Publishers around the country have created special initiatives to help the people of Haiti.

Random House has made a sizable donation to relief efforts, joining a 100,000 euros by their corporate parent, Bertelsmann AG. Here’s more: “Random House, Inc. is making a $100,000 corporate contribution to be shared by the American Red Cross Haiti Relief Fund and Partners in Health. The latter is a long-established Haitian health-care provider, miraculously left standing post-earthquake, led by Paul Farmer. This remarkable doctor and his life’s work is the subject of “Mountains Beyond Mountains” by our author Tracy Kidder, which has sold more than one million copies in its Random House Trade Paperback edition through the power of its inspiring narrative.”

Next, Lost Pines Productions will send free books to donors. “Just make a donation of any size at Haiti Children and email me. I’ll promptly ship your book from our list.”

Finally, TIME /Time Inc. Home Entertainment will release a short book entitled “Haiti,” complete with earthquake coverage by Time luminaries and an afterward by President Bill Clinton. Here’s more: “The book will include exclusive photos from TIME photographers and analysis from top experts on the country. TIME will donate at least $75,000 of proceeds to benefit Haitian relief efforts.”

If you know of a publishing initiative we missed, feel free to add it in the comments section for a future post.

In a Foreign Policy interview, former President Bill Clinton revealed a sizable portion of his bookshelf.

UPDATE: The site also has a six-page list with 142 books recommended by global thinkers. The fascinating interview should generate plenty of gift ideas for the scholarly aspiring President on your holiday shopping list. Thanks to the Little, Brown and Co. Twitter feed for spotting the link. Here are the Presidential picks:

“Outliers” and “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell
“Nonzero” and “The Evolution of God, The Moral Animal” by Robert Wright
“The Origins of Virtue” by Matt Ridley
“The Ends of the Earth” by Robert Kaplan
“A Theory of Everything” by Ken Wilber
“Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life” by Gerald Martin
“Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt” by H.W. Brands
“The Age of the Unthinkable” by Joshua Cooper Ramo

Los Angeles Times book blogger Carolyn Kellogg received a personalized note from former President Bill Clinton responding to a story she wrote about his reading habits–a two-page missive that included Clinton’s current reading list.

Clinton has led a literary life, speaking to publishers and writing his bestselling memoir. His current reading list contains seven books, an eclectic mix of fiction and nonfiction.

Here’s part of Clinton’s reading list, but be sure to read the rest: “Here’s a list of books Bill Clinton has been reading lately, from his own pen: “1. Steven Johnson‘s “The Invention of Air” and “The Ghost Map,” esp. #1 2. Tom Zoellner‘s “Uranium” 3. Malcolm Gladwell‘s “Outliers,” his best book.”

Even though it’s highly likely that a memoir from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is years in the offing, that doesn’t mean there can’t be stories about every permutation and combination relating to such a possible step. To wit, the Bookseller’s Katherine Rushton reports that Blair will meet publishers in London at the start of October, together with Robert Barnett, the Washington lawyer he has instructed to sell his memoirs. Random House and HarperCollins are expected to make bids for the book, and Bloomsbury (in a partnership with Miramax) and Simon & Schuster have confirmed they are also entering the fray. Hachette is understood to have ruled itself out of the competition, although CEO Tim Hely Hutchinson declined to comment to the Bookseller.

As already speculated, Blair’s approach direct to the US is seen as an attempt to bag the biggest deal possible by capitalizing on his popularity there, Rushton explains. Securing Barnett, who won big money for Bill Clinton and Alan Greenspan advance-wise (and also represents James Patterson now) is also likely to inflate Blair’s advance. Rushton also has more in the Telegraph today about the pre-Frankfurt plan for Blair.

Yesterday afternoon the Bookseller broke the story that literary lawyer to the stars Bob Barnett would be representing Tony Blair – and shopping around the former UK prime minister’s interests to America first. So of course, people are wondering a) who will get the book and b) how much they will have to pay for it. Bill Clinton money? Alan Greenspan money? Something even greater?

