Kristina Holmes will start her own literary agency, The Holmes Agency.

Holmes plans to take on nonfiction clients exclusively. Her list will be open to several different genres, including health and wellness, business, psychology, spirituality, sex, relationships, environmental issues, science, nature, literary nonfiction and memoir.

Previously, Holmes was a partner literary agent and consultant at Ebeling & Associates Literary Agency for six years. Some of the authors she has worked with include Garret Kramer, David Steinman and Gregory Lang.

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Michael Brito (Edelman Digital), and Tim Devane (bitly). Register now.

In 2013, book lovers could get a chance to explore BookExpo America (BEA), the major publishing industry trade show that has been traditionally limited to industry professionals.

BEA event director Steven Rosato posted about the potential change on the show’s official blog. What do you think–should book lovers be allowed to attend BEA?

Check it out: “This will not happen immediately, but are looking at 2013 to shift BEA to a Thursday – Friday – Saturday, leaving the trade portion exclusive on Thursday and Friday so the industry can continue to meet and conduct the B2B business that is inherent to BEA and open the doors on Saturday for consumers built around author events, but also allow them onto the show floor to look behind the curtain, see what new works from their favorite writers will be coming out like ComicCon does.  This will also give a day of exhibits on the weekend that small but vocal portion of librarians and booksellers miss.” (Via Michael Cairns)

The Hollywood Reporter just revealed a Hunger Games cover story this month.

The article reported that 7.5 million Hunger Games books have been sold since the first trailer’s release back in November 2011.

The article included the news that Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth (the principal actors) have signed on to star in the full four-movie franchise. The trio was joined by director Gary Ross in the cover photo for this month’s issue of the magazine. Follow this link to see more pictures.

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Boston-based publisher Beacon Press and New York-based Other Press have a promotional wager riding on the Super Bowl.

Here’s more from the release: “the publisher whose home team loses (Beacon’s New England Patriots or Other’s New York Giants) will promote two of the other publisher’s titles for a week on the web, featuring the two titles on their web site and promoting the titles across social media platforms. In addition, the publisher whose team brings home the trophy will give away a selection of its books to a handful of winners selected from online entries, and both publishers will use their web presences to endorse the giveaway.”

Follow this link for more details about the giveaways. Who do you think is on the losing side of this publishing bet?

Do you think Amazon would fit in beside the Walmart and Target in your local mall?

Jason Calacanis reported rumors this week that the online giant may launch brick-and-mortar stores. Even the New York Times speculated about the resurfacing rumors:

The idea seems farfetched, but before 2001 so was the idea of Apple operating its own stores. “I give them two years before they’re turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake,” a consultant told BusinessWeek about Apple’s plans in what has become one of the most celebrated bad guesses of the era.

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The act of letter writing has inspired countless songs.

For your letter writing inspiration, we’ve created a special Spotify mix with an hour of inspiring music–plenty of time to write some letters this weekend. Follow this link to listen to the whole Spotify playlist.

Writers around the world are taking the Month of Letters Challenge this month. To keep the letter-writers in the audience motivated in February, we are posting letter writing resources, tools and inspiration.

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Romance author Kresley Cole has landed a deal with Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers for her first young adult novel.

Entitled Poison Princess, the first book will launch The Arcana Chronicles series. Publication is set for October 12th. Writers House literary agent Robin Rue represented Cole on this deal.

Here’s more from the release: “Poison Princess centers on sixteen-year-old Evangeline “Evie” Greene, a privileged teenager from Louisiana. When an apocalyptic event decimates her hometown, killing everyone she loves, Evie realizes the hallucinations she’d been having for the past year were actually visions of the future—and they’re still happening. Fighting for her life and desperate for answers, she must turn to her wrong-side-of-the-bayou classmate: Jack Deveaux. As Jack and Evie race to find the source of her visions, they meet others who have gotten the same call.” (Photo Credit: Deanna Meredith Studios)

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Country music star Billy Ray Cyrus will publish his memoir with Amazon Publishing in hardcover and eBook edition in spring 2013.

Trident Media CEO Dan Strone negotiated the deal alongside John Ferriter, Lo Bosworth and Stuart Dill from Octagon Entertainment. Strone also negotiated an $800,000 deal for Penny Marshall‘s memoir with Amazon.

Cyrus (pictured, via) had this statement in the release: “I learned early from The Book of Psalms that: ‘The Truth will be your shield and your buckle’. I’ve always loved that.  You only get one chance to tell your life story.  This is my chance to set the record straight.  I realized that over the years that there have been untruths and misconceptions about me, my music, my life, my family and our dreams.  I’m going to lay out the facts starting from August 25th, 1961 and work my way to the present, even if it stings a little.”

Artist Jon Cotner thinks that poetry shouldn’t just be studied, but rather should be looked at as ”a way of life, a mode of knowing.”

With this in mind, the artist created ”Poem Forest,” a work created for the New York Botanical Garden that brings poetry back to nature–having visitors read lines from different poems while walking through the park.

eBookNewser has more: ”Cotner’s installation takes classic lines from poetry and imposes them on a 20 minute walk through the park. He explained on the BMW Guggenheim blog: ‘Poetry can wake us, and in the process we create a shared world or ‘the commons.’ But what characterizes this common world? How can we describe it? With such questions in mind, I shaped Poem Forest.’”

If you like clicking on “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” links to find new books, you will love this homemade Amazon books visualization and recommendation site.

Follow this link to see the search results for Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84. Created by Andrei Kashcha, the site uses Amazon data to create a flowchart with book cover links to scores of new books you might like. While the interface feels a little busy at first, it is easy to click and explore the book covers.

Here’s more from the site: “Yasiv is a visual recommendation service that helps people to choose the right product from Amazon’s catalog … it shows what people are buying with other products. A link between two products means that they are often bought together. By simply observing the network of products one may guess what has more popularity and what has less.” (Via Reddit)