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Banned Books Week will focus on diversity this year. The annual celebration, which calls on readers to fight against censorship by reading works that have been banned, will run from September 25−October 1, 2016.

According to ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, more than half of all banned books are by authors of color or reflect issues of diversity. This year’s Banned Books Week global event will celebrate banned literature and will also deal with why diverse books are disproportionately challenged.

“It’s alarming to see so many diverse voices facing censorship,” stated Charles Brownstein, chair of the Banned Books Week Coalition. “2016’s Banned Books Week is an important moment for communities to join together in affirming the value of diverse ideas and multiple viewpoints. By shining a light on how these ideas are censored, we hope to encourage opportunities to create engagement and understanding within our communities, and to emphasize the fundamental importance of the freedom to read.”

HarperCollins has acquired the world rights for a memoir by Nujeen Mustafa, a teenage Syrian refugee who travelled from Syria to Germany in a wheelchair.

The Library Foundation of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Public Library are celebrating the Oxford English Dictionary throughout the month of March with an event called: Hollywood Is A Verb: Los Angeles Tackles the Oxford English Dictionary.

During the month, the libraries across the city will host public programs that encourage readers to rethink the dictionary. There will be more than 60 events and activities across the Los Angeles Public Library system. Events will include: poetry workshops, dictionary-themed improv, word game tournaments and art classes.

In addition there will be several author talks. For instance on March 3, National Book Award-winning author James Gleick and UCSD Professor of Cognitive Science Lera Boroditsky will discuss “how knowledge systems like the Oxford English Dictionary mirror or change the way the human brain functions.”

Ninety-two percent of U.S. college students prefer print books to e-books, according to new research.

The numbers come from a four year study led by American University’s linguistics professor Naomi Baron who is also the authors of Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World.

The research includes feedback from more than 420 university students from the U.S., Slovakia, Japan and Germany in 2010 and 2013. Tech Times has more:

The team also found that the main reason why students used e-books was because they were cheaper than the traditional paper book versions. It wasn’t always because it was easier to use or lighter to carry but some of the survey’s open answers included space saving reasons and convenience. When it comes to preference, paper trumps the screen.

(Via The Los Angeles Times).

Internet sensation Doug the Pug has inked a book deal.

His owners Leslie Mosier and Rob Chianelli are working on a photo book called, Doug the Pug: The King of Pop Culture, for St. Martin’s Griffin. The title will feature shots of the popular Internet dog in his living room and out on the town with celebrities, among other things.

The book is slated for a November release, but is already attracting presales on Amazon. The title is already No. 1 in Dog Care books. The pug has more than 5 million social media followers across the various networks.

Crowd-funding site Kickstarter has successfully funded 100,000 projects.

The 100,000th project to reach its goal is a photo piece called “Falklands/Malvinas: One War, all Wars”.

Several of these successes were in publishing, comics and journalism. For instance, the site helped to fund 3,521 comic books and comics related events. In addition, Kickstarter fund a collection of lost poems by Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda which will be published by Copper Canyon Press. Follow this link for more interesting facts about Kickstarter successes.

The Authors Guild’s dispute with Google over scanning copyrighted works could reach the Supreme Court.

The case began in 2005, when the writer’s group accused Google of “massive copyright infringement.” The case has had many twists and turns along the way. In October 2015, a judge upheld Google’s appeal that its efforts to scan millions of books for its digital library does not violate copyright law.

Now, publishers are petitioning the Supreme Court to hear the copyright-infringement case against Google brought by the Authors Guild. In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Author’s Guild president Roxana Robinson explains why. Here is an excerpt:

Open Road Integrated Media has teamed up with app maker hoopla digital to add its e-book catalog to hoopla’s app.

Titles including: The Color Purple; Up the Down Staircase; Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee; M.C. Higgins the Great and The Hero and the Crown will all be available through Hoopla’s content library.

Hoopla digital works with North American public libraries to distribute e-books and interactive content to patrons through computers and mobile devices. Their catalog includes more than 440,000 movies, TV shows, albums, e-books, audiobooks and comics.

News Corp, the umbrella company that owns HarperCollins, earned $2.16 billion in revenue in fiscal Q2 2016, down 4 percent from the comparable quarter last year.

The company attributed the drop to several factors including “lower consumer revenues at the Book Publishing segment.”

Revenues also suffered from foreign currency fluctuations of $141 million and the adjusted revenues only declined 1 percent. The company also reported lower advertising revenues at the News and Information Services segment.

Fashion designer Zac Posen has inked a cook book deal with Rodale Books.

