Get hype, Divergent fans—your favorite author is working on a new series.

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When you're writing a book, obviously you need to have some idea of where you're going to end up when you're finished. George R.R. Martin may hate writing outlines—which is probably why we're all in this mess, hungrily waiting for his sixth book— but when he sent his publisher the first thirteen chapters of A Game of Thrones, he had a much, much different idea of how the war between the Starks and the Lannisters would play out. Possible spoilers except...well, let's hope not.

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Ok, most of could have guessed this, but I'm not the only one who was holding out hope George R.R. Martin would get his next A Song of Ice and Fire this year, right?

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HarperCollins might profit off LGBTQ titles in its catalog, but don't take that as an indication of commitment to equality.

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Harper Lee, author of one of the classics, To Kill a Mockingbird is celebrating her 88th birthday today and decided to make a rather big announcement. Digital Spy writes, "In a rare public statement released through her publisher, HarperCollins, Lee said: 'I'm still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries. I am amazed and humbled that Mockingbird has survived this long. This is Mockingbird for a new generation.' " Just last year, the author was in a legal battle over the rights to the novel, which she said had been stolen from her by her literary agent through trickery. That suit was settled to Lee's satisfaction and you'll be able to purchase the novel digitally (both e-book and audio book versions) starting July 8. (via Geekosystem) Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?

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Just a reminder: It's illegal for companies to work together to artificially control the price of goods -- even when one of those companies is Apple. The Department of Justice's (DOJ) price fixing case against Apple has come to a guilty verdict. Now I bet they wish they had settled like all the other defendants in the case.

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Why do people think they can get away with crowdfunding something that doesn't belong to them? 

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Fans of the long-running A Song of Ice and Fire series (those are the books that Game of Thrones is based on, if you didn't know) were probably a little miffed when they heard that George R.R. Martin was working on a companion book called The World of Ice and Fire Encyclopedia instead of, you know, finishing the series. Well prepare to be more miffed (miffed-er?), because the release date has already been pushed back to 2014, and it's now going to be a multi-volume "lushly illustrated retelling" of Westerosi history. Which, to be fair, sounds awesome, but we would have settled for an encyclopedia. Or The Winds of Winter. Whichever.

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Pulitzer Prize-winning author Harper Lee dropped the proverbial mic after To Kill a Mockingbird and has been living a fruitful life ever since. However, a recent bump in the road has brought her name back into the news. She's suing her agent over the rights to her famous work, rights she says were stolen using trickery.

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Just a month ago we were talking about the shady things Amazon.com does to use its 60% of the ebook market muscle to make smaller publishers lower prices against their better judgement. We were also talking about how the US Department of Justice had announced that it would be investigating six of Amazon's competitors in ebook publishing (Apple, Simon and Schuster, Hachette Book Group, the Penguin Group, Macmillan, and HarperCollins) for colluding to set prices in the ebook market. Well, it only took about a month for the DoJ to announce that they had indeed found, in their opinion, enough evidence to prove that the six were trying to fix prices. And it took less than a day for Amazon.com to, seemingly coincidentally, announce plans to push down pricing on its ebooks, from $15 to $10 in some cases.

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A month ago, Apple and five other publishers were warned that the U.S. Department of Justice was seeking a case for collusion and price fixing regarding eBook prices. Now, it would seem those warnings weren't full of hot air, as the Department of Justice has officially filed a lawsuit against Apple, Hachette Book Group, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Penguin, claiming that these publishers colluded to fix eBook prices. Word on the people familiar with the matter street says Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, and HarperCollins already settled their suits, but Apple and Macmillan have refused to engage in talks, and deny that they have participated in an collusion to fix eBook prices.

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According to a report on The Wall Street Journal, the Department of Justice has taken notice of eBook publishing and pricing. Federal prosecutors have sent letters to Apple, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Penguin Group, Macmillan, and HarperCollins, stating that the Department of Justice is seeking a case for collusion and price-fixing. Aside from potentially reading about a possibly long legal battle, what consumers could expect from this is, intriguingly, lower eBook prices.

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And we were just talking about Amazon throwing its weight around to get small publishers to lower their ebook pricing even if they think it would be financially against their interests... now the US Department of Justice has warned Apple, Simon and Schuster, Hachette Book Group, the Penguin Group, Macmillan, and HarperCollins that it will be investigating them for possible violations of Anti-Trust Law in their pricing of eBooks. The case rests on the rules Apple set down for how publishers would be required to publish their books to the iPad, and some significant differences between their rules and the way publishers interact with physical retailers.

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Sometimes we review things because they're right up in our niche and we know most of you are going to be looking at them anyway, so you might as well listen to what we have to say about them. Sometimes we review things because they certainly look like they're right up in our niche, but we want someone we know to check them out first and tell us if the water is fine. That someone, naturally, usually, winds up being us. Which brings me to Geek Girls Unite, a book by Leslie Simon that came out yesterday from HarperCollins. Ladies and gentleladies, the water is fine. In fact, it's just the way you like it, or would have liked it when you were a young lonely girl geekling who thought she'd never find anyone else like her except on anonymous forums.

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Apple, along with book publishers HarperCollins, Hachette, Mcmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster are now involved in a class-action lawsuit that accuses them of colluding to fix prices in order to hurt Amazon's Kindle success. The lawsuit, being brought by a Seattle law firm, suggests that all the parties involved had reason to be afraid of Amazon's pro-consumer pricing scheme for both its hardware and for eBooks. The logic of the case goes something like this: Publishers were concerned about lost profits from the sale of Amazon's eBooks, Apple was concerned that the Kindle could seriously damage the iPad's viability as an eBook reader, and therefore, the two teamed up to fix prices to try and thwart Amazon's eBook endeavors.

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Let's pretend we live in a world where digital objects are forced to reflect the utility of a real-world analogue. For instance, we could say that this blog is a lot like a newspaper, and require that it be sold at news stands, get ink on your fingers, would require the destruction of an entire forest, and only be durable to last a few days. "This world is ludicrous!" I hear you cry. But this is the world in which book publisher HarperCollins wants us to live.

The Pioneer Library System of Oklahoma has posted an open letter to their blog in which they reveal that the eBooks that HarperCollins makes available to the library for its (groundbreaking, and totally amazing sounding) digital loan program will self-destruct after 26 checkouts.

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