"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" broke sales records in the U.S and in Britain during it first 24 hours on the market. According to the publisher, Scholastic Corporation, the seventh and final book of the series written by J.K. Rowling sold 8.3 million copies in the U.S. on Saturday (July 21st) and 2.65 million copies in Britain.

Children around the world waited in long lines to get a copy of the final book in the Harry Potter series. An executive from the publisher compared the excitement, anticipation and plain hysteria of the book's release to the Beatles' first visit to the U.S.

Approximately six weeks after it acquired complete ownership of Bookspan, Bertelsmann has initiated a major overhaul of the book club business, a process that will eliminate 280 positions, or about 15% of its workforce of 1,900. As part of integrating Bookspan into BMG Columbia House, an unspecified number of smaller clubs will be closed as will Madison Park Press, the publishing program launched about 18 months ago.

Referring to Google's happy position where to "Google something" has become an everyday phrase, Mr Heap said Wally would soon be muscling into the search engine corner of cyberspace.

"In the future I think you will be saying 'I'm going to Wally it'," he said. Last month, Entertainment Rights became the world's biggest independent owner of children's brands when it bought up its US rival in a deal that doubled its size and added Lassie and the Lone Ranger to its portfolio.

Hampstead-born Mr Handford, 50, worked in an insurance office to fund his way through art college and specialised in drawing crowd scenes.

He created the popular Wally character - the time-travel aficionado who always dresses in red and white - in 1986. Since then, more than 73m of the "Where's Wally?" books have been sold around the world. Each picture takes him around eight weeks to draw. Entertainment Rights said Where's Wally has become one of the most recognisable children's characters in the world but still had plenty of potential to grow.

Postal rates for periodicals would increase 11.8 percent on average, if the Postal Service accepts the recommendation of the Postal Regulatory Commission announced Feb. 26. The commission also called for an average rate hike of 7.6 percent.

In its announcement, the commission said that, drawing from recommendations from the Postal Service and Time Inc., magazines that adopt more efficient mailing procedures would pay smaller rate hikes under the recommended periodicals rate structure.

"This is a sad turn of events for book reviews. AP reviews, even small, ran far and wide, and always helped sales," said a book-company publicist who alerted Editor & Publisher to AP's decision. The publicist requested anonymity.

When E&P asked AP about the decision, Linda M. Wagner, the wire service's director of media relations and public affairs, said in a statement today: "AP is revamping its Lifestyles coverage to focus more resources on topics like food and parenting, and as a result we are discontinuing the book-review package that had moved through that department."

She added that AP "remains as committed as ever" to covering books--via reviews, features about authors, etc.--through its Arts and Entertainment Department.

5. Book Binder Book binding is an industry that’s been around since the first century A.D. Today, a book binder maintains the machines that cut, fold and sew books together. According to OOH, employment in this field is expected to decline through 2014 as a result of a slower demand for printed material and increasing reliance on digital publications.

Where we're headed -- A combination of inexpensive overseas labor and new computer-operated equipment makes it easier to assemble books.

Smith and Wiley & Sons have plenty of potential content: There are more than 1,000 "Dummies" titles, with better than 150 million copies of the franchise in print.

"Whatever topic you can think of, there's a 'Dummies' book for it," Smith told Daily Variety. "There's such a plethora of information, and these are books -- not pamphlets."

Smith and Weed first began exploring the idea of a "Dummies" partnership several months ago. "We met with them at the Licensing Show in New York after Mark Itkin at William Morris set us up," he said.

Weed said he and Smith will try to create programming that emulates the tone of the book series. "Our goal is to bring relatable information to the small screen in a manner that will be both educational and entertaining at the same time," he said.

Deal with Wiley calls for A. Smith to work closely with the publisher to develop ideas. "We're not just licensing the name," Smith said.

The owners of nine Fox television affiliates in the U.S. will not air a two-part special in which O.J. Simpson speaks about the killing of his ex-wife.

Lin Broadcasting and Pappas Broadcasting, both small chains with stations in small and mid-sized cities, say the program If I Did It, Here's How It Happened does not serve the public interest.

In the show, scheduled for broadcast Nov. 27 and 29, Simpson is to speak in "hypothetical terms" about how he would have committed the 1994 killing of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman "if he were the one responsible."

