Category: News (71-80 of 376)

Oct 16 2012 10:39 AM ET

Johnny Depp launches his own publishing imprint

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He’s been a tipsy pirate, a crazed milliner, and a blade-fingered freak. Now Johnny Depp is trying out a different kind of role: book publisher.

The actor’s imprint will be a division of HarperCollins and will bear the same weighty-sounding name as his production company, “Infinitum Nihil,” which means “Nothing is forever.” Already slated for Depp’s imprint is The Unraveled Tales of Bob Dylan by journalist Douglas Brinkley, to be released in 2015. Brinkley and Depp are already co-editing House of Earth, a long-forgotten novel written by the late folk musician Woody Guthrie, which is scheduled for some time next year. READ FULL STORY »

Oct 11 2012 09:23 AM ET

Mo Yan wins the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature

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Image Credit: Chen Yimin/AP

For weeks, Haruki Murakami has been the odds-on favorite to win the Nobel Prize in Literature this year, but a writer less known to American readers took the big honor. Chinese Author Mo Yan, author of Red Sorghum, The Garlic Ballads, and Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out, was “overjoyed and scared” when he learned of his win. The Swedish Academy’s official announcement read, “Through a mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives, Mo Yan has created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition.” READ FULL STORY »

Oct 10 2012 12:01 PM ET

Sarah Palin writing diet and fitness book

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Image Credit: John Moore/Getty Images

Sarah Palin is writing a diet and fitness book. On Tuesday, the former vice-presidential candidate sent an e-mail to People, announcing: “Our family is writing a book on fitness and self-discipline focusing on where we get our energy and balance as we still eat our beloved homemade comfort foods!” READ FULL STORY »

Oct 10 2012 09:02 AM ET

2012 National Book Awards finalists announced

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Minutes ago, the finalists for the National Book Awards were announced on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. There were 20 books announced in four categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People’s Literature. Among the nominees are five Pulitzer-winners and five debut authors. See below for the full list, and click the titles for EW’s reviews. READ FULL STORY »

Oct 9 2012 04:40 PM ET

Roman Polanski victim writing tell-all memoir

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Image Credit: Elisabetta Villa/Getty Images

Samantha Geimer, the former teenager who was at the center of the Roman Polanski sex scandal, is writing a memoir.

Polanski was convicted of having sex with Geimer — who was 13 years old at the time of the act — in the late 1970s, causing him to flee to United States for Europe. Geimer, who is now 47, has signed a deal with Atria books to share her side of the story.

“I am more than ‘Sex Victim Girl,’ a tag the media pinned on me,” she said in a statement. “My friends in junior high, scolded by their parents to stay away from that girl, also labeled me. I offer my story now without rage, but with purpose — to share a tale that in its detail will reclaim my identity. I have been dogged by tired thinking and easy tags nearly my entire life. I am not a stick figure. I know what it is like to be a woman and a victim in the realest possible way.”

The book is expected to hit shelves next fall. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Read more:
Roman Polanski directing film version of erotic play ‘Venus in Fur’ — with a French twist
Roman Polanski to investigate Dreyfus Affair with next film
Roman Polanski exclusive: First look at interview included on ‘Ghost Writer’ DVD

Oct 9 2012 10:17 AM ET

Ke$ha to publish illustrated memoir -- We want ghost sex!

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Image Credit: Jim Dyson/Getty Images

Ke$ha has apparently taken the words of her latest hit “Die Young” to heart and decided to make the most of her life while she can — she’s announced plans to publish a memoir at the tender age of 25.

The illustrated memoir will feature the singer’s “thoughts and reflections” as well as a series of pictures ranging from her early years to her most recent tour. (Dang! I had hoped “illustrated” meant literally hand-drawn by Ke$ha.) READ FULL STORY »

Oct 8 2012 11:32 AM ET

Random House buys Lena Dunham's book for more than $3.5 million

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Image Credit: Larry Busacca/Getty Images

Hannah Horvath would be seething with jealousy right now.

Lena Dunham, the 26-year-old star and creator of the hit HBO series Girls, has landed a book deal at Random House for a massive $3.5 million. That’s more than the $2 million Dick Cheney received for his memoir In My Time and short of Amanda Knox’s $4 million and Tina Fey’s $5 million for Bossypants.

