• Terry Pratchett has died at age 66 of complications from Alzheimer’s. Thousands have petitioned Death to bring him back.

• Insights into writing by Toni Morrison. “I used to get up before sunrise . . . as the day wore on, I got dumber and dumber.”

• The trouble with indie math. Yes, self publishing pays better than traditional publishing, if you can attract the same number of readers. And that’s a big If.

• Dangerous consequences of the book life. In college I read novels the nights before finals. Only problem was, I was a math major, not an English major.

• The state of Alabama is now investigating whether Harper Lee is really behind the publication of Go Set a Watchman, the prequel to Mockingbird. “The investigation is being led by the state’s Human Resources Department with the help of the Alabama Securities Commission, which among other things, works to prevent financial fraud against the elderly.”

• The National Book Critics Circle awards have been announced. Marilynne Robinson took home the fiction prize.

• Now let me get this straight. Revenue at B&N continues to fall, sales continue to slide, the stock price is plummeting, and 13 more stores are scheduled to close. But they had planned on closing 20 stores, so prospects look bright! “Sales trends are turning,” the CEO says. Of course they are; he’s retiring 2 May.

• British authors love their agents more than their publishers.

• How to make $225 an hour writing poetry. Recall we reported in January that a subway poet was making $700 a week. If this trend continues, students are going to start dropping out of med school to become bards.

• Crown’s Catholic-interest imprint, Image Books, will no longer publish new titles.

• James Patterson will donate a total of $1.25 million to school libraries. You have until 31 May to nominate a school to receive as much as $10,000 from this pot.

• The 2015 PEN/Faulkner finalists have been selected.

• Did a human or computer write this? I got more than half wrong.

• Neil Gaiman on his friendship with Douglas Adams. “Books are sharks.”

• Two agents weigh in on the business of self publishing children’s books. Meanwhile, children’s books by and about people of color appear to be on the rise. Sort of.

• An update on the class action lawsuit against Author Solutions.

• Finally, an app that will remove the profanity from your digital books. I think they’re going the wrong way. I want an app that will insert profanity: “Call me fucking Ishmael.”

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Stephen Parrish is a contributing editor at Easy Street.

• Elizabeth McCracken won The Story Prize for her collection Thunderstruck. Also, the LA Times book prize finalists have been announced.

• Harper Lee says “Go Away!” in answer to a persistent journalist. Maybe people should just leave her alone.

• It’s been confirmed: Barnes & Noble’s new NOOK Press, a buffet of self-publishing services, is really just another tentacle of Author Solutions.

• Judging from ISBN output, Author Solutions is fading back as CreateSpace continues to accelerate.

• Maya Angelou stamps are available for preorder.

• Insights into why Jamie McGuire returned to self publishing.

• The harsh reality of nonfiction writing. It’s all gloom and doom in Canada, people. Gloom and doom.

• No boys allowed: author’s school presentations are sometimes attended only by girls. And some writers are sporting mustaches in protest.

• Things Ryan Boudinot can say about MFA writing programs now that he no longer teaches in one. A rebuttal from Adrian Van Young. And a summary of the shitstorm that has followed.

• Nine authors who regretted the success of their work. And an in-depth account of William Powell’s Anarchist Cookbook odyssey.

• Turns out, Conan Doyle did write that story. I knew it all along: I deduced it!

• The Kansas state senate has passed a bill allowing teachers to be prosecuted for distributing materials deemed harmful to minors. One state representative wants Toni Morrison on the list of such materials. Censorship is a slippery slope, people.

• Finally, this gives me a boner: a “map” of literary genres. Now you know what to get me for Christmas.

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Stephen Parrish is a contributing editor at Easy Street.

• The number of independent bookstores has increased 27% since 2009. But as Book Riot reports, the number has suffered a 25% overall decrease since 2000.

• Want to publish Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman overseas? Gotta travel to the agent’s London office to read it. (Watch the agent’s attitude adjust when he peddles his next book.)

• Barnes & Noble will spin off its college textbook division as its own publicly traded company. Textbooks account for almost 45% of B&N’s revenue.

• The princess author syndrome. I’ve known authors like this. I’m not saying you’re one, of course, but they’re out there.

