Thanks to the breakaway success of Fifty Shades of Gray, Random House employees were notified at their holiday party this week that they’ll be getting “5,000 shades of green.” CEO Markus Doyle announced to a cheering crowd Random Housers on Wednesday that every full-time employee who’s been with the company longer than a year will get a $5,000 bonus, while people who have been there less time will get a pro-rated gift.
Yes, bedbugs can hide in library books.
This week, Hachette kicked off the e-book price wars after it abandoned the agency model of e-book pricing. As soon as the set prices were dropped, retailers started lowering costs, and as of Thursday, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest was going for $4 on Amazon, Barnes and Noble’s website, and the iTunes store.
Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein has donated $1.5 million to the Library of Congress to fund three new literary awards which will be given out over the next five years. The prizes will include the following: “the David M. Rubenstein Prize for a groundbreaking contribution to the sustained advancement of literacy by any individual or entity worldwide; the American Prize, honoring a project developed and deployed in the United States during the preceding decade with special emphasis on combating aliteracy; and the International Prize, which would honor the outstanding work of an individual, a nation or a non-governmental organization (NGO) working in a specific country or region.”
Insert your punchline here: Dick Cheney and his cardiologist are writing a memoir about the former VP’s faulty heart.
From zilch to $75,000: Jonathan Evison walks The Stranger through the book deals, piddling advances, movie options, and bar tabs that make of the financial calculus of an aspiring novelist.
