Michelle Obama’s memoir will be titled Becoming and is set for a November release by the Crown Publishing Group. The news was released via Markus Dohle, CEO of Penguin Random House, the publisher for the Crown imprint. It was also tweeted by the former first lady. "Writing Becoming has been a deeply personal…

EXCLUSIVE: As Glee winds down, Chris Colfer is creating more opportunities for himself by going deeper into the Land Of Stories. The Golden Globe-winning actor and NY Times bestselling author has inked a new five-book deal with publisher Little, Brown to expand the popular children’s fiction franchise he launched with…

Book sales in 2013 were so-so — but with a caveat — the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group report today. Total net revenues for books and professional and scholarly journals fell 0.4% to $27.0B, with net units -1.2% to 2.6B, The numbers were drearier if you just look at the trade…

Here’s a novel concept: NBCUniversal Television Consumer Products Group and Hyperion Books are teaming to publish Pawnee: The Greatest Town In America, a book “written” by Amy Poehler’s character Leslie Knope on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation. Pawnee, Ind., is the setting for the series, which centers on Knope, a…

In what seemed an inevitable move once it fell behind on vendor payments, the brick and mortar bookseller Borders officially filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy today as management attempts to figure out a way to keep afloat the Borders and Waldenbook chains. Its first move will be to close 30% of its stores. It doesn’t seem…

Simon & Schuster today is about to market the heck out of O, its anonymously written and self-proclaimed provocative novel about Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. That’s right — the campaign that hasn’t happened yet. Supposedly, it’s penned by someone “who’s been in the room with Obama”. This is kinda…

EXCLUSIVE: Gersh has hired Joseph Veltre to become head of its book department, where he will broker publishing deals and sell books for film and TV. Veltre had spent the past six years running The Veltre Company, and he’ll bring all his clients with him when he joins the Gotham Gersh office on February 1. Veltre’s…

Law & Order executive producer/showrunner Neal Baer is making his novel writing debut with a series of 3 books. The novels, which Baer is writing with SVU co-executive producer Jonathan Greene, have been sold to Kensington. The medical thriller books, the first of which is titled Kill Switch, are set in the world of…

EXCLUSIVE: Summit Entertainment has acquired world rights to The Night Circus, a first novel by Erin Morgenstern that will be published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group in September. The book is the story of two young prodigy illusionists in the 19th Century who are groomed to battle out their fathers’ age-old…

Just last week, the literary agent for UK author Patrick Ness was in Los Angeles discussing film rights to his celebrated Chaos Walking children’s book trilogy. "The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say," is the brilliant opening line of the first book The Knif…

EXCLUSIVE: After cranking out three bestsellers, E! Entertainment Chelsea Lately host Chelsea Handler has taken the next step forward. She has been given her own imprint by her publisher, the Hachette Book Group USA division Grand Central Publishing. The imprint, called Borderline Amazing/A Chelsea Handler Book, will…

More lucrative extensions for HBO’s flagship series True Blood. HBO will release a True Blood graphic novel, True Blood, Vol.1: All Together Now. on February 8, 2011. It is a compilation of the six issues from the first True Blood comic book series plus bonus content. Since debuting in July, the True Blood comic…