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Stephen King, who testified against the merger, told us tonight that he is 'delighted with the outcome.''Publishing should be more focused on cultural growth and literary achievement and less on corporate balance sheets.' nyti.ms/3WkBE5h

A judge blocked Penguin Random House from buying its rival Simon & Schuster, in a significant win for the Justice Department, which has lost in some recent antitrust cases. Penguin Random House plans to appeal. nytimes.com/2022/10/31/boo…

The protagonist of “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” has 7 nights to learn how he died. Which is to say that a gay atheist photojournalist in a conservative society, who worked with all sides in a civil war, has 7 nights to learn who killed him and why. nyti.ms/3WewGY6

For New York Times Books I wrote about the ghost stories collected by the Federal Writers Project during their interviews with the formerly enslaved.
nytimes.com/2022/10/28/boo…

Prince Harry's forthcoming shot to No. 1 on Amazon, dislodging Colleen Hoover, who is dominating the best seller lists.
nytimes.com/2022/10/26/boo…

Prince Harry’s memoir finally has a new pub date for early next year, as royal experts and publishing executives speculate over how explosive it will be. w/ Elizabeth A. Harris nytimes.com/2022/10/26/boo…

How Reality Got ‘Storified’ and What We Can Do About It. Super smart review of Peter Brooks' new book about the “storification of reality” and “hyperinflation of story” by the great Jennifer Szalai nytimes.com/2022/10/19/boo…

Colleen Hoover's 'It Starts With Us' sold more than 800,000 copies on its first day on sale -- setting a company record for fiction, according to her publisher, Atria. Here's my recent story on Hoover and her extraordinary rise nyti.ms/3eM3SVT

Shehan Karunatilaka became the second Sri Lankan-born author to receive the Booker Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards. He won for his second novel, “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida.” nyti.ms/3g4eO1c

Shehan Karunatilaka Wins Booker Prize for ‘The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’ nytimes.com/2022/10/17/boo…

“He’s a permanent fixture in our community,” a professor at the Santa Fe Institute said of the novelist Cormac McCarthy. “He’s been living exclusively with theorists for at least 25 years. That is his environment.” nyti.ms/3TnAbsG

Publishing often “feels like you’re just digging a hole in the ground and chucking money into it.' Terrific story by Alex Marshall explaining how Fitzcarraldo, a tiny British publisher, has developed a reputation for spotting future Nobel laureates nytimes.com/2022/10/13/boo…

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TODAY: Jacob Goldstein explores the history of currency, how we came to trust bills printed by the government as legal tender, and how we’ve managed (and mismanaged) the money supply.

A few weeks ago I shared a text where a relative asked me who Colleen Hoover is and how she has so many bestsellers. This morning a different relative sent me this, which answers the question and makes Hoover sound delightful, funny & very hard-working

nytimes.com/2022/10/09/boo…

I spent time with Colleen Hoover and her fans this summer, and wrote about her incredible rise -- from self-publishing her first romance novel a decade ago, to selling nearly 9 million print copies of her books this year. Here's a free link to the story nyti.ms/3ywkffY