Posen has been a chef for many years, cooking with ingredients in his rooftop garden. He has cooked alongside the likes of  Eric Ripert, Martha Stewart, Mario Batali, Marcus Samuelsson and Giada De Laurentiis and has built a popular social feed at #CooingWithZac. The book, Cooking With Zac, is based on Posen’s homegrown recipes.

“My love for fashion design and food have really developed hand in hand,” stated Posen. “When it comes to food, I believe in a balance between healthy food based on fresh, local ingredients, and decadent desserts.”

Rodale Books Senior Editor Marisa Vigilante acquired the world rights from agent David Kuhn of Kuhn Projects. The book is slated for publication in 2017.

HarperAudio, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, is running a radio drama contest for NYU students.

The contest invites writers to submit an original script for a radio play. The grand prize winner will earn a publishing agreement with HarperCollins, which includes an audio production of their script.

The contest is open to students currently enrolled undergraduate and graduate programs and alumni (who graduated no earlier than 2013) of Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Submissions will be accepted through March 1, 2016 at 11:59 PM EST.

NYPD Red 4 by James Patterson & Marshall Karp has joined the iBooks Bestsellers List this week at No. 2.

Apple has released the list of Bestselling iBooks from the week of 1/31/16. January by Audrey Carlan is No. 1 on the list and When Breath Becomes Air by Abraham Verghese & Paul Kalanithi held the No. 3 position.

We have the entire list for you after the jump.

iBooks US Bestseller List – Paid Books 01/31/16

Comedian and journalist Faith Salie will host the Adult Book & Author Breakfast at BookExpo America (BEA) this year.

As Master of Ceremonies, the host of NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! and CBS News Sunday Morning, will introduce the event, talk about the importance of books and welcome the featured authors on stage.

Sebastian Junger (Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging), Colson Whitehead (The Underground Railroad: A Novel), and Louise Penny (A Great Reckoning) will speak about their new books at the event.

The breakfast will take place on Thursday, May 12, from 8-9:30 a.m.

The rules will be the same as previous contests. We’re looking for the top three books in terms of unique-reader pre-order counts within the specified time period. For this contest, that means any pre-order placed between February 1, 2016, and March 15, 2016. All three winners will be published by Inkshares even if they haven’t reached their pre-order goal. One (or more) will be selected by Nerdist or Geek & Sundry to be in their collection on Inkshares.

Seventy-nine percent of book publishing professionals are white;  78 percent are women and 88 percent are heterosexual, according to new research from Lee & Low Books.

The Diversity Baseline Survey includes feedback from 34 publishers and 8 review journals and took a year to complete. The survey also examined the breakdown across the different departments such as executive level positions, editorial and sales.

The publisher created an infographic with all of the stats from the study. We’ve got the entire infographic after the jump.

Penguin Random House has merged its Biographile and Word & Film sites to create a new site called Signature.

The site will include reportage on current events and cultural moments connected with books. The site will feature essays, interviews and opinion pieces by authors, journalists and other experts.

“Whether the headlines of tomorrow are consumed by a financial crisis, a blockbuster movie, a scientific breakthrough, or an election, there are books steeped in those subjects to further our understanding of it all,” said Kristin Fritz, director of Signature. “Signature is for readers who want deeper context for what’s going on around them. At Signature, we want to provide that context and bridge the gap between those readers and the authors and books they’ll find inspiring and useful.”

The Smithsonian is launching a new series of graphic novels next month, which will tie in with a different Smithsonian exhibits.

The first in the Secret Smithsonian Adventures series is called The Wrong Wrights. Written by Chris Kientz and Steve Hockensmith and illustrated by Lee Nielsen, the book is about a group of kids on a visit to the museum. “With the help of a museum ‘fabrications specialist,’ they travel through time to try and restore the Wright brothers to their well-earned place in history,” explains the website. “Along the way they also learn about aerodynamics and other aviation principles from a wise-cracking computer named Smitty.”

The title, which is aimed at middle school readers, drops on February 23rd.

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, a division of Hachette Book Group, will publish children’s books based on DreamWorks Animation’s television series Dinotrux.

Little, Brown has licensed the rights to publish the television show tie-in books. This includes the rights to produce storybooks and board book formats in the US and Canada. The show, an original series distributed by Netflix, is originally based on a picture book series by Chris Gall which is also published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

The new line of books are slated for publication in April 2016. Kara Sargent, executive editorial director, brand, licensed, media tie-in publishing, will oversee the editorial direction.

Penguin Random House have away almost 50,000 books this past holiday season to kids in need.

