Category: publishing

Not in love with the author of the Harry Potter series and her new adult book: “The arrival of The Casual Vacancy has been more remarkable for showing the ruthless, bullying side of publishing that has become all too common. And, given Rowling’s history of litigation, one can only imagine she has done little to discourage it.”

“The genius of syncing up the e-book and the audiobook is that the technology gives to us the thing that is most valuable – more time to read. All of us would read more books if we had more time to read:” Three ideas to make this WhisperSync e-book-to-audiobook sync-up thing actually work for people.

“Bilbo’s story is much more than just the development of an unlikely and reluctant hero. His Baggins side, which looks at times like mere parochialism and timidity, doesn’t fade and disappear as he adjusts to the world of adventure. Instead, Tolkien maintains the balance between these two aspects of Bilbo’s character, showing how they mature into courage and wisdom.”

How did author and filmmaker Stephen Chbosky make his 1999 The Perks of Being a Wallflower, with its bad language, underage drinking, suicide, drug use and sex, into a PG-13 movie? An actors’ contest over the f-word didn’t hurt.

“Norway buys 1000 copies of every book a Norwegian author publishes. It provides a $19,000 annual subsidy to every author who is a member of the Authors’ Union. The Association of Bookstores is allowed to have a monopoly on the sale of books–but is prohibited by law from engaging in price competition.”

Ibrahim Ferghali: “Taking together all the Arabic literature we see translated and celebrated today, in addition to the two aforementioned prizes and others, it is my view that nothing has changed. These translations have failed to give expression to the true nature of the Arab world’s literary output and they have proved unable to bring about any sort of audience for this literature.”

“I would hazard that the likelihood of a Canadian starting the day by reading a poem is greater now than it has been since about 1890. So much for the Internet killing the intellect.”

“Wikipedians not only have no way of deciding whether Philip Roth is an authority on Philip Roth, but even if they decided that he was, they have no way of knowing that the person claiming to be Philip Roth really is Philip Roth.”

“Responding to objections raised by scholars, writers, artists and others, the New York Public Library has revised its plan to remove most of the books from its flagship Fifth Avenue research center to make room for a circulating library.”

Fantasy novelist Silvia Hartmann is writing her current projcet, The Dragon Lords, on Google Docs, and she’s inviting fans to follow along live, watching the drafting, re-drafting and editing.