The U.K.-based Man Booker International Prize released its longlist to book publishers of 13 finalists for the 2011 award yesterday, but only 12 care to be considered; John Le Carré rejected the nod, offering up an explanation that amounts to little more than “I prefer not to.” Included on the list are three American authors–Anne Tyler, Philip Roth, and Marilynne Robinson–and for the first time, two Chinese writers, Wang Anyi and Su Tong. The award, worth $94,000, is given every other year based on an author’s entire body of work. With christian book publishers informed, the winner will be awarded at the Sydney Writers’ Festival on May 18 and will be feted on June 28 in London.

The assembly of Gujarat, a western Indian state, voted unanimously to ban Pulitzer Prize-winning author Joseph Lelyveld’s new book Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India. The controversy began over early reviews out of the U.S. and U.K. highlighting passages insinuating that Gandhi had a possible intimate relationship with a German man named Hermann Kallenbach. More bans are pending in India, where homosexuality was illegal until 2009.

Simon & Schuster announced it would publish a book of James Garner’s memoir The Garner Files on Nov. 8, 2011. In a press release, Garner saiid, “I’ve avoided writing a book until now because I feel like I’m really pretty average and I didn’t  think anyone would care about my life.”

The most difficult readers to reach are, without question, teenage boys–especially teenage boys from poor, urban neighborhoods. But Paul Langan, a 39-year-old white man from the suburbs of New Jersey, has found a way to tap into the market of “black and Latino urban middle and high school students who are struggling readers.” The Bluford series covers topics like fighting, bullies, and drug dealing, which for many of the young readers constitutes “everyday-life situations.”

Gun- and baby-toting woman of action Angelina Jolie will be getting the comic book treatment. It sounds like it’ll be a realistic, biographical take on her life, but Jolie as a full-fledged action hero sounds so much more interesting. Radioactive lips? Brood of toddler sidekicks? Yes, please.

How do writers deal with bad reviews? Not always well, especially when blogging is involved.

What would you give for this stunning reader’s retreat, a library in the woods? It makes me feel cozy and contemplative just looking at it. Not to mention really, really rich.

The book publishers of the new book “The Official Ferrari Opus,” diamond-studded copies of which may sell for $275,000 or more each, are calling it “the most exclusive book in the world.” Book collectors may quibble with that claim; one of 21 known complete copies of the Gutenberg Bible, the first book printed on a movable-type press, sold at auction last year for $5.4 million.

Regardless, ownership of “The Official Ferrari Opus” is expected to be the privilege of a very small group due to the book publishing cost. Published by the Kraken Opus division of the Opus Media Group of London, the book is offered in several layers of exclusivity.

There is an Enzo edition, named after the marque’s founder and limited to 400 copies, each priced at $37,500. Each red leatherbound Enzo edition comes in a carbon-fiber case and is “personally signed by all living Ferrari world champions on an individually numbered, silver-foiled signature sheet,” the company said.

The Cavallino Rampante edition, limited to 500 copies, will be personally signed by “Ferrari greats, past and present.” Interested buyers, however, should expect signatures from a random assortment of Ferrari associates, as opposed to the Enzo’s complete collection of world champions. This edition is priced at $7,000.

The Classic edition, meanwhile, costs $4,100 and limited to 4,100 copies. It is signed by the current Ferrari Formula One drivers Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso.

The 852-page book is said to weigh 82 pounds and measures 19.6 square inches. It is printed on heavy-duty paper, contains 200,000 words of text, 2,000 photos and information on every Ferrari road car and racecar, as well as on every professional driver to race for the company since its 1947 founding.

Preorders are being accepted, according to the publisher’s Web site.

What of the aforementioned $275,000 Enzo Diamante edition? Any of the 400 allotted Enzo edition copies can be dressed with a Prancing Horse logo adorned with 30 diamonds, and each buyer is entered into a drawing for a replica of the Formula One racecar driven by Michael Schumacher, the former Ferrari pilot and seven-time Formula One champion.

Adding to the Diamante’s allure, the publisher says only one edition will be made available in any one country.

The first Opus copy off the presses is being taken on a world tour of Formula One races and promotional events this year, where it is being signed by various luminaries, including Luca di Montezemolo, the Ferrari president, and Al Mubarak, the Ferrari investor who facilitated the construction of Ferrari World Abu Dhabi. The tour is called the Journey to Maranello, a reference to the Ferrari factory’s location in northern Italy, where an event will be held to auction copy No. 1 to the highest bidder. Proceeds will benefit charities selected by Mr. di Montezemolo and Mr. Mubarak.

