Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today’s stories:
The New York Times examines the professional and personal history of Hachette chief executive Michael Pietsch, whose current battle with Amazon over e-book prices has captured the attention of the publishing world.
Open Road Integrated Media has acquired the list of more than three hundred titles from fellow independent e-book publisher Premier Digital Publishing. Premier's titles will be published by Open Road beginning next month. Open Road also acquired E-Reads, the first ebook publisher, earlier this year. (Digital Book World)
Smith Magazine’s second annual Six-Word Twitter Festival kicks off its two-day run tomorrow, June 4. The digital event encourages participants from the public to join celebrities Molly Ringwald, Maria Shriver, George Takei, and others in submitting pithy memoirs via Twitter with the theme of “The Best Advice in Six Words.” (GalleyCat)
Penguin Random House has unveiled a newly designed, text-centric logo, eleven months after the merger between the two publishers. (Publishers Weekly)
Jane Friedman of Scratch examines the differences in book advances given to male and female writers.
Suzi LeVine, the United States’ new ambassador to Switzerland, became the first of her colleagues to be sworn in while placing her hand on an electronic edition of the U.S. Constitution during a ceremony this week. (Washington Post)
Volunteers in San Antonio, Texas, have sorted and helped to distribute forty thousand books to low-income students in the city through the nonprofit First Book. (San Antonio Express-News)
Fundamentals, a children’s bookstore and teaching supply store in Delaware, Ohio, and Mystery to Me, a mystery bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin, have become the latest independent booksellers to receive grants from writer James Patterson. (Columbus Dispatch, Wisconsin State Journal)
The Guardian probes the legacy of Rosemary Tonks, a poet and novelist who received widespread acclaim before removing herself from public life in the 1970s.
