Annalisa Quinn

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Alison Bechdel, author of the graphic memoir Fun Home, has responded to this week's vote by South Carolina's House of Representatives to cut a combined total of $70,000 in funding to the College of Charleston and the ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey series has now sold more than 100 million copies worldwide, Vintage Books announced on Wednesday. The erotica series, which began as Twilight fanfiction, features shy Anastasia Steele, her handcuff-happy lover, ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Apple is appealing a judge's ruling last year that it broke antitrust laws by conspiring with publishers to fix e-book prices. The appeal, filed Tuesday, called U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote's decision "a radical departure ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Ben Bernanke, former chairman of the Federal Reserve under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, says he is planning a book that will span his eight years helming the Fed, with a special focus on the ...

This post was updated at 9:45 a.m. ET

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• The annual VIDA count tracking gender inequality in literary publications is out, and the numbers don't look good for women. VIDA counted the numbers of female authors ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• The shortlist for the Diagram Prize for the year's oddest book title is out and includes Pie-ography: Where Pie Meets Biography by Jo Packham, Working Class Cats: The Bodega Cats of New York City by Chris Balsinger ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Novelist James Patterson, whose mysteries, thrillers, children's books and romances have sold hundreds of millions of copies, is donating $1 million of his personal fortune to independent bookstores across the country. In a statement released by his ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Short story author Mavis Gallant died Tuesday in Paris. She was 91. Born in Montreal, she spent most of her life in Paris. More than 100 of Gallant's short stories were published in The New Yorker. ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• J.K. Rowling is publishing a second crime novel under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith in June. Rowling quietly released the mystery novel The Cuckoo's Calling last year as Galbraith, but her identity was leaked to Britain's Sunday Times. ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Penguin Books India is defending its decision to settle a lawsuit over Wendy Doniger's The Hindus: An Alternative History and withdraw the book from sale in India. The publisher says it has become "increasingly difficult for any ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• The slam poet and novelist Maggie Estep died Wednesday, days after having a heart attack, The New York Times reports. She was 50. Estep helped to popularize slam poetry through appearances on MTV and HBO in ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Gabrielle Giffords, the former Arizona congresswoman who was shot in the head in 2011, is writing a book about gun control. She plans to collaborate with her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, on Enough: Our Fight to ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• The Iranian poet Hashem Shaabani was reportedly executed last month as an "enemy of God," according to human rights groups. Shaabani was a founder of the Dialogue Institute, which promoted Arab culture in Iran. In a ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• The shortlist of the Folio Prize, which is open to writers of any genre or nationality, is due to be announced later today — but has already been leaked via social media. The prize, worth ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Sony is closing its e-bookstore, the Reader Store, and transferring the accounts of American and Canadian customers to e-reading company Kobo. In a press release, Ken Orii, Sony's vice president of Digital Reading Business Division said, ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• A group of more than 200 authors, including Salman Rushdie, Wole Soyinka, Jonathan Franzen, Günter Grass and Margaret Atwood, have signed an open letter criticizing recent Russian laws that "that place a chokehold on the right ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• A novella by the late movie star Charlie Chaplin has been published for the first time. The 34,000-word novella Footlights, which was the basis for his 1952 film Limelight, was found in the Cineteca di Bologna's ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• A small but rare sample of Jane Austen's handwriting has been found tucked into another book at the Jane Austen's House Museum. The scrap reads, "Men may get into a habit of repeating the words of our ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• J.K. Rowling says she regrets pairing Ron and Hermione in the Harry Potter books. In an interview to be published in Wonderland and excerpted in the U.K.'s Sunday Times, she said, "I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• An education report commissioned by UNESCO found "shocking levels of youth illiteracy" around the world. At least 250 million of the 650 million primary school age children globally aren't learning basic skills in reading ...