Free Republic

<p>Last week, an auction for a book by Capt. Richard Phillips, the merchant-ship hero who saved his crew from pirates, drew top bids of around $500,000—half the seven-figure advance it had been expected to fetch.</p> <p>At least that book had bidders. In February, the William Morris Agency failed to find any takers for a Britney Spears memoir.</p>

Does James Frey have embarrassing audiotapes of Oprah Winfrey? The upcoming paperback version of his best-selling novel, "Bright Shiny Morning," includes two passages omitted from the hard cover, which came out last year. The first passage is a triple X-rated story of an affair between a lawyer for the ACLU and the wife of a Republican senator who meet in a bar and proceed to have raunchy sex in bathrooms, alleys, seedy motels and the backseats of the cars. The sex scenes — deemed too racy for some readers — are included in the paperback. The second passage is more...

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) - A dissertation written by President Barack Obama's late mother is being published. Duke University Press said Monday that an edited version of Ann Dunham's anthropological study about rural craftsmen in Indonesia is scheduled to reach stores this fall. Dunham completed the study three years before she died in 1995. Duke marketing manager Emily Young said the foreword was written by the president's half-sister and Dunham's daughter, Maya Soetoro-Ng (so-TOR'-oh ING). The book is based on Ann Dunham's 14 years of research among village workers on the Indonesian island of Java.

A New Pro Al-Qaeda Magazine for Extremists is Offering Fitness Tips to JihadistsA new pro al-Qaeda magazine for extremists is offering fitness tips to jihadists planning attacks against Americans in countries such as Afghanistan. The first edition out this month offers workout tips to get buff with the aim "to train as hard as possible in order to damage the enemies of Allah as much as possible." The English language e-zine, Jihad Recollections, is about 70 pages long and is thought to be produced by an American living in North Carolina. It claims to have articles written by Osama bin...

Yes, Sony and Google have teamed up to offer 500,000 free e-books on the Sony Reader. Free is nice, and half a million is an impressive number, but lots of free and cheap e-books can wreak havoc on your database and best-seller lists--just ask Amazon.com, which found itself with Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" briefly sitting atop its best-seller list for legal thrillers in the Kindle Store, experienced earlier Thursday. The Kindle Edition of "Mein Kampf" isn't free on Amazon. What's interesting is that there are actually two versions: one costs $1.58, and the other costs $1.60. Both are fairly popular,...

Gay magazine Genre will be suspended due to the ongoing recession, it has been announced. The monthly lifestyle magazine is taking a respite, according to CEO David Unger. Unger said in a statement posted on their official website, "We thank all of our readers, advertisers and editorial staff for their support throughout our 16-year history and hope that we can re-establish our relationship when times are better." He also clears that the suspension of Genre magazine, a is part of the Window Media publication, does not affect the other magazines held by the gay press publisher, including the Washington Blade,...

What makes “Dreams From My Father” unique is that so few of those praising the book for its supposed merits seem to have actually bothered to read it. Numerous copies have been sold to Obama’s liberal camp followers, but, unlike Chairman Mao’s “Little Red Book,” no one was actually expected to memorize it cover to cover or to become familiar with its contents. Lord knows, I tried, but, time and time again, I had to put it aside. Based upon those chapters that I managed to slog through, I was reminded of Oscar Wilde’s comment upon reading about the death...

President Obama, the merchandising phenomenon, has been a boon to sidewalk T-shirt vendors everywhere, the Washington Times reports. Less conspicuous, perhaps, is the equally robust success of the children's book industry in marketing Obama's hopeful aura and personal history to parents of young children. Are children's book publishers seeking to indoctrinate impressionable young readers -- or are they simply obeying the laws of supply and demand? When the country elects a new president, publishers characteristically issue a biography or two geared toward young readers. But in the case of Obama, publishers are tapping into unusual levels of excitement and curiosity....

Oprah Winfrey called it the "greatest love story" she'd ever had on her show. The love story was so touching, that Hollywood is even making a movie about it. Herman Rosenblat received international attention for his tale about being a hungry little boy in a Nazi concentration camp who was thrown apples every day by a little girl named Roma, on the other side of the fence. Years later, according to the story, Rosenblat met that same girl on a blind date in New York City and proposed to her on the spot. The only problem was, Rosenblat's story, which...

Yesterday Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) re-introduced the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act.  This year it's H.R. 801 (last year it was H.R. 6845), and co-sponsored by Steve Cohen (D-TN), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Darrell Issa (R-CA), and Robert Wexler (D-FL).  The language has not changed.  The Fair Copyright Act is to fair copyright what the Patriot Act was to patriotism.  It would repeal the OA policy at the NIH and prevent similar OA policies at any federal agency.  The bill has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee, where Conyers is Chairman, and where he has consolidated his power...

