A federal judge has set June 3, 2013 as the trial date in the e-book price-fixing case. That day, the Department of Justice will face off against Apple and publishers Penguin and Macmillan (which owns FSG, Henry Holt, and Picador) over whether they colluded to rig the prices of e-books. (Simon and Schuster, Hachette, and HarperCollins, the other three publishers who were initially accused, agreed to an out-of-court settlement). In an odd twist, the trial date is only a day before the beginning of next year's Book Expo.
Novelist, essayist, and journalist Nora Ephron died last night at the age of seventy-one due to complications brought on by leukemia. Ephron wrote the screenplays for When Harry Met Sally, You've Got Mail, and Sleepless in Seattle, as well as a number of bestselling novels.
The Guardian profiles Swedish author Sven Lindqvist, whose eclectic books Exterminate All the Brutes and A History of Bombing explore the idea that violence is part of a common European heritage. Lindqvist’s 1967 book The Myth of Wu Tao-tzu, about the myth of the Chinese artist trying to seek solace from a “degraded west,” will be published for the first time in English this August by Granta.
A new app raises the question: Would we read books if they announced ahead of time how long it would take to finish them?
Amelia Gray lets slip that Lindsay Hunter—author of the collection Daddy’s—has signed a two-book deal with FSG for a novel and another story collection.
Behind a paywall, but well worth the read: John McPhee covers the history of expletives in The New Yorker, and one famous incident in which editor Robert Gottlieb wore a Post-It with “MOTHERFUCKER” written on it around the office.
The New York Times breathlessly covers the Brooklyn lifestyle of recent transplant Martin Amis, whose move from England they dub “the most stunning infusion of macho literary firepower to the borough since Norman Mailer.” Though Amis has been adapting to the borough—his fancy new home is in Cobble Hill, and his two teenage daughters will attend the private Brooklyn Heights high school St. Ann’s—his work is staying put in Europe. Amis’s next novel, on the heels of his most recent, Lionel Asbo, will be set in a Nazi concentration camp.
To the dismay of local Tea Party politicians, residents of Troy, Michigan, got citizens to vote in favor of a tax hike to support the public library system by threatening to hold a book burning.
The British publishing company Pearson remained the world’s largest publisher for the second year in a row. Of the fifty largest publishers in the world, eleven are based in the U.S.
