There’s nothing like sitting by the pool in summer and diving into a good book. Summer reads usually include carefree fiction that allows you to travel to places you couldn’t otherwise afford to go. Relaxed summer schedules often free you up to put a dent in that growing stack of magazines in your basket and now you can do it for free!

Here’s how to get 10 issues of Family Fun magazine for free:
Sign up for a new account with Tippr (you should get a free $5 credit after you sign up).
Go to the page offering the 10-issue subscription to Family Fun magazine for $5 here.
Click through to purchase the deal. Your total should show up as $0.
Choose to pay through Amazon and you shouldn’t have to enter any payment information.

Christian Audio is offering a free download of “The Pilgrim’s Progress: Retold” by John Bunyan when you complete a 22 question survey. At the end it will give you a survey code. Be sure to write it down because that’s what you’ll use to get your free book. It will then redirect you to the free offer. Hurry! this freebie is available until 7/16/11.


Now, what are some of your favorite authors and celebrities writing about these days? Arnold Schwarzenegger was bragging that he was about to sign the biggest book deal of all time a month before the news broke in May that he fathered a love child with his housekeeper. But after the scandal, it’s Maria Shriver’s book that publishers are chasing, sources say.

#1 NYT bestselling author James Patterson’s next 26 books, including 4 new series for young readers, with 13 titles each for Michael Pietsch at Little, Brown, and Megan Tingley at Little, Brown Children’s, for publication through the end of 2014, by Robert Barnett at Williams & Connolly.

NYT bestselling historical thriller writer Matthew Pearl’s The Bookaneer, about a literary spy and bounty hunter in the 1890s who sets off on a quest to the Samoan Islands to wrest a manuscript from a dying Robert Louis Stevenson, moving to Ann Godoff at the Penguin Press, in a two-book deal, by Suzanne Gluck at William Morris Endeavor, and to Stuart Williams at Random House UK, by Cathryn Summerhayes at William Morris Endeavor.

Rock music legend from The Band, Robbie Robertson’s untitled picture book biography, written by his son Sebastian Robertson, focused on his early years growing up in Canada spending time at Six Nation Indian Reservation, and, later, living and working in America, joining Ronnie Hawkins ’s band as a guitarist at 16, sold to Christy Ottaviano of Christy Ottaviano Books, for publication for Spring 2013, by Ryan Harbage at the Fischer-Harbage Agency.

Jim Collins‘ Great By Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos and Luck – Why Some Thrive Despite them All, co-authored with management professor Morten Hansen, asking why some companies thrive in uncertainty and even chaos, based on nine years of research, enumerating the principles for building a great enterprise in unpredictable, tumultuous, and fast-moving times, also to be released in ebook form for the first time (with Collins’ four previous bestselling books now being released as e-books from July through September), sold to Hollis Heimbouch at Harper Business, for publication on October 11, 2011.

Which ones are YOU going to read?