David Maybury | Blog

Only 4 sleeps until Christmas – and the bookstores are finally seeing a small light at the end of the tunnel… Mark Haddon’s Curious Incident reaches the top 10 best-selling books of 00’s (It’s a short list with just Dan Brown and JK Rowling up there)

Reactions to the Amazon e-book war have been mixed – one of my favourites so far has been Matt Stewart in the Huffington Post:

Imagine if airlines gave their biggest frequent flier customers the worst seats on the plane. If iPhone owners had to wait six months to download the latest tunes… …These are all idiotic ideas, certain to ruin relationships with each industry’s biggest advocates, devastate the bottom line, and get top-level executives axed. So why do these publishers think they’re exceptional?

(And speaking of Huggington Post – check out their top ten tweet tips for publishers. Common sense but all very clever)

Rene Russo has joined Anthony Hopkins, Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston in Thor.

So… there are two Richard and Judy book clubs in the UK now? Confused?

Meghan Daum talks about the loss of Kirkus – or the lack of a loss… apparently.

I still feel more “Yeah, so?” than “Oh no!” about the end of Kirkus. But for all my indifference, I will say this in defense of Kirkus (and professional review publications in general): At least the critics had some cred – Meghan Daum

Jeanne Mosure (Senior Vice President, Disney Publishing Worldwide) talk e-books in the lead up to Disney’s Digital Book releases.

Gadget Republic features ‘Bully Stop‘ – a new app for all phones to filter texts, MMS and calls to phones. (And on the topic of phones – some new statistics on teenagers phone usage, notably sexting)

The Costa Book Awards have announced their judging panel for this year and the Independent UK has some other event highlights.

Did you know that Jimmy Carter wrote 27 children’s books? UK Soldiers in Afghanistan are reading bedtime stories to the kids – 4000 miles away.

And in my favourite story this week – Phil Earle (S&S children’s sales director) has sold his first YA title to Puffin. Expect to see Being Billy on the shelves in 2011.