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If days one and two of Book Expo America were a blur of information-packed sessions, days three and four were a whirlwind of appointments, chance meetings and tote-bag lugging.

Friday we met up with Jamie Israel of SPi Global, then hustled over to the Spain pavilion to meet with Edie Reinhardt and Marcelino Elosua of Lid Publishing, who have some fascinating new initiatives in the pipeline (and should have some news to announce in the fall).

Fans of reading and a certain galaxy far, far away have reason to rejoice: Star Wars Reads Day, a day-long celebration of literacy and Jedi, Sith, Wookiees, and all things Star Wars, is returning. The second annual Star Wars Reads Day is to be held this October 5, 2013. Last year, 30 authors and 1,500 costumed volunteers participated in over 1,200 Star Wars Reads Day events across North America. On October 5 of this year, Star Wars fans, authors, and artists will again come together in this multi-publisher initiative …

Leading independent eBook publisher RosettaBooks today announced that it has been named publisher for AARP’s original eBooks. The 37-million-member nonprofit organization is an advocate for Americans 50+ on crucial issues such as healthcare

Microsoft is reportedly interested in buying the digital assets of Barnes & Noble's Nook Media for $1 billion. But analysts are divided over whether the deal makes sense.

Microsoft already has a 16.8% equity stake in the Barnes & Noble subsidiary, which includes the bookseller's digital book and college book businesses. Microsoft invested $300 million in Nook Media in April 2012, valuing the new company at $1.7 billion at the time. Microsoft and Barnes & Noble completed their strategic partnership last October. Education and news publisher Pearson  subsequently took a 5% stake

The increasingly tricksy hacker known as ‘Guccifer’ has struck again, this time posting links to the first 50 pages of an unpublished novel by Sex and the City author, Candace Bushnell.

True to his or her established credential-sniffing methods, the hacker appears to have found a way into the author’s Earthlink email account before discovering the 37,000 words of the novel Killing Monica as a document attached to an email sent to a publisher.

Extraordinarily, the hacker was also able to hack into the author’s Twitter account in order to post links to screengrabs…

According to the recent Kids & Family Reading Report, 99% of parents think their child should read over the summer, and parents also think their child should read 11 books. Today, Scholastic (NASDAQ: SCHL), the global children’s publishing, education and media company, together with LitWorld, an international literacy organization,  are making sure every child reads books this summer with the Scholastic Summer Challenge, a fun and friendly reading competition that motivates kids to read every day throughout the summer months to avoid the ‘Summer Slide’.

For Matthew Quick, author of The Silver Linings Playbook — the novel that became the Academy Award-winning film starring Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper and Robert DeNiro — success as a fiction writer came slowly, then gradually and then all at once.

Quick (who, in the interest of full disclosure, is a friend and was a college roommate at La Salle University in the early 1990s) took some time in March to talk to Book Business about his whirlwind life since his book hit the silver screen.

In anticipation of a rare week-long block of reading time (electricity is limited in Tulum, Mexico, and, as a result, so are televisions), I loaded up my Nook Simple Touch with another rare treat: fiction. I've found my reading habits have tended toward nonfiction in recent years and, in the last year or so, toward my tablet (at home) or phone (in transit) and away from fiction and my trusty eInk reader. But last week, as I was loath to get sand up in my iPad's, let's call them delicate areas, and wary of trying to read from that back-lit screen under the Yucatan's intense glare—not to mention that I was anxious to get caught up in an epic tale—the Nook and Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings won the dias day.

BEA officials have today announced that BEA's annual Global Market Forum will focus on Mexico. The Global Market Forum, which honors countries from around the world by providing educational panels and cultural exchange opportunities, has become a cornerstone of BEA’s international outreach.

From Kodiak to Key West, Concord to Carlsbad, Grand Forks to Galveston, in 6,200 towns and cities across America, more than 25,000 World Book Night U.S. volunteers will go out and personally hand out a half million free books to new or light readers on one day: April 23, 2013.