It remains to be seen how much money will flow to the 165 plaintiffs who participated in the class-action suit, and attorneys for both parties involved in the 10-year battle say they are not allowed to talk about Friday's settlement, which is subject to final approval by California Superior Court for the County of Los Angeles.

Sources close to the situation calculate that those who joined the class action early are eligible for amounts ranging from $70,000-$140,000, and in some cases more. Those who joined later could get about 40% less, and a minimum amount has been set at $250.

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Of the $70 million, $43 million will be used to pay the class members and taxes on their awards, to fund required reserves and to "activities beneficial to the settlement class members." Two-thirds of the settlement will be paid by insurance companies.

After a recent meeting of its delegates held in Chicago, the National Writers Union has announced its opposition to the Google Book settlement with NWU president Larry Goldbetter calling the proposed agreement, "grossly unfair to writers." Goldbetter said that "compared to the number and seriousness" of the copyright violations engaged in by Google in scanning copyrighted materials, the offer to pay writers between $60 and $300 for each book is "ridiculously low." That only $45 million out of the $125 million in the settlement is allocated to pay writers, "seems way short of the amount needed to compensate authors of millions of books," Goldbetter said.

The NWU also objects to the deal because it believes it is burdensome to require writers to opt out rather than having Google ask permission to use their material. Finally, the NWU said the settlement could interfere with the relationship between writers and their publishers. "The settlement makes assumptions about electronic rights that writers may or may not have assigned to publishers and it sets up an unfair binding arbitration process to resolve disputes between writers and publishers. These disputes must be arbitrated on a case-by-case basis. The settlement does not allow for writers, who were collectively targeted, to collectively negotiate to settle these disputes."

Top showrunners such as John Wells ("Southland"), Ron Moore ("Battlestar Galactica"), Victor Fresco ("Better Off Ted"), Ed Bernero ("Criminal Minds"), Carol Mendelsohn ("CSI"), Clyde Phillips ("Dexter"), Doug Ellin ("Entourage"), Seth MacFarlane ("Family Guy"), Jason Katims ("Friday Night Lights"), Shonda Rhimes ("Grey's Anatomy"), David Shore ("House"), Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse ("Lost") and others have signed a statement opposing shifting two TV writing categories out of the live Emmy telecast (writing for a dramatic series and writing for a movie/miniseries).

The TV Academy announced changes to the show's format Thursday in an attempt to make the program more expedient by time-shifting eight of the 28 categories out of the live telecast. The moves will cut about 15 minutes from the three-hour program.

"Our job is to make an entertaining show that appeals to the maximum number of people but, most importantly, maintains the integrity of the Emmy brand," executive producer Don Mischer said at a teleconference last week.

Though the axed categories were split among directing, writing, acting and producing, writers point out that there were only four writing categories in the primetime telecast to begin with.

When she joined the Writers Guild of America, West in 1975, Mason continued the legacy begun in 1953 by Helen Thompson, the Guild's first African-American member. As did Thompson, many fellow black and women writers over the years were inspired by Mason's decades-spanning career in television, film, and on the stage. Writers Guild Award-winning writer Tina Andrews notes about Mason, "So many of us are here as writers because she was there first willing to assist our journeys. I thank God I had her powerful shoulders to stand upon."

A Shreveport, Louisiana native and Grambling State University alumna, Mason began in theater, becoming a prolific playwright with her work still in production today. She penned over 25 published and produced plays such as: Living Fat, for which she won the Kennedy Center's Norman Lear Award for comedy writing at only age 19, and A Star Ain't Nothin’ but a Hole in Heaven, garnering her the first Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award in 1977. She also became one of the youngest playwrights – of any race – ever to be produced Off-Broadway.

She was also a successful television writer/producer. Her career in television began at barely 20 years old after being hired as a writer on the CBS hit Good Times by TV legend Norman Lear, when he was the show’s executive producer/developer. "I never saw Judy Ann Mason without a smile. She brought it to her writing and her writing brought the rest of us to laughter. She was the ultimate upper," commented Lear on Mason's passing.

