For the first time ever, e-books are outselling hardcovers. A new report from the American Association of Publishers finds that in the first quarter of 2012, e-books racked up $282.3 million in sales, while hardcovers trailed behind at $229.6 million. The good news is that sales increased all around: E-book sales went up by 28.1 percent, while hardcovers rose 2.7 percent.
BOMB magazine has received a $15,000 grant from Amazon to expand its literary section, First Proof. And speaking of $15,000 Amazon grants, writer Alan Averill was awarded the retailer’s fifth annual Breakthrough Novel Award for his debut, The Beautiful Land.
Rapper DeStorm Power name checks fifty-two book titles—from The Picture of Dorian Gray to Fifty Shades of Gray—in a single song.
Apropos of Ken Auletta’s article about Amazon and price-fixing, three New Yorker editors sit down to talk about the effect of e-books on writers, editors, and publishers.
Former Paris Review web editor Thessaly La Force is taking a break from her studies at Iowa to guest edit the Review’s blog, The Daily, this week. First up, an interesting G-chat with Sheila Heti (not easy to do, since Heti’s been interviewed nearly a half-dozen times in the past few weeks). Heti’s new novel has already become the most buzzed-about book of the summer (it is just being published in the US today, though it came out in Canada two years ago). James Wood delivered a reserved, somewhat dismissive review in the New Yorker, which will only make Heti’s target audience like it more, while Chris Kraus, Johanna Fateman, Lena Dunham, Miranda July, and many others have given the book unqualified praise; magazines like Triple Canopy and n+1 are reminding us to read Heti’s work in their archives; and the Huffington Post has made it “The Book We’re Talking About.” You might have a chance to talk it over with Heti herself tonight, when she reads at Brooklyn’s powerHouse arena.