E Books

On Thursday evening, it suddenly became impossible to purchase most e-books on Amazon. It was possible to buy hardcovers, paperbacks and audiobooks, but not most Kindle e-books from the online retailer's website. The purchase of most Kindle e-books had been blocked -- however, those distributed through Amazon Digital Services, or published by one of Amazon's publishing houses, remained available. Concerns that Amazon had deliberately removed the ability to purchase certain books sent ripples through the publishing industry -- those who were on Twitter, at least.

The blankets, coats and diapers are all answers to a looming question: What can I do to help victims of Hurricane Sandy? And now there's another, literary solution: the Defiance Literary Benefit to Rebuild Red Hook . Red Hook, a relatively isolated New York City community that's a mixture of artists, industrial buildings and public housing projects, was hard hit by the massive October storm. Pictures of a flooded Red Hook were among the first to be circulated showing how much damage Hurricane Sandy was causing.

President Obama was the clear winner Tuesday. And he took one author with him: Nate Silver. "The Signal and the Noise," Silver's explanation of how he does what he does, has climbed to No. 2 on the Amazon bestseller list . The 544 page book was published in September. What Silver does, of course, is sort through lots of data to try to find the real story. His fivethirtyeight blog is named for the 538 votes in the Electoral College -- a majority of which is what it takes to get a candidate in the White House.

The European Union is poised to accept a settlement in the case it brought against Apple and publishers over e-book price fixing, Reuters reports. Apple and four publishers -- Hachette, HarperCollins,  Macmillan and Simon & Schuster -- were part of a settlement offer made in September. "European Union regulators are to accept an offer by Apple and four publishers to end an antitrust probe into their e-book prices, two sources said," Reuters writes , "handing Amazon victory in a bid to sell online books cheaper than its rivals, sources said.

It's the holidays, and we know you need help. So the Los Angeles Times has two seasonal e-books to help you get through the next couple of months with a minimum of angst and a maximum of pleasure. The first is "The Los Angeles Times Holiday Handbook" -- more than 110 seasonal recipes to help you celebrate Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year's. Selected from The Times' vast collection of carefully tested recipes, you'll find sumptuous dishes for every occasion. And, of course, they all have been perfected in our Test Kitchen and come with gorgeous color photographs.

British publisher Hamish Hamilton, which is behind the literary magazine Five Dials , is going where it has never gone before: to the record bin. The magazine has issued a limited-edition album, Five Dials 001. The magazine's first-ever release on vinyl is, it says, "a 10-inch dub remix of Hollis Hampton-Jones' novel, 'Comes the Night.'" Hold up: A dub remix of a novel ? Hard to imagine. Luckily, they have a detailed description: "For this one-off audio experiment, Hollis is backed by Ryan Norris, a member of the Nashville-based band Lambchop.

On Thursday news came from Europe that Random House parent Bertlesmann is in talks with Pearson to acquire its publisher Penguin. Random House is already the largest of the big six major publishers, and in fact, is the largest publisher in the world. But it could soon get bigger, increasing by about the size of Penguin. "Pearson confirms that it is discussing with Bertelsmann a possible combination of Penguin and Random House," the company said in a statement. "The two companies have not reached agreement and there is no certainty that the discussions will lead to a transaction.

Jeff Kinney is one of the most popular children's book authors on the planet. More than 75 million copies of the first six books in his "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" series are in print in 41 languages. They just haven't been available in a digital format. But that's about to change. The series' publisher, Amulet Books, announced Monday that it would release the first six titles in the illustrated series as Wimp-E-Books. The e-books will be available for download on Oct. 30 and are available for pre-order today through Amazon and Barnes & Noble . The highly anticipated seventh book, "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel," will be available as both a hardcover and a Wimp-E-Book on Nov. 13. One month before book No. 7's release, "The Third Wheel" has already spent 120 days on Amazon.com's top 100 bestseller list.

Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link, Cory Doctorow and Mercedes Lackey are among the authors who've included their works in the first Humble e-book Bundle . The Humble Bundle operation has previously distributed indie video games and raised more than $7 million for charity; now it is getting into the e-book game. This is how the Humble Bundle works: Pay what you like for a set of six science fiction-fantasy books. If you donate more than the average payment -- which changes in real time -- you get two more.

For the last 18 months, it was tough for Kevin Moffett to tell people what he was working on. "I would find myself getting out of breath," he says of his attempts to fully describe the project he was co-authoring. It's "The Silent History," an app that's a serialized novel, as well as a literary treasure hunt. Like a television show, it took a team of people to create and produce. And it dramatically advances the way digital novels take advantage of the latest bells and whistles available on the iPhone and iPad (sorry, no Android)