Category: publishing

“Extracts from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf will go on sale in kiosks in Germany on Thursday, but with the text blacked out after a court ruled that reprinting the Nazi manifesto broke copyright laws.”

“Often seen as the most personal and mysterious of literary forms – and therefore least likely to be guided by an outside hand – poetry is, in fact, strikingly indebted to invisible creators. What, we might ask, are the effects and risks of this little-understood practice on the nation’s verse?”

Here are five fun book prize judging controversies…

“A vividly told story of life in pre-revolutionary Paris on Tuesday won the 2011 Costa book award in what turned out to be a bitterly fought two-way tussle between fact and fiction. Andrew Miller was given one of the UK’s most prestigious literary prizes – and a £30,000 cheque – at a ceremony in London for his sixth novel, Pure.“

Publishers have a problem when it comes to discussing Amazon: They may fear its power, but they are also dependent on it, because like it or not, Amazon sells a lot of books. But lately, the grumbling about Amazon has been growing louder, with some in the book industry openly describing Amazon’s tactics as “predatory.”

The Taliban’s secular-nationalist opponents are fighting back using some of the very arts that religious fundamentalists seeks to destroy–poems adapted to traditional Pashto music.”

Chetan Bhagat, a former Goldman Sachs banker, has published five books, all romances and all selling more than a million copies. Bhagat concedes to his many critics that his works aren’t great literature, but argues that they encourage social mobility.

“The share of adults in the United States who own tablet computers nearly doubled from 10% to 19% between mid-December and early January and the same surge in growth also applied to e-book readers, which also jumped from 10% to 19% over the same time period.”

“Textbooks are big, heavy and expensive. iPads are compact, light and very expensive. However, if you set aside the question that the vast majority of students won’t be able to afford the $500-plus price of an iPad, Apple’s business model for selling textbook is pretty appealing from an economic standpoint.”

“Great reviews do not guarantee an NBCC nomination. Some of the year’s best-received books were among the missing, including Chad Harbach’s ‘The Art of Fielding,’ Karen Russell’s ‘Swamplandia’ and Christopher Hitchens’ ‘Arguably.'”