With very little fanfare, and smack in the middle of the summer vacation season, the government of Canada has set up a website to solicit Canadians' opinions about "the important issue of copyright." Spearheaded by Tony Clement, the minister of

Respected poets Sharon Olds, Hugo Williams and Christopher Reid are in the running for best collection for the first time in the annual awards. Peter Porter, who won the award in 2002 for his Max Is Missing collection, is shortlisted

The adult trade and reference division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, a book publishing company that has struggled financially, has appointed a publisher seven months after its previous one resigned during a particularly difficult stretch for the company.

Amazon today announced that it would acquire shoes, clothing, bags, and accessories etailer Zappos.com in a stock-swap deal that will total approximately $847m.

The recession has changed consumers' shopping habits so much that three quarters of shoppers would leave a store without buying if they received poor levels of customer service

The finalists for the Ashton Wylie Charitable Trust Literature Awards have been announced with five finalists in both the Unpublished Manuscript and Book category.

Despite Gordon Brown pledging to safeguard spending on schools and universities, government documents show that the total education budget will fall by £100 million after the next election.

After a year in which Scholastic eliminated about 500 positions, sold off a host of non-core assets and wrote-down the value of other units, the publisher has begun fiscal 2010 as a streamlined company that is well positioned to improve

Sales in UK shops shot up 1.2% in June following a sharp fall in May as hot summer weather boosted clothing purchases, official figures show.

Online retailer Amazon has reported a fall in profits between April and June despite an increase in sales.

Revenue at Lagardere Publishing rose 11% in the first half of 2009, to just over 1 billion euros ($1.4 billion at current exchange rates) driven by Stephenie Meyer sales not only in the U.S., but in France and the U.K.

Mainland exhibitors at the annual Hong Kong Book Fair say they are more interested in learning about marketing strategies and promoting their brand names than making money.

Google should promise to protect the privacy of consumers with its Book Search service, the ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Samuelson Law Technology & Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley Law said in a letter to the search giant on

Comic-book films have been among the most bankable properties in Hollywood in recent years. But all the well-known characters are already locked up by big studios.

Michael J. Ross writes "Slow Web page loading can discourage visitors to a site more than any other problem, regardless of how attractive or feature-rich the given site might be. Consequently, many Web developers hope to achieve faster response times