Organizations demand prison e-book readers drop access fees during COVID-19
With prisons and jails in lockdown because of the coronavirus, inmates have almost no educational or recreational activities left. This week, PEN America and many justice reform groups and literacy...
View ArticleLGBTQ children's books face record calls for bans in US libraries
Attempts to remove books from libraries across the US rose almost a fifth last year, with children's books featuring LGBTQ characters making up 80% of the most challenged books.
View ArticleIndie publishers and booksellers waiting for CARES Act relief
As small businesses around the country await funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES ) Act, indie publishers and booksellers are having mixed experiences trying to secure...
View ArticleFederal Appeals Court declares literacy a constitutional right
In a potential landmark ruling, the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held this week that access to a basic minimum education "that can plausibly impart literacy" is a fundamental, Constitutionally...
View ArticlePrint unit book sales rose 10% last week
Unit sales of print books are proving to be surprisingly resilient despite the massive disruption to the economy caused by the coronavirus, rising 10% last week compared to the week ended April 18 at...
View ArticleFree food and $100 prizes: Alaskans rally to get challenged classics to...
A school board in Alaska has got more than it bargained for after pulling classics including The Great Gatsby and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings from the school curriculum, with members of the local...
View ArticleColson Whitehead: Black author makes Pulitzer Prize history
US author Colson Whitehead has become only the fourth writer ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction twice. The African-American author was honored for The Nickel Boys, which chronicles the abuse...
View ArticleMichael McClure, famed Beat poet who helped launch the SF Renaissance, dead...
Michael McClure, the young poet recruited to put together the famed Six Gallery readings in 1955 that launched the San Francisco Renaissance and the legend of the Beats, died Monday, May 4, at his...
View ArticleS&S CEO Carolyn Reidy dies of a heart attack
Carolyn Reidy, president and CEO of Simon & Schuster since 2008, died of a heart attack this morning. She was 71. News of Reidy's death was delivered to shocked S&S employees by Dennis Eulau,...
View ArticleWalker Books and Candlewick acquired by Trustbridge Global Media
Walker Books and its global subsidiaries, which include Candlewick Press, have been acquired by Trustbridge Global Media, the global children's content company formed in 2016 by growth equity firm...
View ArticlePrint unit sales post another double digit gain
Unit sales of print books continue to defy expectations that the coronavirus crisis will lead to a plunge in sales. In fact, just the opposite is occurring. Last week, unit sales of print books had...
View ArticleThe real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for...
When a group of schoolboys were marooned on an island in 1965 for fifteen months, it turned out very differently from William Golding's bestseller, writes Rutger Bregman... ...No one noticed the small...
View ArticleBookstore sales plunged 33% in March
Sales at bookstores tumbled 33.4% in March compared to March 2019, according to preliminary estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Sales this March were $391 million, down from $587 million a...
View ArticleAn open letter to newspapers and other media outlets from the Authors Guild...
From The Washington Post Book ClubYou probably know that most news organizations have been walloped by the Great Cessation. Thousands of journalists have been laid off or furloughed, and many...
View ArticleThe story behind 'The Great Realisation,' a post-pandemic bedtime tale
Before the pandemic, Tomos Roberts read his poems to crowds around London who, he confesses, were often more interested in what they were drinking than what he was saying. Now, hunkered down and out...
View ArticlePublisher sales fell 8.4% in March
The decline in publishing sales due to the impact of Covid-19 began to appear in some, but not all, industry segments in March. The 1,361 publishers who report to the AAP's StatShot program saw a 8.4%...
View ArticlePrint unit sales fell 8% last week, but are still up on the same week last year
After two weeks of consecutive double-digit growth, unit sales of print books fell last week compared to the week ended May 9, 2020, at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. For the week ended May 16,...
View ArticleFree food and $100 prizes: Alaskans rally to get challenged classics to...
Original Story: April 30, 2020: A school board in Alaska has got more than it bargained for after pulling classics including The Great Gatsby and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings from the school...
View ArticleRWA retires RITA Awards, debuts the 'Vivian'
The Romance Writers of America will permanently retire its annual RITA Awards, which it has presented annually since 1982, and introduce a new award, the Vivian, named after RWA founder Vivian...
View ArticleAn A to Z of old words to calm and inspire hope
Like language, our emotions are universal and whatever fears and anxieties we are now experiencing, someone else in centuries gone by has felt the same way. Here is an A-Z of archaic and forgotten...
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