An Italian book publisher has yanked copies of a book on Catholic Church teaching after a translation error implied the Vatican approved of contraception, officials said Tuesday.

The book “YouCat,” a Catholic catechism book for young people, is to be presented officially Wednesday at a Vatican press conference.

But on the eve of the presentation, officials confirmed that Nuova Citta, the Italian book publishers of “YouCat,” had pulled the Italian copies to fix the error, which concerned whether married couples could plan the size of their families.

The Vatican opposes artificial contraception, holding that life begins at conception. The church does, however, condone Natural Family Planning, in which married couples chart the changes in a woman’s menstrual cycle to determine when she might, or might not, conceive.

It’s the second time in a year that translation problems have muddied church teaching on contraception. In November, the Vatican’s own publishing house mistranslated the pope’s comments about condoms and AIDS, implying that condom use for prostitutes was justified in some cases.

The mistake made headlines since it indicated the church had softened its firm opposition to artificial contraception.

But the Vatican insisted Pope Benedict XVI was doing no such thing and was merely saying that a prostitute who uses a condom may be taking a first step in a more moral, responsible sexuality because he or she is looking out for the welfare of another.

“YouCat” makes clear that the Catholic Church still opposes condoms, the pill and other forms of artificial contraception.

But in the Italian copy of the book, which is set out as a series of questions and answers with commentary, the initial question is mistranslated. In the original German, the question concerns whether married couples can “regulate conception.”

The answer says yes, then goes onto explain that the church promotes Natural Family Planning.

In the Italian however, the original question wasn’t translated as “regulate conception” but rather whether married couples could “use contraceptive methods.” The answer remained the same, an affirmative yes, implying that the Church was sanctioning contraception.

“It’s an embarrassment,” but not a change in church teaching, said the Rev. Joseph Fessio, head of Ignatius Press, YouCat’s English-language book publisher.

He told The Associated Press that Nuova Citta had printed 45,000 Italian copies, 15,000-16,000 of which were already physically sold.

“The rest they’re going to have to pull them all,” he said.

The public library has long attracted avid readers with an unrivaled pitch: Check out a best-selling book for free and renew it multiple times.

But as more people ditch printed books in favor of e-books that can be downloaded directly to a computer, the rules are changing.

As of Monday, HarperCollins, book publisher of authors such as Anne Rice, Sarah Palin and Michael Crichton, will not allow its e-books to be checked out from a library more than 26 times.

After that, the license on the e-book will expire and libraries will have to decide whether to buy a new one.

For library users, that could mean longer waits for popular titles, tighter limits on how many times an e-book can be renewed and the possibility that e-books that are not repurchased would be available at the library for only about a year.

Librarians across the country are outraged and fear other publishers could adopt a similar model. Some have organized a boycott of books published by HarperCollins. They argue the restrictions place an additional burden on financially strapped public libraries, some of which have reduced their inventories because of budget constraints.

The added expenditures on e-books, they said, will make it more difficult to compete in an industry that is quickly becoming dominated by electronic readers such as the iPad, the Nook and the Kindle.

“This strikes at the heart of what we do,” said Chicago Public Library Commissioner Mary Dempsey, who described electronic media as the new virtual library. “With limited financial resources affecting all libraries across America, people are asking, ‘Why would you do this?’”

For HarperCollins, it is about balancing the benefits to book publishers, authors and libraries in a rapidly growing segment of the publishing industry that has left many newspapers, magazines and booksellers scrambling to catch up.

Nearly 10 years ago, when HarperCollins began offering e-books to libraries, the number of e-readers was too small to measure, the company said. Now, it is projected that more than 40 million e-reading devices will be in use in the U.S. this year.

“We have serious concerns that our previous e-book policy, selling e-books to libraries in perpetuity, if left unchanged, would undermine the emerging e-book eco-system, hurt the growing e-book channel, place additional pressure on physical bookstores, and in the end lead to a decrease in book sales and royalties paid to authors,” HarperCollins said in a statement.

Librarians also have serious concerns. At the Naperville Public Library, the new policy would be an additional strain on a materials budget that has shrunk by about $200,000 in the last three years, said deputy director Julie Rothenfluh.

