Contest #1

Amazon.com has started accepting entries for its third year of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Grand Prize is a publishing contract with Penguin. Many of the finalists in all the categories also received publishing deals, so it isn't winner-take-all, by any means. Here are the rules and instructions. A big change this year is the addition of a separate Young Adult category. Enter soon, the deadline is February 7, or whenever they have received 10,000 entries.

Contest # 2

Powell's.com is accepting nominations for its annual Puddly Awards, their readers' favorite books. The twist this year is that the Awards will be for the Books of the Decade rather than the Year. Nominate your favorite book of the decade for a chance to win the grand prize of $250 worth of Powell's credit, or for one of the four $50 gift cards. The deadline is January 31, only a few more days.

Spring Previews

Find out what books are coming soon with the Spring Publishing Previews. We like to know what's coming in the next few months so we can get first dibs at the public libraries, or request review copies.

The Publishers Weekly issue is available online, and this is quite a bargain because it costs $12 for the issue, if you can find it. We normally find a copy at the Barnes & Noble or Borders. We find it's worth the splurge, because we discover as many books from the ads as we do from the PW lists. But last year's Fall Preview was noticeably thinner than the previous Spring Preview. Both the number of books being published and the number of ads were way down, bad news for publishers and readers alike.

The other link is to 2010 Paperback Preview of The Bookseller, the U.K. Equivalent of Publishers Weekly. Click anywhere on the page to enlarge. Many of the books listed here won't be published in the U.S.

The Online Bookshop You Don't Know About

But there is a website where you can buy U.K. (as well as U.S., Canada, and Australia) books for discount prices with FREE SHIPPING. We've been ordering books from The Book Depository for the past six months or so and have no idea how they make money at all. They often have the best prices on books of any online bookstore, and they really do provide free shipping to much of the world, including North America. It usually takes a week or 10 days to get a book from them.