“Amazon.com is pushing deeper into the academic book market. The online retail giant will do on-demand reprints of some 400,000 out-of-copyright books from the University of Michigan library, in a deal announced today. Amazon has been actively targeting academia, trying to convince universities to adopt the Kindle DX as a textbook replacement and outsource reprints of older academic titles to its print-on-demand service, BookSurge.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Above The Fray, The High Line Develops Its Own Culture
“A little more than a month since its first stretch opened, the High Line is a hit, and not just with tourists but with New Yorkers who are openly relishing a place where they can reflect and relax enough to get a new perspective on Manhattan. Despite the complaints about noise, gentrification and tour buses spewing forth their cargo, many locals have fallen so hard and fast for the park that they are acting as impromptu tour guides, eager to show off their new love interest.”
Keats House Reopens Following Major Face-Lift
“It is a pilgrimage site for visitors from all over the world, now standing on a road renamed Keats Grove in his honour, and was voted the top poetry landmark in Britain by members of the Poetry Society. It reopens to the public on Friday after major restoration work backed by a £424,000 Heritage Lottery grant, which has recreated the rooms the poet knew – some charming, some hideous.”
Not Just Gates (Yes, US Still Needs To Talk About Race)
“A member of the cast of ‘Porgy and Bess’ stayed with a Pacific Heights friend during the opera’s run here. One night when the singer, an African American, was parking, a local woman emerged from her house, approached and demanded to know why she was there. … The next night, when the singer lingered in her car making a phone call, the woman apparently summoned police….”
SF’s Magic Theatre Pares Back From Two Stages To One
“The Magic Theatre is giving up one of its two performance spaces at Fort Mason Center,” and artistic director Loretta Greco is calling it “both an artistic decision and a fiscal one.” “Even before she was hired early last year, she said, she’d raised the question of whether the Magic needed two theaters for a six-play season. With only four plays in the 2009-10 season, it was time to take a step that ‘decreases our rent immensely.'”
High-Risk Investments To Blame For Orgs’ Ailing Budgets
“If the investment goal of arts endowments is the preservation of capital, how can they now face decreases of 35%, aside from the criminal actions of investors like Bernard Madoff? For the answer, look to nonprofit money managers and ‘managers of managers,'” which “have encouraged arts organizations to seek ‘total returns,’ including capital appreciation, from their endowments, rather than merely preserving capital and accruing dividend income.”
In Italy, International Art Crime Gains Academic Cred
With classes on art history, criminology, international organized crime, museum security and forgery, a three-month master’s program in international art crime studies — billed as the world’s first — is “trying to capitalize on interest in a field that’s been gaining attention through news media reports about the restitution of looted art and through popular literature. Not to mention that police forces around the world have in recent years created special squads to combat the problem.”
Romance Writers Have The Sales, But Respect is Elusive
A “scent of frustration” was evident at the Romance Writers of America’s annual conference last week. “Despite all their success, despite accounting for one out of every four books sold, despite weathering this devastating recession better than any other segment of the publishing industry, this is still a group in need of some serious self-esteem building.”
Photo Essay: What Should An Airport Look Like?
From the first days of airports, architects have struggled with their design, even as they “have become as ubiquitous–and about as glamorous–as bus stations. Perhaps that’s really the new model. In the talented hands of a Piano or a Foster, the bus station will be light and airy, but the kind of theatricality shown by the first generation of airports now seems out of place.”
Target, A Powerhouse Champion Of Unknown Authors
“[M]uch in the way it has cultivated its image as a counterintuitive purveyor of Isaac Mizrahi clothes or Michael Graves tea kettles, Target has been building itself into a tastemaker for books. Through its book club, as well as a program it calls Bookmarked Breakout, both started in 2005, the company has highlighted largely unknown writers, helping their books find their way into shopping carts filled with paper towels, cereal and shampoo.”