Category: publishing

Mark O’Connell: “I’ll start a book, get about halfway through it, and then, even if I’m enjoying it, put it down in favor of something else. … On my bedside table, there’s a precarious column of half-read paperbacks that taunts me with the evidence of my own readerly promiscuity. The reason I don’t finish books is not that I don’t like reading enough; it’s that I like reading too much. I can’t say no.”

“if television companies, encouraged by the success of Parade’s End, should decide to look outside the narrow bounds of established classics to the nearly forgotten, where should they look?” (Hint: Look for writers’ writers.)

“Are Amazon et al, with their bought-and-paid-for notices, killing off the book review? Or are they rather making the traditional, commissioned book review more important than ever?”

Bestselling American crime novelist Sue Grafton has back-pedalled on her description of self-published authors as “too lazy to do the hard work” following disbelief and anger from the independently published community.

Kafka, after all, wanted his work burned. So did Virgil, who tried to destroy the Aeneid. “When it comes to such arguments, who is right? Who is justified? Why does it matter – and what does it even matter, in the modern age where it’s no longer an easy thing for the past to simply disappear?”

“In 2013, publisher Chicken Soup for the Soul will sell a new line of Chicken Soup for the Soul Foods around the country. This growing collection of comfort foods will begin with seven soups, including an ‘iconic Chicken Noodle’.”

Literary once denoted the value, intent, and even content of a written work. Now it mostly connotes taste. What’s “literary” is not always “best,” but usually suggests a higher form of artfulness in writing. In the collapse of high and low, it loses meaning, becoming a diffused, vague suggestion of class and classism (kind of like, sorry, “hipster”).

“At first, he advertised that he would review a book for $99. But some clients wanted a chorus proclaiming their excellence. So, for $499, Mr. Rutherford would do 20 online reviews. A few people needed a whole orchestra. For $999, he would do 50.”

“The acknowledgments are now the last words a reader encounters. Is it really worth clouding a novel’s actual finale for what is, in effect, an advertisement for a book the reader has already finished?”

“Campus bookstores’ long-term survival depends on abandoning literary pretense altogether. According to the National Association of College Stores, which represents approximately 3,000 campus retailers, course materials account for a smaller and smaller proportion of total bookstore sales, ticking down from 57 percent in 2009 to 56 percent in 2010, to 54 percent last year.”