So, there’s this new writing contest: http://bit.ly/hRoPmE

Only a $149 entry fee, and they own all rights (including “terrestrial rights”) to all submissions forever. So there.

Takedowns here, here, and here.

Happy Monday!

Whether you enjoy Swedish journalists-turned-novelists or not, you have to hand it to Stieg’s trilogy, which helped novels to claim 77% of the USA Today’s 2010 Bestselling Books spots. It’s the highest percentage since they started releasing results in 1993.

More details and links at USA Today’s site.

Look for these jars to participate in the poetry jam.

A creative writing form and theory class at Washington State University has started a public poetry project called Poetry Jams. The project goes like this: they leave jam jars (see above) in a variety of public places on the Palouse (mainly Moscow, ID and Pullman, WA) and encourage people to read the poems inside, then contribute their own. How cool is that? Go to http://poetryjams.org/ to find out more.

An excerpt from an essay written by Pulitzer Prize winning author Steven Millhauser in the New York Times about the relevance of short stories and the “virtues associated with smallness:”

The Ambition of the Short Story
By STEVEN MILLHAUSER

The short story — how modest in bearing! How unassuming in manner! It sits there quietly, eyes lowered, almost as if trying not to be noticed. And if it should somehow attract your attention, it says quickly, in a brave little self-deprecating voice alive to all the possibilities of disappointment: “I’m not a novel, you know. Not even a short one. If that’s what you’re looking for, you don’t want me.” Rarely has one form so dominated another. And we understand, we nod our heads knowingly: here in America, size is power. The novel is the Wal-Mart, the Incredible Hulk, the jumbo jet of literature. The novel is insatiable — it wants to devour the world. What’s left for the poor short story to do? It can cultivate its garden, practice meditation, water the geraniums in the window box. It can take a course in creative nonfiction. It can do whatever it likes, so long as it doesn’t forget its place — so long as it keeps quiet and stays out of the way. “Hoo ha!” cries the novel. “Here ah come!” The short story is always ducking for cover. The novel buys up the land, cuts down the trees, puts up the condos. The short story scampers across a lawn, squeezes under a fence.

Read the whole essay here.

As annoying as fonts like comic sans might be, it turns out they have a few advantages:

BBC News – Making things hard to read ‘can boost learning’

Amazon is set to introduce lending to its Kindle devices. Note says a book can be loaned “once” for a two-week period.

Once ever? Seems like not so much lending will be going on. Still, a step in the right direction.

Tell me this isn’t awesome: Little Librarian playkit. Go on. I dare you.

Question: Is this good or bad?

I used to work at a Borders, and the wrath I experienced at that time–at the blithering corporate idiocy that was slowly running their company into the ground–is the stuff of legends. None of the mind-numbingly stupid things I had to do (alphabetizing dictionaries, switching all of the inventory on one bookshelf to another three times in two days) compared to the soul-killing hours I spent in charge of the magazines.

Thus begins a snarky and pretty intelligent post about why magazine sales are suffering and how its the corporate Borders-type mentality that’s driving them down.

Read here.

For the love of all things holy, click here to see the world’s most complete, kick-ass, and giant illustrated explanation of the book publishing process.

(Once you’re there, be sure to click for the full-size version. It’ll blow your mind/monitor.)