Category: publishing

“This is the best time for anyone to be a writer. The opportunities for writers to reach readers with their words have never been better. This is just a golden age, an incredible time. All of the traditional gate-keeping systems have fallen away, and power is shifting from traditional publishers to the authors themselves. We’re witnessing a confluence of multiple disruptive revolutions happening at the same time.”

You’re a geek parent – a science fan, into technology, maybe into making cool things yourself. What should you read to your kids? Wired has a (long) list of book ideas for you, everything from The Wind in the Willows to The Dark Is Rising (and a lot more).

The delicate sensibilities of Scottish men – who apparently just can’t be seen reading a crime book by a woman – caused one publisher to change an author’s name, and shorten her book title as well.

Well, that’s what the London bookies are saying. The 84-year-old author “joins a [finalist] list including her fellow Americans Ann Patchett and Madeline Miller, Esi Edugyan from Canada, the Irish writer Anne Enright and the sole British contender, Georgina Harding.”

“The special guest of this year’s fair was the Chinese Communist Party’s censorship bureau. Assisted by the government-funded, but independent, British Council, the fair’s organizers invited the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP)–the Communist Party’s designated body for ensuring that all publications, from poems to textbooks, are certified fit for the public at home and abroad to read.”

“Our directive was to nominate ‘distinguished’ works of fiction, published in book form in 2011 that, ideally, spoke to American themes. And 2011 saw a bounty of good novels. We unanimously agreed on our three nominees. In our collective judgment, these very different novels are three very distinguished works of fiction.”

“The oldest intact European book – the St Cuthbert Gospel – is to remain in the UK after the British Library raised £9m to buy it. The acquisition of the 7th Century copy of the Gospel of St John follows the library’s largest fundraising campaign.”

“A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter. I feel no obligation to deal with politics. I do feel a responsibility to society because of going into print: a writer has the duty to be good, not lousy; true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error.”

“Women Sufi poets were part of a widespread emancipation movement in the Indian Subcontinent and West Asia that started more than a thousand years ago and lasted till the nineteenth century. Interestingly, these poets fought for women’s rights at a time when that concept was still unformulated.”

“The obvious answer is to let the [jury] pick. We’re the people who have gone through the 300 novels. All the board is asked to do is to read three top novels that we’ve given to them…In fact, what’s happened today is a lot of the articles and blog posts have gotten it wrong–they’ve been blaming the three of us!”