Richard Branson

For you, I, and probably many others, LinkedIn is a bit of an odd beast. We all no doubt have a profile on the 'social network for professionals', but how often we actually log in and check what's going on is another matter altogether.

Founded in 2003, LinkedIn garnered somewhere in the region of $1.5 billion in revenue last year. Today, it claims 277 million members, 3.5 million active company profiles, 24,000 schools, and 300,000 jobs. Its core mission is to "...connect the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful".

Faber is to publish a "definitive" biography of entertainment mogul Simon Cowell by journalist Tom Bower, whose biography of Bernie Ecclestone came out with the publisher earlier this year. Sweet Revenge: The Intimate Life of Simon Cowell will be out in May 2012, and is "the result of hundreds of hours of unprecedented access to Cowell, plus direct contributions from his many supporters and rivals", Faber said. UK and Commonwealth rights were acquired by publisher Stephen Page from Jonathan Lloyd of Curtis Brown, with Angus Cargill set to edit. The book will be published simultaneously in the US by

Representatives of more than 20 Chinese children's books publishing houses met with their foreign counterparts to examine market trends, such as e-books and international cooperation, at a seminar in Beijing recently. E-books dominated much of the conversation at the event organized by Random House Children's Books and the Beijing International Book Fair's managing office.