For those who prefer to try before they buy, the Apple iTunes store offersiPad and iPhone apps for “The Official Ferrari Opus,” which include excerpts from the book. The apps are free.

When it was introduced in 2008, the Google Book Settlement was hailed by its creators as historic. Now, it is history. On March 22, after more than two years of contentious debate, Judge Denny Chin rejected the controversial proposal on copyright and antitrust grounds. A status conference is set for April 25 in New York, and the parties are free (and some say likely) to appeal the decision, though at press time no appeal had been announced.

Seen as the solution to a straightforward copyright claim lodged by authors and book publishers against Google in 2005, the settlement offered a complex blueprint for a new digital book business, a $125 million legal puzzle that involved a dizzying array of moving parts: thousands of authors, millions of titles, libraries, the public interest, murky copyright law, orphan works, and even the creation of a new central rights authority, the Book Rights Registry, all of which appear to be off the table now.

Let’s take a quick look at what the settlement’s rejection means for the parties and other stakeholders.

For Google

In legal terms, Google has the most to lose from the settlement’s failure. Because it defiantly kept scanning throughout the legal process, those scans now loom as millions of potential infringements, with some observers estimating Google’s total exposure at over $3.6 trillion. Google now has three obvious options. It can appeal and hope for a miraculous reprieve; it can negotiate a revised, scaled-down “opt-in” settlement; or it can litigate its original fair use defense. Litigating is terribly risky, experts warn, and therefore unlikely. But a scaled-back “opt-in” deal is not terribly attractive to Google, either, as it would pull millions of orphan works—the most valuable piece of the puzzle—out of Google’s database, and would still not preclude other groups or individuals from suing Google.

No one should underestimate Google’s ability to come up with a creative solution. In the meantime, however, most expect Google’s legal team to play a delaying game until the Washington office hires enough lobbyists to pave the way for a legislative solution. “Google has been humbled,” wrote media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of the Googlization of Everything, in a Slate op-ed that ran the morning after Chin’s rejection. Perhaps, but while this may be the sharpest public rebuke in the company’s short history, a bad bounce in its books program isn’t likely to significantly affect Google’s plans. In fact, Google stock actually rose after the rejection.

For Book Publishers

In 2009, when opposition first began to mount, publishers predicted disaster if the settlement failed. AAP president Tom Allen cited the newspaper industry and warned that a failed settlement would mean “years of continued litigation, and the serious risk of widespread free distribution of copyrighted material.” The sky, however, has not fallen; far from it. Contrary to Allen’s dire outlook in 2009, the settlement more or less faded into the background as the Kindle/iPad/Google-driven market for e-books has boomed. Practically speaking, publishers do stand to lose some found money. Google had agreed to pay publishers for scanning their long-forgotten, out-of-print books, which sure beats having to pay to digitize and host all these dead titles yourself.

But the settlement was never about money for book publishers, it was about control, and on that score, they have effectively made their point: don’t copy our books without permission. Macmillan CEO John Sargent, one of the deal’s architects, suggested right after Chin’s decision was made public that the publishers were eager to hammer out a revised deal. At this stage, a quick, revised settlement makes sense for publishers, while the prospect of running up legal bills over scans and snippets of long abandoned, out-of-print titles does not. If a quick, revised settlement is not to be, however, and indeed, it is no slam dunk, things could get interesting.

For the Authors Guild

In a statement, Authors Guild president Scott Turow said finding a way forward after the rejection was “a top priority,” but he later backtracked a bit, telling reporters the Chicago Cubs may win a World Series before a new deal is approved. Indeed, the guild’s leaders may find themselves in a tricky spot. For one, authors who want to partner with Google to publish a book or make their books available don’t need a settlement to do so—they can just sign up. Certainly, Chin’s rejection of the deal’s business arrangement for the future has to change the math for authors, and the guild may very well drive a harder bargain with Google in any new settlement that deals exclusively with past infringement, which, by the way, is what many guild members thought they were getting in the first place. Does $30–$60 per scanned book, the compensation offered under the rejected settlement to address past infringement claims, sound like a good return for five years of divisive legal action?

