Free Republic

Sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick's heirs battle Hollywood over the rights to the 2011 Matt Damon film "The Adjustment Bureau."Plot outline for a Philip K. Dick story: Hollywood buys film rights to obscure short story by famous author. Makes movie. Movie makes money. Producers then claim they never needed to buy rights in the first place. Demand their money back. Emblematic Philip K. Dick story elements: Attempt to turn back time and murkiness of reality. Extra mind-bending plot twist: Author of original story is named Philip K. Dick. As Laura Dick Coelho, one of the late author's daughters, told me:...

Penguin's security issue was not specified, although it likely refers to piracy concerns. But analyst Avi Greengart said he wondered how much of Penguin's objections have to do with security and how much with the business model of lending titles, especially new titles, through libraries. The growing availability of e-book titles for borrowing through public libraries has hit a bump. On Tuesday, Penguin Group USA announced it would no longer allow digital editions in any e-format of new titles to become available for library lending -- and it is disabling availability of all titles for lending in Amazon's Kindle format....

Sarah Palin used to pronounce Mitt Romney's name "M-I-L-T." In one of the many embarrassing anecdotes about the former Alaska governor, former aide Frank Bailey writes in a leaked manuscript that Palin actually argued with some of her staffers about how to correctly pronounce Romney's name. During her own 2006 campaign for governor, when Romney was chairman of the Republican Governors Association, Bailey writes that Palin didn't seem to know much about the then-Massachusetts governor. “During the campaign for governor, when Romney was in the background of our Republican Governors’ mess, Sarah didn’t even have a clear idea who he...

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican Publishing House is gearing up to distribute another blockbuster tome — this one the exclusive work of Pope Benedict XVI.Salesian Father Giuseppe Costa, director of the publishing house, told the Vatican newspaper yesterday, “This morning I sent the text to various editors; the aim is to present it in March.”Salesian Father Giuseppe Costa (CNS/Carol Glatz) The book is “Jesus of Nazareth. Part Two. Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection.” And the texts sent out are Vatican-controlled translations into a variety of languages.The pope’s book could come out just four months after...

Writers are bypassing the traditional route to bookstore shelves and self-publishing their works online. By selling directly to readers, authors get a larger slice of the sale price. Joe Konrath can't wait for his books to go out of print. When that happens, the 40-year-old crime novelist plans to reclaim the copyrights from his publisher, Hyperion Books, and self-publish them on Amazon.com, Apple Inc.'s iBooks and other online outlets. That way he'll be able to collect 70% of the sale price, compared with the 6% to 18% he receives from Hyperion. As for future novels, Konrath plans to self-publish all...

WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange has said in an interview he had signed deals for his autobiography worth more than one million pounds(($A1.57 million). Assange told Britain's Sunday Times newspaper that the money would help him defend himself against allegations of sexual assault made by two women in Sweden. "I don't want to write this book, but I have to," he said on Sunday. "I have already spent 200,000 pounds for legal costs and I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat." The Australian said he would receive the equivalent of $A800,000 from Alfred A. Knopf, his American publisher,...

Sarah Palin's new book, "America by Heart," has logged unimpressive sales numbers, publishing sources say. Even so, the memoir, which went on sale in November, holds second place on the New York Times bestseller list, The Washington Post reported. Palin's first book, "Going Rogue," was released one year ago and became the second-fastest selling political book in history. It went into a second printing three days after its release and went on to sell 2.2 million hardcover copies. "America by Heart" (subtitled "Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag") had an initial press run of 1 million copies, suggesting its publisher,...

(RTTNews) - A prominent newspaper in Mexico's border city of Ciudad Juarez has published an editorial requesting guidelines on media publishing from drug cartels operating in the city after one of its employees was shot dead by suspected drug operatives last week. The unprecedented editorial carried by the El Diario de Juarez newspaper on its front page on Sunday was prompted by the killing of Luis Carlos Santiago, 21-year-old photographer working for the paper, last week. Santiago and a co-worker was shot by unidentified gunmen in Ciudad Juarez on 17 September when they were sitting inside a parked car outside a...

Is this a move to grab the influential under-12 demographic in the midterms? Barack Obama, New York Times bestselling author and President of the United States, is finally fulfilling the terms of his three-book, $1.9 million deal with Random House with the forthcoming release of the children's book Of Thee I Sing: A Letter To My Daughters. Obama's earlier books include the nonfiction hits Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope. According to its publisher, the book (illustrated by Loren Long) will be "a moving tribute to thirteen groundbreaking Americans and the ideals that have shaped our nation."