Her other TV writing credits include writing or co-writing for primetime network shows such as A Different World (NBC), American Gothic (CBS), Beverly Hills 90210 (FOX), Sanford, (NBC), and the Emmy-nominated series I’ll Fly Away (NBC). Her telefilm credits include Lifetime’s Sophie & the Moonhanger (teleplay by Sara Flanigan and Judi Ann Mason, story by Sara Flanigan). In addition, she wrote on daytime serials, as Head Writer for the Writers Development Program at Guiding Light (CBS), later becoming Associate Head Writer on the ground-breaking Generations (NBC), the first daytime series to center around an African American family.

The duo performed their hit Wanted Dead or Alive at a gala to celebrate 40 years of inductions.

Veterans Crosby, Stills and Nash were also inducted at the event, while Sir Tom Jones was given a hitmaker award.

Albers and Fontana will receive their awards at the 61st annual awards ceremony Feb. 7 at the Hudson Theatre. Albers served as president and Fontana as VP of the WGA East from 2005 to 2007. During that time, the two worked to broker the agreement that ended the long-running hostilities between WGA East and WGA West. "Albers and Fontana personify what the Jablow Award is about: service and dedication to the Writers Guild East and its membership," said WGA East president Michael Winship.

During Albers' term as president, the WGA organized Comedy Central's The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. He's also been a monologue writer since 1995 at Late Night With Conan O'Brien, winning an Emmy and six WGA awards.

Fontana is president of the WGA East Foundation. He's also written and produced St. Elsewhere, Homicide: Life on the Street and Oz, for which he received three Emmys.

The Federal Writers Project operated from 1935-1939 under the leadership of Henry Alsberg, a journalist and theater director. In addition to providing employment to more than 6,000 out-of-work reporters, photographers, editors, critics, writers, and creative craftsmen and -women, the FWP produced some lasting contributions to American history, culture, and literature. Their efforts ranged from comprehensive guides to 48 states and three territories to interviews with and photos of 2,300 former African-American slaves. These are preserved in the seventeen volumes of Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves.

"To be able to take the tools, the apprenticeship, whatever I learned from being a vampire writer, or whatever I was -- to be able to take those tools now and put them in the service of God is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful opportunity," she said. "And I hope I can redeem myself in that way. I hope that the Lord will accept the books I am writing now."

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"My objective is simple: It's to write books about our Lord living on Earth that make him real to people who don't believe in him; or people who have never really tried to believe in him," she said.

She pressed the point: "I mean, I've made vampires believable to grown women. Now, if I can do that, I can make our Lord Jesus Christ believable to people who've never believed in him. I hope and pray."

As the Swedish Academy enters final deliberations for this year's award, permanent secretary Horace Engdahl said it's no coincidence that most winners are European. "Of course there is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the centre of the literary world ... not the United States," he said in an exclusive interview Tuesday.

He said the 16-member award jury has not selected this year's winner, and dropped no hints about who was on the short list. Americans Philip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates usually figure in speculation, but Engdahl wouldn't comment on any names. Speaking generally about American literature, however, he said U.S. writers are "too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture," dragging down the quality of their work. "The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature," Engdahl said. "That ignorance is restraining."

His comments were met with fierce reactions from literary officials across the Atlantic. "You would think that the permanent secretary of an academy that pretends to wisdom but has historically overlooked Proust, Joyce, and Nabokov, to name just a few non-Nobelists, would spare us the categorical lectures," said David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker.

"And if he looked harder at the American scene that he dwells on, he would see the vitality in the generation of Roth, Updike, and DeLillo, as well as in many younger writers, some of them sons and daughters of immigrants writing in their adopted English. None of these poor souls, old or young, seem ravaged by the horrors of Coca-Cola."

"(The chat) was great actually, it was really an honour. She was much more conversational and relaxed than I had imagined that she would be, so I was able to enjoy myself and feel I was speaking to not just a queen but an ordinary person in conversation," he said. "Most of the conversation had to do with the historical questions the book explores, and she was really quite struck (by the story)."

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"The Queen was fascinated to hear this document is housed in its original version in the National Archives here in the U.K., in Kew, just a short distance from Buckingham Palace, so she wanted to know more about this document," Hill said. She also asked him what it's like to be a writer, and she spoke about her visits to Canada and how she imagines it would be a "wonderful" place to live, Hill said.

