Actor Tom Isbell has landed a seven-figure book deal at HarperCollins’ children’s division for a young adult fantasy trilogy.

The first book is entitled The Hatchery. Literary agent Victoria Sanders negotiated the deal with acquiring editors Alyson Day and Phoebe Yeh. A tentative publication date has been set for 2013.

Isbell has starred in movies alongside Robert De Niro, Ed Harris and Harrison Ford. He has also written children’s plays; he is currently adapting Rodman Philbrick‘s Newberry Honor-winning book, The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg (to be produced by Theatre for Young Audiences at the Kennedy Center in the fall of 2012).

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According to a new study from Strategy Analytics, the iPad is still the dominant tablet, but it has lost market share. The company estimates that Apple had a 58 percent share of the tablet market in the fourth quarter of 2011, down from 68 percent of the market in the same period the year before.

Strategy Analytics director Peter King explained: “Global tablet shipments reached an all-time high of 26.8 million units in Q4 2011, surging 150 percent from 10.7 million in Q4 2010. Demand for tablets among consumer, business and education users remains strong … Apple shrugged off the much-hyped threat from entry-level Android models this quarter.”

eBookNewser has more: “The study draws a parallel to this drop and the introduction of the Kindle Fire. However these two devices are in different price brackets and it may be the growth in the tablet market overall that is making Apple less dominant.”

On today’s Morning Media Menu, Social Times staff writer Devon Glenn shared three creative ways to promote your book on social networks–advice she collected Digital Book World in New York City.

GalleyCat, eBookNewser and Social Times have covered Digital Book World all week. Follow the links below to read more.

David Houle: “There were more books published this week than there were in all of 1950″

74% Of Book Buyers Have Never Bought An eBook

Take a Look at Copia, a Social Network for Book Lovers

Should eBooks Be Distinguished From Books?

How Will Social Media Affect the eBook?

Looking for some afternoon entertainment? Over at the New York Public Labs, you can build your own 3D or moving image–turning 19th Century Stereograns into fun digital images.

After Maria Popova at Brainpickings introduced the new tool, this GalleyCat editor made a rushing waterfall GIF and a 3D waterfall (embedded on the right).

Oliver Wendell Holmes explained the tool back in 1859: “We have now obtained the doubleeyed or twin pictures, or Stereograph, if we may coin a name. But the pictures are two, and we want to slide them into each other, so to speak, as in natural vision, that we may see them as one. How shall we make one picture out of two, the corresponding parts of which are separated by a distance of two or three inches?”

For your weekend reading pleasure, here are our top stories of the week, including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s shocking news about Amazon, a fake Cormac McCarthy Twitter account and  Jack Gantos‘ Newbery Medal winning novel (pictured).

Click here to sign up for GalleyCat’s daily email newsletter, getting all our publishing stories, book deal news, videos, podcasts, interviews, and writing advice in one place.

1. 10 Bestselling Books with More Than 80 One-Star Reviews
2. What’s the Best Book You’ve Read in a Single Day?
3. Cormac McCarthy Did Not Join Twitter
4. Pinterest Tips for Writers
5. INFOGRAPHIC: Most Quoted Books of 2011
6. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to Distribute Amazon Books
7. J.R.R. Tolkien & George Orwell Removed From Public Domain
8. Best Mystery Books of 2011
9. Revive the Lost Art of Letter Writing Next Month
10. Jack Gantos Wins the Newbery Medal

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.

The Ideal Man by James Conrad: “Twenty-nine-year-old Grace Watts is feeling stifled in her marriage to David Watts, a successful real estate agent. He is financially secure, but is insensitive, unimaginative, sexually inept and sometimes cruel. As Grace seeks meaning in her life, David becomes annoyed at what he considers ‘erratic behavior’ and frustrated that his wife refuses to let anybody dominate her.” (November 2011)

Spies Inc. The Adventures of Dash Danger by John Keilman: “After bully Biff Vermin sends him on a mission to steal a secret cupcake frosting recipe from The Lunch Lady, the boy looks for help inside his Dash Danger book. But he needs your help, too, to pull this off. You get to create a cool spy name, map out a plan, design gadgets and develop a secret code.” (January 2012)

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This week when President Barack Obama went to visit Jan Brewer, the governor of Arizona, they reportedly got into a heated discussion about her book.

According to Fox News, while both kept smiles on their faces, they could be seen having an argument. Brewer told Fox that the President was upset with her about her book.

Obama had apparently not approved of Brewer’s description of a meeting the two had in the White House in which she accuses him of lecturing her like a child.

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Booklr, a company that measures sales figures for the book business, compared the average price of a Nook book with the average price of a Kindle book. Kindle books on average are cheaper at $6.48 a book than Nook books which average $8.94 a book.

We’ve embedded the infographic above–what do you think?

The Colbert Report host Stephen Colbert interviewed Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak this week. Follow these links to watch part one and part two of the interview.

According to Shelf Awareness, Colbert “turned [to Sendak] for advice on becoming a celebrity children’s author, pitched his sequel idea for Where the Wild Things Are 2: Still Wildin’ (featuring action star Vin Diesel) and generally let the wild rumpus begin.”

During the interview, some of the “rumpus” that emerged included Sendak’s opinion on the current state of children’s literature; he finds it “abysmal” and thinks that “most books for children are very bad.”

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British author Andrew Miller has won the Costa Book of the Year for 2012 for his novel Pure, a fictional story set just before the French Revolution. Europa Editions will publish the book in June.

Miller topped four other authors for the win, including Matthew Hollis (who was nominated for his biography of poet Edward Thomas).

Miller will receive a prize of 30,000 pounds, about $46,760. Miller told reporters at the event that he planned to use the money to live off of. The Telegraph UK had this quote: “‘It’s not as if writers tend to be particularly wealthy people. I certainly have no private income. What money we raise through events like this we pay the mortgage I’m afraid, we live off it.’”