Sony Corp. said Tuesday it will launch an electronic book store on the Internet and start selling a device that displays e-books purchased from the store October 1, after missing an earlier unveiling in the Spring due to technical reasons.

The Sony Connect book store will carry about 10,000 books from the top six publishers, including News Corp.'s HarperCollins and CBS Corp.'s Simon & Schuster.

The launch of the store coincides with the official debut of its highly anticipated electronics book reader, which reviewers have said mimic the quality of regular paper.

The "Sony Reader Portable Reader" system will sell for about $350. For a limited period, new Connect customers will receive a $50 credit to buy books from the service.

OPRAH Winfrey has inked a deal to publish a fitness book with her personal trainer Bob Greene in what industry insiders say is the richest nonfiction book deal in history, sources told On The Money.

While sources declined to give an exact price, these people said it is larger than the $12 million advance former President Bill Clinton got to write his autobiography, "My Life," which was published by Knopf in 2004.

Oprah's book will be published by Simon & Schuster in January, and the gathering of publishing types at the annual Book Expo America in Washington, D.C., this weekend was abuzz with speculation about "an embargoed book coming out in January," according to a source.

Schultz, speaking with media following a speech to the Detroit Economic Club, said the company is looking to branch out to book sales in its stores, much like its move to sell music and promote films. He did not give details on how the company will specifically partner with authors or publishing firms, but said the work of popular authors could be featured. Starbucks has been selling various music collections in its stores and some exclusive albums have won multiple Grammy awards.

In addition, the company could within 12 to 14 months begin offering proprietary content for customers to download via wireless internet connections that are already available in stores. The content would include music or video that could be viewed on a laptop or downloaded to an MP3 audio player. Schultz said customers typically utilize in-store wireless connections to access email accounts, but the executive said the wireless connections are "a unique asset" that can be a bigger revenue generator.

The Time Warner Book Group is the fifth-largest U.S. book publisher, with authors including James Patterson and Malcolm Gladwell, Paris-based Lagardere and New York-based Time Warner said in e-mailed statements today.

Lagardere has been seeking media takeovers to lower the company's dependence on its stake in the maker of Airbus aircraft, and it acquired W.H. Smith Plc's Hodder Headline unit for 223 million pounds ($389 million) in September 2004. Time Warner has been selling divisions including its music unit to reduce debt, and said its book business needed the global "scale" of being part of a larger book publisher.

"This is a major step in fulfilling a Lagardere objective to create a balanced portfolio in three main languages, French, English and Spanish," said the statement from Lagardere, whose chief executive is Arnaud Lagardere.

Expect many, if not most, memoirs published in the coming months and years to include a prologue, note or preface--some sort of warning--telling the reader just how many liberties the author has taken with the facts, say publishing executives.

Peter Osnos, founder and editor-at-large of PublicAffairs Books, said explanatory prefaces "will be clearer, more forthright and more common" in the future.

But don't expect many publishers to force their writers to go cold turkey from the occasional use of fiction--a composite character, a rearrangement of events or name changes--to smooth out the rough parts of what otherwise is being marketed as a "true" story.

Ms. Jordan, who has been a key member of the BookExpo America management team since 1997, the first year the event was wholly managed by Reed after the event’s acquisition from the American Booksellers Association, has been Special Events and Public Relations Director for BEA since 2000. Working closely with ABA and AAP, the event’s co-sponsors, she has been instrumental in strategic planning and in developing the special programming and author-related events that have turned BookExpo America into the English-speaking world’s premier book event.

The sales figure for the adult hardcover category was up 2.6 percent in October with sales of $176.7 million. This has declined by 1.1 percent in 2005. Adult paperback sales were up by a solid 16.7 percent (sales totaled $101.9 million). Sales for this category have grown 9.0 percent over last year’s sales. The adult mass-market category dipped by 15.8 percent with sales totaling $51.2 million for this category; a slight decrease of 1.7 percent for the year.

The children's and young adult hardcover category saw a rise of 5.1 percent in October (sales totaled $69.8 million). This category has done very well in 2005 with sales 80.4 percent greater than last year's. The children's and young adult paperback publishing sales saw a significant increase of 39.8 percent with sales totaling $54.1 million. This category is up by 6.6 percent for the year.