Cairo - An Islamic publishing house in Egypt has published what is says is a 'forged' version of the Christian Bible, angering the local Coptic Church, independent daily al-Masry al-Youm reported Thursday. The owner of the Islamic Enlightenment Publishing House, Abuislam Abdullah, wrote in the introduction that the reason behind the book's publication was to prove that there are several versions of the bible and that Christians had forged theirs. Abdullah claims that the version he published was written before the Book of Genesis, the Christian Old Testament.

There is nothing unusual about political biographies aimed at young readers. (The lives of both Barack Obama and John McCain were both depicted in rather heroic terms in books intended for young readers during the 2008 presidential campaign.) But when the subject is Sarah Palin – whose own autobiography "Going Rogue" has sold more than 2 million copies – you can bet that reader interest will run particularly high. "Speaking Up: The Sarah Palin Story," expected in bookstores this fall, is part of the ZonderKidz biography series. Other books in the series tend to be inspirational rather than political, featuring...

High price, high sales, glossy ads, trebles all roundSaving the whole of the newspaper industry is a big ask, even for a "magical and revolutionary" device, but there might just be hope for the magazine business. The rapaciously-priced ($4.99 for this month's issue) iPad edition of Wired has comfortably outsold the somewhat cheaper print edition, and it's not even ad-free. On the contrary... It's a success for 'definitely not free', which you might reckon is a problem for Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired and King of Free. Anderson however has been tetchily protesting - in between tweeting the...

<p>The Canadian rock band Rush has sent a letter to Kentucky U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul, saying his campaign is violating copyright laws by playing their music without permission.</p> <p>The Courier-Journal of Louisville reported that Rush's attorney, Robert Farmer of Toronto, had sent the letter to the Paul campaign. Farmer told the newspaper his objection is not political.</p>

Sarah Palin announced on her Facebook page that Joe McGinniss, author of the infamous book Fatal Vision that chronicled the story of Jeffrey MacDonald, has rented the house right next door to hers. It seems he's chosen her has the subject of his next book. Lucky her. While she keeps the tone of her post upbeat and positive, it's clear she is disturbed to know that someone so hostile and antagonistic toward her is watching her and her family's every move. Since Palin published her post, the blogosphere has been all atwitter about this development. Many people find it creepy....

At the beginning of March 2004, almost nobody outside the narrow world of Chicago politics had heard of Barack Hussein Obama. He was 42, a state legislator and the author of a well-received but by no means bestselling memoir, Dreams from My Father. Then he won the Democratic primary for the safe senatorial seat of Illinois. Four months later, he delivered his galvanising keynote address to the Democratic national convention (“there is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is a United States of America”). That November he was duly elected senator: the only African-American in Congress’s upper...

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Enjoy $9.99 electronic books while you can -- for they soon may be a thing of the past. News Corp Chief Rupert Murdoch, who oversees a media empire than includes HarperCollins books, home to authors like Michael Crichton and Janet Evanovich, made clear on Tuesday his displeasure with the low price Amazon.com Inc has set for electronic books.

E&P will shut its doors this afternoon after more than 125 years in operation as "the bible of the newspaper industry" and one of America's oldest magazines. Staffers are vacating the offices in New York City, but we still hope to be back. We shipped our January issue on Monday and it will be mailed to subscribers next week. This Web site and our two blogs will remain alive but we will not be updating them after today. Office phone and email service will be suspended but staffers--a vast majority have worked here from 10 to 25 years--can be reached...

Ever since electronic books emerged as a major growth market, New York’s largest publishing houses have worried that big-name authors might sign deals directly with e-book retailers or other new ventures, bypassing traditional publishers entirely. Now, one well-known author is doing just that. Stephen R. Covey, one of the most successful business authors of the last two decades, has moved e-book rights for two of his best-selling books from his print publisher, Simon & Schuster, a division of the CBS Corporation, to a digital publisher that will sell the e-books to Amazon.com for one year. ... The move promises to...

Media: By now the decline of the newspaper industry has become, well, yesterday's news. Small wonder the industry's own trade publication would eventually close its own doors. But there's a little more to the story. Last week Editor & Publisher magazine, aged 125, finally ended its run as newspaperdom's principal trade pub when owner Neilsen Business Media announced it no longer fit in with the company's reformulated plans. Journalists who had long since ceased reading the print edition offered nostalgic tributes — online. That their posts appeared on the Internet itself tells much of the story. In recent years both...

While Sarah Palin is certainly making waves with her own best-selling book “Going Rogue,” the former governor and vice presidential candidate is also in the spotlight with a cameo appearance as a heroine in the recently released children’s book “Help! Mom! Radicals Are Ruining My Country!”In the book written by Katharine DeBrecht, “Governor Sarah” (a character based on Palin) attempts to help two young boys hold onto their dream of a swing-set business which is struggling as a result of high taxes, heavy regulations and 246 czars. “I am trying to let all Americans know that these radicals are killing...