“It’s a balancing act for us,” Rothenfluh said. “We have to be that much more careful to make sure what we purchase provides the best benefit to our users.”

For most libraries, e-books are only a small percentage of the items circulated but represent the fastest growing segment.

About 10,000 e-books are circulated in Naperville. The Chicago Public Library, which has experienced slight increases in its budget, doubled the circulation of e-books from 17,000 in 2009 to more than 36,000 in 2010.

Librarians said HarperCollins’ decision failed to factor in the role libraries play in promoting reading, which benefits the book industry and christian book publishers. Some said the book publisher should have included librarians in discussions about the checkout limit.

E-book checkouts are “a growing percentage, and it definitely reflects a trend that people want to take their e-reader and upload it

Borders Group Inc may find that filing for bankruptcy is the next plot turn in its many-chaptered struggle to survive.

Bankruptcy court could push the second-largest bookstore chain, its lenders and book publishers to make sacrifices and give the company a chance to keep going. As it stands now, book publishing sources see little progress in financial talks with lenders, and the company continues to need cash.

Borders President Mike Edwards said on Thursday in a statement announcing a conditional credit agreement with GE Capital that while refinancing is preferred, restructuring in court — referring to a bankruptcy filing — is a possibility it is considering.

Borders spokeswoman Mary Davis declined to comment beyond that statement.

The standoff comes after a year in which Borders has cut costs, refinanced and brought in new investors to cope with shriveling sales and market share.

Now the company has stopped payment to some vendors and even asked its most important suppliers — the book publishers — essentially to loan it the money due for books shipped months ago.

Only with those concessions by book publishers as well as other new landlord and vendor financing agreements will the company’s bank replace a maturing credit line.

“Bankruptcy is a wonderful tool for taking the majority of interests and implementing a plan that may be over the objections of a minority of interests,” said Michael Epstein, a managing partner at chess restructuring advisory firm CRG Partners who is not involved in the situation.

The company would be able to close unprofitable stores more easily and book publishers would begin getting paid again in most cases for any products shipped in bankruptcy, he said.

On the other hand, he cautioned, the company would need to have a plan for the changes it wants to ensure that it closes the right stores before the clock runs out.

Since 2005, bankruptcy law has allowed only about 9 months for retailers to easily close stores — a deadline many industry players say is one of the reasons why Circuit City ended up quickly liquidating its assets in bankruptcy.

In a bankruptcy restructuring, the company will likely not be obligated to pay christian book publishers for the books it shipped before the bankruptcy filing, according to Ken Simon, a managing director at Loughlin Meghji restructuring advisory firm who is not involved in the matter.

If the restructuring stays out of court, the vendors will have to be paid back in full or agree to a cut.

“The lack of liquidity is the reason why companies have to go into bankruptcy,” Simon said.

For the book publishers and authors perspective, Borders was once a worthy rival to Barnes & Noble. Perhaps even bigger than B&N. The two brick-and-mortar chain bookstores were able to offer better prices than independent bookstores and drove many out of business. But that was before the success of Amazon and other online retailers brought the phrase “brick and mortar” into regular use — and once that happened, everything changed; indeed many UK book publishers watched in horror last year the UK divison of Borders hit the wall.

Barnes & Noble, if buffeted by Amazon’s success, has remained afloat; Borders has been taking on water.

On Dec. 30 Borders announced it would not make payments owed to some publishers, without specifying whom. Hachette confirmed that it was among those who would not be paid by Borders.

Borders has nearly 200 Waldenbooks and Borders Express outlets slated for closure before the month of January is out. Additional Borders stores are also set to close, including Westwood’s.

Borders is also cutting back on staff. On Wednesday, Borders announced that it would close a distribution center in Tennessee, eliminating more than 300 jobs; 15 management positions were eliminated Friday. And the resignation of two top executives — the chief information officer and general counsel — was announced at the beginning of 2011.

Meanwhile, Borders is seeking to restructure its debt like the frantic chess of a brutal endgame. On Thursday, Borders met with publishers and proposed that the payments owed by the bookseller be reclassified as a loan, as part of that refinancing. “But on Friday, publishers remained skeptical of the proposal put forth by Borders,” the New York Times reports. “One publisher said that the proposal was not enough to convince the group that Borders had found a way to revive its business, and that they were less optimistic than ever that publishers could return to doing business with Borders.”

