Comparing Fifty Shades of Grey to Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Fear of Flying, prominent literary groups criticized the Brevard County Public Library system for refusing to carry E. L. James‘ racy novel.

The National Coalition Against Censorship circulated the letter, getting signatures from the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, Association of American Publishers, PEN American Center, American Society of Journalists and Authors and The Independent Book Publishers Association. Follow this PDF link to read the letter. Here’s an excerpt:

The idea that “erotica” should be categorically excluded from public libraries has no merit. Sexuality, an integral part of the human experience, has always been part of creative expression. As the late Justice Brennan observed, “Sex, a great and mysterious motive force in human life, has indisputably been a subject of absorbing interest to mankind through the ages.” Indeed, a library’s collection would be incomplete without the, by now classic Memoirs of A Woman of Pleasure (“Fanny Hill”), Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Tropic of Cancer or even Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying. There is no rational basis to provide access to erotic novels like these, and at the same time exclude contemporary fiction with similar content.

Author and journalist Susan Orlean (left) has written two nonfiction pieces that have been turned into films. She’ll discuss her new book, Rin Tin Tin, in Mediabistro’s first online Literary Festival & Workshops starting July 16. Other speakers include Rebecca Skloot, Jason Boog, and Jason Allen Ashlock. Register now.

David Hunter has raised more than $6,800 for his zombie-based learning project, “Geography Taught in Zombie Apocalypse.” Above, we’ve embedded a video about the Kickstarter project–what do you think?

Here’s more about the project: “I love geography, and I love zombies. I believe that students can learn important educational concepts through the lens of their interests. I’ve chosen to combine geography and zombies because I don’t think it is a natural connection. By building this project, we can show that learning can be done through far out scenarios, or even just based on what students are interested in. I also believe that the Zombie genre has the potential to engage often disengaged students, providing an alternative to boring textbook reading.”

The money will be used to pay for production costs and hire illustrators as well as other experts. For educators, you can follow this link to view a video where Hunter explains the details of a zombie-based learning curriculum.

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Sony Pictures Entertainment will adapt Walter Isaacson‘s bestselling biography of Steve Jobs, with The Social Network screenwriter Aaron Sorkin writing on the script.

Sony Pictures Entertainment co-chairman Amy Pascal had this statement:  “Jobs’ story is unique: he was one of the most revolutionary and influential men not just of our time but of all time. There is no writer working in Hollywood today who is more capable of capturing such an extraordinary life for the screen than Aaron Sorkin; in his hands, we’re confident that the film will be everything that Jobs himself was: captivating, entertaining, and polarizing.”

Mark Gordon, Scott Rudin and Guymon Casady will produce the upcoming biopic.  Deadline Hollywood has the release.

The Zodiac killer, a serial killer who claimed in letters to newspapers to have murdered dozens of people back in the 1970s, has been the subject of a number of books and films.

The latest is a book called The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up written by a former California Highway Patrol officer named Lyndon Lafferty.

According to the book’s website, the team of investigators working on the case discovered the killer back in 1971.

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This week, TASCHEN is hiring a public relations manager, while Apress needs a managing coordinating editor. Angry Robot Books is on the hunt for a U.S. sales and marketing manager, and Guideposts is seeking an editor of series fiction. Get all the details below, and find more just-posted publishing gigs on mediabistro.com.

• Public Relations Manager TASCHEN (New York, NY)
• Managing Coordinating Editor Apress (New York, NY)
• U.S. Sales and Marketing Manager Angry Robot Books (New York, NY)
• Editor, Series Fiction Guideposts (New York, NY)
• Digital Marketing Associate RosettaBooks (New York, NY)

For more job listings, go to the Mediabistro job board, and to post a job, visit our employer page. For real-time openings and employment news, follow @MBJobPost.

What is the worst book you’ve ever read?

Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic and author Michael Dirda held an epic “Ask Me Anything” interview at Reddit, fielding questions online from readers about self-publishing, Amazon and the worst books he ever reviewed.

At one point, he talked about the worst book he’d ever read. Check it out: “Judith Krantz‘s Dazzle. Even the sex in the book was boilerplate, a totally meretricious work. John Sutherland–a distinguished English authority on the novel and the best seller–once included Dazzle in his list of the 25 worst novels of the century.”

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Novelist Thomas Steinbeck received a mountain of letters from his father, John Steinbeck. Over at The Hairpin, the son of the late Nobel Prize winning author talked about what he learned from these letters.

Follow this link to read a letter Steinbeck wrote about relationship advice. Thomas has written a number of books, most recently The Silver Lotus. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

my father sent me this very long letter, and he had very tiny handwriting — he wrote by hand — and it was like an 18-page letter. It took me a week to decipher this thing, because of his handwriting, primarily. And when I got to the very end of it, I noticed at the very bottom, he said, “Son, I want to apologize. I would’ve sent you a note but I didn’t have the time!”

Meaning, that ultimately, the greatest amount of time in all writing is spent editing. My father said there’s only one trick to writing, and that’s not writing, that’s writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. Like sculpture. I mean, the first thing off the top of your head isn’t the most brilliant thing you ever thought of. And then when you’re writing about it, when you want others to understand what you’re still talking about, then it really requires that you edit yourself really, really well, so that other people can comprehend it.

You can read all the online book reviews in the world, but nothing beats real-world conversations between readers and authors.

In an ongoing effort to build community among readers, writers, and publishing types in real life, we are hosting our next Mediabistro Book Club on May 16, 2012 from 6:30 until 8:30 pm at Stone Creek Bar & Lounge in Manhattan.

Follow this link to RSVP for the free party. Our featured authors include:

Susie DeFord, Dogs of Brooklyn
Jane Hodges, Rent Vs. Own: A Real Estate Reality Check for Navigating Booms, Busts, and Bad Advice
Jillian Medoff, I Couldn’t Love You More

Publishing house Weldon Owen created an infographic called “How a Book is Born,” tracing the path of a book from idea to final product.

We’ve embedded the whole infographic below–all book professionals can learn from this image which shows how a book is conceptualized, pitched, picked up, written, edited and who gets drunk along the way.

Check it out: “Here’s the heartwarming, only slightly messy, and roughly 74 percent accurate story of how an idea churns through the publishing process just like—as a publisher we once knew put it—a rat travels through an anaconda. Don’t think too much about that analogy. Just enjoy this flowchart that takes you from a brilliant idea to a best-selling trade book. And stop asking your mother embarrassing questions.”

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Novelist Carlos Fuentes has passed away. Mexican president Felipe Calderon shared the sad news on Twitter.

The great author had won the Miguel de Cervantes Prize and the Latin Literary Prize. In July, Dalkey Archive Press will publish his novel, Vlad. They also published his books Terra Nostra, Where the Air Is Clear, and Distant Relations. Here is an excerpt from his novel, Inez:

“We shall have nothing to say in regard to our own death.”

For a long time this sentence had been going around and around in the aged maestro’s head. He did not dare write it down. He was afraid that consigning it to paper would make it real, with fateful consequences. He would have nothing more to say after that: the dead man does not know what death is, but neither do the living. For that reason the sentence that haunted him like a verbal ghost was both sufficient and insufficient. It said everything, but at the price of never saying anything again.

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