Tan accepted his Academy Award with a speech: “Our film is about a creature that nobody pays any attention to, so this is wonderfully ironic.”

Tan is well-known in his native Australia, but Scholastic’s Arthur A. Levine Books imprint will make three of his picture books available as a single collection entitled Lost & Found: Three in March 2011.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

eBookNewser has more details. We wrote about the debate last week as the publisher decided eBooks could only been checked out 26 times by library patrons–setting off a wave of Twitter protests.

What do you think? The boycott site explains: “Until this policy is revoked, join us by not buying any new books or ebooks published by HarperCollins or any of its imprints … In addition, support your local library if it chooses to participate in the boycott and write a letter to HarperCollins explaining your actions. The boycott will end as soon as HarperCollins agrees not to limit the number of times a library can loan each ebook.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We caught up with the author of Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion to ask a single burning question–is it possible to do anything new with the remix genre?

Goldsher replied:  “Absolutely.  My latest, My Favorite Fangs, tries to be very different. The one-sentence, high-concept pitch is The Sound of Music with vampires, and that sounds pretty simplistic — and some might say silly, even — but it’s way more than that.  I’ve taken elements of the movie, and the real von Trapp family history, and undead myths, and jammed them together, then gave it a Monty Python or Family Guy vibe, which has — fingers crossed — created an entity until itself.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Akashic Books publisher Johnny Temple joined us for a Media Beat interview this week, talking about how he transitioned from rock star to literary publisher over the last 10 years.

Here’s an excerpt from today’s installment (embedded above): “I had no publishing background, but looking back, I think it gave me a boost … I was unburdened by this morose attitude in book publishing, [thinking] ‘Nobody reads books anymore, our business is in decline’–all these doom and gloom attitudes. Unfortunately, I’ve never had that.”

Below we’ve included more interview excerpts with Temple–a publisher and Girls Against Boys bassist. Visit Akashic Books to explore the publisher’s long and varied list.

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Back in the 90′s, Sheen wrote a book of poetry entitled A Peace of My Mind. We believe we’ve found an Amazon link to the self-published collection–a screen-shot is embedded above (click to enlarge). The  collection features illustrations by Adam Rifkin.

TMZ reports on the unwritten memoir: “Sheen tells us he wants the world to know what really happened behind-the-scenes of the show during his 8-year run … the good times and the bad … and he plans on naming names — including co-stars. We’re told Sheen even has a title in mind — When the Laughter Stopped.” (via Publishers Weekly)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Electric Literature c0-founders Andy Hunter and Scott Lindenbaum introduced the storytelling site Broadcastr at the eBook Summit last year. The beta-version of the site launched this morning.

The storytelling app will let people record audio versions of location-specific stories around the globe–like Foursquare for storytellers. Above, we’ve embedded a video of the eBook Summit presentation.

Check it out: “Just like in human memory, every story is bound to a place.
Whether dishing last night’s details to friends, uncovering local lore, perusing restaurant reviews, listening to travel guides, tuning in to citizen journalism, contemplating oral histories, or sharing hilarious anecdotes, Broadcastr amplifies all our voices. Users can take a GPS-enabled walk as stories about their surroundings stream into their headphones, like a museum tour of the entire world.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Lindsay Lohan has reportedly signed a £2.1million deal to pose for a nude photography book. According to The Daily Mirror, Academy Award host James Franco will be her partner for this project.

The video embedded shows the pair in the trailer for an imaginary action film in the 2006 film, The Holiday. Lohan and Franco will be shot by celebrity photographer Terry Richardson. In the past, Richardson has snapped the pictures of Lady Gaga, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jay-Z, and many others.

The Mirror reports: “Richardson has persuaded Lindsay and James to get involved. He has assured them it will be provocative but tasteful … Obviously there will be comparisons to Madonna’s 1992 Sex book. But James and Lindsay believe theirs will be classier.” (Via Sarah Weinman)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Submit your beloved but unknown author to Writers No One Reads, a Tumblr blog dedicated to lost writers. It’s the perfect site for uncovering weekend reading material.

Here’s one of our favorite entries: “No one reads Polish avant superman Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, a.k.a. Witkacy (1885 – 1939). Publisher description of his first play, Maciej Korbowa and Bellatrix (1918): “A psychotic guru known as the Master, Maciej Korbowa, aided by his gender-shifting alter-ego Bellatrix, presides over a secret club of disciples addicted to drugs, alcohol, and sado-masochistic orgies and leads this band of metaphysical desperados and decadent artists no longer able to create on a philosophical quest for absolute Nothingness — until he finally betrays them all to the revolutionary Sailors of Death.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Today’s guest on the Morning Media Menu was Michael Siedlecki (pictured), the founder of Neovella. The new collaborative website allows writers to co-write stories with friends online and share them with other friends (both online and offline).

Follow this link to listen to the interview (MP3 link). Here’s an excerpt: “I would say publishers should be worried. Our generation gets all its reading done online, and its not necessarily high quality content. The stories that they get are not necessarily stories they find in a bookstore. Online, it’s stories about their friends. I tried to tie in the social aspect by having multiple people writing a story at once. If their friends see it, it’s like listening in on a conversation–which makes it more attractive.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Sullivan (pictured, via) will also write for Newsweek, the weekly magazine that recently merged with the website. Sullivan’s site counts 1.2 million unique visitors a month. In 2006, Sullivan published The Conservative Soul.

Here’s more from Sullivan’s blog: “I am very proud to have played a part in the Atlantic’s self-reinvention in this period and its first profitable year in memory. To have played any part in perpetuating this legacy in an environment that has been as tough on magazines as any in memory is an honor I will cherish to the end of my days. But there are some opportunities you just can’t let pass by. The chance to be part of a whole new experiment in online and print journalism, in the Daily Beast and Newsweek adventure, is just too fascinating and exciting a challenge to pass up.” (Via Morning Media Newsfeed)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Here are some handpicked titles from our New Books section. Want to include your book? Just read our Facebook Your New or Upcoming Book post. Don’t forget to include your title’s exact release date and a link.

Blue Heaven by Jadette Paige: “Worshiped all his life, the Godchild is shocked by the stranger who dares lay hands on him, even if it is to save him from assassins. With a different name given by his new ally, Blue is freed from the constraints of the holy order for the first time. He revels in the extraordinary experiences opening to him, then in the passion that sparks between him and the hard-edged, oddly gentle Stryver.” (December 2010)

Playdate by Thelma Adams: “Set in suburban California, this witty debut novel features bed-hopping parents who get into more trouble (and have more fun) than their kids.” (January 2011)

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As we head home for the weekend, we wanted to make sure you had plenty of publishing headlines to keep you busy. Here are the most popular headlines of the last week, ranging from Barnes & Noble’s self-publishing news to The Hunger Games’ fan trailers (one is embedded above) to the reasons why Borders went bankrupt.

Email GalleyCat to get all our publishing stories, book deal news, videos, podcasts, interviews, and writing advice in a daily email newsletter.

1. 6 Reasons Why Borders Went Bankrupt
2. Bible Sharing Couple Hijacked by Somali Pirates & Killed
3. L. K. Madigan Has Died; How To Contribute To Her Son’s College Fund
4. Scientists Date Unreadable Manuscript
5. Hunger Games Fans Fill YouTube with Homemade Movie Trailers
6. Barnes & Noble Opens Doors for Self-Published Writers
7. Borders Attempts To Reassure Customers
8. Katherine A. Powers ‘A Reading Life’ Column Discontinued at Boston Globe
9. WordPress Tools To Put Your Book in Browsers
10. Kathryn Stockett Sued By Her Brother’s Maid

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Library Journal reported that HarperCollins wants library eBook provider Overdrive to reduce the number of times a digital eBook can be checked out under a single license. Here’s an excerpt:  “HarperCollins has announced that new titles licensed from library ebook vendors will be able to circulate only 26 times before the license expires.”

Following the news, librarian Leah L. White tweeted: “If you are frustrated and angry about the @harpercollins decision to cap ebook lending, the hashtag is: #hcod.” eBookNewser has more details about the evolving library policies. We’ve collected a few tweets from the thread below…

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His essay focused on eBook bundles created by Pirate Bay members: “[W]hat the publishers should be most concerned about, is the fact that a library of 2,500 books can be downloaded in a matter of hours. E-books are small files and 2,500 of them can be packed into a single download (Torrent) that’s only about 3.4GB. If you set the average price per book at a measly $2, the worth of said download would be $5,000. Bring it up to $4 a book and you’re at $10,000.”

What do you think? Will piracy keep increasing? We visited Pirate Bay and made a list of the top ten most popular single titles (using the site’s “Top 100″ list for eBooks) on the file sharing site. As you can see by the list below (titles, but no links!), the most popular books aren’t the titles you might expect…
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Oscar-nominated actor James Franco will play the man behind the curtain. Deadline reports that the Academy Awards co-host will play the title role in the Disney prequel, Oz: The Great and Powerful. The video embedded above shows Franco with actress Anne Hathaway, his co-host at the Oscars.

Spiderman director Sam Raimi, producer Joe Roth, and screenwriters Mitchell Kapner and David Lindsay-Abaire will also join the project. In addition, Flavorpill says that Black Swan actress Mila Kunis will play the younger version of the Wicked Witch of the West.

Flavorpill speculates: “we can’t help but wonder if this is a weird attempt by Disney to make Oz into a sexy franchise, a la Pirates of the Caribbean. Nothing against those films, but when you’re dealing with a beloved original that’s as ingrained in the collective subconscious as The Wizard of Oz.”

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