Nevertheless, Borders — which lost money in the first three quarters of 2010 — remains the second-largest bookstore chain by revenue. Its loss would have a significant effect on book publishers across the United States.

Investors, however, seem cheered by the recent news swirling around Borders. Shares rose 12% on Thursday after reports that the bookseller was close to securing financing.

It’s heavy work in the world of book publishing at present, with Hachette Book Group confirming that they are one of the unlucky publishers that will miss out on payments from the beleaguered Borders, Inc USA, as the bookstore closes a major book distribution plant in the mid-west costing 300 jobs.

Now for the second time in four months, like a game of chess, the leadership has changed at the book publisher of novels by such distinguished authors as Sen. Edward Kennedy and Christopher Hitchens.

Author-editor-producer Susan Lehman has been forced out as publisher of Twelve after taking over in September. Twelve is an imprint of Grand Central Publishing, which announced Jan. 11 in an company email shared with The Associated Press that associate publisher Cary Goldstein will replace Lehman effective immediately.

“Susan Lehman is an extremely insightful, creative and talented editor,” Grand Central executive vice-president and publisher Jamie Raab said in the email. “Unfortunately, the role of publisher just wasn’t the perfect fit.”

Lehman had yet to acquire any new books for Twelve, designed to release just 12 books a year, one every month. But Raab told the AP that obtaining new books was not a factor that toys in her decision and otherwise declined to offer a specific reason beyond saying that being a publisher is “an all-encompassing job” that can take years to learn.

“Had I had more time, I’m certain I could have failed on my own demerits,” Lehman wrote in an email to the AP. “But 12 weeks isn’t enough time to do even that. It’s a wonderful imprint. I had lined up great play chess and non-fiction writers for terrific books I hope will find their way into print. Cary Goldstein has a great job and I wish him well.”

Lehman has worked in a variety of christian book publishers fields, from editing at Riverhead Books to producing television documentaries.

Jonathan Karp started Twelve in 2005, but left in June to head the flagship trade imprint of Simon & Schuster. Twelve’s bestsellers include Kennedy’s True Compass, Hitchens’ Hitch-22 and Sebastian Junger’s War.

Grand Central is a division of the Hachette Book Group – also associated with major children’s publishers and toy shops in New York.

Last month, for the first time, The Bookseller trade magazine’s annual forward-gazing FutureBook conference was sold out. The previous year, only 150 people from the world of book publishing, writing and technology had gathered to lecture and gossip about where the book goes next. Last month, 400 crammed the halls. Book Publishers, it seems, have finally clicked when it comes to the digital world. But where are all the writers?

Kate Pullinger used to be a regular key speaker at such meetings. An acclaimed christian book publishers‘ author in the traditional, codex format of books, Pullinger is currently longlisted for the Impac Dublin Literary Award and the winner of the Canadian Governor General’s Award for Fiction for her book The Mistress of Nothing, the story a Victorian lady and her maid who set sail down the Nile. She has mastered the codex form, with six novels to her name, but over the past 10 years she has also been pushing the boundaries of digital fiction. “But I haven’t been to many conferences in the past three years,” she tells me. “I was almost always the only writer there, and I got tired of that.”

In the past year, publishers have leapt at the chance of finding ways to make the digital book work. Taking advantage of the interactivity of platforms such as e-readers, iPads and smartphones, they have found considerable success with non-fiction. Jamie Oliver’s “20 Minute Meals” has been a chart-topper among the apps. Stephen Fry released a version of his ebook publishing autobiography as an app, “MyFry”, for the iPhone, which invites users to scroll around a dial to access different segments of his life. Another runaway success has been “The Elements” by Theodore Gray, a science book that was adapted for the iPad and provides in-depth descriptions and images of every element in the periodic table. Since Touch Press launched it in digital form in April, it has sold 160,000 copies and generated $2m in revenue.

