Today in books and publishing: Susan G. Komen exec to tell her side of the Planned Parenthood story; bookstore imitates Chabon’s fiction; Woodward’s next book will cover Obama’s economic strategy. 

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Amber Qureshi leaves Viking Press. Qureshi, a rising star in the publishing world, has left her job as executive editor of Penguin imprint Viking Press. In 2008, she was featured in Publishers Weekly’s 50 under 40 list, and she has edited such titles as Voices From Chernobyl, Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger (winner of the Man Booker Prize) and Joshua Clark’s memoir, Heart Like Water. There’s no word on whether she has accepted a new position yet. [Publishers Weekly]

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Bob Woodward takes another look at a President and his men. The best-selling author and investigative journalist who helped break the Watergate scandal is turning his sights on President Obama, Congress, and their handling of the latest economic crisis. Simon & Schuster will publish the book on September 11th. The day before publication, Diane Sawyer will interview Woodward on ABC’s World News. [The Washington Post]

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Isaac Bashevis Singer story appears for the first time in English. Isaac Bashevis Singer once offered this explanation for why he chose to write in Yiddish: “I am sure that millions of Yiddish talking corpses will rise from their graves one day and their first question will be: ‘Is there any new Yiddish book to read?’” His decision to stick with Yiddish means that many of his stories have gone unread by English speakers. Today, The New Yorker publishes the first English translation of his story “Job.” [The New Yorker]

Google purchases travel guidebook publisher Frommer’s. Google has made another foray into the business of location-specific content by buying popular travel book publisher Frommer’s from John Wiley & Son. Last year, Google purchased restaurant review service Zagat. The company has not yet indicated whether they will continue to produce physical Frommer’s guidebooks. By the way, all these travel guidebooks are white-washing horrible regimes, according to Foreign Policy’s Michael Moynihan. [The Bookseller] 

The origins of fanfic. ”If you were to lock a group of pop culture junkies and TV addicts in a bunker, tell them that the end of the world had arrived and that they had to preserve culture for posterity by writing books, what they would produce would be fan fiction.” [The Guardian]

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