Pupils at a school in Italy are replacing all their text books with computers for a year - in what is being described as a unique experiment.

A competition to write a modern Wind in the Willows has been launched to mark the 100th anniversary of Kenneth Grahame's classic book.

Organisations involved in plans to sell some of Wales' oldest and rarest books say they have "agreed a way ahead".

The annual Frankfurt book fair is where everyone in the world of publishing gets a chance to catch up on the newest developments. Since the last fair, Amazon has launched its Kindle e-book reader in the US, and Sony has

Twenty years after his first poetry collection Birthmarks was published to critical acclaim, Mick Imlah has won the £10,000 Forward prize for best collection with his second, The Lost Leader.

The days of children reading traditional books are numbered, claims the man spearheading a campaign to improve literacy in schools.

Perhaps the peculiarly hybrid name of his department - Culture, Media and Sport - has clouded his judgement. But the Secretary of State, Andy Burnham, will today add his voice to calls by chief librarians for a revolution to modernise

The credit crunch has already hit the book trade, and its effects will be more and more visible in the coming months: but publishers are hoping this means changes to the stock rather than the till receipts.

He is the biggest-selling writer in English you've never heard of. His name doesn't grace any Booker list, but it is found on the lips of every college student in India. While the global literati dwell on the fiction of

People would be able to chat, drink coffee and watch videos in English libraries under a new government proposal, The Independent has learnt. Andy Burnham, the Secretary of State for Culture, will today launch a consultation on changing the face

Amazon's Digital Text Platform is an online tool (find it at http://dtp.amazon.com/mn/signin) with which anyone with a Social Security number, a bank account and a book in file format-the tool converts HTML files, unencrypted .mobi eBooks, Microsoft Word documents, .txt

French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio has been awarded this year's Nobel Prize for Literature.

WH Smith , the newspapers, books and stationery retailer, posted a better-than- expected 15 percent increase in full-year profit, as margin gains and cost savings offset a continuing fall in underlying sales.

In another move by a publisher to exploit the book-to-film connection, Macmillan has inked a partnership with the L.A.-based literary agency RWSH. The move, which allows RWSH to exclusively sell film and TV rights to unagented titles on Macmillan's list,

Richard Madeley and Judy Finnegan's new show on digital channel Watch attracted an average audience of 100,000 viewers, according to initial overnight figures.

Nearly three years after publishers filed a lawsuit against Google over its controversial program to scan books from library shelves, a settlement could be near. Although rumors of a settlement have flared up and died down intermittently over the years,

Self-publishing site Lulu has made almost a quarter of its employees redundant.

Online retailer Amazon.co.uk is to offer Print-on-Demand (POD) books in a move the company says will ensure titles "will effectively always be in-stock".