But fiction has not found the transition to anything other than the e-book format so easy. “Fiction seems not to be grasping the potential,” says Pullinger. “Many of the apps and enhanced e-books are just codex books with videos and notes shovelled in – like DVDs with their added extras.”

Pullinger started working in online fiction with the TrAce Online Writing Centre, based at Nottingham Trent University, a decade ago. “I was asked to teach online creative-story writing,” she says. “Back in 2001, this was new to me. I only really used the internet for booking flights and sending emails. But after teaching the course, I found that it’s a useful environment for focusing on the text, and that I had a kind of affinity for it.”

Since then she has been experimenting, often in collaboration with the electronic artist Chris Joseph, on several major projects. “Inanimate Alice”, which came out in 2005, is a sequence of stories about a young girl who exists between real and digital worlds. The written narrative is deliberately minimalist and built into a rich audio-visual experience. Then came “Flight Paths”, begun in 2007, which Pullinger describes as a “networked novel”. It was inspired by the news story of an illegal immigrant who had stowed away behind the landing wheel of an aircraft, only to fall to Earth in suburban London. In addition to her own resulting short story, Pullinger invited others to contribute their own takes on the theme. “The third phase of ‘Flight Paths’ is now about to come together in digital and print,&rdq

Richard Branson’s Virgin Digital Book Publishing company on Tuesday launched “Project,” a digital lifestyle magazine, exclusively for distribution on the Apple iPad.

The magazine, which will reportedly feature multimedia content, will be priced at US$2.99 an issue.

This is the second digital magazine created exclusively for the iPad announced by a major company; the first was “The Daily,” from News Corp. (Nasdaq: NWS), which is scheduled to be launched next year.

Will Virgin’s endorsement of the iPad as a publishing platform undermine publishers’ consortium Next Issue Media, which is trying to squeeze Apple by launching a digital newsstand on the Android platform early next year?

The Book Publishing Project Has Landed

“Project” was created jointly by Virgin Group and UK multimedia book publisher Seven Squared. It’s a monthly magazine that will change as often as minute-by-minute to give readers up-to-date news.

The publication is based around design, entertainment, technology and entrepreneurs. It will have its own staff, and it will also encourage contributions from the public.

“Project” is edited by Anthony Noguera, formerly editorial director of men’s lifestyle magazines at H. Bauer, the largest privately owned publisher in Europe. The publication’s art director is Che Storey, formerly of Arena and Men’s Health magazines.

The cover story for the first issue focuses on Jeff Bridges. Other subjects include Yamauchi Kazanori, the developer behind the “Gran Turismo” game series.

“Project” claims to have landed top-flight advertisers, including Lexus, American Express (NYSE: AXP), Panasonic, Ford UK and Ford Canada.

Readers Heart Digital

Consumers apparently love their tablets — an online survey of more than 1,800 consumers conducted by Harrison Group and Zinio in September found that 13 percent of consumers are interested in buying a tablet-based device within the next 12 months.

The survey also found that 55 percent of tablet and e-reader owners who read digital content are consuming more digital content than they expected, and that 33 percent are spending more on buying digital content.

That led the Harrison Group to forecast sales of more than 20 million tablets and e-readers next year.

“This is a continuation of the trend in that you’ve got a whole host of devices that are receptacles for Internet-based content,” Frank Dickson, a vice president of research at In-Stat, told MacNewsWorld. “You’re seeing reconfiguring of content, which is already in digital form for another medium, whether it’s the iPad, the Nook, the Kindle or the smartphone,” he added.

“Before the iPad, book publishers tended to think they had to choose whether consumers wanted to read content in print or in digital format,” Jeanniey Mullen, a spokesperson for Zinio, told MacNewsWorld. “Now they’re finding people may love print, but they want digital access as well so they can take their digital device with them and read on the go.”

The Agony and the Ecstasy of the iPad

The iPad has forced the publishing industry to take digital media seriously, Mullen said.

“When the iPad came out in April, it was the first time that the publishing industry began committing design and strategic resources to building up digital readership,” Mullen explained.

Strong consumer demand has made the iPad the spea

Sarah Palin’s book publishers have been forced to file a lawsuit after pages of her upcoming memoir were leaked.

