lock the doors and turn on the lights

the 2009 Edgar winners are:

Best Novel:  “Blue Heaven” by C. J. Box

Best First Novel by An American Author: “The Foreigner” by Francie Lin

Best Fact Crime: “American Lightning:  Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century” by Howard Blum

Best Young Adult: “Paper Towns” by John Green

Best Juvenile: “The Postcard” by Tony Abbott

the Edgar’s site has a more complete listing of the winners and nominees.

posting by marin

controversy a brewin’

there were a couple of news items last week that might’ve caught your attention:

Amazon acquired Lexcycle, a company best known for its iPhone application for reading e-books, Stanza.  Lexcycle conforms to the e-pub format developed by the International Digital Publishing Forum which is not platform specific.  of course, the purchase resulted in immediate concern and speculation about the monopoly that is Amazon with its own competing Kindle version of an iPhone app.  for additional, unfettered commentary with insightful links, head over to Dear Author.

(via Publisher’s Weekly)

Google’s attempts at scanning books to provide full-text access online through their BookSearch service is, not surprisingly, receiving continued resistance from the Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers as a violation of copyright.  now stepping in is the U.S. Justice Department to examine these claims in terms of possible antitrust violations.  the deadline for authors and authors’ estates to opt out of the book scanning was extended as well in a separate court decision.  Google and proponents of the practice argue that it will provide access to out-of-print titles and will benefit authors and publishers.  as usual, Dear Author provides a useful summary of the history of the developments and legal action.

(via Shelf Awareness)

posting by marin