Rowling complained about articles in the Daily Mirror, Daily Record and the Scottish Mail on Sunday that reported that she had bought a property close to the estate she already owns in Perthshire. The Scottish Mail on Sunday article, headlined "JK's Rowling hills", was accompanied by pictures showing long-distance views of the author's home, the neighbouring property that she had recently bought and the surrounding countryside.

Rowling, through her solicitors Schillings, said that the articles, published in October last year, invaded her privacy by identifying the location of her Perthshire home. She complained that there had been a breach of clause 3 of the PCC code of practice. In 2005 the PCC upheld a complaint from Rowling after the Daily Mirror published information that could identify the address of her London home.

However, in this case the PCC, which has stated that identifying the location of celebrities' homes may attract stalkers, found that the articles did not name the road the property was on, nor its location in relation to the nearest town.

Salman Rushdie slipped into Buckingham Palace yesterday to receive the knighthood that had angered many parts of the Muslim world when it was announced last year that the Queen would knight the controversial author.

In a break with normal procedure, it was not announced in advance that the 61-year-old Rushdie would be among those knighted. The palace wouldn't comment on whether his name had been withheld for security reasons. Security has been a major concern for Rushdie since 1989, when Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for his death, accusing him of blasphemy against the Muslim world in the 1988 novel The Satanic Verses.

The edict forced Indian-British Rushdie to live underground, protected by British special agents, until the sentence was finally withdrawn in 1998. "This is, as I say, an honour not for any specific book but for a very long career in writing, and I'm happy to see that recognized," Rushdie said after the ceremony.

Spring has sprung leaks in big-network lineups. Ratings shortfalls for some top series have sparked Hollywood hand-wringing on the eve of next week's fall schedule announcements. Such shows as ER, CSI: Miami, My Name Is Earl, The Simpsons and Supernatural hit all-time lows in recent weeks, and others -- including Grey's Anatomy and Cold Case -- are down sharply from last spring.

Some observers blame the writers' strike, which forced a three-month gap in most scripted series and led viewers to stray. Most series have trickled back but without the usual marketing fanfare. "I'm not convinced people realized their shows were back," says ABC prime-time research chief Larry Hyams. "It's not like there was a premiere week" that lured them.

Strike-hobbled scripted series weren't the only ones to lose ground. American Idol, Survivor and Deal or No Deal did, too, part of the typical ratings erosion as series age. "There has been significant slippage compared to normal series averages," says ad buyer John Rash of Campbell-Mithun in Minneapolis. "What's difficult to discern is if this is a post-strike media malaise that will be corrected" next fall.

But it's not as if viewers abandoned TV. Nielsen data show overall viewership is flat or up slightly from last spring. Instead, more people are watching cable. And more of them are recording shows on DVRs, now in 24% of homes, up from 16% last spring. More than 2 million Grey's viewers — 10% of its total audience — now watch the show one to seven days after it airs.

1. "I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"

The actual advice here is technically a quote from Kurt Vonnegut's "good uncle" Alex, but Vonnegut was nice enough to pass it on at speeches and in A Man Without A Country. Though he was sometimes derided as too gloomy and cynical, Vonnegut's most resonant messages have always been hopeful in the face of almost-certain doom. And his best advice seems almost ridiculously simple: Give your own happiness a bit of brainspace.

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14. "I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled 'science fiction' ever since, and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal."

Vonnegut was as trenchant when talking about his life as when talking about life in general, and this quote from an essay in Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons is particularly apt; as he explains it, he wrote Player Piano while working for General Electric, "completely surrounded by machines and ideas for machines," which led him to put some ideas about machines on paper. Then it was published, "and I learned from the reviewers that I was a science-fiction writer." The entire essay is wry, hilarious, and biting, but this line stands out in particular as typifying the kind of snappishness that made Vonnegut's works so memorable.

1. AVOID ALL REFERENCES TO THE "R" WORD. "Retirement" conjures up images of mobile homes and leisure time-something you, as a career novelist, are unlikely to have much of once your book is released. When you're talking to agents and editors, or querying them by mail, you're not retired. You were, perhaps, most recently an accountant, but your professional situation has fortunately changed, so now you can pursue your literary career on a full-time basis. You've distilled your considerable life experience down into a phenomenal book that's going to have a wide audience. But you didn't decide to write a book because you had extra time on your hands. (You'd be surprised how many query letters trumpet that motivation.)