In the past couple of weeks big-name agents like Andrew Wylie and authors like Seth Godin have used e-books to challenge traditional publishing, making us protectively clutch our paperbacks. At Digital Book World, Emily Williams examines the crucial questions of copyright and contracts in the emerging battle to control the e-book future, while at The Atlantic, Tim Carmody looks back at "10 Reading Revolutions Before E-Books." The latest craze of the heady e-book era, the Kindle 3, is out now and earning rave reviews; John Naughton explains why this version of Amazon's e-reader will thrive: "

Following Random House's e-book deal with Andrew Wylie earlier this week, Penguin is now negotiating with the super-agent about digital rights to books in Wylie's direct-to-Amazon Odyssey Editions. Insiders speculate that the deal with Random house nets up to 40 percent for backlist titles by Wylie's clients (a significant raise from the old 25 percent rate). According to the website The Bookseller, Wylie's DIY Odyssey imprint has been whittled down from twenty titles to seven—if negotiations with Penguin succeed, there will be only a handful of titles from his e-book gambit left.

Over at the

Rick Gekoski's article about the Man Booker Prize gives you a real sense of the importance of British literary awards—or perhaps just the self-importance of authors nominated for them. Either way, the famously malcontent author Thomas Bernhard would have a field day mocking the pompousness (though he'd probably pocket the prize money anyway).

Music fans will have the satisfaction of seeing Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards read from his forthcoming autobiography, Life, at the New York Public Library on October 29th, leaving us to wonder not just how he's survived this long, but also how

Standoff ends: It was only a month ago that literary agent Andrew Wylie, in a challenge to publishers who resisted negotiating new terms with authors over e-book rights, announced his own e-publishing venture called Odyssey Editions and offered exclusively on Amazon twenty backlist titles ($9.99 each) by his clients, including Lolita, Invisible Man, and Portnoy's Complaint. Whether Wylie's move was a bluff, a taunt, or an earnest expansion of his business, Random House wasted no time in responding, ceasing all new English-language business with the tony lit agency. This was undoubtedly

As the rave reviews of Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Freedom, pour in ("Masterpiece of American fiction," "Novel of the Century," etc.) and the backlash begins (though you can't buy the book yet), Lorin Stein blogs at The Atlantic about what it means for the future of literary fiction (and the companies that publish it). Stein knows the territory well; he worked for Franzen's publisher, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, for more than a decade before decamping to the Paris Review a few months ago. He writes: "In my 12 years at FSG, we saw publishers lose millions every season trying to corner the market

“Buying literature has become cool again," proclaims Paul Levinson, a communications professor at Fordham, in a New York Times article about how e-readers are shattering the stigma of being a bookworm. A recent iPad buyer agrees: “It’s almost like having a new baby . . . people approach me and ask to see it, to touch it, how much I like it. That rarely happens with dead-tree books.”

New York magazine details the history of the ailing Barnes and Noble and the current behind-the-scenes power struggle between founder Len Riggio and his rival Ron Burkle to control its future. 

Have you ever looked at a white chocolate truffle and wondered: "What black arts could have stripped this chocolate of its natural hue?"  At McSweeney's Luke Burns has, imagining H. P. Lovecraft as a candy copywriter for Whitman's Sampler. 

Who are the world's highest paid authors? Don't ask—you probably already know.

Tonight, Taylor Plimpton reads from his new book, Notes from the Night, at Manhattan's

Over at The Village Voice, Michael Musto devotes his entire column this week to his horrid situation with the publisher Alyson Books. Musto's Fork on the Left, Knife in the Back was supposed to be in stores on February 1st, but Alyson still hasn't published it, and hasn't been very forthcoming (at least not with Musto). We hope that Alyson, which is owned by Regent Media, sorts this out soon, because other books we're excited to read—namely Laurie Weeks's Zippermouth and Kevin Killian's Spread Eagle—are also in limbo.

"Get ready for ads in books," says the Wall Street Journal. The paper

Barnes & Noble put itself up for sale on August 2. Now, B&N founder and chairman Leonardo Riggio has bought 990,740 shares of the company's stock—apparently in "an effort to strengthen his voting position for a likely proxy fight."

English-speaking francophiles, rejoice: You can get a sneak peak at Lydia Davis's new translation of Madame Bovary in Playboy's September issue. According to a tweet by Hugh Hefner, it's "a great read."

Google Editions, which was supposed to make millions of books digitally available this summer, will now launch in the fall. Despite its seeming potential to

Literary critic Frank Kermode has died at the age of 90. Kermode penned more than two hundred pieces for the London Review of Books, beginning with the first issue in 1979, and edited and wrote dozens of books over the course of his distinguished career. The New Statesman writes: "Kermode wasn't just the finest literary scholar of his generation, he was also one of this country's most luminous practitioners of the higher journalism." His last book, Concerning E. M. Forster was reviewed in the spring 2010 issue of Bookforum.

In an interview with Big Think, novelist Rick Moody says that the

Stephen Elliott has picked Jonathan Franzen's Freedom for his reading club at the Rumpus. The novel will go on sale August 28, and Elliott is clear about where you shouldn't buy it: "Books purchased from Barnes and Noble, Borders, and Amazon are ineligible."

Since Amazon opened its Kindle store in the UK in early August, ebook retailers there have entered into a price war. In the latest move, bookseller WH Smith cut the prices of its top 100 bestsellers by as much as 66 percent on its ebook site.

Joseph Young cranked out his new vampire novel, NAME, in a month. There's a reason he finished

Jonathan Franzen doesn't like author videos. How do we know? He announced it—in an author video: "This might be a good place for me to register my profound discomfort at having to make videos like this." 

Bill Clinton liked to read Walter Mosley. George Bush liked The Very Hungry Caterpillar. But what does Obama like (aside from Joseph O'Neill)? Here's his reading list from the past two years, which makes us ask—are women allowed? Evidently, Obama hasn't talked about a woman author since the summer of 2008, when he praised Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals.

The Awl wonders: Have authors