Überstar gives you a look at reality-TV like never before. The first hit in a three-part series, Überstar is what thousands of confidentiality agreements were signed to stop.

Überstar speaks from four continents, nine networks, and thirteen hit shows.

Überstar follows the lives of eleven young hopefuls as they compete for a starring role in a big-budget feature film.

Überstar follows one success and ten failures.

Überstar is as real as a fiction book gets…

Set in a fictitious reality-show, Überstar puts you in the shoes of everyone involved. From high-flying Executive Producers to carnivorous Publicists; from contestants chasing their big-break to judges looking to humiliate them in front of an audience of millions – Überstar is reality television at its glamorous and devastating best.

“If you look closely, you’ll see the clues I’ve left…”

Dr. Vaughn Alaine-Marshall

Überstar is now available for purchase in eBook and paperback at the Hendlin Books Online Store as well as Amazon.com.

B&N remains committed to offering consumers access to digital content “however they want it,” and Riggio told analysts that the e-book market “is not a two horse race” between Apple and Amazon, adding that with its core technology in place B&N is well positioned to benefit from the digital boom. He called the sale of e-books the new growth story for B&N, one that could rival the 1990s when the retailer began rolling out its superstores. He said 2010 will be a “watershed” year for the company as it transitions from a bricks-and-mortar bookseller to an e-commerce retailer.

Its experience since returning to the e-book market last year with the purchase of Fictionwise has further convinced Riggio that the market will be more consolidated than the traditional bookstore market where it took B&N years to get its 18% (and growing) market share. He predicted that B&N will top the 18% mark in e-books “overnight.” While some analysts questioned the need for B&N to develop its own e-reader, Riggio said the device helps bring people into stores and that the retailer plans to invest even more in its in-store Nook displays. He said its booksellers will become “e-book evangelists.” Riggio said he expects pricing of e-books to evolve with the agency model likely to become the dominate form of sale and said that eventually B&N will earn better margins from e-books than print books.

Source: www.publishersweekly.com

2010 is now upon us and we have our sights on another fantastic year. Hendlin Books is opening a German office and expanding into the European and American marketplaces. Our future is bright, however the face of our industry is changing by the month. Here are our predictions of what is in store for the publishing industry this coming year:

• The popularity of e-books will increase. By year end, nearly every straight-text title published with commercial intent will be available for purcahse on e-book. But despite the fast growth, e-books will still make up a tiny share of the market—no more than 2% of sales for most titles—and will contribute only a minimal amount to publishers’ bottom lines.
• Sales of books in electronic form to public libraries will continue to grow.
• Publishers will start acquiring specialized Web sites to get content for their books and to target niche audiences. By year-end, every major publisher will need to have an understanding of how to put a value on Web sites, because the old measures—namely, sales and profits—won’t necessarily be relevant and because the acquisitions will be smaller than what the companies would normally consider.
• Christmas 2010 will be the first one in which sales of customized books, enabled by the Internet and print-on-demand, will become substantial.
• Literary agents will begin to experience the same kind of consolidation that has hit other parts of the book business, as the shrinking of advances below the very top tier of authors and the growing need for agents to provide editing, marketing and increasingly detailed rights management make it hard for smaller agencies to bring in enough money to cover their overhead costs.
• Publishers will push harder to publicize books through the Internet channels as print and broadcast media continue to lose audience to the Web, in particular subject-specific sites.

Hendlin Books acknowledges the trends and advancements in the international literary landscape, however it does not whole-heartedly believe in its legitimacy. Hendlin Books is in the process of developing a marketing strategy and over the next twelve months we will be perfecting a mode of delivering a book into the market place. In 2010, Hendlin Books will be implementing a radical, transcendental method that does not attempt to win the attention of the public.

Cllr. Emer Costello, Lord Mayor of Dublin announced today that 156 titles have been nominated for the €100,000 Award. It is the world’s most valuable annual literary prize for a single work of fiction published in English and is a Dublin City Council initiative, in partnership with IMPAC.  The nominations come from 163 libraries in 123 cities and 43 countries worldwide.

Dublin City Council will announce the shortlist on 14th April 2010. The Lord Mayor will reveal the winning novel on 17th June 2010.

Other books among the 156 novels nominated include The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, winner of the 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize: Home by Marilynne Robinson, winner of the 2009 Orange Prize and The Armies by Evelio Rosero, winner of the 2009 Independent Prize for Fiction.

Source: www.impacdublinaward.ie

Wolf Hall, set in the Tudor court when Henry VIII was on the throne but struggling without an heir, has been the favourite since the long-list was announced in July.

The Booker judges described Mantel’s latest work as a “thoroughly modern novel set in the 16th century”, but James Naughtie, chairman of the judges, admitted that the decision had not been unanimous.

He said a secret ballot among the panel resulted in Mantel’s book winning by three to two, but declined to name the book the other two judges had selected, insisting that all involved were happy with the final result.