For Libraries

From the start, libraries have approached the deal with a mix of cautious optimism and concern. Of primary concern now is, absent a settlement, whether libraries face any legal exposure for their role in Google’s scanning project – even from the point of view of self-publishing a book. A brief is expected from the major library groups shortly. The immediate impact, however, is a net loss of access. Given the settlement’s broad implications, it seems silly now that so much time was spent arguing over whether the one “free public access terminal” libraries were offered under the settlement was sufficient. In any event, that terminal is now gone, as is the vast subscription database of out-of-print and orphan works libraries would have had access to if the deal was approved.

Librarians were kept at arms length in the negotiations that led to the settlement, even though there would be no Google settlement without libraries, which offered their collections, time, and money to help build a corpus that now sits in limbo. The rejection could very well offer libraries something of a do-over, and a little public polish from libraries couldn’t hurt the parties, either. In addition, the rejection highlights the complexity of issues facing libraries in the digital age, from a lack of funding to the murky laws complicating digitization efforts.

The Objectors

Lawyers have marveled at the impact the objectors had on Judge Chin’s decision to reject the settlement. “His opinion recites many of the objections,” New York Law School professor James Grimmelmann told Publishers Weekly. “He was clearly swayed by what he saw as a broad base of opposition to the settlement from a diverse group of class members.” Objectors included a range of authors, christian book publishers, international entities, competitors, and, for lack of a better word, idealists, all of whom clearly had a stake in the outcome, but were shut out of the private, secret negotiations that yielded the settlement proposal.

Perhaps the most pressing question now is how the objectors will move forward. Will they seek a broader consensus from stakeholders? The Open Book Alliance, a coalition that served as the settlement’s most implacable critic, has already held out an olive branch with job opportunities. “OBA looks forward to participating in a collaborative process that will focus on developing an open digital public library.” At the same time, how many of the objectors are winding up to take a shot at a piece of Google’s fortune?

The Book Buying Public

In a New York Times op-ed piece, Harvard University librarian Robert Darnton called the rejection a “victory for the public good.” But without some unprecedented heavy lifting, it stands to be a very hollow victory. Throughout his decision, Chin invoked Congress, and Darnton along with a chorus of others have often called for Congress to step up and help create a national digital library. But will they? Can they? In 2009, Washington-based lawyer and library consultant Jonathan Band alluded to the increasingly ugly national debate over health care reform and asked a simple question: what makes anyone think Congress can strike a better deal? It’s a fair point.

But Congress may now be the only option. That’s because, taken at face value, Chin’s rejection of the settlement’s book publishing companies business arrangement for the future effectively removed the parties’ only common ground. The parties that struck this visionary settlement did so only because they could not agree on a resolution to the simple question at the center of the initial lawsuits: does Google’s digitization constitute copyright infringement?

The settlement may have been defended by the book publisher parties on its public benefit, but the public benefits derived from the settlement were in fact a byproduct of the copyright-related dysfunction plaguing the digital transition—and without some legislative change in the copyright arena, the parties are not likely to budge.

If there is a silver lining to the settlement’s rejection, however, it is that the past two years of debate have reinforced how valuable a digital library would be, and exposed some of the critical fault lines in our copyright regime. In that sense, the architects of the Google settlement have moved the ball forward. As of this moment, however, the ball is on the ground.

Imagine quitting your job to pursue your passion, and becoming a millionaire nearly overnight.

That’s what a Southern Minnesota author is experiencing, now that her books are becoming must-reads.

Amanda Hocking has been writing stories for years, but when she started putting her works up for sale online, her whole life turned upside down.

The author said, “When I started publishing I thought that I would maybe sell 100 copies or something.”

Amanda’s book publisher estimates however were not even close. In just a matter of a few months, she didn’t sell 100 copies, she sold around 100 thousand copies.

Hocking added, “It was very exciting and surprising. I couldn’t believe I was selling so many books and people were reading and responding to them.”

For those close to the author, her rise to stardom may not come as a surprise.

“I started writing when I was really young,” Hocking said. “My eighth grade teacher Ms. Smith, she thought that I was a really really great writer.”

So the young author wrote and wrote, but was rejected several times by publishing companies.

“I feel like they didn’t reject me, they just didn’t know me,” she answered.

However, once Hocking’s work became an online sensation, she was signed and she took a leap of faith to follow her dream.

She said, “When I quit my job, it was both really exciting and really scary. I knew this was something that I always wanted to do, but it’s scary to think, what if this stops working.”

