American literary great J.D. Salinger died today, he was 91. According to Harold Ober, Salinger’s representative, the writer died of natural causes. Here’s a brief excerpt from the New York Times J.D. Salinger, Literary Recluse, Dies at 91:

He bragged in college about his literary talent and ambitions, and wrote swaggering letters to Whit Burnett, the editor of Story magazine. But success, once it arrived, paled quickly for him. He told the editors of Saturday Review that he was “good and sick” of seeing his photograph on the dust jacket of “The Catcher in the Rye” and demanded that it be removed from subsequent editions. He ordered his agent to burn any fan mail.

My thoughts are with his family and friends.

It’s hard to ignore an author like James Patterson. His books, an estimated 14 million copies sold, are everywhere from airport bookstores, in the supermarket and featured on prominent shelves in bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders. I’ll confess that the only Patterson book I’ve read is Sail (aff link). The novel was okay. At best it was entertaining. But I’m unlikely to be buying another Patterson novel in the future.

However, being a mega-selling superstar author, James Patterson is someone all struggling novelists should pay attention to and learn a thing or two.

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I was shocked and saddened when I saw a story on a ‘Google Alert’ email that mystery writer Robert B. Parker died suddenly Monday January 18 of an apparent heart attack. Parker died at his writing desk, doing what he loved best, writing a new Spenser novel.

I began reading Parker’s novels in high school, and for a time, appeared to be addicted to them. The plots seemed simple enough, yet had an undercurrent of complex twists and turns. In fact, all those novels I read (which seemed to be a perfect escape from the angst of high school) inspired me to write my own mystery stories.

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Sometimes I just want to throw my hands up in the air and give up. I’m talking about those publishers and authors who are paranoid about their books being pirated if they’re released as ebooks. This ’strategy’ is not very business smart. Why? Because when a publisher/author refuses to release a book in ebook format for fear of pirating, it gets pirated anyway. I’ve pointed this out in one of my most commented-on posts J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the definition of irony.

Now we can add Stephen King into the mix (yes, that Stephen King, the one who wrote an exclusive ebook for the new Kindle he helped promote). His newest novel ‘Under the Dome’ was released in ebook format several weeks after the print release of the book. Publishers didn’t want the lower ebook price to eat away at the higher hard cover price. Within days of the print release, pirated ebooks of ‘Under the Dome’ were circulating around the internet. In turn, this ate away at print and ebook sales.

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For many people, it may seem wrong that one can get rich by giving stuff away for free. This is exactly what one science fiction writer and digital evangelist is doing – and he’s the traditional publishing industry’s worst nightmare. I’m referring to Cory Doctorow,  a fellow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the co-editor of the blog BoingBoing and a science fiction author who sells and gives away his novels for free.

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Stephen King’s latest magnum opus, Under the Dome: A Novel (aff link), has recently been released. If you haven’t yet made it down to your local bookstore, you might want to take a look. The novel is a brick, weighing in at a whopping 1,074 pages. I plan on reading King’s latest work eventually, but I’ll probably wait until the ebook edition is released later on this year (I only have so much shelf space and I don’t want Stephen King hogging it all).

The premise of the novel is interesting: A clear dome falls over a town and they must somehow survive the consequences of being cut off from the rest of the world. There is a great book review in the NYT – and the review is also where I got the inspiration for this post.

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If you’re looking for dirt-cheap prices on a few upcoming major hardcover book releases, then you’re in luck. Online giant Amazon.com (full disclosure – I’m an Amazon affiliate) and retail giant Wal-Mart are in a heated price war over upcoming titles by some heavy-hitting authors.

For consumers, this is great, especially for the upcoming holiday season right around the corner. Major titles to be released are Stephen King’s Under the Dome; John Grisham’s Ford Country; and James Patterson’s I, Alex Cross – the latest in his ongoing series. For booksellers, publishers and authors though, this is a worrisome trend.

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Science fiction and fantasy author Neil Gaiman is going to write a short story using Twitter. To be more precise, his going to write the first 140 characters of a short story, then let other Twitterers write the rest of the story. The crowd-sourced piece of fiction, once complete, will be compiled by BBC Audiobooks and will be made available on the BBC Audiobooks website as well as iTunes as a free download.

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In today’s technology-driven, social online world, authors need a website to promote themselves and their books. Without an online presence, an author risks being thrown into obscurity. An author website should be primarily of an author’s own making (except for the design, that should be left to professionals). Their publisher (unless they are an indie author) might help them optimize their site to promote their books – that never hurts.

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I’ve been reading Dan Brown’s newest book The Lost Symbol (aff link) since it was released on Tuesday. When I bought the book at my local bookstore, I knew it wasn’t going to be a great literary achievement and I had no expectations of being enlightened. I bought the book to be entertained.

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