On BookMachine over the past couple of weeks it was all Fitba, Shades and Gray as Cargo announced three new signings, there were 6 Questions for Jon Reed and we asked Should Children’s Books Come with Age Certifications?

In the news it was announced They’re Making Another Hobbit Film Now, and while Steidl launches book-scented perfume, Fifty Shades beats Harry Potter into submission on Amazon.

We had a guest post from Kathy Meis on why It’s a Brand New World, and if you find yourself in Edinburgh over the festival period, do amble along to BookMachine Edinburgh – 17th August.

Yes, yes, it’s another post about another sales record broken by Fifty Shades of Grey, but look: we’ll stop reporting on it just as soon as you convince people to stop buying it. Vintage has unleashed the Kraken here, and the second it can stuff it back into the depths (oo-er missus, etc.) from whence it came, we can all shut up about it, finally, and get on with our decidedly non-sexy day to day lives. Until that glorious day, however, we’re stuck with letting you know that the trilogy has now collectively outsold all seven Harry Potter books on Amazon UK, making EL James the biggest selling author in the site’s nearly-fourteen year history.

This week on the site, our Monday column argued that sometimes Your Innovation Ain’t All That. We then saw The elderly get techy with iPads, and Thomas Pynchon’s back catalogue digitised at last, while dreaming up puns as Publishing goes to the dogs in early Christmas slate announcements (barking up the wrong tree?).

Our big news was the announcement of BookMachine Oxford (hosted by Osprey Group). We hope to see all you Oxford folks there on 28th June.

Elsewhere on the web, there’s lots going on for you self-publishing types out there: are you Not writing? There’s an app for that: Write or Die. There’s More on the economics of the self-published book, some reading on Booktango and the Future of DIY E-book Publishing and there’s the suggestion that Amazon’s markup of digital delivery to indie authors is ~129,000%.

Are you an editor? This week The Guardian has been big on The importance of good editing, and what do you think, Should Editors Get Credited in Books?

Meanwhile, here’s Jane Friedman on marketing and building an author platform and the Anatomy of Book Discovery: A Case Study.

These posts look at How ‘Fifty Shades’ Is Changing the Face of Publishing and Why the ebook you want isn’t for sale in your country.

And, to wrap up this week, here’s a Summer Reading List 2012: 10 Essential Books for Cognitive Sunshine.

Last week, after my observation that Waterstones is not in a better position to offer bundling now than it was last year, I had a brief debate on Twitter about pros and cons of bundling print and digital during which someone (oh so rightly) asked the question: ‘do customers even want an eBook version of the printed novel they just bought?’ This led to a couple of posts, and Sam Missingham brought out some numbers over on the Futurebook blog from a survey done with 4,000 customers 9 months ago. Here’s a summary:

This week on BookMachine, we kicked things off with the The ABC of Waterstones: A Bookseller’s ‘Promised Land’ and 5 questions for Carolyn Jess Cooke, then looked at This week in literary prizes and the news that Today in tyrants: Hussein daughter seeks publisher for father’s memoirs. And if all that wasn’t enough, we had 5 questions for Rebecca Swift of The Literary Consultancy.

Elsewhere on the web it was a mighty busy week too, especially if writing’s your thing: here are 10 Ridiculously Simple Tips for Writing a Book, and Getting your first book published: Lessons learned! Meanwhile this post has Six Tough Truths About Self-Publishing (That The Advocates Never Seem To Talk About), while there’s the argument that Discoverability and Marketing Are Publishing Company Differentiators. Here’s How to fight back against bogus Amazon/Kindle reviews, and what about some Self-Publishing Statistics – Who are the Top Earners?

On the tech front, some are asking Can We Please Move Past Apple’s Silly, Faux-Real UIs?, is it a symptom of Nostalgia and Finitude in Digital Media?

For designers there’s The Future of Book Cover Design in the Digital Age discussed and Publishing Perspectives asks: Does Digital Publishing Really Encourage More Reading?

It seems that If You Want to Succeed in Business, Read More Novels, even though Over half of surveyed e-reader owners use devices to conceal ‘shameful’ reading habits. And for all that reading over the weekend, you might need 17 Cozy Reading Nooks Design Ideas.

Between the re-publication of Mein Kampf and the revelation that Osama Bin Laden liked to keep up on his correspondence (which at least explains all those missives to the Daily Mail signed ‘Outraged of Abbottabad’ that were uncharacteristically gay-friendly by the paper’s usual standards), this is very much shaping up to be the summer of the dead megalomaniacal tyrant in the world of letters.

Well, here’s another one to throw on the pile and set alight in an ironic tribute to the fallen despots: Raghad Saddam Hussein – daughter of… eh, let’s say George Foreman – is shopping around international publishing rights to Hussein Sr.’s memoirs which, like Bin Laden’s letters, are handwritten. What is it with these guys and writing manuscripts by hand? Man, you’d think they lived in a cave or something.

It’s been a big week in the world of Waterstones. Last Monday, we had the shock announcement that they would be hand-selling Kindles – their long-awaited digital strategy finally coming to the fore ­– followed by their refurbishment plans, introducing branded coffee shops to over 130 stores. There are so many buzz words I could use here but instead I’m going to confine myself to a run through of what seems to have emerged over the past week in the Wacky World of Waterstones.

Everyone’s a critic

The web, and not least Amazon’s customer review functionality, has been blamed for the demise (or at least the endangered species status) of the professional literary critic. There’s not doubt that the amount of space in the national press given over to books is less than ever, and the number of literary editors has diminished too. Needless to say, the whole newspaper market is changing and shrinking, thanks to this Internet thingummy. So, Bookmachiners, I ask you – is this such a bad thing?

I have a weird dual perspective on this issue…

This week on the site, we were Revisiting elearning in the Web 2.0 age with Anna Faherty, and Felice Howden asked What Game Is Anobii Playing? Meanwhile, the London Literature Festival announces 2012 line-up, and Century buys rights to Wool, inevitable sheep jokes.

Elsewhere on the  web, it appears that Amazon aims to launch front-lit Kindle in July and Amazon launches CreateSpace in Europe.

As Pottermore adds Kobo as a Harry Potter e-book partner, and apparently Moglue Makes It Dead Simple For Anyone To Create And Publish Interactive Ebooks, there’s A Humorous Yet Truthful Look at Publishing, and The Book Designer is asking: Are You Trying to Create an “Impossible” Book?

And then there’s the big questions: Paper Book vs. Digital Book – Who reads which, where and why?

Finally, it appears that In E-Reader Age of Writer’s Cramp, a Book a Year Is Slacking.

On the site this week, we were Writing the book on fashion, arguing that the term ‘Legacy Publisher’ Is Not A Thing, and reporting on Foyles now selling ebooks.

Meanwhile, as we ponder Franzen, E-books & Bathtubs, Is Amazon the Death of Literary Culture?

There was lots going on in educational publishing as Online Store Kno Sues Publisher for Pulling Its Digital Textbooks and Nature Publishing Group Officially Launches a New Interactive Textbook. Apple and Others Strive to Be the Next Wave in Educational Publishing, and as Inkling Previews Its Semantic Publishing Platform, which looks to be a pretty good response to iBooks Author, there’s yet another authoring platform released by Sourcefabric.

As The publishing industry has gone mad for film-style trailers, we also had news that Publishers win battle against illegal e-book sites. Go team!

And BookWrap leaves you this week with 29 Soundbites On Writing And Publishing.