The Associated Press

By now we're all aware of the battle raging between Amazon.com (AMZN) and Hachette over the pricing of eBooks. While the consumer is certainly the loser as the two big corporations go head to head, there's likely a winner from the battle royale as well-Barnes & Noble (BKS).

Associated Press

Maxim's John Tinker and Kevin Rippey explain why Amazon.com's standoff with Hachette Books is good news for Barnes & Noble:

NEW YORK (AP) - Three years ago, guest speaker Mindy Kaling joked that publishing's annual national convention, BookExpo America, resembled "a high school reunion where all the jocks were killed in a plane crash, and all the minorities, too."

Little seems to have changed.

From Wednesday to Saturday, tens of thousands of publishers, authors, agents and librarians will meet at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York for a convention predominantly organized by whites, spotlighting books predominantly written, edited and published by whites.

Bexar County, Texas has opened a new library that has no books inside. Instead the library is outfitted with iPad stations and iMacs loaded with digital books available to check out, making it the first digital library in the country.

The library is called the BiblioTech. Patrons can check out eBooks, audiobooks, and software training databases, as well as eReaders. The library also hosts computer classes and patrons can use laptops, tablets, and desktops at the branch.

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 to The Associated Press. Parent companies Pearson and Bertelsmann, which announced the news Monday morning, said the new, New York-based company will employ some 10,000 people and comprise nearly 250 imprints. Penguin CEO John Makinson will be chairman. In the CEO's seat will be Markus Dohle, formerly the chairman and CEO of Random House.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Best-selling author Vince Flynn, who wrote the Mitch Rapp counterterrorism thriller series and sold more than 15 million books in the U.S. alone, died Wednesday in Minnesota after a more than two-year battle with prostate cancer, according to friends and his publisher. He was 47.

Flynn was supporting himself by bartending when he self-published his first novel, "Term Limits," in 1997 after getting more than 60 rejection letters.

The publisher of Khaled Hosseini, Harlan Coben and other popular authors has decided that it's comfortable with letting libraries offer e-book editions of brand new releases.

Starting Tuesday, libraries can offer e-books from Penguin Group (USA) at the same time that the hardcover comes out, a switch from the previous policy of delaying downloads for six months, the publisher told The Associated Press. While vastly more e-books are available to libraries compared with a few years ago, Penguin and other publishers have limited digital access for fear of losing sales.

Small Demons, the innovative start-up that connects all the details of all the books we read into a connected web of information, announced today that it has added a fifth of the big six book publishers with the addition of Penguin to its catalogue.  Having already inked deals with Simon & Schuster, Random House,Harper Collins and Hachette, Small Demons now has content deals with five of the big six publishing houses. Many books within the Penguin collection, including bestselling genre fiction and the world's leading classics brand Penguin Classics, will begin to appear on the site over the course of 2013, allowing readers to explore their favorite books and draw surprising connections between seemingly disparate literary worlds: from Jack Kerouac's jazz legends to Jim Butcher's Chicago wizards, from Jane Austen's genteel England to Charlaine Harris's tumultuous Bon Temps, Louisiana.

For Barnes & Noble, the digital future is not what it used to be.

After a year spent signaling its commitment to build its business through its Nook division, Barnes & Noble on Thursday announced disappointing holiday sales figures, with steep declines that underscored the challenge it faces in transforming from its traditional retail format.

While you were pondering your happy hour plans on Friday, the Associated Press reported that literary lion Philip Roth is hanging up the quill, having spilled the news in October to French publication Les inRocks.

“Némésis sera mon dernier livre,” said Roth of Nemesis, his latest and allegedly last novel. He added, and our French is a little rusty here, that, essentially, he's happy with what he's done, but he's tired of reading and writing fiction and doesn't think further works will significantly impact his legacy.

Friends and writers seem skeptical that he's actually finished. —Brian Howard

The Swedish Academy announced on Thursday that it had awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature to Mo Yan, a Chinese author who was said to be “overjoyed and scared” when the Nobel organizers contacted him to say he had won the coveted award.

“Through a mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives, Mo Yan has created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition,”