The New York Times

Scholastic to Publish 'Year of the Jungle,' an Autobiographical Picture Book by Suzanne Collins in Fall 2013
November 29, 2012

[PRESS RELEASE] New York, NY (November 29, 2012) 3Ž4Scholastic, the global children’s publishing, education and media company, today announced the publication of Year of the Jungle (September 10, 2013), an autobiographical picture book by Suzanne Collins, author of the worldwide bestselling The Hunger Games trilogy, with illustrations by James Proimos. Scholastic also announced plans to publish the trade paperback edition of Catching Fire (June 4, 2013, ISBN: 978-0-545-58617-7, $12.99), as well as re-packaged paperback editions of Collins’s bestselling The Underland Chronicles, a five-book series about Gregor the Overlander, featuring all new cover art (Summer 2013). Scholastic will publish and deliver the books through all of its distribution channels.

Does Apple Own the Digital Page Turn or Doesn't It?
November 19, 2012

On Friday afternoon, The New York Times' Nick Bilton posted an item on the paper's Bits blog entitled "Apple Now Owns The Page Turn," citing U.S. Patent D670,713.

Incredulous, Bilton wrote:

This design patent, titled, “Display screen or portion thereof with animated graphical user interface,” gives Apple the exclusive rights to the page turn in an e-reader application.

Yes, that’s right. Apple now owns the page turn. You know, as when you turn a page with your hand. An “interface” that has been around for hundreds of years in physical form. I swear I’ve seen similar animation in Disney or Warner Brothers cartoons.

(This is where readers are probably checking the URL of this article to make sure it’s The New York Times and not The Onion.)

National Book Award 2012 Winners
November 15, 2012

The 2012 National Book Awards took place tonight, when accolades were given in each of four categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry and Young People's Literature.

The winners were:

Fiction: Louise Erdrich, The Round House

Non-Fiction: Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

Poetry: David Ferry, Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations

Young People's Literature: William Alexander, Goblin Secrets

Nate Silver's book sales jump 850% after the NYT statistician predicts outcomes in 49 of 50 states
November 8, 2012

Have you been following the "Drunk Nate Silver" Twitter meme? Well, vanishing buy button or not, here's news that's bound to make Mr. Silver—the NYT blogger/statistician who predicted the election results witih uncanny accuarcy— intoxicated… with cash:

"On Amazon.com, sales for [Silver's book] The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don’t were up 850% the day after the U.S. election, according to CNNMoney. By Thursday, it was #2 on the site’s U.S. best seller list and #8 in Canada."

Then again, the odds are good that he predicted, that, too. —Brian Howard

On Your Mark, Get Set, NaNoWriMo!
November 1, 2012

Why let your authors have all the fun? If you’ve been sitting on an idea for a novel, now is the time to do something about it—and fast. November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, during which thousands of people will push themselves toward completing what seems, to some, an entirely unattainable goal. The premise is simple: write one 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

Back in 2000, its year of inception, the event had just 21 participants and a measly 6 “winners”—those who reach the goal of committing 50,000 words to paper. Since then, NaNoWriMo has exploded; by the time 2011 rolled around, there were more than 250,000 participants and roughly 37,000 winners. NaNoWriMo has no judges, no prizes and nobody necessarily even reads the finished novels; in order to be a winner, you just have to get 50,000 words of fiction out of your brain and into a document. According to the rules, you are allowed to outline your novel as much as you want prior to November 1, as long as you don’t write anything that ends up in the novel itself.*

Noise Pollution: Why more data isn't better data
November 1, 2012

I'm writing this note on Election Day Eve, and while the world is eagerly reading Nate Silver's political predictions in his excellent New York Times blog FiveThirtyEight, I've been tucking into Silver's new book, "The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don't" (Penguin Press).

Silver holds an exalted position as a high priest of political statistical analysis; his model for crunching polling data in 2008 proved eerily accurate. As publishing moves into an era of big data, there's much to be gleaned from Silver's cool approach to information. Silver's stance is that, contrary to conventional wisdom, more information is not necessarily a good thing, and certainly not right away.

Author Nicholas Sparks Sets Up Three Cable Dramas (Exclusive)
October 31, 2012

Don't cry for Nicholas Sparks. The author of 16 New York Times best-sellers, including such tear-jerkers-turned-movie hits as The Notebook and Dear John, is expanding into TV.

Sparks, 46, has put shows into development at three cable networks through Nicholas Sparks Productions, the shingle he started in April with his longtime literary agent Theresa Park. (UTA’s Elise Henderson joined in July as head of TV.)

Sparks and Park will act as executive producers on all three projects. UTA and attorney Scott Schwimer represent Sparks and his Nicholas Sparks Productions shingle.

Nate Silver's "The Signal and the Noise" on publishing and Big Data
October 25, 2012

Silver has interesting things to say about Big Data, for instance. While some have been focused on the mechanics of Big Data — building the infrastructure, for instance — Silver has the practitioner’s pragmatism. His concern is that we may be seduced into thinking that more data is the same as better data or the right data:

". . . our predictions may be more prone to failure in the era of Big Data."

The Twenty National Book Award Finalists Revealed
October 10, 2012

The twenty Finalists for the 2012 National Book Awards were announced this morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” hosted by Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, and Willie Geist. David Steinberger, Chairman of the National Book Foundation’s Board of Directors and President and CEO of Perseus Books Group, appeared as a guest on the show. This was the first time that the National Book Award Finalists were announced on television.

States modify payouts and credits in ebook pricing settlement
October 4, 2012

Many ebook buying consumers in 49 states will soon receive payments as a result of the states’ settlement with publishers HarperCollins, Hachette and Simon & Schuster. The states have provided a few more details about how those payments will work and have changed some things slightly.

In a document filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the states’ attorneys lay out two modifications to their original settlement: