News & Notes -- 2/23/2013

Worth Reading:

• Is Sherlock Holmes still under copyright?  Leslie Klinger, Holmesian scholar and co-editor (with Laurie R. King) of the recent short-story collection, A Study in Sherlock, is suing the Conan Doyle estate.  The estate recently demanded licensing fees be paid for In the Company of Sherlock Holmes, an upcoming anthology of short stories also edited by Klinger and King.  Of the 60 or so works featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, only 10 remain under copyright in the U.S.; the bulk of the titles are in public domain. Klinger's suit argues that because the characters of Holmes and Watson are well established in the stories already in public domain, the characters themselves are also in the public domain.  FreeSherlock.com has the full text of the press release from the Klinger camp.  Nate Hoffelder also takes a look at the issue on his blog, The Digital Reader.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

• Jane Litte at Dear Author offers  "Some post price fixing settlement thoughts." 

Cool Stuff:

• Author Alarms is a new service which will let you know when your favorite author has a new e-book out, whether the author is traditionally published or a self-published indie author.  Just sign up with your email and the author's name, and they'll send you an email when a new book by that author comes out -- free.  I'm definitely going to try this out!

•  Here's a post with photos of creative bookshelves of all types (some more practical than others!)

• And here's a post with lots of photos of how the Bookworm Bookshelf was designed and built.

Bookworm Bookshelf by Rachel Ariyavatkul

  Ebook bargains: 

• Magic Under Glass, by Jaclyn Dolamore.  $1.59 Kindle, $1.99 Kobo (ePub)

• Three mysteries by Deborah Crombie are on sale at Kobo for $3.99 each: All Shall Be Well, Dreaming of the Bones, Leave the Grave Green . Amazon has them for Kindle at an even lower price, along with the first book in the series, A Share in Death. Crombie writes wonderful mysteriesr; grab these while you have the chance. 

Giveaways on other blogs: 

• These Broken Stars ARC -- at The Midnight Garden  (YA SF)

• The Better to See You (signed copy) -- at Kimba "The Caffeinated Book Reviewer" (Fantasy romance)

• India Black and the Shadows of Anarchy -- at Escape with Dollycas Into a Good Book

Books & Ebooks in the News:

• Head over to the Children's Book Week site to read about this weeklong celebration of children's books (May 13 - 19, 2013.)  Schools and libraries can order a free poster.  



Brian Selznick's poster for the 2013 Children's Book Week

•  The UK has issued a set of six stamps commemorating Jane Austen's books (BBC News).  See a gallery of all six stamps at The Guardian.

•  "Independent Booksellers Sue Amazon and Publishers Over Ebooks" (Leslie Kaufman, The New York Times).  After you read this, head over to Dear Author for a look at what is wrong with the suit.

• Print-on-demand start-up Paperight wants to let copy shops print books -- legally  (Craig Wilson, TechCentral)

• "The latest enemy of libraries is... an author!" (Richard Davies, AbeBooks.co.uk)