He said: “We voted by secret ballot and I genuinely didn’t know who would emerge the winner. It wasn’t a unanimous decision but it was one all the judges were content with. It was a difficult decision. This year’s short-list was one of the strongest.”

Mantel, who was shortlisted for a Commonwealth Prize and the 2006 Orange Prize for fiction, has written several other novels, including the critically acclaimed Beyond Black.

She won the prize over South African-born Australian J.M. Coetzee, who would have been the first person to win it three times, and other bestselling and acclaimed writers, including Sarah Waters and A.S. Byatt.

Source: www.smh.com.au

Source: Reuters

“Since October of 1993, USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books List has provided our readers with a complete picture of sales in the publishing industry,” said Susan Weiss, managing editor of the Life section. “With the addition of sales figures from Kindle, we have created a more robust list which reflects the new platforms consumers and readers are using to purchase books.”

“We are thrilled to be contributing Kindle book sales information to USA TODAY for their comprehensive bestseller list for books customers,” said Laura Porco, director of Kindle books. “Given the great overlap of taste between Kindle customers and physical book buyers, the USA TODAY Best-Selling Books List is truly reflective of what customers are buying regardless of format.”

Rankings for USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books List are based on retail sales data collected each week that include more than 2.5 million volumes from about 7,000 physical retail outlets in addition to books sold online. USA TODAY’s list ranks titles regardless of genre or format, providing one of the best assessments of which books are most popular among readers and consumers each week. USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list has been published each Thursday in the newspaper’s Life section since October 28, 1993.

Source: prnewswire.com

Winton said that this award has tried to do its part over time to stiffen the resolve and bolster the confidence of Australian writers and by honouring local stories and voices it’s contributed to the success our literary culture has enjoyed in recent years.

The Judging Panel wrote about the winning entry, “Breath is a searing document about masculinity, about risk, and about young people’s desire to push the limits. Winton is at the height of his powers as a novelist, and this is his greatest love letter yet to the sea, to the coast of West Australia, and a compelling testimony to the role of surfing in Australian culture.”

Tim Winton has published twenty books for adults and children, and his works have been translated into 25 languages. Since his first novel An Open Swimmer won the Australian/Vogel Award in 1981, he has won the Miles Franklin Literary Award four times (for Shallows, Cloudstreet, Dirt Music and Breath) and twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize (for The Riders and Dirt Music). He lives in Western Australia.

The Miles Franklin Literary Award, is Australia’s first and most prestigious literary award. Established in 1954 with a bequest from the author Miles Franklin, the award was founded knowing that recognition was the major struggle for all Australian authors. The Miles Franklin Literary Award celebrates Australian character and creativity and nurtures the continuing life of literature about Australia. It is awarded for the novel of the year which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases.

Source: trust.com.au

Adiga is the third first-time novelist to win the 50,000-pound ($86,000 US) Booker Prize, which is awarded each year for the best novel in the British Commonwealth and the Republic of Ireland.

Adiga, who lives in Mumbai – formerly Bombay, charts his journey from working in a teashop to entrepreneurial success in what is seen as a critique of modern India and its class divisons. “It’s meant to get people thinking. Large numbers of people are not benefiting from the bottom,” said Adiga about his work.

Adiga began his journalistic career as a financial journalist, interning at the Financial Times. With pieces published in the Financial Times and Money, he covered the stock market and investment. His review of previous Booker Prize winner Peter Carey’s book, Oscar and Lucinda, appeared in The Second Circle, an online literary review. He was subsequently hired by TIME, where he remained a South Asia correspondent for three years before going freelance. During his freelance period, he wrote The White Tiger.

The novel, chosen from a shortlist of five, had “knocked his socks off,” said Portillo. Previous debut winners were Arundhati Roy in 1997 for God of Small Things and DBC Pierre in 2003 for Vernon God Little. Adiga, who wanted to become a novelist since he was a boy, was born in Madras, now Chennai, and later moved to Mumbai.

Source: sify.com

The Academy cited le Cezio as an “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below reigning civilisation.”

Le Cezio, 69, received critical acclaim for his debut novel The Interrogation in 1963, however it wasn’t until 1980 that he achieved commercial success with Desert – a work rewarded with the inaugral Grand Prix Paul Morand by the Académie Française.

Le Clezio was born 1940 in Nice of France, but both parents had strong family connections with the former French colony Mauritius. At the age of eight, he moved to Nigeria with his family. During the month-long voyage to Nigeria, he began his literary career with two book Un long voyage and Oradi noir. He has taught at universities in Bangkok, Mexico City, Boston, Austin and Albuquerque among other places. Since the 1990s, Le Clezio and his wife share their time between Albuquerque in New Mexico, the island of Mauritius and Nice.

The Nobel Prizes have been awarded annually since 1901 to those who “conferred the greatest benefit on mankind during the preceding year.” The annual Nobel Prizes are usually announced in October and are handed out on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, a Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite.

Each prize consists of a medal, a personal diploma and a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (1.4 million U.S. dollars).

Source: nytimes.com