The week that was - with Katie Allen from The Bookseller

Amazon has continued its push into publishing this week, buying 450 titles from Marshall Cavendish—the e-tailing giant's first foray into children's publishing. The books will be published both in print, and as e-content for the Kindle Fire which incidentally looks set to hit the UK in a matter of weeks

Think publishers are cowering in the face of Amazon's ambitions? Think again. Two new imprints have been unveiled this week. Hachette Livre stablemates Little, Brown Book Group in the UK and New York's Grand Central Publishing are joining up on a new list which will specialise in commercial crime, suspense and thriller titles in translation. The imprint will be named Trapdoor in the UK, and the first title is set to be Swedish bestseller Dark Secrets by the duo known as Hjorth-Rosenfeldt.

Meanwhile, Constable & Robinson is to launch Canvas, a new commercial fiction list which will focus on women's fiction. The Bookseller office was particularly enamoured of the rather lovely logo.

World Book Night is also looking to grow, with founder and Canongate m.d. Jamie Byng predicting "dozens" of countries will take up the idea, after the promotion expands to the US next year. He also revealed an altruistic bent for 2012, with half of the million titles up for grabs to be donated to "some of the hardest to reach potential readers particularly within UK prisons, libraries and hospitals, care homes and homes for the elderly". The debate over the effect of the promotions on booksellers rages on, but as our features editor Tom Tivnan points out, last year 20 of the 25 WBN titles had sales lifts comparing March 2011 and March 2010.

We broke the news this week about two poets dropping out of the race for the T S Eliot Prize for Poetry, first Alice Oswald and later in the week Australian poet John Kinsella, over ethical concerns about new sponsor Aurum. It's been a little while since we had a prize bust-up, and this one reflects the true purse vs principles debate that will only get more biting as economic woes continue.

And one prize that no one is particularly happy to receive is the "dreaded" Literary Review Bad Sex Award. Bloomsbury's David Guterson, who took the prize for his contemporary reimagining of the Oedipus myth Ed King, was laissez-faire about his win, commenting: "Oedipus practically invented bad sex, so I'm not in the least bit surprised". "Carry On" star Barbara Windsor was there to present the prize, even though the author was unable to make it.