Terry Pratchett fans celebrated the fantasy novelist’s birthday yesterday. According to Tor.com, the beloved author of Discworld is also “the most shoplifted author in Britain.”

If you want to celebrate, check out the finalists for the first ever Terry Pratchett Anywhere But Here, Anywhen But Now First Novel Award. The winning novelists gets a £20,000 prize as an advance on a publishing contract. Here’s more about the contest:

These six books will be discussed by the judging panel which includes Sir Terry Pratchett, Rob Wilkins, Editorial Director Simon Taylor, Publicist Lynsey Dalladay and Alex Veasey from The Forbidden Planet. A winner will be announced on the 31st May. Thank you to everyone who took part and sent in your novels, the standard was remarkably high and we had over 500 entries. Apologies for keeping you on tenterhooks, the sixth spot was hotly contested as the standard was so high.

Read more

Anne Hoppe will be moving from HarperCollins Children’s Books to Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children’s Book Group.

Hoppe spent 18 years at HarperCollins. She will begin in her new role as senior executive editor starting January 23, 2013.

Some of the authors on her list include When I Grow Up author “Weird Al” Yankovic, Discworld series author Sir Terry Pratchett, Carnival of Souls author Melissa Marr and Animorphs series author Katherine Applegate. In a past interview, Yankovic talked about how he and Hoppe came together for his debut picture book project.

With 11,525 votes, The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling has won the Best Fiction award at the Goodreads Choice Awards. Earning 20,328 votes, Veronica Roth was named Best Goodreads Author for Insurgent.

We’ve linked to samples of all the winners below.

All these authors were nominated and picked by Goodreads users. Did your favorite writer make the list?

Read more

According to Deadline Hollywood‘s UK editor, Random House Children’s Screen Entertainment will be raising a $100 million to fund new television, toys, video games, and film projects.

The group was created after Random House Children’s Books partnered with the UK production company, Komixx Entertainment. The article mentions a number of authors and illustrators who could see more properties developed, including Philip Pullman (author of “The Golden Compass”) and Terry Pratchett (author of “Discworld”).

Here’s more from the post: “UK-based Kommixx Entertainment, the film and television production company backed by Swiss venture fund EAM Private Capital, intends to go out into the market for RHCSE in March. It may yet approach an existing film and television financier such as Aramid Capital to help it raise the money. The $100M will be used to develop cartoons and live-action films and television series based on RHCB properties, as well as video games and toys.”

Just in time for the holiday release of a new Sherlock Holmes adaptation, AudioFile magazine will give readers a free collection of Sherlock Holmes short stories on audiobooks.

To access the collection, readers need to sign up for the Audiofile newsletter between Dec. 16 and 29. In months past, the multimedia series has also included listeners’ guides to Agatha Christie, Edgar Allan Poe, Neil Gaiman, and Terry Pratchett. The free stories will be read by award winning producer David Timson, including the stories “Silver Blaze,” “The Adventure of the Stockbroker’s Clerk,” and “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plan.”

AudioFile publisher Robin Whitten explained: “With the 150th anniversary of Arthur Conan Doyle‘s birth this year and the release of the Sherlock Holmes film starring Robert Downey, Jr., it’s an appropriate time to encourage a new generation of fans to discover the voices of Sherlock Holmes … the atmospheric settings, intellectual puzzles and intriguing characters of Arthur Conan Doyle make perfect audio listening.”

On Friday evening, Los Angeles Times Book Editor David L. Ulin announced the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes during a ceremony at the Los Angeles Times building.

Marilynne Robinson won the fiction prize for “Home;” Michael Koryta won the Mystery/Thriller prize for “Envy the Night;” Frank Bidart won the Poetry prize for “Watching the Spring Festival: Poems;” and Terry Pratchett won the YA prize for “Nation.”

More details here, the rest of the winners are listed after the jump. Here’s an LA Times interview with Robinson about traveling the United States: “Robinson then complained that many people ignore Iowa, saying folks go to the West Coast and East Coast but skip the middle. To her, the area’s beauty is quite unparalleled.”

Read more

The Galaxy British Book Awards were handed out at a gala ceremony last night, and the Independent‘s Louise Jury reports on the speeches, the winners and the surprises of the evening (which will be televised at the end of the week.) Highlights included Richard & Judy‘s Best Read of the Year going to Jed Rubenfeld for THE INTERPRETATION OF MURDER, while Ricky Gervais beat established writers including Geraldine McCaughrean and Terry Pratchett to take the children’s book of the year honour with Flanimals of the Deep, the third in the series he has produced with the illustrator Rob Steen. Gervais accepted his award live on stage in Ipswich. “That’s fantastic … it’s the first one for my literary outputs,” he said, admitting his work had been described as “books about bollocks with eyes drawn on them”. Other winners in various categories included Richard Dawkins, Ian Rankin, Peter Kay, Conn & Hal Iggulden and Victoria Hislop.