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President Obama signed a two-book, six-figure deal with Crown for an abridged, young adult version of Dreams From My Father and another nonfiction work that will not be written until after his presidency.

Former President George W. Bush has finally signed his book deal. The book is tentatively titled Decision Points and will focus on 12 of Bush's most difficult personal and political decisions. The book will be published by Crown in 2010. I've heard that he received a $7 million advance (compared to Clinton's $15 million advance).

In response to former Governor Rod Blagojevich's six-figure book deal, the Illinois legislature introduced House Bill 4078. The bill would require “any elected official who is convicted of a felony or of a misdemeanor involving a violation of his or her official oath of office to forfeit any monetary rights derived from any media depiction or detailing of the crime for which the person was convicted as a term of their sentence. The forfeiture lasts during the term of the sentence and any period of probation, parole or supervised release." Read more from PW.

According to the Telegraph, a test screening of the latest Harry Potter film earned poor reviews. Viewers complained that the film contained pointless scenes, focused too much on the romances between Ron/Lavender and Harry/Ginny, and missed out many crucial characters and plot lines. They better fix it! I'm not waiting an extra 8 months for a disappointing movie!

When Robert Bolano died, he left many unpublished manuscripts. It seems that a possible sixth part to his behemoth 2666 has been found. 2666 recently won the NBCC award for fiction. I've been attempting to make my way through this novel, but it's not doing anything for me. More to come on this later, hopefully.

The International Association of Culinary Professionals announced the finalists for their 2009 Cookbook Awards. You can view all the finalists here. Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito's Baked: New Frontiers in Baking was named in the baking category. Apparently the judges didn't hear about my Red Velvet Disappointment. The James Beard Foundation apparently did hear about the Disappointment, as Baked does not appear amongst their award nominees.

The publication of Catching Fire, the sequel to Suzanne Collins's fantastically fantastic The Hunger Games, has been bumped up from September 8th to September 1st. Film rights to The Hunger Games have been sold. Sweet. Can you imagine that movie?

An Australian company has created a way to make paper from wombat poop. Surprisingly, I wasn't shocked when I read this. I seemed to recall, somewhere in the deep recesses of my subconscious, hearing about something like this before. Yep, if you don't care for wombats, how about elephants? I'll take my books made out of trees, thank you very much. If this is the future of print books, I may have to switch to a Kindle.

The Man Booker International Prize is awarded every two years to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language. You can see the complete list of the 2009 nominees here. From the USA: Evan S Connell, E.L. Doctorow, and Joyce Carol Oates.

In response to author and publisher concerns that the text-to-speech function available on Amazon's Kindle 2 would violate copyright, Amazon decided to disable the text-to-speech feature by default and allow publishers to enable the feature on a title-by-title basis. Several disability groups are protesting this decision.

Sony has made over 500,000 public domain titles available for free for use with the Sony Reader.

Harlequin is launching a new line aimed at teens. Harlequin Teen debuts in August with its first publication, My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent.

The finalists for the 2009 National Magazine Awards have been announced. Take a look.