USA Today

Bookish (www.bookish.com) a one-stop, comprehensive online destination designed to connect readers with books and authors, launches today, providing visitors with exclusive content and insider access to A-list writers. Notable launch stories include: A joint interview with legendary crime fiction writer Michael Connelly and prize-winning suspense author Michael Koryta, revealing that Connelly had begun a book centering on a school shooting prior to the tragedy in Sandy Hook. The article also features juicy tidbits about both Connelly and Koryta’s upcoming books: www.bookish.com/connelly

If there’s one thing every self-published author yearns for, it’s to be reviewed alongside traditionally published books, but for most that’s a dream that is unlikely to come true. Book reviewers, whether for traditional book review columns or book blogs, frequently don’t accept submissions from self-published authors. Instead, there’s a web of professional relationships between traditional publishers and reviewers which keeps the books and the reviews flowing.

But this week, the New York Times published a long and enthusiastic review of a self-published book, Alan Sepinwall’s The Revolution Was Televised.

Self-help guru Tim Ferriss may have had a troubled start with his latest book, The 4-Hour Chef, but now it’s flying off the shelves. The book in question has gone from being boycotted by Barnes and Noble to becoming the first BitTorrent bestseller.

Here’s the story. The book is published by Amazon Publishing, which signed the back in August 2011. As a result, Barnes and Noble, as well as a few other brick and mortar booksellers, declared that they will not carry the book, as part of their battle with Amazon…

Students don't seem to want to buy e-textbooks. So some schools are simply forcing them. While several colleges across the country are pushing electronic textbooks, touting them as more efficient and less cumbersome than regular textbooks, students are reluctant. E-textbooks still account for only 9% of textbook purchases, says Student Monitor, which researches college student behavior. "How excited can you expect to get about an e-textbook?" Student Monitor President Eric Weil says. "It's not a fashion statement, it's not a status symbol…"
 

This weekly feature examines certain ebooks’ paths to bestseller-dom, and highlights bestselling titles that are selling more copies in digital than in print. Slammed by Colleen Hoover Hoover’s first book, Slammed, is self-published and hits the NYT ebook fiction bestseller list this week at #13. The young adult romance tells the story of an 18-year-old girl, Layken, whose family has to move across the country after her father’s death. When Layken meets her new neighbor, Will, romance and challenges ensue. Hoover tells me, “I hadn’t written anything in the past ten years until December [2011], when I got the idea for

Publisher Little, Brown's limited-time e-book promotion of George Pelecanos' new crime novel, What It Was, is paying off. The novel, released on Jan. 23, enters USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list at No. 36, the highest debut for Pelecanos, who has written 18 novels.

Book Business' own Eugene G. Schwartz was on the scene at the third annual Digital Book World Conference. He filed this comprehensive report from the proceedings.

Attendees at the third annual Digital Book World Conference heard reports that while publishers are in fact healthy and thriving in the new digital age, a lot more work is needed to let go of the habits of the past and live in the new interactive, multi-platform and vertically patterned business world of the future.

The cohort of newly minted consultants in attendance—emerging out of downsizing and transformation—are witness to their price as well as their opportunities.

Carolyn McCosh says she has loved "real books, the printed-on-paper kind," ever since she got her St. Louis Public Library card in first grade. The 45-year-old had little interest in e-books — until Christmas.

Along with millions of others, she unwrapped a Kindle Fire, a gift from her boyfriend and "a huge defining moment for me." Since then, she has bought $100 worth of e-books — from histories to mysteries — and wonders, "Am I a traitor to printed books?"

NEW YORK, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- U.S. consumers are finding the price of digital tablets dropping sharply, a trend that could continue, market analysts say. "If you have an uncompetitive product, you're going to have to take it and and move the inventory. And one way to do that is to lower price," said Avi Greengart, an industry analyst at Current Analysis. Greengart said RIM lowered its prices -- down to $299 for the 64-gigabyte BlackBerry PlayBook -- because the firm was planning to exit the market. Prices will also come down as software upgrades become available and because

Amid the Arctic flatness of the Minnesota prairie on a bleak December afternoon, author Amanda Hocking's new brick house seems a snug nest of Midwestern warmth.
 
About 100 miles south of Minneapolis, Austin is most famous as the birthplace of Spam, the canned meat product.

Hocking's mother herds a gaggle of pint-sized, present-laden relatives out the door. Hocking's roommate, Eric Goldman, cleans up, stuffing crumpled wrapping paper into a garbage can. The canine lord of the manor, a regal miniature schnauzer named Elroy, dominates the foyer, resplendent in a Christmas get-up.