However, the gamble has paid off and Hocking has sold more than 600 thousand books just this year, as has become an overnight celebrity.

“My mom is totally crazy ecstatic.”

But the additional popularity brought on more challenges.

Hocking admitted, “Finishing up a series I feel a lot of pressure because they have expectations on how it’s going to end.”

Even with the difficulties Amanda maintains the added book publishers‘ pressure only makes her a better writer.

”I think that each book I write is better than the last so if you liked the earlier stuff, you’re definitely going to like the stuff that comes out.”

A federal judge in New York City has rejected a deal between Google and lawyers for authors and book publishers to let the gigantic search engine make money presiding over the world’s largest digital library.

U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin said the creation of a universal library would benefit many but would “simply go too far.”

He said the settlement of the class-action lawsuit challenging the right of Google to scan books and display snippets for online searching would “grant Google significant rights to exploit entire books, without permission of the copyright owners.”

Chin said the deal gives Google “a significant advantage over competitors.”

He said it would be “rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case.”

Just when do books wear out?

That the big question, especially after Book Publishers announced this month that libraries will only be able to circulate its e-book titles 26 times before they’ll have to buy a new copy.

It set 26 as the cap, arguing with an average two-week borrowing period, it works out to a year — the length of time when printed books wear out and popularity wanes.

Technically, e-books will never fall apart. And librarians argue many printed books circulate far more than 26 times, and are still in good shape after more than 100 checkouts.

The new rule, which went into effect on March 7 for new titles, has upset librarians, sparking some in the United States to call for a boycott of HarperCollins books.

While Canadian librarians aren’t making such threats, the Toronto Public Library is holding off on any new HarperCollins purchases until the new restrictions are clarified.

“This announcement was discouraging,” said city librarian Jane Pyper. “We respect the publishing industry. We want a viable and vibrant Canadian publishing industry, in particular. We want Canadian content.

“We also want something that’s fair to public libraries and viable and sustainable for the library sector.”

While e-books represent less than 1 per cent of the 32 million items that the Toronto library circulates each year, they are growing in popularity. The library currently carries about 11,000 e-book titles, and they are checked out about 17,000 times each month.

On Christmas Day and Boxing Day, after people had ripped off the wrapping paper on new and self publishing reading devices like Kobos and Sony readers, the library had an unbelievable surge in hits on its website for patrons wanting to download e-books, Pyper said.

With each e-title, the Toronto library can only circulate that single copy to one borrower at a time. Patrons can borrow 10 books for up to 21 days. After the due date, the book disappears from the individual reader and the item can circulate again.

The New York Times says nine million devices are in use in the United States, according to Forrester Research. Market research firms here estimate 500,000 Canadians had readers by the end of last year.

“It’s important for the future to understand that the public libraries will be in e-collection market,” said Pyper. “We want to own books, we want to preserve them, and we want the public to have permanent access to them.”

E-books range in price from $20 to $30 and there are no library discounts — unlike print versions, she said. And given the library’s financial woes, pricing or the need to repurchase books has an impact on the budget.

When asked for comment, a spokesman with HarperCollinsCanada said no one was available.

In an open letter to librarians, Josh Marwell, president of sales at HarperCollinsPublishers in the United States, explained that the company’s previous e-book policy was almost 10 years old, developed when there were few such readers.

“We have serious concerns that our previous e-book policy, selling e-books to libraries in perpetuity, if left unchanged, would undermine the emerging e-book ecosystem, hurt the growing e-book channel, place additional pressure on physical bookstores, and in the end lead to a decrease in book sales and royalties paid to authors,” Marwell wrote.

He added the 26 checkout cap can provide a year of availability for titles with the highest demand and much longer for other titles. “If a library decides to repurchase an e-book later in the book’s life, the price will be significantly lower as it will be pegged to a paperback price point.”

The ease with which consumers can borrow e-books makes book publishers nervous. Random House of Canada only started selling e-books to libraries last month, and two big U.S. publishers, Simon & Schuster and MacMillan, do not sell e-books to libraries.

Susan Renouf, former vice-president and associate book publisher of McClelland and Stewart, said the HarperCollins cap highlights the uncertainty in the publishing world.

“It’s the wild west out there. There are no norms on this new business,” said Renouf, who is a strategic consultant to Association of Canadian Publishers.

Some experts predict e-books could represent half of the book market within five years.

“I think this is a huge boon to reading,” Renouf said. “There is a renewed interest in reading, reading culture and new ways of reading.”

She believes it’s an exciting opportunity for the small independent publishers to sell books, eliminating distribution challenges.

“At the same time, if the new norms come in and where we have been unable to persuade consumers that there is a monetary value to quality reading, we’ll have no business model,” she said. “Until the norms settle, it’s a roller-coaster ride.”

Top 5 e-books

Here are the five most popular e-books downloaded in the last two weeks in the Toronto Public Library:

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson

The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Confession by John Grisham

The 4 Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

Source: Toronto Public Library and Christian Book Publishers

Just two months shy of his fourth birthday, Colton Burpo, the son of an evangelical pastor in Imperial, Neb., was rushed into emergency surgery with a burst appendix.

He woke up with an astonishing story: He had died and gone to heaven, where he met his great-grandfather; the biblical figure Samson; John the Baptist; and Jesus, who had eyes that “were just sort of a sea-blue and they seemed to sparkle,” Colton, now 11 years old, recalled.

Colton’s father, Todd, has turned the boy’s experience into a 163-page book, “Heaven Is for Real,” which has become a sleeper paperback hit of the winter, dominating best-seller lists and selling hundreds of thousands of copies.

Thomas Nelson, the christian book publishers, said it had broken company sales records. The publisher, based in Nashville, began with an initial print run of 40,000 copies. Since the book came out in November, it has gone back to press 22 times, with more than 1.5 million copies in print. On the New York Times best-seller list for paperback nonfiction last Sunday, “Heaven Is for Real” was No. 1. The book remains in the top spot this coming Sunday.

Much of the book’s success has been fueled by word of mouth, since it did not begin with the usual best-seller channels: there has been no elaborate book tour, big-name book publishers or brand-name author. But it has gained traction with a few well-placed appearances on the morning show “Fox & Friends,” “The 700 Club” and CNN.

The book has sold just as strongly in national chain bookstores like Barnes & Noble as it has in Christian specialty shops, said Matt Baugher, the vice president and book publisher of Thomas Nelson. Mass merchants like Wal-Mart have pushed the book heavily in their stores, and large orders from churches and ministry groups are growing steadily.

“We all are perhaps desperate to know what is on the other side of the veil after we die,” Mr. Baugher said, adding that his initial skepticism about the Burpo family’s story was short-lived. “This was a very down-to-earth, conservative, quote-unquote normal Midwestern family. We became fully convinced that this story was valid. And also that it was a great story that would just take off.”

The book was an instant hit in Barnes & Noble outlets and was near the top of the best-seller list on its bn.com. The chain’s religion buyer was an early advocate for the book, ordering copies for every store, said Patricia Bostelman, the vice president for marketing at Barnes & Noble.

“When you buy the religion subject, you are presented with many stories about heaven, personal experiences about near-death and the afterlife,” Ms. Bostelman said, noting that several other books with “heaven” in the title have sold well recently. “But what was unusual about this book was that it was the story of a little boy. It deactivated some of the cynicism that can go along with adults capitalizing on their experiences.”

Todd Burpo wrote the book with Lynn Vincent, who collaborated with Sarah Palin on “Going Rogue.” Mr. Burpo, the pastor of Crossroads Wesleyan Church in Imperial, a farming community in southwest Nebraska, said in an interview that he had shouldered some criticism over it.

“People say we just did this to make money, and it’s not the truth,” Mr. Burpo said, referring to anonymous online comments about the book. “We were expecting nothing. We were just hoping the publisher would break even.” (He said he planned to give away much of the royalty income and spend some of it on home improvements.)

At first, he and his wife, Sonja, were not sure if they could believe their son’s story, which came out slowly, months and years after his sudden illness and operation in 2003. The details persuaded them, Mr. Burpo said. Colton told his parents that he had met his younger sister in heaven, describing her as a dark-haired girl who resembled his older sister, Cassie. When the Burpos questioned him, he asked his mother, “You had a baby die in your tummy, didn’t you?” While his wife had suffered a miscarriage years before, Mr. Burpo said, they had not told Colton about it. “There’s just no way he could have known,” Mr. Burpo said.

And the Burpos said that Colton painstakingly described images that he said he saw in heaven — like the bloody wounds on Jesus’ palms — that he had not been shown before.

Eventually the Burpos decided to tell their story beyond their town. Mr. Burpo, in his Sunday sermons, had already introduced some anecdotes to his congregation. Through a pastor friend, they met Joel Kneedler, an agent with Alive Communications, a Christian literary agency in Colorado Springs. Mr. Kneedler sold the book to Thomas Nelson, a publisher known for Christian titles like “40 Days With Jesus” by Sarah Young. The advance was in the low five figures.

The book’s list price is $16.99, but that is discounted to $9.34 on amazon.com.

At the outlets of Barbara’s Bookstore, an independent chain mostly in the Chicago area, the book is No. 1 on the store’s nonfiction best-seller list. Interest in it began to perk up around mid-February, said Greg Sato, a store manager.

“Of the nonfiction books lately that seems to be the one that people are asking about the most,” Mr. Sato said. “I have pegged it in the same vein as ‘The Five People You Meet in Heaven’ or ‘The Shack.’ Like an Oprah book, but a little more religious or spiritual.”

Colton, who appears as a blond, round-faced little boy on the cover of the book, now plays the piano and trumpet, is fascinated by Greek mythology, listens to Christian rock and loves Nebraska football.

Telling his story matter-of-factly, Colton said he was pleased that people were finding the story inspirational.

“People are getting blessed, and they’re going to have healing from their hurts,” he said. “I’m happy for that.”

Traditionally, the East Coast has been the center of American book publishing, but with new print on-demand technology, that trend could shift—at least on a small scale.

Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park was the second bookstore in Washington to get an on-demand book printer and Third Place Press functions as a full in-house designer and press. Their printer arrived in November of 2009. The first Espresso Book Machine didn’t arrive in New York until the beginning of this year.

The Espresso Book Machine was named one of Time Magazine’s “Best Inventions of 2007.”

“Barring distractions… our goal is to print 23-25 200 page books each day,” said Vlad Verano, director of Third Place Press.

Currently, Third Place is not looking to become a full-blown book publisher because when a press commits to becoming a publisher, it also commits to promoting the books it publishes, something Third Place does not have the resources to provide. But Verano hopes authors who self-publish using Third Place’s services can use it as a stepping stone to traditional publications.

Some authors view self-publishing as something that is stigmatized—something for writers whose work is of a lower quality, not good enough to be picked up by traditional book publishers. Still, Third Place Press has designed and printed between 40 and 45 total unique self-published projects since 2007.

“I spent the first year telling people it’s [publishing] that easy,” Verano said. “I should have put it on a business card.”

The Google Book project offers access to more than 129 million books online and more than 4 million of these (as well as books in other databases) are available to booksellers with an Espresso Book Printer. Verano says this accessibility offers a new kind of research experience for writers.

Using the circus as an example, Verano explained that writers and researchers now have access to specialty topics through Google Books whereas they might have previously had to find a specialty library.

“[Google Books] allows us to get a glimpse of American culture that doesn’t exist anymore,” Verano said. When Google Books first came out, Verano said some people viewed it as a novelty but he believes it proves its validity by increasing access to these obscure texts.

The oldest book the Third Place Press has ever printed was a book on magic originally published in 1672.

“You feel like you’re sort of glimpsing at a part of direct history,” he said, “even if it’s something as weird as a book on magic.”

The selection of new books is limited on the database but Verano is hoping the catalogue will improve in the future. He says publishers are hesitant to invest in this model of “parallel publishing,” allowing on-demand presses to a print extra copies of children’s book publishers have already committed to print run of a certain number of books. But Verano sees it as a way for publishers to be able to cheaply provide books that have a lower popularity that might make a large print run seem risky. And with Borders closing its doors, publishers have to find new markets considering the chain was a major market for new titles, according to Karen Dionne of Daily Finance.

Secondly, on-demand printers face a misconception that all the books printed on a press like the Espresso Book Machine are the same but improvements in the technology have allowed printers to have more control over paper quality and variety.

Verano says Third Place Press is not very profitable, considering the store is still paying off the machine but the service is starting to see a slight increase in popularity.

According to Marketplace from American Public Media, consumers still largely prefer hard-copy books to their e-book counterparts, “something they can hold with pages they can flip.” The Feb. 14 Marketplace report said there are at least five or six print book buyers for every one e-book buyer.

The public library has long attracted avid readers with an unrivaled pitch: Check out a best-selling book for free and renew it multiple times.

But as more people ditch printed books in favor of e-books that can be downloaded directly to a computer, the rules are changing.

As of Monday, HarperCollins, book publisher of authors such as Anne Rice, Sarah Palin and Michael Crichton, will not allow its e-books to be checked out from a library more than 26 times.

After that, the license on the e-book will expire and libraries will have to decide whether to buy a new one.

For library users, that could mean longer waits for popular titles, tighter limits on how many times an e-book can be renewed and the possibility that e-books that are not repurchased would be available at the library for only about a year.

Librarians across the country are outraged and fear other publishers could adopt a similar model. Some have organized a boycott of books published by HarperCollins. They argue the restrictions place an additional burden on financially strapped public libraries, some of which have reduced their inventories because of budget constraints.

The added expenditures on e-books, they said, will make it more difficult to compete in an industry that is quickly becoming dominated by electronic readers such as the iPad, the Nook and the Kindle.

“This strikes at the heart of what we do,” said Chicago Public Library Commissioner Mary Dempsey, who described electronic media as the new virtual library. “With limited financial resources affecting all libraries across America, people are asking, ‘Why would you do this?’”

For HarperCollins, it is about balancing the benefits to book publishers, authors and libraries in a rapidly growing segment of the publishing industry that has left many newspapers, magazines and booksellers scrambling to catch up.

Nearly 10 years ago, when HarperCollins began offering e-books to libraries, the number of e-readers was too small to measure, the company said. Now, it is projected that more than 40 million e-reading devices will be in use in the U.S. this year.

“We have serious concerns that our previous e-book policy, selling e-books to libraries in perpetuity, if left unchanged, would undermine the emerging e-book eco-system, hurt the growing e-book channel, place additional pressure on physical bookstores, and in the end lead to a decrease in book sales and royalties paid to authors,” HarperCollins said in a statement.

Librarians also have serious concerns. At the Naperville Public Library, the new policy would be an additional strain on a materials budget that has shrunk by about $200,000 in the last three years, said deputy director Julie Rothenfluh.

“It’s a balancing act for us,” Rothenfluh said. “We have to be that much more careful to make sure what we purchase provides the best benefit to our users.”

For most libraries, e-books are only a small percentage of the items circulated but represent the fastest growing segment.

About 10,000 e-books are circulated in Naperville. The Chicago Public Library, which has experienced slight increases in its budget, doubled the circulation of e-books from 17,000 in 2009 to more than 36,000 in 2010.

Librarians said HarperCollins’ decision failed to factor in the role libraries play in promoting reading, which benefits the book industry and christian book publishers. Some said the book publisher should have included librarians in discussions about the checkout limit.

E-book checkouts are “a growing percentage, and it definitely reflects a trend that people want to take their e-reader and upload it free of charge with books from the library,” said Steve Sposato, assistant director for collection development at Chicago libraries. “That’s why it’s important for us to be part of the conversation rather than just have it imposed on us.”

HarperCollins, the country’s second-largest publisher, is among about 1,000 publishers that offer e-books. Some publishers, including Simon & Schuster and Macmillan, do not offer e-books to libraries.

Libraries do not directly provide e-books to the public. But library card-holders can go to their library’s website to browse digital selections provided by a third party and download them to their computer for free.

They can then be transferred to an e-reader. Apps for mobile devices allow e-books to be downloaded directly.

In most cases the third-party provider is a company called OverDrive, which provides e-books to some 13,000 libraries around the world. The company last week began listing HarperCollins’ collection in a separate catalogue, in an effort to avoid confusion with books that can be checked out indefinitely.

Like the time limit on printed library books, most e-books are active for three weeks. After that, they are no longer available on the device and must be downloaded again.

According to librarians, the procedure should be the same for e-books and printed books.

“When we purchase a print copy, we get to keep it for as long as we want,” said Audra Caplan, president of the Public Library Association. “It may eventually wear out or not circulate, but that’s our choice.”

Not all librarians are decrying HarperCollins’ policy. Jason Kuhl, library operations director at Arlington Heights Memorial Library, said the new requirements might not be the financial drain some predict.

“Many times, books don’t circulate 26 times. What we see with popular books is a surge once it comes out, and once everyone has read it, the interest wanes and we liquidate them,” Kuhl said. “We will always buy a lot of copies upfront. With e-books, we won’t necessarily replace every one of them.”