MediaWeek (Vol 3, No 42b): Midnight's Children, Harold McGraw on Technology, 50 Best Bookstores

The Independent is reporting that after years of working on a script Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children is to become a movie (Independent):

The novelist has been working for two years with the director Deepa Mehta on a script of a film version of the book that originally made his reputation. This week, the Harold Greenberg Fund, set up by the Canadian media firm Astral in honour of one of Canada's leading film directors, announced it was giving an award for "polishing and packaging" the script. Deepa Mehta, an Indian-born Canadian who has known Rushdie for many years, is best known for her trilogy Fire, Earth and Water, which she directed between 1996 and 2005. She and her husband, David Hamilton, run up the film company Hamilton Mehta, in Toronto. He will produce the film, which she will direct. The book's protagonist, Saleem, is born in Bombay at midnight on 15 August 1947, the moment when India became independent, who discovers that all Indian children born in that first hour have magical powers. The novel won the Booker Prize in 1981, then 12 years later was named the "Booker of Bookers". In 2008, in a contest to mark Booker's 40th anniversary of the prize, was again singled out as the best novel ever to win the prize.

Harold McGraw III and Philip Ruppel of McGraw Hill opine about the impact of technology on reading in (the) USA Today:

Today, it is not uncommon to hear predictions that the names of the great publishing houses will soon fall from the covers of books to the footnotes of self-published history tomes. Casual observers could be forgiven for thinking this way based on headlines on the e-reading revolution. First, Amazon announced that its e-book sales topped its hardcover sales for the first time. Then, in August, the Washington Post Co. sold iconic Newsweek amid questions about the future of weekly magazines. And just recently, this newspaper launched a " major organizational restructuring" as part of a continued shift from newsprint toward more digital platforms. While this tide of headlines speaks to the sea change sweeping the publishing world, the industry itself is anything but washed out. In fact, many parts of the industry are thriving in the digital age. Nowhere is this clearer than in the success of the e-book. The Association of American Publishers recently reported that e-book sales for the first half of the year were up more than 200%. Far from being the end of the publishing industry, this number is a sign of a new beginning. Why is there such a gap between the perception of a dying industry and the reality of a rapidly adapting one? It begins with five common myths about publishing:

Traveling England? What better guide than the 50 best bookshops Independent A deep write up and review of the conference eBooks: Libraries at the Tipping Point from Librarian in Black (Link) From the twitter: @Personanondata The Independent: What do you do with 8 million books? Build a shelf 153 miles long Independent Bodleian's offsite storage Elsevier Introduces Article-Based Publishing to Increase Publication Speed PR MediaPost: Wave of New Data On E-Reader Owners MediaPost Frankfurt Book Fair - Digital heads discuss the e-book market and the challenges that face us all PaidContent Picture Books Languish as Parents Push ‘Big-Kid Books’ - NYT See comment number 1.