Barnes & Noble Names Book Award Winners (Good e-Reader) Time Warner Spins Off Magazines as Meredith Talks Fall Through (Paid Content) The Insanity of Making a Wizard of Oz Film in Today's IP Climate (Techdirt) A Contract from Alibi, the Random House Digital Imprint (John Scalzi) Kindle Daily Deals: Vanished in the Dunes by Allan Retzky (and 3 others) ...

              Pearson Launches New Incubator Company for Startup Companies (Good e-Reader) Amazon's Price Parity Clause Attracts Attention of German Antitrust Regulator (GigaOM) Audible Users Get an iPad App (Galley Cat) Random-Penguin & Libraries (Digital Book World) Kindle Daily Deals: The Cider House Rules by John Irving (and 3 others)...

One hurdle down. Several more to go with the EU, Canadian Competition Bureau and various other antitrust authorities around the world still needing to weigh in on this. Penguin's settlement with the Justice Department was a move to smooth the way for this merger, and it looks like that move worked. Note that Random House, not included in the price-fixing case, will be bound by the terms of the Penguin settlement. Who owns how much of what? For those who are keeping score, according to the announcement: Following completion, Bertelsmann will own 53% and Pearson 47% of Penguin Random House. It will encompass...

  By Brian Howard Last week, following a soft-launch the week prior, Random House marched out BookScout, a Facebook app designed to link readers with books they'll like but might not have discovered on their own. The recommendation engine draws on a user's "likes"—both on one's Facebook timeline and then directly through the app. Intriguingly, BookScout is not purely a Random House recommendation engine—it'll tip readers to any book in print, regardless of whether it was published by its own imprint Knopf, Big Six rival HarperCollins, indie McSweeney's or even Amazon Publishing. Though the app's early reviews have been mixed (I've found its recommendations to...

Watch out EL James, there's a new writer out to steal your crown as a bestselling romance novelist—and she's only 17-years-old. Like the [Fifty Shades] author, Beth Reeks was snapped up by a publisher after her book was initially a hit online. Now her novel, The Kissing Booth, is set to be published in paperback, which could see the teenager propelled even higher up the bestsellers lists. Like James, Reeks' genre is romance but, befitting for her age and that of her target teen audience, she doesn't realm into the erotic. Her novel is described as a 'cool, sexy young adult romance', and is about the...

Penguin Books, along with its seriously talented team of graphic designers, is making great play of its latest rebooting of the George Orwell franchise. Coverage from the Huffington Post to the Creative Review lauds Penguin’s brave and high-minded initiative to relaunch Orwell’s works with bold cover designs that recall the original Penguin editions—only, in the case of Nineteen Eighty-Four, with the title erased to signify censorship. Penguin Classics’ own website states: "In recognition of one of Britain’s greatest and most influential writers, Penguin Books, the Orwell Estate and The Orwell Prize are launching the inaugural ‘Orwell Day’ on 21st January with new editions of...

If you can’t find the right library e-books for your new Kindle, Nook, iPad or other gizmo, you’re not alone. More than 100 patrons of the District of Columbia Public Library were lined up electronically today for 10 e-book copies of The Racketeer, John Grisham’s new novel about the murder of a federal judge. Some 400+ D.C. library users awaited 60 electronic copies of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, the best-selling fiction title on the New York Times list. And a digital version of The Casual Vacancy, by J.K. Rowling, was not even in the catalog of the D.C. public library system. Could a well-stocked national digital library system—in...

  Employees at book publisher Random House are getting a little something extra in their fishnet Christmas stockings this year, a $5,000 bonus. The bonus, which will be the same for top editors as their secretaries, follows a particularly good year for the publishing house in large part from the success of ... Read Full Article Source: ABC News * * *    ...

The slow pace of ebook innovation (O'Reilly Tools of Change) The transformation of publishing (The Guardian) Goodreads CEO Otis Chandler on the Future of Discoverability and Social Reading (Digital Book World) A New Era for Books: The Random House-Penguin Merger Is Just the Start (The Atlantic) Kindle Daily Deal: Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser {and} Puss in Boots by Eric Metaxas & Pierre Le-Tan * * * Follow us @TeleRead  Join us on Facebook...

  They’re going to the chapel and they’re gonna get married: Book publishers Penguin and Random House will become one after their parents company complete an upcoming merger. If the merging of companies in other industries is any indication, this new union could produce higher book prices as the two cease competing, as well as a possible dearth in the selection of titles. Read Full Article ... Source: The Consumerist * * * Follow us @TeleRead  Join us on Facebook...

So two of the largest publishers in the world are merging their book arms entirely to deal with "this exciting, fast-moving world of digital books and digital readers," to quote Pearson CEO Marjorie Scardino. Could there be any clearer proof that e-books are where the action is, and that the print-only model is truly over? What price print Luddism now? What does everyone else think?...

Penguin, Random House Aims to Attack Emerging, Digital Markets (Paid Content) Barnes & Noble Nook eReaders Debut in UK (Good E-Reader) Douglas & McIntyre Collapse a New Sign of Publishing Industry Struggles (The Star) Why the Boom in Self-Publishing is a Mixed Blessing (NY Daily News) Kindle Daily Deal: Against His Will by Trish Jensen {&} Rise of the Wolf by Curtis Jobling * * * Follow us @TeleRead Join us on Facebook...