Nora Ephron died yesterday at age 71. I love her movies (When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, and Julie & Julia) and her 1983 novel Heartburn is a personal favorite. Nora Ephron's wit made this story delightful even though it's based on Nora's marriage and divorce from Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein. She will be missed tremendously. Read more about Nora Ephron here. And here are Nora's Must Reads.

Sometimes contemplating the end of the world as we know it through a book can be thoughtful experience, and very often it's action-packed as well. Check out book lists such as If You Liked...The Hunger Games and the YA list Apocalypse & Dystopia to discover some great titles about the possibility of a dark future for humanity.

Browse through our Readers' Lists for even more books on this and so many other topics your fellow readers have discovered.

“A fictional biography whose subject in the beginning is a sixteen-year-old boy in the Elizabethan era and in the end -- three hundred years later -- is a thirty-six-year-old woman.” Okay, so would you pick up a book based on this summary? I was actually intrigued by the summary of Orlando, especially by its being written by Virginia Woolf. This is a wonderfully fun novel and a wild ride through four centuries, exploring the roles of men and women at different eras and the social mores of those times. Woolf cleverly matches her prose style to the literary style of the period in which Orlando lives, creating always-changing moods and sheer delight for the reader. I have read that the novel is based in part on Woolf’s life with her lover Vita Sackville-West, and that may be. But most of all, this book is just plain fun to read. A great introduction to an incredibly talented author.

Did you know the summer blockbuster The Dark Knight Rises (hitting theaters on July 20) riffs off of one man's work? Frank Miller re-imagined a Batman even darker than the vigilante crime fighter who came before, one burdened with black thoughts and dark deeds. Check out his Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, The Dark Knight Strikes Again, and Batman: Year One to meet the Batman who inspired David Fincher's film!

One of our greatest writers, Ray Bradbury, died yesterday at age 91. He wrote more than 27 novels and 600 short stories. “You must write every single day of your life... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.” ~ Ray Bradbury
And more on Ray Bradbury and libraries: http://nationalbook.tumblr.com/post/24555708196/remembering-ray-bradbury-1920-2012

Romance Writers of America states:

On average, a published romance author writes one-and-a-half romance manuscripts per year. On average, one to two romance novels per author is released per year.

In general, romance fiction is bought from an author by a publisher (sometimes through an agent) by way of a contract. The contract almost always involves a cash advance and then a royalty pay-out.

Authors can make anywhere from $3,000 to several million dollars for their first book. Like the authors, contracts and royalty rates vary greatly.