TODAY'S NEWS

Pre-Frankfurt Deals: Two Iowa Writers' M.F.A.s Go at Auction
By Rachel Deahl
Closing a five-way auction just before the Frankfurt Book Fair, Brian DeFiore sold North American rights to The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore to Cary Goldstein at Twelve. The novel is 26-year-old Benjamin Hale's debut and is presented as the memoir of the first chimp to develop the ability to speak. DeFiore is championing the book as a potential buzz title at the coming fair. Read on »

Earthscan Acquires Assets of RFF Press
By Jim Milliot
U.K.-based environmental publisher Earthscan has acquired the publishing assets of RFF Press, the publishing imprint of Resources for the Future, the Washington, D.C. organization the conducts research on environment, energy, natural resource and public health issues. RFF will remain as an imprint and its Washington offices will serve as the North American base for Earthscan LLC, a new Earthscan subsidiary. Don Reisman will remain publisher of RFF Press and Andrea Titus will continue as sales and marketing coordinator. Read on »

iStoryTime Brings New Authors to Smartphones
By Craig Morgan Teicher
The digital revolution means it isn’t just big companies and established authors getting into the e-book app game—anyone with an idea, some start-up capital and tech know-how can now successfully bring a high-quality e-book app to market. That is exactly what happened with three friends with technology backgrounds who wanted to give their children books, not video games, to occupy themselves at the grocery store. The result is iStoryTime, an e-book platform for iPhone and Android OS that is getting children’s books by new authors—many of them without print book contracts—into kids’ hands. Read on »

Going Crazy for a Caterpillar
By Karen Springen
One Thursday morning the warm sun came up and—pop!—an estimated 1.6 million children listened to Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Viewers of NBC’s Today Show also saw kids on the set hearing the 40-year-old picture book about a larva that eats strawberries, plums, ice cream and a lollipop before becoming a butterfly. Read on »

Distribution: Langenscheidt Adds Language Line; Hachette Expands Chronicle
Beginning this month, the Langenscheidt Publishing Group is taking on distribution for Fluenz, a Miami-based software company that develops a variety of language programs for Window and Mac computers. Langenscheidt said the line, which includes teaching programs in Spanish, Italian, French and Mandarin Chinese, is a good complement to its own language products which it markets through Berlitz. Langenscheidt will distribute Fluenz to its major national accounts and independent book retailers. Read on »

Blogs

MORE STORIES

Monday's Reviews Today: Coetzee's 'Summertime' and Lemon's 'Happy'
In J.M. Coetzee's Booker shortlisted Summertime, the award-winning author offers a “powerful” novel in which a young biographer interviews people who knew the now-deceased writer John Coetzee. Per our reviewer: “The biographer’s efforts to describe his subject ultimately result in an examination that reaches through fiction and memoir to grasp what the traditional record leaves out.” And in poet Alex Lemon's straightup memoir Happy, we get “voltaic narrative” from a once hard-partying college baseball player who descends into drug and alcohol abuse as he confronts his own mortality in the wake of two frightening strokes. Read on »

Comings and Goings
If you've been laid off recently, left your job or landed a new position and would like to pass along your contact information to others in the business, send details to pwletters@reedbusiness.com. Please include your full name and former title/company.

Andrew Meisenheimer, former acquisitions editor at Zondervan, can be reached at meisenheimer.a@gmail.com.

You can find a full list of all those who have appeared in Comings and Goings here.

The PW Morning Report
A daily roundup of book and publishing news from across the Web: Obama Wins Nobel; Two Takes on Mueller; Sergy Brin on Google Books; B&N E-Reader Rumors; Wild Things in New York; Britain’s Favorite Poet; Defending Single-Purpose Reading Devices. Read on »

AUTHORS ON THE AIR

Authors on the Air: Miss O'Dell; Fran Tarkenton; Jane Velez Mitchell
On today’s Good Morning America, Chris O'Dell shared her memoir Miss O'Dell: My Hard Days and Long Nights with The Beatles, The Stones, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and the Women They Loved (Touchstone, 978-1416590934, $26). Read on »

PICTURE OF THE DAY

Feminist Press Goes Online
On Tuesday night members and friends of the Feminist Press celebrated the soft launch of the publisher’s new website at the CUNY Graduate Center. Among the site’s features is the "Friends of FP" membership, which readers can purchase for home delivery of every FP publication. Pictured here are FP interns (l. to r.): Natalie Peart; Caroline Rex-Waller; Ayana Smith; and Dior Vargas. Submit your pictures here »

JOB OF THE DAY

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