Annalisa Quinn

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Amazon reported an unexpected second-quarter loss Thursday of about $7 million — though revenue rose 22 percent — as it continues to bet big on investments in digital content. The Bookseller summarized Amazon's strategy of ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Jane Austen will be the new face of the 10-pound banknote, replacing Charles Darwin, the Bank of England announced Wednesday. That follows an uproar after the bank said it would replace Elizabeth Fry — the only ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Chuck Palahniuk says he is working on a sequel to Fight Club, his 1996 cult novel about underground fighting matches. The sequel, which will be a "dark and messy" graphic novel series, doesn't yet have a publisher. ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• A previously unpublished short story by Catch-22 author Joseph Heller comes out today in The Strand Magazine [subscription only]. The magazine's editor, Andrew Gulli, said he found the story in the library archives at Brandeis University ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Although it's hard to imagine Ernest Hemingway as anything other than bearded, gruff and gin-scented, five detailed scrapbooks by the Nobel Prize winner's mother give a glimpse of his early life through baby photos, school reports, drawings ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• In a twist worthy of her latest detective novel, it turns out it was a lawyer's wife's best friend who leaked J.K. Rowling's identity as the "Robert Galbraith" who wrote the crime novel The Cuckoo's Calling. The ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• The prince of Denmark is going on world tour. The Globe theatre company announced this week that it wants to bring Shakespeare's play to every country on Earth, so it plans to embark on a two-year tour ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• The 33^rd annual Ernest Hemingway look-alike competition at Sloppy Joe's Bar in Key West, Fla., kicks off Thursday. The stoically bearded among us will go head to head in the fiercely competitive three-day tournament to ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Juror B37 has dropped her plans to write a book about the George Zimmerman trial. In a statement released by literary agent Sharlene Martin of Martin Literary Management, Juror B37 wrote, "I realize it was ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• The debut detective novel The Cuckoo's Calling, seemingly written by a former Royal Military Police member named Robert Galbraith, was actually written by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, The Sunday Times revealed this weekend. Rowling's publisher ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• A school district in Long Island, N.Y., has flunked its own summer reading list. The Hempstead Public Schools list features authors such as "George Ornell" and "Emily Bonte," (properly spelled Orwell and Brontë) alongside dozens of other ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• U.S. District Judge Denise Cote delivered a stinging assessment of Apple on Wednesday when she ruled that the company knowingly "participated in and facilitated a horizontal price-fixing conspiracy." In her opinion, she wrote, "The evidence ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• The Ender's Game author and anti-gay activist Orson Scott Card responded to boycotts threats against the upcoming film adaptation starring Harrison Ford. The queer geek group Geeks OUT is organizing boycotts and "Skip Ender's Game" events in ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Google scored a victory this week when an appeals court ruled that the Authors Guild and other organizations couldn't collectively sue the tech giant over its digital library project. Writers groups alleged in a 2005 ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• The vastly prolific fantasy author Neil Gaiman is bringing back his popular Sandman series that ended more than a decade ago, the DC Entertainment imprint Vertigo announced Monday. The Sandman: Overture #1 will be illustrated by J.H. ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Publishers Penguin and Random House have officially merged into one entity known as Penguin Random House (not, as many had hoped, "Random Penguin" or "Penguin House"). The deal "creates the world's largest publisher of consumer books," according ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Paula Deen's New Testament: 250 Favorite Recipes, All Lightened Up isn't even out yet (it's set to be published in October), but a surge of pre-orders in the past few days has made it the top-selling book ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• When NASA launches its first solar sail mission into deep space, it'll be carrying DNA from some of the late, legendary science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke's hair. Most famous as the author of 2001: A ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Erdem Gunduz, the protester known as "The Standing Man" who held a six-hour silent vigil in Instanbul's Taksim Square in response to clashes between Turkish police and demonstrators, has inspired protesters to form "The Taksim Square Book ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Last week, Kickstarter apologized for featuring a book proposal by pickup artist Ken Hoinsky that critics say promotes sexual assault with tips such as "Don't ask for permission" and "Force her to rebuff your advances." ...