Earnings reports released by the New York Times Company in October indicate that drastic measures will have to be taken over the next five months or the paper will default on some $400 million in debt. With more than $1billion in debt already on the books, only $46 million in cash reserves as of October, and no clear way to tap into the capital markets (the company’s debt was recently reduced to junk status), the paper’s future doesn’t look good.

AN EMERGING nation looks increasingly confident as a player on the world stage... China in the 21st century, contemplating the pros and cons of the internet? No, Tudor England, at the time when a gifted, impulsive young man called William Tyndale arrived in London..

Dr. Waltzer is the Director, Jewish Studies, at Michigan State University. It was as a result of his research that the Penguin Group decided last week not to publish the now-discredited Holocaust memoir by Herman Rosenblat. Waltzer began raising questions about the book in November. In response the producer of the movie that was to be based on the memoir complained to Waltzer's dean. After Rosenblat admitted he had lied the producer said: "It’s unfortunate he told a lie .... The man is tragically flawed, but his story had value." Waltzer was joined in his doubts about the book by...

U.S. book publishers and booksellers are full of foreboding - even more than usual for an industry that has been anticipating its demise since the advent of television. The holiday season that just ended is likely to have been one of the worst in decades. Publishers have been cutting back and laying off. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced that it would not acquire any new manuscripts, a move akin to a butcher shop proclaiming it had stopped ordering fresh meat. American bookstores, both new and secondhand, are faltering as well.

Journal to require authors to post in the free online encyclopaedia.Wikipedia, meet RNA. Anyone submitting to a section of the journal RNA Biology will, in the future, be required to also submit a Wikipedia page that summarizes the work. The journal will then peer review the page before publishing it in Wikipedia. The initiative is a collaboration between the journal and the RNA family database (Rfam) consortium led by the UK Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton. "The novelty is that for the first time it creates a link between Wikipedia and traditional journal publishing, with its peer-review element," says...

The economy has crashed down on an industry once believed immune from the worst—book publishing—with consolidation at Random House Inc., and layoffs at Simon & Schuster and Thomas Nelson Publishers. "Yes, Virginia, book publishing is NOT recession proof," said Patricia Schroeder, president and chief executive officer of the Association of American Publishers. "It's sad day." At Random House, the country's largest general trade publisher, the man who helped give the world "The Da Vinci Code" is in talks for a new position, while the publisher of Danielle Steel and other brand-name authors is leaving altogether. Stephen Rubin, who released Dan...

The publishing industry is betting on Barack Obama like no president in decades. Since Election Day alone, more than half a dozen book deals have been signed to exploit Obamania. Two dozen books in the works range from the serious to the silly. There are retrospective ticktocks on how Obama won office and prospective looks at his first year in the White House. There is a biography on Obama’s father, a compilation of essays on Obama and race, and others tilting toward the celebratory with photographic montages. There are children’s books, of course, and a style guide on Michelle Obama,...

-snip- McCain made his first million the old-fashioned way: he married the daughter of a wealthy businessman. But Barack Obama, the son of an absent African father and a mother who relied on government-issued food stamps to feed her children, became a millionaire in a more modern manner – on the back of a book deal. It happened circuitously. In 1990, Obama was already enough of a celebrity – the first black president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review – for the New York publishers Simon & Schuster to offer a “six-figure contract” for a proposed autobiography. The only problem...

For those of you who may not know, the publishing industry is almost completely run by liberals. Any debate on this should be ended by an August survey from Publishing Trends which showed a whopping 86% of respondents plan to vote for Barack Obama in November. Yes, 86%. Here's the real stunner, though. A survey in Publishers Weekly released in July of 2008, found the following:The salary divide between men and women actually increased in 2007—men received an average salary increase of 4.5% last year, compared to 4.2% for women. Men earned an average salary of $103,822 last year, compared...

Three men have been charged with plotting to attack the publisher of a controversial novel dealing with the Prophet Muhammad, British police said Thursday. The three - salesman Abrar Mizra, 22; cab driver Abbas Taj, 30; and Ali Beheshti, 40 - were arrested Saturday near the north London home and office of Martin Rynja, who plans to publish "The Jewel of Medina," police said. They were arrested after a fire broke out at Rynja's building, but police have refused to disclose any details. The men were charged with plotting to endanger life and damage property. Beheshti was also charged with...