Category: publishing

Amazon helps journalists and fiction authors publish short stories and long articles – but why? Could be to accustom writers, and consumers, to working only for the e-giant, some suspect.

“A group called the Cooper Square Committee started a petition to save the store, attracting 40,000 signatures. Business picked up by about 25 percent in September and October, Mr. McCoy said, leading him and Mr. Contant to believe they could continue with a smaller reduction in rent.”

“The Russian Booker Prize is set to choose the best novel of the decade. The five finalists were picked by professional jury from a list of 60 books, previously shortlisted for the prize in various years from 2001 to 2010.”

“Via yet another enhancement for Amazon Prime, subscribers who also own Kindles can borrow one (and only one) book per month from about 5,000 available titles. Once borrowed, you keep the book for as long as you like.”

Yearly figures show “a drop in the number of static and mobile public libraries from 4,612 to 4,579. And they show a 2.9% drop in the number of book loans to 300.22 million.”

“Alexis Jenni received the Prix Goncourt for his debut, L’Art Francais De La Guerre (The French Art of War). As is traditional, the 10 Euro (£8.60) prize was handed out at the Drouant restaurant in Paris.”

“Everything I’ve ever written was composed in notebooks first. I have hundreds of them filled with my scribbles tucked away in boxes. I also buy them obsessively, so I probably have just as many empty notebooks lying around the house ready and waiting to be filled. I find that writing longhand I can enter a zone of comfort I find hard to achieve when sitting in front of a screen – I find typing annoying.”

“A Belgian judicial adviser has recommended the country’s courts reject a legal bid to have a book featuring fictional boy hero Tintin banned for racism.”

“Expert librarians whose skill has been treasured for decades by choirs, dramatic societies and researchers face the loss of a centralised system in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, which makes loans from an unrivalled lending collection of 500,000 music scores and 90,000 playscripts.”

“The only difference between me and other authors is that I send my work to a wonderful woman who understands my atrocious spelling and corrects it. Apart from that, I am a writer. That’s what I do, write.”