Philip Pullman

British book bloggers and tweeters are enthusing over the ‘First Editions, Second Thoughts‘ auction at Sotheby’s of print first editions annotated by their authors, including JK Rowling, Hilary Mantel, Philip Pullman, Nick Hornby and Ian McEwan, to be sold off in aid of English PEN. The Guardian has put together a beautiful clickable interactive gallery [...]

The post Sotheby’s auctions off annotated first editions appeared first on TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics.

Do you judge a book by its cover? Designers Jon Gray and Jamie Keenan shared their theories on attracting readers – from cute cats to alluring perfume – at the Edinburgh book festival.

1. Face theory: Research suggests that human beings spend 48.6% of their lives decoding facial communication, so a big draw for a potential book buyer will be the familiarity of a face. The cover of Nick Hornby's Otherwise Pandemonium, for example, uses a cassette tape to create the image of a face.

With no holiday-season movie equivalent of the “Chronicles of Narnia” versus “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” slugfest of 2005—and about six months away from the next film in the “Chronicles” series and nearly a year away from the scheduled release of the next “Potter” adaptation—it almost seemed as though 2007’s year-end book-to-movie offerings were designed to boost the fortunes of lesser-known titles rather than break box-office records. With the exception of “The Kite Runner,” director Marc Forster’s ambitious take on Khaled Hosseini’s international best-seller, and “P.S. I Love You,” a romantic drama adapted from the 2004 novel by Cecelia Ahern, high-profile