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Last year two 20-somethings decided to sell books on the streets of New Orleans. But the city said they needed a permit. But it wasn’t possible to get a permit. “It turned out New Orleans had permits for street vendors selling food, flowers, razor blades, shoelaces, candles, and pencils—but not books. And anything that wasn’t explicitly permitted was forbidden.” So the pair fought the ban and ended up in the state Supreme Court – where they won…

A new comprehensive study on the state of Canadian publishing reports that there are more Canadian books being published and demand for them is increasing…

Hillary Clinton and JK Rowling are suing publications for breaking embargoes on their books. But should a publisher be able to sue a newspaper for reporting what’s in a book? “Clinton and Rowling may honestly believe the press violated their copyrights by quoting from and discussing the contents of their books prior to the official pub date. But neither author has much of a legal case, and I’m sure their lawyers would confess over drinks that the noise and litigation is mostly theater.”

So Oprah thought retreating to the classics would rid her book club of controversy? “John Steinbeck’s selection by Oprah is likely to confirm the suspicions of those critics who look down their noses at him as a simplistic writer not worthy of inclusion in the American pantheon. For starters, if East of Eden is a classic, it’s a disputed one. A handful of Steinbeck partisans defend it as one of Steinbeck’s great books, to be placed alongside works like Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. Others argue that it’s flawed but still worthwhile, even a masterpiece. But an equally large—if not larger—group thinks that hardly anything good can be said about it.”