The ninth annual Morning News Tournament of Books (ToB) will commence in March 2013.

So far, 15 finalists have been revealed. Three titles from the “pre-tournament playoff round” are currently in the running for the sixteenth and final slot. We’ve included the two lists below.

Here’s more from the announcement: “The ToB is an annual springtime event here at the Morning News, where 16 of the year’s best works of fiction enter a March Madness-style battle royale. Today we’re announcing the judges and final books for the 2013 competition as well as the long list of books from which the contenders were selected.”
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Junot Diaz, Dave Eggers, and Louise Erdrich led the list of fiction finalists for the National Book Awards this year.

Follow the links below to read free samples of the finalists in every category–who is your favorite?

The finalists were announced on MSNBC this year, a new twist for the prestigious award. The winners will be revealed at a gala ceremony on November 14 in New York City at Cipriani Wall Street.

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The cover of the upcoming issue of Granta deconstructs women’s magazines like Vogue with with pink fonts, splashy headlines, and a connect-the-dots cover model.

Granta 115: The F Word will “explore the ways in which feminism continues to inform, address and complicate” the power balance between men and women. Publication is set for May 19th.

It will include writings by Eudora Welty, Tea Obreht,  Louise Erdrich, Jeanette Winterson, and Edwidge Danticat.

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Responding to Andrew Wylie‘s exclusive eBook deal with Amazon, Penguin Group CEO John Makinson offered a calming point to all the outrage.

At Publishers Weekly, the CEO noted that the backlist titles involved compose “a very small percentage” of the company’s total revenue. “I don’t think it’s a cosmic issue. We will continue to talk to the Wylie Agency and we will continue to talk to our authors about what is best for them,” concluded Makinson.

Last week Wylie unveiled the Odyssey Editions eBooks imprint, releasing 20 eBook versions of beloved literary titles including, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison and Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich. Macmillan CEO John Sargent said he was “appalled” by the Wylie/Amazon deal and Random House has stopped dealing with the agency.

Despite his calming words, Makinson added that he is unhappy with the Wylie/Amazon deal and agreed with Sargent’s sentiment that books should be made available through a wide variety of channels.

In a long profile in the current issue of Harvard Magazine, agent Andrew Wylie revealed that eBook deals are “currently on hold across the board” at his famous agency, and cautioned publishers that he could take eBook rights elsewhere.

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.’”