Have you written a romance novel this year? You can submit your manuscript to Avon Impulse, a new digital imprint at HarperCollins’ Avon Books.

They accept both unagented and agented submissions, and the guidelines had this note: “Avon Impulse authors may also be considered for the traditional Avon Romance publishing program.” Read the complete submission guidelines before submitting your book.

Here’s more from the publisher: “We encourage creativity, so feel free to impress us with what you’ve got! We also have our eye out for great submissions in the following subgenres: Contemporary, Fantasy, Futuristic, Ghost, Gothic, Historical, Magical, Time Travel, Western, Shifter, Small Town, Steampunk, Suspense, Vampire (and others).”

What book do you wish more people had read this year? People love to create Best of the Year lists every December, but we prefer to spotlight the most overlooked books each season.

Below, we are linking to free samples of the Most Overlooked Books of 2012. Share your favorite overlooked book in the comments section, and we’ll add a sample to our growing list.

To get the list started, we took selected titles from Slate’s long list of underrated books and Flavorwire’s Notable Books Unfairly Overlooked by ‘The New York Times’ list.

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The National Book Award winners for 2012 were revealed earlier this year. You can read free samples of all the winners below to help fill your eReader or tablet.

Louise Erdrich has won the fiction award for The Round House from Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers.

Katherine Boo has won the nonfiction award for Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity from Random House.

David Ferry won the Poetry award for Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations from University of Chicago Press.

The Young People’s Literature award went to William Alexander for Goblin Secrets, published by Margaret K. McElderry Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing.

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Happy holidays! GalleyCat readers around the world have been building Book Christmas Trees all month.

After we shared a photo of a Book Christmas Tree, many of our readers started building their own. We’ve collected three trees in our holiday slideshow (embedded above)–a virtual Book Christmas Tree Farm. You can see 21 more trees in last year’s collection.

Building a tree of books is a simple but powerful way to show your support for print books and bookstores in this digital age. If you build your own, be sure to email GalleyCat a photograph.

For the past 15 years, fans have circulated rumors about a film adaptation of Lois Lowry‘s The Giver. In an interview with studio 360, Lowry confirmed that the movie “is finally on the road.”

Oscar-winning actor Jeff Bridges has been an advocate for this project for many years. He will play the title character. At the moment, studio executives are auditioning young actors for the lead role of Jonas.

Lowry first published The Giver in 1993. The book won the Newbery Medal in 1994. The full quartet includes Gathering Blue (2000), The Messenger (2004) and the author’s latest release, Son (2012).

Sally Forth comic strip writer Francecso Marciuliano recently published I Could Pee on This, a collection of poems written from the point-of-view of cats.

As a special gift to GalleyCat readers, we’ve printed his “Bookstore Cats” poem below, an ode to four-legged booksellers that is not included in the book. Here’s more about the book:

Cat lovers will laugh out loud at the quirkiness of their feline friends with these insightful and curious poems from the singular minds of housecats. In this hilarious book of tongue-in-cheek poetry, the author of the internationally syndicated comic strip Sally Forth helps cats unlock their creative potential and explain their odd behavior to ignorant humans. With titles like “Who Is That on Your Lap?,” “This Is My Chair,” “Kneel Before Me,” “Nudge,” and “Some of My Best Friends Are Dogs,” the poems collected in I Could Pee on This perfectly capture the inner workings of the cat psyche.

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Digital publishing community Wattpad now counts ten million uploads.

Members of the community upload one million new pieces on a monthly basis. Back in August 2011, the site reached one million site users. Several Wattpad writers, including book blogger Brittany Geragotelis and UK novelist Beth Reekles, have landed book deals with traditional publishing houses.

In an email announcement, product marketing manager Amy Martin shared the company’s next goal: “Given current growth rates we’re only looking at another three years until we reach 129 million uploads. That’s our next target because according to engineers working on the Google Books project it’s the total number of unique books that have been published worldwide since the advent of printing.”

Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group has plans for a new romance imprint which will invite the crowd to participate in what gets published.

The imprint which will go by the name of Swoon Reads.  AppNewser has more about how it will work: “Writers are invited to submit manuscripts to the site where readers can read, rate and comment on submissions. The highest rated manuscripts will be picked up for publication in both print and eBook formats.”

We are proud to unveil Varney the Vampire: A Literary Remix, a free digital book featuring the work of GalleyCat readers.

We used Smashwords to publish the final product, and you can download a free copy in all major eBook formats. If you participated in our Literary Vampire Remix Writing Contest but can’t find your work in the digital book, email GalleyCat and we will update the digital book.

Here’s more about the book: “A crew of dedicated GalleyCat readers remixed a single page from Varney the Vampire-a bestselling vampire novel from the 19th Century filled with enough star-crossed romance, vampire action and purple prose to inspire another Twilight trilogy.”

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Want to give free eBooks to your friends and family this holiday season?

For all the GalleyCat readers who celebrate Christmas, we’ve collected 25 free digital books about the holiday–they can be downloaded in all eBook formats. Our list includes old classics like A Christmas Carol (pictured) but we also discovered some lost gems like A Kidnapped Santa Claus.

Follow these links to explore more free eBooks at Project Gutenberg: our 50 Free eBooks To Be Thankful For list, our Free Books for Halloween collection, our Free Herman Melville books list, our Free Edgar Allan Poe books collection, our Downton Abbey poetry reading list, our Free Bram Stoker collection and our Free Books That Inspired David Foster Wallace list and Free Books Neil deGrasse Tyson Thinks Everybody Should Read.

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