Category: publishing

“It’s the fastest selling book of the year in the UK but British author EL James’s erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey is just too pornographic for residents of Brevard County, Florida, according to local librarians.”

Retired army colonel Richard Kemp accuses the publishers of “giving voice to terrorists.” The anthology’s editors “argue that its 235 [translated] poems, including love poems, verses exulting in the Afghan landscape and patriotic ballads, provide a unique insight into the human side of the Taliban.”

“Now, as we move into the digital age, the well-made copy has come to occupy a familiar, almost nostalgic middle ground between the aura of an original and the ghostly quality of a computer file. A mass-produced paper book, though bulkier and more expensive, may continue to be more desirable because it carries with it this material presence. And presence means something–or it can, at least, in the hands of a good book designer.”

“Fan fiction has boomed in the past decade, as young people (and many adults) have swarmed online to share what-if tales set in their favorite movies, books, animation, and videogames. Hunger Games fanfic? 10,692 stories. Teen Titans? 26,594 stories. Shakespeare fan fiction? Oh, yes way: 1,747 stories.”

“The digital age has transformed the physical act of reading and will alter journalistic literary criticism as well. … The full effect of these changes will have on book reviews isn’t clear, but they’re already shifting in ways that would both please and alarm Orwell.”

“Yoni Appelbaum, a Ph.D. candidate in history from Brandeis University, was procrastinating on his dissertation. Instead of writing, he would spend his time commenting on a blog under the pseudonym, ‘Cynic’. Eventually, it got him a job writing for that website – The Atlantic.”

“The suggestion is that iTunes song tasters, or viral videos, won’t generate a buzz for novels in the same way because you can’t really taste them in snatches. Cut-price deals or Twitter raves can presumably drive them up e-book best-seller lists, but if publishers die off, their sifting role – sorting out the literary chaff – will leave readers lost for real guides to the book market.”

Otsuka’s “slim prose poem about Japanese picture brides coming to America after WWI beat out works by literary giants Russell Banks, Anita Desai, Don DeLillo and Steven Millhauser.”

“We recently pointed out that publishers are fooling themselves by thinking that they must charge super high prices on ebooks. That post seemed to set off some angry folks inside the publishing industry who did the standard thing: talking about all of the overhead that goes into publishing a book. We hear this all the time. But it’s meaningless. It’s cost-based accounting, rather than value-based accounting. The consumer doesn’t care how much it cost you to make the original.”

“Believed to date from 1941, the translucent, tissue-thin pages are filled with annotated writing, crossed out and underlined in sections. Saint-Exupéry experts authenticated the pages.” One of the pages contains a scene that never made it into the book.