Kathryn Stockett

Penguin's digital book sales account for 20 per cent of its revenue in the United States Digital ebooks accounted for 12% of revenues at publishing giant Penguin last year after download sales doubled on a year ago, owner Pearson has announced. The books business, whose UK division published 78 top 10 best-sellers last year, grew overall profits by 5% to £111 million in 2011, despite the collapse of two major customers, including Borders in the United States. Since the beginning of 2008, digital downloads of apps and ebooks across Penguin have totalled approximately 50 million, with revenues from ebooks

+29,029 ft.: If all the copies of "Steve Jobs," Walter Isaacson's biography of the late Apple CEO, were stacked, the pile would be taller than Mt. Everest.

 The first official sales charts including e-book sales data have been published in the Wall Street Journal this weekend, with Nielsen BookScan now supplying e-book sales reports to the US paper. Killing Lincoln by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard (Henry Holt & Co) was number one across all three non-fiction charts—hardcover, e-book and combined—with The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks taking the hardcover and combined fiction top spots, losing out to Bonnie by Iris Johansen (St Martin's Press) in the e-book only chart.

With questions arising about Agency Model pricing, Book Business examined the 10 best-selling e-books lists during mid August to get a sense of what prices seemed to be "right" for trade consumers.

Self-published author John Locke has signed a deal with a traditional publisher. The print editions of John Locke Books will be sold and distributed by Simon & Schuster, the company announced Monday.

Locke was the first— and so far, only— self-published author to sell a million Kindle ebooks. He writes thrillers starring the character Donovan Creed, and has published the popular, "How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!"

Chapel Hill, N.C.-based Algonquin Books, a division of independent publisher Workman Publishing, has launched the Algonquin Book Club, which will feature four book selections each year as well as literary events related to each selection. The events will be held around the country and simultaneously webcast on the Algonquin Books' website.