Ebook Juggernaut John Locke Coming Soon to a Bookstore Near You

Plus: A new short story from Tom Rachmann is available as a Kindle Single

Today, from the book world: Dan Rather says his memoir is almost done, Tom Rachmann has a new short story available as a Kindle Single, and a self-publishing juggernaut signs a distribution agreement with a major publisher.

• John Locke, whose self-published ebooks about a CIA assassin named Donovan Creed and a formed gunslinger named Emmett Love have sold over one million digital copies, is coming soon to a bricks-and-mortar store near you after signing  "a sales and distribution agreement" with Simon & Schuster. The New York Observer explains that under the "unique" terms of the deal, Locke "is still a self-published author, technically publishing under John Locke Books," with the publishing house simply printing up hard copies and circulating them to bookstores. According to The Bookseller, hard copies of Locke's eight Donovan Creed novels will hit actual, physical shelves in February 2012. [The New York Observer]
• According to an interview with Women's Wear Daily, Dan Rather is "polishing up" his memoir Summing Up for release this coming spring. The former CBS newsman says the book will focus on “things I have lived” from the 1990s onward, which presumably means significant portions focusing on his retracted 60 Minutes report from 2004 about President Bush's Air National Guard service, his retirement as CBS News anchorman the following year, and his new gig as host of HDNet's critically acclaimed, sometimes hard-to-find news program Dan Rather Reports. When the project was announced last November, The New York Times described "a wide-ranging memoir about [Rather's] journalism days," but it sounds like the focus has narrowed. [WWD]
• The Imperfectionists author Tom Rachman has a new short story called "The Bathtub Spy" available for purchase as a Kindle Single today. According to the Amazon product description, the story centers on the relationship between Paul, a new employee at an intelligence agency, and his boss named Wayne, "who spends his days playing Solitaire on his computer [and] assaulting underlings with a chewed-up Nerf football." Mutual understanding, or a complete security breakdown, seems like the logical ending for the 15-page tale. [GalleyCat and Amazon]
• Bloomsbury has acquired the English world rights to El Clasico: Barcelona v Real Madrid, by Irish Times soccer writer Richard Fitzpatrick, a look at the history of the storied and sometimes insane ivalry between the two Spanish football clubs. The book is scheduled for publication "sometime in 2012" and, according to the publisher, will bring the rivalry's "epic nature fully to life with fascinating interviews and historical detail." [The Bookseller]