I’m trying out a new look for the Links post starting this week. Hit the jump for complete linkage. On the menu this week:

• Which popular book series would you tattoo on yourself?

• Lots of advice for aspiring novelists

• Book recommendations from around the web

• What’s behind Kindle’s price drop?

• Your future favorite TV show

• For those writing novels, here are a few recent pieces of advice. Sometimes, with a project as big as a novel, it can be helpful to step back and consider the big picture. To that end, the excellent blog of literary agent Nathan Bransford has everything you need to know about writing novels in one easy post. Bransford’s blog also has advice on how to deal with rejection. Men With Pens has another quick overview post, Five Things You Absolutely Need to Know Before You Write a Novel. Three Guys One Book tells you how to survive the odds as a debut novelist. And remember to watch your outlets, of course, because they’re spying on you.

• The price of “Amazon’s #1 Best-selling Kindle” has dropped sixty bucks to $299. TeleRead thinks competition might be the motivator (and a clone came out in China), or else the takeover of E-Ink by Kindle’s assembler, PVI, resulted in better prices for Amazon. Personally, I don’t think Amazon’s in a “pass the savings on to you” kind of mood with the Kindle. I think it’s more likely they saw the crazy buzz Apple’s price drop generated and wanted some of that. If anything, a Kindle discount is long overdue. But then, maybe Bezos just didn’t want to have to write one of these “sorry we screwed you” letters. In related news, one analyst says there will be 3 million dedicated ereaders in the US by year’s end. Stanza has already been downloaded 2 million times.

• My favorite torrent site isoHunt is in trouble. The MPAA is not only suing the ‘Hunt, they’ve vowed to persecute founder Gary Fung for the rest of his life. During the last MPAA/RIAA-led torrent pogrom a few years ago, isoHunt survived by using the argument that they were only a torrent search engine, and couldn’t be held responsible for illegal search results (if you don’t think file-sharing has legitimate uses, read this). CrunchGear reports, in the link above, that Fung will be using the same search engine argument. I hope it works, I love isoHunt. But if it doesn’t, don’t despair: you can always use Google.

• Speaking of Apple, great news for current and future Macheads: Sony’s releasing a long overdue Mac-friendly version of its eBook Library software at the end of the summer. It’s frustrating because really you only need the software once, to introduce your Sony Reader to Adobe Digital Editions, which is a much better program. If you’re a student, you can get a MacBook Pro for $1100, and they’ll throw in a free iPod Touch. Also, the Apple tablet is rumored to be coming out in October at a price point of $800.

• Contrariwise, the literary tattoo website, is having a week of Harry Potter tats to celebrate the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince movie, which gets released today. Not included in the week, this has to be the best Potter ink. But they’re all winners, really, at least compared to these tatted up Twihards.

• If you’re looking for some reading recommendations, look no further. The National Book Foundation is running a blog summarizing a National Book Award winner a day (fiction winners only), leading up to their crowning the best of the National Book Awards for their 60th anniversary. The Millions tells you why you should read Independence Day (I agree). Here’s The Daily Beast’s weekly recos. Nick Cave has written a novel; he reads an excerpt at the Guardian. The graphic novelization of a Richard Stark classic looks pretty good. And of course, you can always browse Chamber Four’s own book reviews to find books you’ll like.

• Quick takes: Hemingway was a KGB agent, and a bad one (that piece features the best Hemingway picture known to man); there’s a rumor that Jeffrey’s Eugenides’ Middlesex will be adapted into an HBO series—great news because “Hung” and “True Blood” aren’t cutting the mustard; an author who self-published on Kindle landed a book deal, his name’s Boyd Morrison; Playboy gets first rights to new Nabokov work, story at GalleyCat; and the RIAA is laughing at Joel Tenenbaum’s “fair use” argument, at Ars.

• Random of the week: Comedy group Kasper Hauser has a (relatively) new website. Pretty much everything they do is funny, especially their podcasts. Their This American Life impression is spot on.