Cover Stories: A biography of Philip Roth; print-on-demand; Paul Burrell's memoirs; <i>Being Jordan</i>

Ross Miller, the Guggenheim Fellow who is editing the complete works of one of the giants of 20th-century literature, Philip Roth, has now been signed up by Roth's US publisher, Houghton Mifflin, for a biography of the writer. A professor of English at the University of Connecticut and the author of Free at Last, a study of Jewish immigration to the United States, Miller has been promised access to all Roth's papers and correspondence, as well as to his friends and family. Cape, Roth's long-time UK publisher, is the likely home for the project here.

* Print-on-demand has made less of an impact in the UK than in the United States, where publishing companies such as Perseus have a centre devoted to fulfilling orders for out-of-print backlist titles. This week, however, an enterprising independent bookseller, The Bookcase, Lowdham, Nottinghamshire, has announced it is setting up a publishing imprint, Bookcase Editions, to focus on out-of-print books of local interest. The first title is Leading the Blind by local-boy-made-good Alan Sillitoe. The novelist's non-fiction works include several volumes of travel. Leading the Blind forms part of the oeuvre, an evocative guide to old travel literature. Jane Streeter, owner of The Bookcase, reports that Sillitoe is delighted by the revival, and publication will tie in with Lowdham's Book Festival next month.

* As if William and Harry didn't have enough to contend with, next month will bring an expanded edition of Paul Burrell's memoir, A Royal Duty. The former royal butler's tale has sold more than a million in hardback for Michael Joseph and Penguin is hoping that a new 14,000-word section will boost the paperback. They promise that Burrell will be busy in British bookshops and media. You have been warned. Meanwhile, he has apparently signed up with a LA "talent" agency, with a view to a screen career.

* What a curious pair: Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss's award-winning book on punctuation, has been knocked from its spot atop the hardback bestsellers by a certain Katie Price, whose Being Jordan contains innumerable exclamation points of which Truss would disapprove.