Book Deal for College Kids' "Twitterature"

The Twitter revolution continues apace as two 19-year-old college freshman just sold "Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books, Now Presented in Twenty Tweets or Less" to Penguin.
Penguin's John Siciliano bought the book, and the deal was brokered by Brian DeFiore at DeFiore and Company. According to LA Observed, the book will be "a humorous retelling" of literary classics in 140-characters or less. The book was pitched by Emmett Rensin (who is the son of David Rensin, a LA Observed writer) and Alex Aciman.

Here's more from the website: "Like any good revolution, this one started in a college dormitory. Sitting in our suite at the end of another long day at the University of Chicago, we had an epiphany of the sort that many men wait for until their golden years, and which for too many others never comes before the grave. What, we asked, are the grandest ventures of our or any generation? And what, to give this a bit more focus, best expresses the souls of 21st century Americans?”

Oprah Book 'Say You're One of Them'

Oprah Winfrey announced that Say You’re One of Them by Nigeran author Uwem Akpan is the first story collection to be featured in her book club. Each of the five stories in the collection “left me gasping,” Winfrey said, in explaining why she chose the book.

Charlotte Abbott -- Publishers Weekly

50 Cent's Book, The 50th Law, on Wall Street Journal's Best Seller Lis

NONFICTION

1. "Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin" by Kathy Griffin (Ballantine Books)

2. "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, Simone Beck, and Sidonie Coryn (Alfred A. Knopf)

3. "Culture of Corruption: Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies" by Michelle Malkin (Regnery Publishing)

4. "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown and Company)

5. "In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect" by Ronald Kessler (Crown)

6. "The Conversation: How Black Men and Women can Build Loving, Trusting Relationships" by Hill Harper (Gotham)

7. "StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup's Now, Discover Your Strengths" by Tom Rath (Gallup Press)

8. "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow (Hyperion)

9. "Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment" by Steve Harvey (Amistad)

10. "The 50th Law" by 50 Cent and Robert Greene (HarperStudio)

11. "A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity" by Bill O'Reilly (Broadway)

12. "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto" by Mark R. Levin (Threshold Editions)

13. "Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen" by Christopher McDougall (Knopf)

14. "Strength in What Remains" by Tracy Kidder (Random House)

15. "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide" by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (Knopf)

The Ghost Whisperer Writes!

First she was an actress. Then she was a singer (remember "BareNaked"?). Now, Jennifer Love Hewitt is carving a path for herself as an author, with two whole books in the works. (For those of you who are keeping count, that's one less than Lauren Conrad. Really.) So what great literary works can we expect to see in bookstores under Hewitt, Jennifer Love? In 2010, she'll release a dating and relationship guide — called The Day I Shot Cupid — and this November, a ten-issue comic book series about a possessed music box called, creatively enough, Jennifer Love Hewitt's The Music Box.

Did You Know?

Hillary Clinton’s memoir, Living History, sold more than 200,000 copies in its first day of publication, more than any other nonfiction title. It was published in June 2003.

Quotes of the Day For the Writer

"Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing."

-- Oscar Wilde

"Twilight" Author Sued

A woman who wrote an obscure vampire book as a teenager has sued "Twilight" author Stephenie Meyer, accusing her of stealing ideas from the work for the fourth book in her vampire series, "Breaking Dawn."

Meyer's publisher responded that the lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in federal court in California, is a meritless claim meant to further the career of the aspiring screenwriter making the complaint.

Jordan Scott's lawsuit accuses Meyer of copyright infringement and argues that, as Scott wrote her vampire novel "The Nocturne," she posted passages online, and that Meyer stole ideas from Scott's work for her own book."The Nocturne" and "Breaking Dawn," which was published in 2008, show similarities in language, plot lines, characters and other points, Scott's lawsuit stated. For instance, the lawsuit said both books contain a wedding passage and an after-wedding scene of sex on the beach.

Hachette Book Group, Meyer's publisher, said the "alleged similarities" are "wholly lacking in substance," and Meyer based "Breaking Dawn" on an earlier, unpublished sequel to "Twilight" that she wrote.

Hachette called the suit a "publicity stunt to further Ms. Scott's career," and said it expected the court would dismiss it.

Meyer's "Breaking Dawn" is the fourth book in the "Twilight" series, which has sold more than 70 million copies worldwide and become the basis of a Hollywood movie series.
The first film, "Twilight," earned more than $380 million at worldwide box offices and the second, "New Moon," hits theaters in November. The books and movies are about a girl named Bella Swan, who has a star-crossed love affair with dangerous but handsome vampire Edward Cullen.

Scott's book "The Nocturne," which she started writing at age 15 in 2003, had an initial printing of 5,000 books and is about to go into a second printing, according to her lawsuit.