It’s finally here! Click here to go download it (download will start automatically).
There’s nothing super special about it. With all the delays, since last year, I thought they were cramming in all of the annotations and such, but it looks like those are coming later. This app, which lets you buy and read kindle books [...]

I love promotional programs like the new Read It Forward here in Birmingham/Jefferson County. They seem to merge all of the fun parts of technology, connects a community and has FREE books! This year Tom Sawyer has been selected as the book for Alabama Reads and the JCLC system is stepping up to make reading [...]

Amazon fired the opening salvo in the latest skirmish over eBooks with mega-publisher Macmillan. Macmillan, one of the largest publishers in the world is at odds with Amazon over the pricing of Kindle books, so Amazon deleted all of the “Buy Now” buttons from all Macmillan published titles! I’m sure Amazon can predict the impact [...]

The Alabama Book Festival launched a new website last weekend. This year will be the 5th year for the state-wide literary festival. It scheduled to run 10 a.m. through 4 p.m. Saturday, April 17th, in the Old Alabama Town section of Montgomery. The full line up of speakers and authors is listed here and includes [...]

It’s less than a week before Steve Jobs takes the stage atop a unicorn showing the world the fabled Apple Tablet (iSlate). And it appears that Amazon thinks there is going to be a real battle for books. In the past two years, Amazon has used its size to bulldoze its way through publishing. But [...]

I opened the Birmingham News this Sunday morning and saw the great feature story The Alabama Booksmith owner Jake Reiss. It’s always fun to learn more about the people in the stacks of some of our favorite stores.

The annual Local Author Expo has been in full swing since 11 a.m. today and ends at 3 p.m. for the day. If you didn’t make it out today, you can go by the Birmingham Library tomorrow (Sat., Dec. 5th) and mingle with some of Birmingham’s literary minds.
Over 140 local authors are attending this year [...]

Exciting things are happening over at LibraryThing and they tie in locally. So I am making a few changes to help bolster their efforts and build buzz for local Birmingham bookstores. This first change, really will affects the handful of visitors that have subscribed to the {head}:sub/head Google Calendar. I have decided to stop updating [...]

For 27 years, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest has been urging readers to send along the best of the worst opening lines for fictitious novels. They are always bad… which is good. And the best are really punny, even funny.
David McKenzie won this year’s contest. You can click through to read his entry. But I actually [...]

After a few years of trying to find its place in the Birmingham scene, independent bookstore and publishing house Greencup Books has announced it’s going-out-of-business after the November 2nd, el Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) festival. The shop has been struggling over the past few months, having never really regained its footing [...]