Adult books have the Wodehouse Prize for comic writing, and now children's books have their equivalent: The Roald Dahl Funny Prize. The prize is the brainchild of Children's Laureate Michael Rosen and he will judge along with Sophie Dahl, Dara O'Briain and Chris Riddell. There will be two categories, each worth £2,500: 6 and under, and 7 to 14.

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Rumours that Gabriel García Márquez had written his last novel were premature. The Nobel prize-winning Colombian author, who suggested to a Spanish newspaper a couple of years ago that his heart was no longer in fiction, is now reported to be close to completing a new work.

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People have until July 8 to vote for one of the six novels competing for the Best of the Booker: Pat Barker's The Ghost Road, Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda, J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, J.G. Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur, Nadine Gordimer's The Conservationist, and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children.

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Retail displays are the most important driver of book sales, according to new research by The Bookseller. No they are not, said Book Marketing Ltd a week later: respondents to its survey claimed that booksellers' recommendations - usually advertised in displays - were the least influential of marketing aids. Which is correct? With booksellers charging publishers huge sums to appear, it's an important question.

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Princeton University Press may have established an unenviable record when it spotted 90 spelling and grammatical errors in a 245-page book that it has withdrawn from sale. The errors littered Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District by Peter Moskos. “This is a terribly embarrassing matter,” said Peter Dougherty, the PUP director, blaming the debacle on a junior copy editor.

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