“Mass market paperbacks, those pocket-sized best sellers available everywhere from airports to drug stores, are on the decline, apparent victims of increased competition and the squints of baby boomers who value larger print over lower prices.” So publishers are experimenting with a larger format. “The new paperbacks will be at least a centimetre taller than mass market books — big enough to make the books more readable, but small enough to fit into pockets and existing store racks. In both size and prize, they will stand midway between mass market books and “trade” paperbacks, which are the same size as hardcovers.”
Blog
Dallas Museum Gets $400 Million
The Dallas Museum of Art had a big day Tuesday, getting donations worth as much as $400 million: three extensive art collections, a $25 million Monet, $32 million of endowment funds for acquisitions and a really nice house on Preston Road. The stash of 800 works dating from the 1940s to the present includes giants such as Jasper Johns, Richard Serra, Willem de Kooning and Gerhard Richter. It’s the largest combined gift in the museum’s history and one of the nation’s biggest ever.”
Chicago Theatre League Chief To Step Down
Marj Halperin, the long times head of the League of Chicago Theatres, is stepping down from the job. “Established in 1979 — as the Chicago theater community was just beginning to become a cultural force to reckon with — the League now serves as umbrella organization for about 170 Chicago area commercial, not-for-profit and presenting theaters. It is a community of organizations whose budgets, artistic missions and audiences vary widely.”
Double Discs: Two-Sided Music
If you’re older than 30, you remember when music came on vinyl records and cassettes and you had to turn the record or cassette over to play the other side. Now the CD generation gets its chance. DualDiscs are here: CD on one side, DVD on the other. The cost is about the same as a conventional CD, with prices ranging from $12 to $19.
Publisher Sues P. Diddy For Advance Money
Random House is suing P. Diddy to get back a $300,000 advance for an autobiography the rapper never wrote. The book was contracted for in 1999 and no manuscript is yet forthcoming. “Random House has seldom resorted to a legal course of action with its prospective authors who don’t write the books we have contracted for, but Mr. Sean Combs has left us no choice.”
Foyles To Expand Worldwide
Foyles, London’s much-beloved book shop, has announced that it will expand worldwide, in its first expansion since the 1930s. “The privately owned group will target cities where it can establish as authoritative a presence as it has in London, where its business has been based since 1906.”
Seattle Artists Rally To Fired Director’s Defense
Last week the board of tiny Seattle contemporary art presenter Consolidated Works abruptly fired founding director Matthew Richter without explanation. Now a virtual Who’s Who of Seattle art has signed a letter of protest to the board and the arts community has rallied to his defense.
Kenyon: A Fascinating Time For Classical Music
Classical music in trouble? Not at all, writes Nicholas Kenyon. “The fascinating question is why the repertory has been creatively disoriented in the way it has over the past couple of decades, why people now find gamelan music or 13th-century organum as meaningful to them as the classics. I believe there is a very simple answer to this: we have finally reaped the harvest of a century and more of recording and broadcasting, which has gradually made the widest possible range of music available to us, all at the same time, in an almost frighteningly all inclusive way. How could this overwhelming experience not have a drastic influence on our taste?”
Roundabout Leaves Theatre League
New York’s Roundabout Theatre has left the League of American Theatres and Producers, which represents Broadway theatres. “Todd Haimes, Roundabout’s artistic director, wasn’t available for comment. Variety quoted him last week as saying only, ‘The league doesn’t serve the needs of a nonprofit theatre operating on Broadway’.”
US Confiscates Art Passports
US Customs agents have confiscated fake passports intended for an art show, saying they might be “harmful if imported.” “The items belonged to an art group headed by Vienna artist Robert Jelinek, and included what the government described as “fantasy passports,” along with ink pads, rubber stamps and ink. They were taken from Jelinek’s luggage Feb. 9 in Detroit as he headed for Cincinnati.”