Bidding for the debut essay collection — titled Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s Learned — started at $1 million and quickly climbed as publishers pursued the hot property. The 66-page book proposal contained “color, illustrations and a humor that publishing executives predicted could produce another bestseller like Tina Fey’s blockbuster memoir,” according to the New York Times. READ FULL STORY »

Oct 4 2012 01:20 PM ET

'Girls' star Lena Dunham heading toward a huge, $3.6 million book deal

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Image Credit: Michael Buckner/Getty Images

If Hannah Horvath got a monster book deal as quickly as Lena Dunham, the 26-year-old woman who created and portrays her on Girls, Girls as a TV series would come to a screeching halt. Where would our broke, semi-motivated aspiring essayist have left to go? There would be no need for roommates or crappy jobs.

According to Deadline, the bids for Dunham’s future advice-book-slash-essay-collection — tentatively titled Not That Kind of Girl — have climbed to a whopping $3.6 million and could go even higher as Dunham and literary agent Kim Witherspoon continue to meet with publishers. The negotiations began at $1 million.

To put things in context, if the deal happens, Dunham’s book would rake in more than Dick Cheney did for In My Time, which went for $2 million — and it would fall a bit short of Amanda Knox’s upcoming memoir ($4 million) and more than a million short of Tina Fey’s Bossypants ($5 million), although Fey had well more than a decade of fodder on Dunham.

Do you think Dunham’s writing is worth the big bucks? Will you look at Hannah Horvath differently when you watch season 2 of Girls?

Follow @EWStephanLee on Twitter.

Read more:
Lena Dunham shopping advice book — What do you want to see in it?
Mindy Kaling: An in-depth interview about her book, childhood, shoes, and homemade sashimi
Rita Wilson says no to nudity on ‘Girls’. What other actresses have no-nudity contracts?

Oct 3 2012 12:37 PM ET

J.K. Rowling's 'The Casual Vacancy' sees respectable sales figures during first week

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Image Credit: Hachette Book Group

J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy is reportedly “on track to become the year’s bestselling novel in hardcover,” according to EVP of Little, Brown Michael Pietsch.

Which is another way of saying it’ll be one of the best-selling novels of the year other than E L James’ paperback Fifty Shades trilogy. Nielsen BookScan reports that Rowling’s first novel for adults sold 157,000 hardcover copies in its first week of publication, and Little, Brown announced that the novel has sold 375,000 copies across all formats. The book only went on sale on Thursday (whereas books are normally published on Tuesdays), but it fell short of the record set for adult books by Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, which moved 550,946 copies in its first week of publication in 2009.

The Casual Vacancy has exceeded our expectations,” Pietsch said. While it may turn out to be the best-selling hardcover fiction of 2012, it probably won’t be the top-selling hardcover overall. No Easy Day, Mark Owen’s firsthand account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, sold 254,000 copies in its first week and continues to do well, moving 52,000 copies this past week against Rowling’s adult debut.

Will you be purchasing a copy of The Casual Vacancy?

Read more:
J.K. Rowling’s ‘The Casual Vacancy’: 10 NSFW lines you would NEVER see in a Harry Potter book
J.K. Rowling’s ‘The Casual Vacancy’: Read EW’s review
J.K. Rowling considering a ‘director’s cut’ of the ‘Harry Potter’ books

Sep 26 2012 12:48 PM ET

Barnes & Noble announces its Apple and Amazon rivals Nook HD and Nook HD Plus

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Barnes & Noble deepened its inroads into the tablet market with two new devices unveiled yesterday in Manhattan: the Nook HD ($199) and Nook HD Plus ($269). In private presentations to the press, executives for the bookseller made frequent comparisons between the 7-inch Nook HD and Amazon’s Kindle Fire and the 9-inch Nook HD Plus and the iPad 3.

Both devices are available for pre-order today and will ship in November, in time for the Holiday season.

While the devices boast several tablet functions — including video, apps, e-mail, and web-browsing — representatives emphasized that reading is what B&N does best. The tablets are designed to facilitate one-handed reading better than its competitors, based on research into the average size of a woman’s hand. The devices promise to be the lightest tablets on the market; the 9-inch HD Plus weighs 20 percent less than the comparably sized iPad, and in fact is closer in weight to the 7-inch Kindle. The Plus offers 10 hours of battery life for reading and 9.5 hours for watching video. Both devices have expandable memory — up to 64 GB — but neither comes equipped with 3G, 4G, or GPS.

READ FULL STORY »

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