• 8,000 rare books and manuscripts in the Mosul Public Library have been destroyed by ISIS.

• Former inmates and their poetry.

• The Bram Stoker Award finalists have been announced.

• Maya Angelou will get a postage stamp.

• Forty-two years after his death, Pablo Neruda will finally rest in peace.

• A previously unknown Sherlock Holmes story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has been discovered in an attic. (Some don’t believe Conan Doyle wrote it.) It’s always an attic, isn’t it? Go search your attic right this moment: who knows what you may find. By the way, here are some theories about the recent plethora of manuscript discoveries.

• The copyright on Mein Kampf soon to expire, it will be reprinted in Germany, despite howls of protest. I’ve read this book, and don’t believe it’s as dangerous as its detractors suggest. Mostly it’s the somewhat incoherent rant of a man who believed, at the time, he was unjustly persecuted. A squillion copies of the original exist, and autographed copies are actively traded, in Germany, behind closed doors.

• A writer is banned by a Christian publisher because he supports marriage equality and identifies with the LGBT community. Shocker. The silver lining is all the publicity he’s receiving.

• Nicholas Rossis analyzes his Amazon advertising experience. Also: how Amazon advertising works.

• Writers and publishers are hooking up directly, bypassing literary agents. But is it a trend?

• Poets & Writers has an app. It will do for writers “what HopStop does for straphangers.” Well that clears everything up, doesn’t it?

• Finally, now we know why the llamas escaped! To attend a book reading, of course.

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Stephen Parrish is a contributing editor at Easy Street.

• What Pet Should I Get? A new Dr. Seuss picture book is coming out 28 July. In 2013 the author’s widow and secretary found the manuscript in a box that had been set aside since 1991, when Suess died. Srsly? They waited 22 years to look inside the box? Ron Charles asks whether we really want a new Dr. Suess book. Ron! Bite your tongue.

• Ten writers who took themselves way too seriously. (Ten isn’t bad. Imagine how long the list of politicians would be. Or television evangelicals.)

• Philip Levine, Pulitzer Prize winner, former Poet Laureate of the United States, died on Valentine’s Day.

• Another eye-opening conversation with Jonathan Franzen. “I don’t care what people read.”

• Family Christian Stores files for bankruptcy. But they get to keep going. It’s the publishers who will foot the bill for their insolvency. How Christian of Family Christian Stores!

• Twenty-two books women think men should read. Well, HuffPost newsroom women, anyway.

• Happy words outnumber sad words in ten surveyed languages. No wonder we struggle to describe our dark, dismal, somber, gloomy, brooding moods.

• Is Amazon under threat from a new challenger? Not unless Jericho is under threat from a kazoo.

• Finally, “Everybody Wants to Be an Author.” Sung to the tune of “Everybody Wants to Be a Cat.”

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Stephen Parrish is a contributing editor at Easy Street.

• Does Barnes & Noble sell books anymore?

• Simon & Schuster sales dropped 3.8% in 2014, and profits dropped 5.6%. But that’s okay, they say: current initiatives “will march us into the future.” Your left! Your left! Your left, ri-ight, left!

• Editing clauses in publishing contracts: how to protect yourself.

• The latest Oprah Book Club pick is Ruby, by Cynthia Bond. Oprah fell in love with the book after only the first sentence. I’ll spare you the trouble of looking it up: “Ruby Bell was a constant reminder of what could befall a woman whose shoe heels were too high.”

• It’s never too late to write that novel. In fact, maybe you ought to wait. JFK Jr., when asked whether he would ever enter politics, said it was an old person’s game. Something similar could be said for writing.

• Tax insights from author Elizabeth Spann Craig.

• Mark Twain’s tombstone plaque has been recovered. And for the record, I didn’t steal it. I’ve never been to Elmira, New York. Except for that one time, the day the plaque was stolen, but I was just passing through.

• Is fan fiction the future of publishing? Part of the fiber, maybe, but the future? Nah.

• Melanie’s Marvelous Measles brings out the trolls. Visit the Amazon page to read the reviews, but please don’t buy the book. You might catch something.

• Library visits are down in the UK, by 40 million in four years. Libraries are closing and budgets are shrinking. To a bibliophile like me, this is Armageddon.

