➻ Portfolio, publisher of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time, announced the formation of a new imprint this week. It will be called Current, and will focus on popular science titles. And, if it does half as good as Portfolio does with business titles,* we all have a lot to look forward to. (*Here is a list of Portfolio’s current and upcoming titles.) Portfolio also put out a new issue of the Business Beat recently, featuring (as always) Jack Covert in the Just Jack corner.

➻ Fresh from victory over Amazon in the famous price wars, Macmillan CEO John Sargent has entered the arena of the Internets with a new blog. His post on the agency model, availability and price has generated quite a debate so far, with over 100 comments.

➻ As Claire Kirch reported in Publisher’s Weekly, A Colorado Group is calling for a boycott of Amazon. Kirch writes “ProgressNow Colorado is urging its members to make online purchases at Colorado-based retailers, such as the Tattered Cover Bookstore and Ultimate Electronics, explaining that these businesses employ ‘thousands of’ Colorado residents and pay Colorado sales taxes.”

➻ In announcing the Vook release of Unleashing the Idea Virus, Seth Godin smartly discussed what he calls The Wordperfect Axiom, or how “When the platform changes, the deck gets shuffled.” You should also check out Seth’s recommended reading for March, including Tom Peters’ The Little Big Things, released this week.

➻ “Fascination has little to do with what you say, and everything to do with what you inspire others to say and do (and buy).” So says Sally Hogshead, author of Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation, in her guest post over on the Bullish on Books blog. After working with her on her ChangeThis manifesto, I was hoping for more Jägermeister mentions in the article.

➻ The New Yorker‘s book club is reading Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us by Dan Pink this month. If you decide to join them, they’ll have a live chat with Dan on the 25th. (Drive was a Jack Covert Selects in December.)

➻ Economist Robert Schiller is a fan of Anna Bernasek’s The Economics of Integrity, writing “This book is a reminder that our economy functions as it does not just because of a profit motive, or because of regulations, but also because, fundamentally, people believe in what they are doing and have a personal sense of integrity.” He wrote that for a recent series of guest posts for Paul Solman’s Business Desk blog, in which various economists reviewed some of their favorite recent books. Schiller also chose Identity Economics: How Our Identities Shape Our Work, Wages, and Well-Being by George A Akerlof and Rachel E Kranton.

➻ New Zealander Ralph Brown has self-published a new fable, The Village That Could, and posted it as a free podcast on his website. Author Scott Sigler of Dark Øverlord Media believes in both self-publishing and podcasts. He built his very substantial audience that way, and recently asked Who Needs You, Big Publishing? in a presentation at this year’s TOC Conference. (Head over to the conference site to view a video of the presentation.)

➻ I wanted to embed this video, because it was created by two of the people I love most in the world, but I couldn’t, so you get Megafaun, The Tallest Man in the World and Jaw Lesson doing Bon Iver’s “Creature Fear.”