The donation was made through the nonprofit First Book as part of the publisher’s #GiveaBook social media campaign. For every mention of the hashtag on social networks during the five week promotion, the publisher donated a book.

“Through the #GiveaBook effort, book lovers everywhere shared that love with 50,000 children in need,” stated Kyle Zimmer, president and CEO of First Book.  “We are so grateful to Penguin Random House for providing these brand new books for the classrooms and programs we serve, giving a gift that will be treasured throughout the year.”

Scholastic will pull, “A Birthday Cake for George Washington” by Ramin Ganeshram after backlash against the book because of its depiction of slavery.

The children’s book which is about a slave named Hercules who is baking a cake for the former president. “This story, told in the voice of Delia, Hercules’s young daughter, is based on real events, and underscores the loving exchange between a very determined father and his eager daughter, who are faced with an unspoken, bittersweet reality,” explains the book’s description. “No matter how delicious the president’s cake turns out to be, Delia and Papa will not taste the sweetness of freedom.”

The School Library Journal called the book, “highly problematic” explaining that “young readers without sufficient background knowledge about the larger context of American slavery may come away with a dangerously rosy impression of the relationship between slaves and slave owners, and those with a deeper understanding are likely to find this depiction offensive.”

The polarizing book has earned hundreds of one-star ratings on Amazon, as well as about seventy five star ratings.

Lee Bo, one of the Hong Kong book publishers who recently went missing, is reportedly in China.

Five employees of the Hong Kong publisher The Mighty Current disappeared in late December after the publisher planned a book that was critical of the Chinese government. Last week, the company dropped the book. Chinese police confirmed that Bo was in custody in China through a strange “confession letter”. Bloomberg has more:

Police in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong sent a letter to Hong Kong authorities stating that the bookseller, Lee Bo, was in China, Hong Kong police said on the government’s website. Chinese authorities also enclosed a letter from Lee similar to one he sent to his wife that was reproduced by Hong Kong media on Monday, the statement said.

The news comes a day after Gui Minhai, the Swedish citizen who also worked for the publishing house and went missing in Thailand, made a bizarre resurfacing with a strange confession on China’s state television CCTV.

More than half of Germans read a print book at least once a week, while only 17 percent of the country’s citizens use movie streaming services or read e-books weekly, according to a new report.

However, the survey from YouGov also revealed that 89 percent of Germans still admit to watching television at least once a week. Here is more from The Local:

A total of 53 percent of Germans said they’d bought themselves a book over the last six months, while 38 percent said they’d done so as a gift for another person.

The research also found that only 13 percent of Germans said they could live without books.

A university in Northern Russia has burned 53 textbooks associated with the Soros Foundation, George Soros’ NGO.

The organization was recently labeled a security threat by Russian several weeks ago. The books were related to a “Renewal of Humanitarian Education” program at the school, according to reports. CNBC has the scoop:

College libraries in the Russia’s northern republic of Komi were searched last month to find textbooks and manuals related to a project run by Soros’ foundation, the local Russian news site 7×7 reported on Wednesday, citing an official letter from the regional education ministry.

Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky has criticized the incident calling it “completely unacceptable,” The Moscow Times reports.

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) has launched a new internship program in partnership with United Negro College Fund (UNCF).

The program will offer paid summer internships to high-achieving African American students at various publishing companies including: Cengage Learning, Elsevier, Hachette Book Group,HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan, McGraw-Hill Education, Penguin Random House,  Scholastic and W.W. Norton. These positions will be in a variety of departments at these publishing houses including: editorial, marketing, publicity, sales and digital engineering. Jobs will take place in New York, Washington, Boston, and St. Louis during the first year.

“In an industry where our ideas are our commodity, recruiting diverse talent is a top priority for publishers,” stated Tina Jordan, vice president of AAP. “Attracting African American student interns to the publishing industry is an important step our member organizations are taking to expand workforce diversity and inclusion efforts.”

Hong Kong publisher The Mighty Current has cancelled a book critical of the Chinese government, after five employees recently went missing.

The chief editor of publishing house Jin Zhong revealed the fate of the book’s publication to Hong Kong’s Apple Daily newspaper. TIME has the scoop:

“The difficulty of publishing political books in Hong Kong is already in the international spotlight,” Jin wrote, according to the HKFP. “People in the industry are feeling great fear and pressure; they want to stay out of trouble so that they won’t be the next one [to disappear]. I received many calls from friends and family trying to persuade me. Because of that, we decided after much deliberation to suspend the publication of your work.”

Last week, a group of American book publishing associations called for the release of the missing publishing company employees.