MULTI MEDIA NEWS

Quercus - Independent publisher Quercus has put its plans for extension and new recruitment on hold given the current global financial slow down. The company failed to make a profit in 2008 but claim they will emerge from the current problems in a strong position.

Publisher, Faber have reported a fall of 17% in UK sales, according to the Bookseller. The company's chief executive blamed Christmas lists that just didn't cut it. The company are going to build their popular fiction lists as well as retaining their usual literary identity. There are no plans for redundancies and the company will not be looking at job cuts or wages freezes until, at least, March.

The British Library service is close to breaking point - Unison, who have launched a save the libraries campaign, claimed recently. The main reason for the problem in under funding and failure to buy in new titles. We all need to support the various campaigns up and down the country.

Harpercollins have launched two e-commerce web sites offering readers exclusive editions of work by Tolkein as well as natural history titles. www.tolkein.co.uk

TOP 5 MASS MARKET SELLERS OVER CHRISTMAS

1-BEEDLE THE BARD BY J K ROWLING
2-DEAR FATTY BY DAWN FRENCH
3-GUINESS WORLD RECORDS
4-AT MY MOTHER'S KNEES BY PAUL O'GRADY
5-THAT'S ANOTHER STORY BY JULIE WATERS

Daniel P Depp, the half brother of actor Johnny Depp, is to publish a debut novel set in Hollywood.

The novel, Loser's Town, is set to attract far more attention than the average crime thriller from a first-time author.

The revelation of the writer's connection to the world famous actor prompted a bidding war for the book in the US.

The British rights have been bought by Simon and Schuster, with publishers in Canada, Hungary and France also acquiring the title.

Loser's Town is to be published in spring 2009, with sequels already planned. The novel is said to involve a blackmail plot by a fictitious gangster who seeks to coerce a famous actor to appear in the film he wants to make.

The writer's inside knowledge of Hollywood and its underworld has enhanced interest in the content of the book.

His agent Meg Davis of MBA literary agents was initially unimpressed by the email she received from a writer who mentioned that he had a famous brother.

"I thought he was a nutcase but I wrote back saying our website says we'll read scripts, and I didn't care who his brother was," said Davis.

Like his brother, Daniel Depp was born in Kentucky.

He read classics at university and, after various jobs, he set up a production company called Scaramanga in Hollywood with Johnny.

The pair worked on the film The Brave in 1997, in which Johnny starred with Marlon Brando.

Daniel drew on his experiences making the film to create Loser's Town.

On the digital fiction count - The latest issue of the excellent Thrilling Detective is now online

And at the movies:

Jim Carrey is to play Scrooge for a new big budget version of Dickens favourite from Robert Zemeckis

It is rumoured that the movie Spider-man 4 will see Spidey battling Morbius the living vampire.

Watchmen is set for a MARCH 6th opening. The movie, based on the legendery graphic novel is highly anticipated and is bound to do a good opening. After that it's down to the quality of the film.

And not media related in any way but bloody amazing -

CHICAGO - U.S. scientists have found a way to levitate the very smallest objects using the strange forces of quantum mechanics, and said on Wednesday they might use it to help make tiny nanotechnology machines.

They said they had detected and measur

ed a force that comes into play at the molecular level using certain combinations of molecules that repel one another.

The repulsion can be used to hold molecules aloft, in essence levitating them, creating virtually friction-free parts for tiny devices, the researchers said.
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Federico Capasso, an applied physicist at Harvard University in Massachusetts, whose study appears in the journal Nature, said he believed that detection of this force opened the possibility of a whole new class of tiny gadgets.

Improving tiny machinery
The team, including researchers at the National Institutes of Health, has not yet levitated an object, but Capasso said he now knows how to do it. "This is an experiment we are sure will work," he said. His team has already filed for patents.

"By reducing the friction that hinders motion and contributes to wear and tear, the new technique provides a theoretical means for improving machinery at the microscopic and even molecular level," Dr. Duane Alexander of the NIH's National Institute of Child Health and Human Development said.

"The emerging technology of nanomechanics has the potential to improve medicine and other fields," he said in a statement.

The discovery involves quantum mechanics, the principles that govern nature's smallest particles.

By altering and combining molecules, tiny machines could be devised which could have applications in surgery, manufacturing food and fuel and boosting computer speed.

Quantum mechanical forces
The discovery arose from Capasso's prior work as vice president of physical research at Bell Labs, the research arm of telecoms gear marker Lucent Technologies, now Alcatel-Lucent.

"I started to think how can I use these exotic quantum mechanical forces for technology," he said in a telephone interview.

Bell had been working on new devices known as Micro Electromechanical Systems or MEMS, the technology used in air bag sensors to measure deceleration of cars. "We started to play with nanomechanics or micromechanics," Capasso said.

He knew that as devices became smaller and smaller, they would fall prey to what is known as the Casimir force, an attractive force that comes into play when two very tiny metallic surfaces make very close contact.

In very small objects, this force can cause moving parts to stick together, an effect known as stiction.