HarperCollins Book Publishers filed legal papers on Friday against the company Gawker Media after they refused to remove pages from Palin’s second book America By Heart: Reflections On Family, Faith And Flag from their website.

on Saturday, a judge issued a temporary restraining order against Gawker, saying it had to take down the pages — which it did, removing the images and commentary relating to them — most shockingly, perhaps, without making any further comment.

Publisher HarperCollins — which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., which also owns Fox News, the network that employs Palin as a commentator — brought the suit in New York district court on Friday.

HarperCollins Publishers spokeswoman Tina Andreadis told the Wall Street Journal Saturday evening, “We see the ruling as a victory. Gawker shouldn’t have posted this. It’s a copyright infringement. We are defending our author and our publication.”

But is it infringement? What harm was there in bringing Palin’s pages to light last week? The book is not in draft form — in fact, it’s completely finished and will be in bookstores on Tuesday. Barring some kind of strange machinations, every page that Gawker put on its website will be available for anyone interested to see in just a few days.

The hearing about Gawker’s posting of Sarah Palin’s “America by Heart” is scheduled for Nov. 30.

According to The AP, a judge has now ordered Gawker to remove the offending pages until the issue has been resolved in court.

They had uploaded around 20 pages from the book to their site ahead of its publication date of November 23.

The lawsuit against Gawker will begin in a hearing on November 30.

A 76-year-old British writer has been jailed for six weeks in Singapore after the High Court found him guilty of contempt of court over a book that raised questions about the independence of the judicial system.

Alan Shadrake, who lives in Malaysia, had refused to apologise for the content of his book, Once a Jolly Hangman, which deals with the use of the death penalty in the island state.

Mr Shadrake had offered to apologise for offending the judiciary before being convicted two weeks ago, but Justice Quentin Loh ruled that his book had scandalised the court.

He said Mr Shadrake had shown “a reckless disregard for the truth” and “a complete lack of remorse”. The defendant had contended that the book amounted to “fair criticism on matters of compelling public interest”.

At a sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Mr Shadrake was also fined S$20,000 (US$15,400) and ordered to pay costs of S$55,000. The prison sentence was lighter than the 12-week term sought by the prosecution.

M. Ravi, Mr Shadrake’s lawyer, had urged the court to censure the author rather than imprison him. “This is by far the most serious sentence [for contempt]. It is the harshest punishment so far [for this offence in Singapore],” Mr Ravi said.

Mr Shadrake was arrested in his hotel room after travelling to Singapore to publicise the book in July. The Singapore authorities have said that charges of criminal defamation are also being considered.

Overseas human rights campaigners condemned the proceedings. Phil Robertson, deputy director of New York-based Human Rights Watch, said Singapore was “damaging its poor reputation on free expression by shooting the messenger bearing bad news”.

The Singapore authorities have robustly dismissed claims that the courts discriminate against individuals on grounds of nationality, background or status.

Ministers are unapologetic about restrictions on free speech, however, which they say are essential to prevent conflicts between the prosperous island’s mainly Chinese, Indian and Malay population groups.

K. Shanmugam, the law minister, said in a speech in New York two weeks ago that Singapore’s “small society” could not withstand the impact of US-style media freedoms.

“For example, the faultlines in our society, along racial and religious lines, can easily be exploited,” he told an audience at Columbia University.

Singapore’s controls on expression include a state-supervised and mainly state-owned media, tough libel laws and restrictions on street gatherings of more than four people.

Mr Shanmugam questioned the objectivity of organisations such as Reporters Without Borders, the Paris-based press freedom organisation, and Freedom House, a US group that campaigns for civil liberties.

RWB ranks Singapore 136th in the world for press freedom, below Iraq and Zimbabwe, while Freedom House has angered Singapore by ranking it below Guinea, where more than 150 anti-government protesters were last year killed during a rally.

“I suspect that our rankings are at least partly due to the fact that we take an uncompromising attitude on libel – and the fact that we have taken on almost every major newspaper company [in the world],” Mr Shanmugam said.

Singapore, with a population of 5m, also imposes heavy penalties on criminal offenders, including caning for violence and vandalism, and the death penalty for murder and drug trafficking. It has one of the lowest crime rates in the world.

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