A team of intrepid Thai actors have recreated the Iron Man 3 trailer using fireworks, body paint and toy helicopters.

FEDFE “sweded” the film, creating a lo-fi tribute to a big-budget movie–re-adapting the comic book adaptation with amateur actors. Check out the urban dictionary definition of sweded:

The summarized recreation of popular pop-culture films using limited budgets and a camcorder. The process is called sweding. Upon completion the film has been Sweded. Origins: In the Michel Gondry film BE KIND REWIND, the character Jerry accidentally erases the videotapes at Mos Def’s rental store, and the pair remake all the movies themselves. These versions become popular with customers, who are told they take longer to arrive and cost more because they come from Sweden. Hence, the films are referred to as ‘Sweded’.

(Video via)

J.J. Abrams will work with Mulholland Books on S., an book idea conceived and developed by Abrams but written by Alive in Necropolis author Doug Dorst (pictured, right).

Abrams (pictured, left) is the producer, writer, and director behind projects like Lost, Star Trek and Super 8. He will support the book through his Bad Robot production company. Check it out:

[S] is Abrams’s first foray into publishing and will be released by Mulholland Books/Little, Brown and Company on October 29, 2013. At the core of this multilayered literary puzzle of love and adventure is a book of mysterious provenance. In the margins, another tale unfolds—through the hand-scribbled notes, questions, and confrontations of two readers. Between the pages, online, and in the real world, you’ll find evidence of their interaction, ephemera that bring this tale vividly to life.

(Via Sarah Weinman)

The Tribeca Film Festival will feature a documentary called Out of Print, looking at the future of books and interviewing Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, self-published author Darcie Chan and other experts.

We’ve linked to the trailer above. AppNewser has more details:

We haven’t seen the death of paper books yet, but there’s already a documentary about its impending demise. EBooks are not as tactile, aromatic, or spatial as traditional forms of reading, but they are helping to spread the joys of reading to places where transportation is problematic. The works of philanthropic organizations like Worldreader and The Information Heritage Initiative would be impossible without digital books.

As we end our National Poetry Month celebration, we’ve compiled a selection of three TED videos about poetry.

The list features poets who delivered poetry performances at the TED stage. This trio includes YouTube sensation Shane Koyczan, Project V.O.I.C.E. founder Sarah Kay, and Tony Award-winning artist Lemon Andersen.

For more recommendations, check out the “Spoken-Word Fireworks” playlist curated by TED. Which poets do you nominate to perform at future conferences?

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Matilda The Musical has been nominated for 12 Tony Awards this year. You should read a free sample of the original Roald Dahl novel.

The Broadway adaptation was nominated for Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score (Tim Minchin wrote the music and lyrics). In addition, Bertie Carvel was nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, Lauren Ward was nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role. Here’s more about the nominations:

Matilda is the story of an extraordinary little girl who decides that despite a bad beginning, her story is going to be an astonishing one. Armed with a vivid imagination and a sharp mind, Matilda dares to take a stand and change her destiny.

Happy National Poetry Month! All throughout April, we interviewed poets about working in this digital age. To end the month, we spoke with writer Marilyn Singer.

Throughout her publishing career, Singer has written more than ninety books (fiction, nonfiction, and poetry) for children and young-adults. Check out the highlights from our interview below…

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HarperCollins’ William Morrow imprint has unveiled  a “digital-original mystery, suspense and thriller line” called Witness Impulse. The imprint will release its first digital titles in October, already stocked with 100 books acquired by editors.

William Morrow executive editor Dan Mallory will lead the new line. The launch will include classic Agatha Christie short stories, releasing digital singles of the Hercule Poirot stories and an omnibus edition. Here’s more about the imprint:

Witness will feature the same royalty structure as William Morrow/Avon’s other digital-first imprints: authors receive a 50% royalty once their book sells 10,000 copies (initial royalties start at 25%). They will not receive an advance … Even though these books are digital-first, the HarperCollins sales group is always seeking out opportunities in print, working with key retail accounts to execute tailored promotions in physical stores. To date, more than 60 percent of Impulse titles have a print format, with thousands of printed copies sold for each of those books.

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We spend a lot of time covering independent authors on GalleyCat, bringing news from the self-publishing world every week.

In an effort to consolidate our reporting, we will release a monthly Self-Publishing Intelligence Report that links to all of our resources for indie authors. Below, we’ve linked to our bestseller lists and the top news stories about this booming corner of the publishing industry.

If you are an author, find some support in our directory of writers looking for writing groups.

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Novelist J. S. Scott topped the Barnes & Noble section of our our Self-Published Bestsellers List this week with a boxed set about a sexy billionaire.

To help GalleyCat readers discover self-published authors, we compile weekly lists of the top eBooks in four major marketplaces for self-published digital books: Amazon, B&N, Apple iBookstore and Smashwords. You can read all the lists below, complete with links to each book.

If you are an independent author looking for support, check out our free directory of people looking for writers groups.

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If publishers drop digital rights management controls on eBooks, will piracy increase? One prominent publishing example saw “no discernible increase in piracy.”

Macmillan’s Tor imprint dropped its DRM over one year ago, and Tor UK editorial director Julie Crisp wrote an essay looking back at the imprint’s progress since then. The article included commentary from authors and this key passage:

Protecting our author’s intellectual copyright will always be of a key concern to us and we have very stringent anti-piracy controls in place. But DRM-protected titles are still subject to piracy, and we believe a great majority of readers are just as against piracy as publishers are, understanding that piracy impacts on an author’s ability to earn an income from their creative work. As it is, we’ve seen no discernible increase in piracy on any of our titles, despite them being DRM-free for nearly a year.