The advance will be inflated by Blair’s perceived value in the US, said one leading publisher of political books. “The Americans love him. They see him as an articulate George W. Bush. He’ll get a good whack out of a US publisher.” And the direct approach to the US is seen to thwart UK agents who were vying for a slice of the action. “It will be a shoot out between HarperCollins and Random House, but I think HarperCollins will prevail despite the much trumped link with Gail Rebuck‘s husband. [Rupert] Murdoch‘s keen and he’s got deep pockets,” said a major non-fiction publisher. “They’ve been political bedfellows for a very long time, and [News Corp] is a multimedia company,” a leading UK literary agent added. Shootout royale? Major league auction? Stay tuned, as the drill goes..

As promised, UK superagent Ed Victor held off until this month to shop around Rolling Stones guitarman Keith Richards‘ memoirs, and the gambit has paid off handsomely, according to Crain’s Matthew Flamm. Bidding for a book by the Rolling Stones’ famed founding member, co-song writer and rhythm guitarist has reached $7.1 million for world English rights, according to publishing industry sources. With just three houses vying for the book, now the battle rages between HarperCollins and Little, Brown.

“This is Bill Clinton money,” an executive not involved in the bidding told Flamm. Knopf paid $10 million to $12 million for former President Clinton’s autobiography in 2001, while we’re guessing the final bid will be somewhere in the vicinity of $8 million. Alan Greenspan money, perhaps?

PW Daily reports that former President Bill Clinton‘s next book, GIVING: How of Each of Us Can Change the World, will be published on September 4 by Knopf. The 256-page manuscript – much shorter than his nearly 1,000-page memoir, also published by Knopf – was acquired by the imprint’s chairman and editor-in-chief Sonny Mehta, and the book will be simultaneously published in hardcover, ebook, audiobook (read by the author) and large print, with a portion of the proceeds being donated to charity.

“I’ve done my best in this book to demonstrate what I’ve seen firsthand through my Foundation’s work in Africa and around the world: that all kinds of giving can make a profoundly positive difference,” Clinton said in a release. “The amount of good that so many individuals and NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) have been able to do has proven to me that almost everyone-regardless of income, available time, age, and skills-can do something useful for others and, in the process, strengthen the fabric of our shared humanity.”

Author David Lodge popularized a game where you go around in a circle and name a book you claim to have read when in fact you haven’t, and now a new survey conducted in Britain conducted by a researcher at the University of Leeds doesn’t just confirm this practice, but reveals the titles least likely to have been read even as they are bought in droves. In non-fiction, political memoirs by David Blunkett and Bill Clinton top the list, with David Beckham‘s MY SIDE in third place. For fiction, the top “dog” is DBC Pierre‘s VERNON GOD LITTLE followed by the 4th Harry Potter volume and ULYSSES.

Four out of 10 of the 4,000 people polled said they could not concentrate on long titles and less than a quarter found time to read every day. Feeling tired and watching television instead were the main reasons for not finding time to read, with a fifth of people claiming it was because they worked late. “The research illustrates that the pressure of finding time for reading is the main factor when it comes to discarding a book unfinished,” said researcher Kevin Killeen.

AP’s Hillel Italie had such a good opening line that it bears repeating: “George McGovern was never elected president, but at least he gets to write a book about one.” The president in question is the much-written-about Abraham Lincoln, who will be the latest subject for Times Books’ series of presidential biographies. “President Kennedy thought that only the president could understand the exact pressures and responsibilities of the job, and I felt that George’s defeat in 1972 would give him a sense of the kinds of decisions a president has to make,” said former Kennedy aide and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., the series’ general editor.

McGovern wasn’t the first choice – both E.L. Doctorow and Bill Clinton were considered but turned it down due to other commitments. Times Books editorial director Paul Golob said he expected McGovern to be finished a year from now and hoped to have the book out by February 2009, the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth.