Tonight the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) handed out their annual literary awards at a ceremony in New York City. GalleyCat was there, live-tweeting the ceremony along with a crack team of literary Twitter writers.

The fiction award went to Hilary Mantel for Wolf Hall (Holt).

The nonfiction award went to Richard Holmes for The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (Pantheon).

The autobiography award went to Diana Athill for Somewhere Towards the End (Norton).

The biography award went to Blake Bailey for Cheever: A Life (Knopf).

The criticism award went to Eula Biss for Notes From No Man's Land: American Essays (Graywolf Press).

The poetry award went to Rae Armantrout for Versed (Wesleyan).

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As we noted this morning, Amazon.com (AMZN) temporarily pulled the buy buttons on many graphic novels from comic book publishers like Marvel, IDW, Dark Horse, and Image Comics. The move followed a database error that listed incorrect prices for many titles handled by Diamond Book Distributors.

As of this 4:07 p.m. EST writing, the buttons had not returned. You can follow the buy-button status by checking the page for Daredevil Noir, a hardcover graphic novel collecting Alexander Irvine's series--as of this 10:23 a.m. EST writing, the buy direct button was removed. The Beat has more information about the costly "computer glitch" that caused problems for the online bookseller.

In the meantime, this is the perfect time to visit your local brick and mortar comic bookstore. "I don't know that we will be too affected by that--I haven't noticed any change today," Alex Cox, owner of Rocketship Comics, told GalleyCat. "We rely on foot traffic--it's more of a browsing experience for our customers. Amazon customers know what they want already, they are looking for bargains, mostly. I think that's true for bookstores in general."

Drop in the bucket or costly mistake? Include your thoughts in the comments.

GalleyCat will begin profiling literary agents, managers and publishing attorneys in the coming weeks that we find fascinating in rather interesting interviews. Our first literary agent? Michael Bourret, of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management.

What's your official title and why are you the best agent in the universe?

I'm Vice President and Literary Agent at Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. I think I'm a great agent, but I don't think there's such a thing as "the best" in our business. I'm the best fit for my

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In a world overloaded with 140-character tweets, it sometimes seems like the patient art of the long biography could become obsolete. Instead of complaining, one biographer took her subject straight to Twitter.

Today's guest on the Morning Media Menu was Marion Meade, the critically acclaimed biographer of Dorothy Parker, Woody Allen, and Buster Keaton. She spoke about her new biography: Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney. During the interview, she talked about how she created a Twitter page for the dead novelist, wrote her biography proposal, and built a career as a biographer.

Press play on the embedded player below to listen.

Here's an excerpt about her Twitter page for the author: "I was looking for a way for people to remember West. So last year around June, he opened a Twitter account. He's been Twittering ever since from his current location... in Mount Zion Cemetery [in Queens] ... A lot of publishing people followed him because they got the joke. But a lot of people followed him who didn't get the joke...I think he would have thought it was a lot of fun and crazy. He loved things that were crazy."

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A melodramatic trailer for the upcoming adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's The Twilight Saga: Eclipse surfaced today, giving publishing folk something to argue about all weekend. The movie comes out June 30.

Watch the trailer for the adaptation embedded above. Last year GalleyCat caught up with a number of National Book Award finalists, getting their thoughts on the Twilight publishing phenomenon.

Add your thoughts in the comments section--will the blockbuster series be the death or the salvation of publishing? Here is Jezebel's take: "While it includes the requisite shots of Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson looking sullen, Taylor Lautner's abs are only visible for two seconds. Unacceptable!"

Among literary critics and authors, plagiarism has been a perpetual debate in the 21st Century--we've reported on many, many stories over the years.GalleyCat Reviews covered the On Copyright 2010 conference yesterday, the many speakers focused on the crucial difference between remixing original content and plagiarism.

Author David Shields read an excerpt from his book Reality Hunger: A Manifesto: "This book contains hundreds of quotations that go unacknowledged in the body of the text. I'm trying to regain a freedom that writers from Montaigne to Burroughs took for granted and that we have lost ... However, Random House lawyers determined that it was necessary for me to provide a complete list of citations for these quotations; the list follows (except, of course, for any sources I couldn't find or forgot along the way)."

Not everyone agrees. The Book Bench has a round up of Reality Hunger reviews, remixing both critics and champions of the book. What do you think?

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After counting 180 job rejections, journalist Jason Paul took the "Living One Year Doing X" gamble--vowing to only conduct his life, from housing to jobs to friends, on Craigslist. Our sibling blog Media Jobs Daily posted an interview with the blogger behind LivingCraigslist about how he found work and friends by Living Craigslist.

Here's an excerpt: "Paul told us he's even made friends through Craigslist, which are part of the self-imposed rules of his term. 'I didn't know how possible that was, but I consider them normal friends.' This opposed to his early experiences, when he'd bring pepper spray or a third party whenever meeting anyone new. He said he did have one experience—his first housing experience in Denver (which you can read about here) didn't work out, and 'it made me remember that not everyone on the site is going to be perfect and you have to be careful.'"

There may be a book deal in his future. On his site, he notes: "I have been speaking with a literary agent. No contracts have been signed and no publishers have joined the team, but I am optimistic. On this front I promise to keep all posted."

Publishing folk around the country are wondering what the iPad bookstore will look like, with a mix of excitement and apprehension. Based on a new report, the iBooks store will have a sprawling network of categories for iPad readership--a shopping experience beyond the App Store's simple interface.

Forbes explored a report by Busted Loop about the inner workings of the iBooks platform. Here's more from the article: "[It's] a highly organized approach to bookselling. Apple has designated about 20 'top-level' categories for books, including 'Fiction & Literature', 'Reference,' 'Romance,' 'Cookbooks' and 'Comics & Graphic Novels.' Below those categories lie more than 150 sub-categories, including some very specific genres, such as 'Manga' under 'Comics & Graphic Novels,' 'Special Ingredients' under 'Cookbooks,' and 'Etiquette' under 'Reference.'"

In addition, there will be extensive subcategories, according to the report. The "Sports and Outdoors" contains 15 different kinds of labels, while "Fiction & Literature" will have 13 subcategories.

On the Internets, writers are now measured by page-views and followers--statistics that some fear will corrupt our literary integrity. At the Copyright Clearance Center's On Copyright conference yesterday, Gawker Media's COO of finance, legal, operations & business development Gaby Darbyshire directly addressed those fears.

Darbyshire (pictured, via) explained a controversial policy shift at Gawker: "When we started paying our writers by the page-view (bonuses based on page-views), everybody started talking about how there would be a race to the bottom--how we'd be writing about nothing except Paris Hilton sex tapes. The absolute opposite has occurred, because at the end of the day, you don't get a sustained growth in audience [and] in the success of your content, without producing quality."

She concluded: "What our writers discovered--even though they were scared to start with (they were like, 'oh my god, we have to find big scoop-y stories)--was that the diligently researched feature type good stuff that's original and new; that's what works. That's what they are incentivized to produce, and we can measure exactly what is successful and what is not--which newspapers, by the way, never could, because you don't know who is throwing away what section of the paper."

What do you think? Will page-views corrupt or inspire 21st Century authors?

Last night two independent presses won the 2010 Best Translated Book Awards, rising to the top of a shortlist drawn from an impressive collection of publishers.

Gail Hareven won the fiction award for The Confessions of Noa Weber, translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu and published by Melville House Press. Elena Fanailova won the poetry award for The Russian Version, translated from the Russian by Genya
Turovskaya and Stephanie Sandler and published by Ugly Duckling Presse. The complete press release is embedded after the jump.

Here's more from Melville House Press publisher Dennis Johnson: "[This fiction award] represents what we see as part of our mission at Melville House: Not just to publish both fiction and nonfiction in translation for the sake of essentially preserving it, as if it were something on the verge of going extinct. That strikes us as a way of further ensuring its obscurity. Rather, we see it as our mission to trumpet that work loudly, and to work aggressively to get that work in the hands of as many people as possible, especially those who would not normally encounter translated literature."

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Last night Publishers Weekly reported that Amazon had removed buy buttons from graphic novels from major comic book publishers like Marvel, IDW, Dark Horse, and Image Comics--apparently to rectify a pricing problem with graphic novels. Amazon customers are already wondering about the situation in the online retailer's forums.

Here's the scoop: "A source knowledgeable about the situation told PW that Amazon has been forced to temporarily take down buy buttons for all titles supplied by Diamond in order to correct the problem. According to the source, Amazon has to do an audit to figure out which customers got books and at what prices."

We'll keep you updated on this story, but you can follow the buy-button status by checking the page for Daredevil Noir, a hardcover graphic novel collecting Alexander Irvine's series--as of this 10:23 a.m. EST writing, the buy direct button was removed. You can also explore Who Moved My Buy Button?, an Authors Guild service tracking Amazon's control over individual titles.

A standing-room only crowd packed the Copper Tavern in Manhattan earlier this week for the first mediabistro.com Book Club. The four featured writers pictured above read excerpts from their books and offered one-on-one advice to aspiring authors in the audience.

From left to right, the authors were: An Irreverent Curiosity author David Farley, Cemetery Road author Gar Anthony Haywood, Getting In author Karen Stabiner and Museum Legs: Fatigue and Hope in the Face of Art author Amy Whitaker. See all the photos here, all taken by Maggie Yurachek.

After the brief presentation, published authors, aspiring writers, agents, editors, and readers mingled--talking about books all night. The four guests each brought some practical experience for aspiring writers: Farley had turned his travel writing work into a book; Haywood had revived his writing career after years out of the game; Stabiner had turned her journalism into a novel; and Whitaker had built a do-it-yourself book tour to support her book.

Over the next few weeks, we will reprint the writing wisdom that these guests shared with the aspiring writers in the audience. The next Book Club is scheduled for May 12--email GalleyCat with your suggestions.