• It gets worst. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, only 54% of surveyed Americans read a book last year. Fiction is declining. Poetry fell from 12% to 6.7%. The sky is falling!

• And yet: listen to spoken word poet Sarah Kay recite “The Type,” and prove poetry is as relevant today as it ever has been.

• Apparently Harper Lee is fine with the new book deal. At least everyone who purports to speak on her behalf says so.

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Stephen Parrish is a contributing editor at Easy Street.

• It’s true. The sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird will appear in July of this year. Harper Lee actually wrote the novel, titled Go Set a Watchman, in the 1950s, before Mockingbird, and had thought the manuscript was lost.

• Update: Well, maybe.

• Another update: Now it’s #1 at Amazon.

• The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America will soon accept self-published works for membership consideration. However, such works must still meet minimum earnings requirements—which in most cases will constitute a high hurdle.

• Wanted: Doris Lessing biographer. “It will take an enormous amount of research work, and of time, to go to America, to UEA, to South Africa. It’s an enormous undertaking.”

• English majors are on the decline. Employment prospects are partly to blame, but so are curriculum changes.

• Victoria Strauss alerts us to vanity publishers masquerading as writers groups.

• Why authors walk away from publishers. Once a current becomes strong enough, it cannot be reversed.

• Finally, how to make $700 a week as a poet. Hmm, I wonder if I can set up a stand and advertise:

PICK A MANUSCRIPT
AND PRICE
GET AN EDIT

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Stephen Parrish is a contributing editor at Easy Street.

• We lost Colleen McCullough yesterday. The Thorn Birds helped define what it meant for a book to go viral. You’d think they’d be nicer to her in her native Australia.

• We lost Rod McKuen too. Goodbye, my friend, it’s hard to die.

• Amazon’s net sales were up 20% last year over the previous year, apparently due in large part to increasing the price of Amazon Prime.

• The January 2015 Author Earnings Report is out. It’s fast becoming the industry standard in book sales analysis. Objective book sales analysis.

• Andrew Sullivan is leaving The Dish. If that’s not the final nail in the blogging coffin, I don’t know what is.

• Voltaire’s Treatise on Tolerance is a bestseller in France, 252 years after its original publication.

• Victoria Strauss looks into Author Translations. Read the correspondence, it’s a hoot.

• Nook Press isn’t causing KDP to lose any sleep. #4 is the deal breaker for me. Also, Target hammers what might be the last nail in the Nook coffin.

• A Scottish MP wants Mein Kampf banned in the UK. “I think that there is a compelling case for a national debate on whether there should be limits on the freedom of expression.”

• Now Illinois residents must pay 6.5% sales tax on Amazon purchases. Some commenters on this article say they’re planning to leave the state. Srsly.

• In the wake of recent debates about teaching cursive in schools, there is evidence that handwriting is good for you.

• Nice infographic on the 13 females who have won a Nobel Prize in literature. However, the interesting part of this article is that GalleyCat is linking to a site that sells ready-made term papers to students, and consequently drawing traffic to that site. I don’t know about you (or GalleyCat), but I think students ought to write their own fucking term papers.

• How books did, by genre, in 2014. Skip the summary and scroll down to the chart.

• I have to include this, otherwise I’ll be fined by the News Gestapo: the Salon article about Spousal Sponsorship that everyone’s talking about. Fact is, there’s no right or wrong path to success.

• Laura Ingalls Wilder’s annotated autobiography (that’s a mouthful) Pioneer Girl is a runaway bestseller for the South Dakota Historical Society Press (another mouthful). Wilder’s Little House stories apparently little resembled her real-world childhood, which was characterized by illness and debt, drought and fire, and numerous relocations. The book, which contains 800 annotations, should be of great interest to fans of the author.

• A timeline of the destruction of Ray Bradbury’s house. If only walls could talk—assuming, of course, they haven’t already been torn down.

• The viral images of Hogwarts modeled from LEGOs. Some people are making fun of this woman. You have to accept the premise this is her hobby, and frankly I think you could have worse hobbies. I’m impressed.

• They found Cervantes! I confess I didn’t know they were looking for him, but they found him!

• Finally, a movie, in which . . . oh, I can’t bring myself to report this one. Read the article and see for yourself. I need wine. Make it a double.

