On February 14, SMITH Magazine will run its annual Love & Heartbreak story show “It’s Like My Heart Has Sciatica.” Join them at 7 pm at 92YTribeca, 200 Hudson St. (New York, NY)

Books of Wonder will host a launch party in honor of A Tangle of Knots  by Lisa Graff. Check it out on Wednesday, February 6th starting 6 p.m. (New York, NY)

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Shannon McCormick hopes to raise $5,000 for his art book project, Presidential Losers: The Book.

As Barack Obama stays in office, former Governor Mitt Romney joins an illustrious group that includes President John Adams, Vice President Al Gore and Senator John McCain. This book will feature artistic portraits of all these men and more. We’ve embedded a video about the project above–what do you think?

Here’s more about the project: “Earlier this year, we assembled an amazing roster of 75 contemporary artists and cartoonists, and each submitted a portrait of one of the loosing contenders from each federal election going back to the defeat of incumbent President John Adams in 1800…We’re currently planning on a very sophisticated 100 page softcover book, complete with all the portraits along with quick bios of the losing candidates and our artists.”

Welcome to our Kickstarter Publishing Project of the Week, a feature exploring how authors and publishers are using the fundraising site to raise money for book projects. If you want to start your own project, check out How To Use Kickstarter to Fund Your Publishing Project.

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Executive editor Jon Meacham negotiated the deal with The Wylie Agency founder Andrew Wylie. The deal includes World English, German and Spanish languages, first serial, audio, and e-book publication rights. The publisher will release the book in 2012.

Gore gave this quote in the release: “I am delighted to be working with Jon Meacham and Random House on my next book. With this new work, I hope to help start a conversation about the large-scale drivers of change that are defining and shaping our future—from the rapid development and integration of radically new technologies to the planet-changing impact of the climate crisis, to poverty, globalization, and the democratization of knowledge accompanying the emergence of a ubiquitous Internet linking ever more intelligent devices.”

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Wylie’s agency counts 700 clients, including major writers like Dave Eggers, Al Gore, Philip Roth, and Louise Erdrich–so these are not idle threats. eBookNewser has more about the article.

Here is an excerpt: “Wylie threatens to monetize those unassigned rights by going outside the publishing business entirely: ‘We will take our 700 clients, see what rights are not allocated to publishers, and establish a company on their behalf to license those e-book rights directly to someone like Google, Amazon.com, or Apple. It would be another business, set up on parallel tracks to the frontlist book business.’”

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Shannon described the event: “While we were waiting to go inside, it was clear that books were on nobody’s mind–I spoke with a few tech reporters and they didn’t seem to understand the impact that the iPad would have on the publishing industry … They were playing electric Bob Dylan music while the media was filing in. I didn’t realize it was a huge milestone in music until someone older than me explained it.”

She continued: “iBooks didn’t get as big of a gasp as the $499 price tag did, but of course, I could tell it would be that way. It basically looks like Classics on the iPhone, which I personally have always thought to be the best way to read and browse books. The books are displayed cover out, in full color, on a light brown ‘wood’ bookshelf. Tap on one, and it takes you to the chapter index. When you flip the iPad horizontally, you are looking at two pages of a book. Flipping pages is easy–no buttons to press, easy to flip around.”

She also observed: “In iBooks, you can change the font and size, but that’s pretty standard. You cannot highlight or make notes. You cannot insert a bookmark–when you leave the application, it will remember where you were when you return, but it didn’t work when I tried it! You can only read books that you purchase through iBooks, not through Amazon. So publishers will have to create a Kindle edition AS WELL AS an iPad edition.”

Shannon concluded: “The presentation of iBooks store was like iTunes for books: you can look at the reviews, you can read sample chapters, summary, etc. This is the new storefront that publishers will have to consider now. Placement in the iBooks store. What info you want to make available. Apple could not comment on whether self-publishers will be able to upload their books.”

You can follow Cynthia Shannon on Twitter.

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The former Vice President will donate all proceeds from the book to the nonprofit Alliance for Climate Protection. Rodale published Gore’s bestselling “An Inconvenient Truth,” and the S&S audiobook won a Grammy Award.

Here’s Gore’s statement, from the release: “Now that the need for urgent action is even clearer with the alarming new findings of the last three years, it is time for a comprehensive global plan that actually solves the climate crisis. Our Choice will answer that call.”

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The Quill Debut Author of the Year Award will be presented to Diane Setterfield for THE THIRTEENTH TALE, published by Atria. In the General Fiction category, the Quill Award will be given to Cormac McCarthy for THE ROAD, published by Knopf. For the second year in a row, Al Gore will receive the History/Current Events/Politics Quill, this time for THE ASSAULT ON REASON, published by The Penguin Press. Quill Awards will also be given to Amy Sedaris, Nora Roberts, Laura Lippman, Robert I. Sutton, Jerome Groopman, Brian Selznick, and Walter Isaacson, among others.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.