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Stephen Parrish is a contributing editor at Easy Street.

• The Mystery Writers of America have announced their 2015 Edgar Award nominees.

• Amazon has released, in beta, its Kindle Textbook Creator for teachers.

• Egmont USA is closing at the end of January, after having failed to find a buyer.

• UK teachers think children are reading less than previous generations. Probably because children are reading less than previous generations.

• Merriam-Webster is working on its fourth edition. But what form will it take?

• SelfEspress wants your self-publishing business. And your money.

• Finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Awards are announced.

• Prison authorities tried to trick Guantánamo Diary author Mohamedou Ould Slahi by forging a letter from his mother. Only problem was, his mother couldn’t write.

• Children and YA sales were up 21.6% from January to October 2014. The biggest winner was ebooks: up 47.8%. Looks like the kids are catching up.

• The iBookstore has sold a billion books and is attracting one million new customers a week.

• A summary of copyright and trademark laws. This link © Easy Street. All rights reserved. Violators will be prostituted.

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Stephen Parrish is a contributing editor at Easy Street.

• Charlie Hebdo has released its survivors’ issue. A five-million print run for a magazine that normally distributes 60,000 copies—the best possible tribute to free speech.

• Tips for writing 93,000 words in six weeks. All fine and good, except for the stuff about abstinence. By the way, if you haven’t read Rachel Aaron’s book (shown, right), it’s got even more tips.

• Library ebook checkouts are on the rise.

• Turns out, The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven made the story up. Well, duh. Tyndale House fell for it, Condé Nast didn’t.

• Macmillan has joined HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster by listing titles with Oyster and Scribd. The subscription trend is like a river current: it can’t be reversed.

• From the You’ve-Got-To-Be-Kidding-Me department: Oxford University Press bans mention of pigs to avoid offending Muslims and Jews.

• Madeline McIntosh, president of the Penguin Publishing Group, has reorganized the company. Some lucky business card printer is going to burn the midnight oil.

• The battle of covers, U.S. vs U.K. I think it’s a tie.

• Illustrated Harry Potter editions will be released over the next 7 years. It will take at least that long for the new look to catch on.

• Gotta love Neil Gaiman. There ought to be a prize for this kind of thing.

• The best books of 2014—according to everyone. I dunno. A meta survey is only as good as its individual ingredients.

• NYC is coming out with an ID card. We think this is good. Even better is that is also serves as a library card.

• Rupert Murdoch held all Muslims responsible for jihadi attacks. JK Rowling mocked him.

• More plagiarism. Will they never learn?

• Members of Get Lit perform “Somewhere in America.” There’s hope for our youth. Hell, there’s even hope for our poetry.

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Stephen Parrish is a contributing editor at Easy Street.

• PEN condemns the Charlie Hebdo murders with a Who’s Who list of signatories.

• The NPR Grammar Hall of Fame. My favorite—#6—made the list!

• Nora Roberts says “Bite me” to rude readers. No doubt that’ll inspire them to be even more rude.

• Be still my heart: maps of fictional places.

• A history of the paperback. “(De Graff) knew he had a winner when a hundred and ten books were sold in a day and a half at a single cigar stand.”

• Someone stole the bronze bas-relief of Mark Twain from his tombstone. Fuckers.

• Turns out, audio books engage us least of all. So next time you tackle Ulysses just play it in the car on the way to work. And turn the volume down.

• Print sales are up, according to BookScan, but maybe only due to changes in reporting practices. And due to Bill O’Reilly. And due to Gillian Flynn . . .

• HarperCollins recalls a Middle East atlas after leaving Israel off. I think they need a new cartographer.

• Facebook has started its own bookclub. Wait for “ZuckerBook” stickers to appear on covers. Oh, and it’s already having an impact.

• The CIA torture report sold out on its first day. At 6,000 pages, I’ll wait for the movie.

• Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, shares his predictions for 2015. If you’re an indie author this is worth reading, because Mark’s got a good crystal ball.

• Men improve their grammar when talking to fertile women. Calm yourselves: they don’t become Shakespeare. But they do get more creative.

Interested in being a correspondent for Town Crier? Write to editors at easystreetmag dot com.

Stephen Parrish is a contributing editor at Easy Street.