Category: publishing

“Bluntly put, dictionaries are in trouble, and have been for years. The big, dusty, 2,000-page family dictionary has become surplus to requirements, as potential users have turned to the internet for their definitions. The figures for 2010 show that spending on dictionaries fell for the seventh consecutive year.”

“The public now expects and demands its media to be free. Digital books will be easily pirated and shared. We’re already seeing a decline in advances to authors from publishers, which in turn leads to less production of challenging books. The trend toward self-publishing and promotion, claims Morrison, only accelerates the drift toward free content.”

“If you accept this minimal commitment to the idea of learning from fiction, you ought, I reckon, to have some interest in the following questions: Is the practice of fiction one we can reasonably expect to give us the insight we hope for? Are serious fiction writers well equipped to give us that insight?”

The British bookstore chain was recently sold. “Managing director James Daunt has vowed to shake up the chain amid flagging sales and customer dissatisfaction. Many publishers have welcomed the move to abandon the 3-for-2 promotion which has dominated the shops’ sales in recent years.”

Wall Street firm Forrester Research has released a report saying that, if priced under $300 and supplies are sufficient, an Amazon iPad-style e-reader could sell 3 million to 5 million units just by the end of this year. Amazon has not confirmed that it is even developing such a product.

Director Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl) says his film is “staying incredibly true to Jane Austen and the humor that you get from Jane Austen and the dynamic of this society and the humor and insight that comes from the situations that she wrote about. And then you also get the horror of zombies.”

“I didn’t have this idea when the Borders closed in East Liberty, but I started noticing that there weren’t many bookstores anymore. I like books and I like talking to people about books. I go to yard sales and church sales. So I thought, ‘Why don’t I do this?’ “

A study from the Reuters Institute at Oxford compares per capita public funding of print journalism in Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the UK and the US, along with market penetration and copy sales. The results might surprise.

The modernist Syrian poet Ali Ahmad Said Esber – better known by his pen name, Adonis – is the first Arabic-language author to receive the prestigious €50,000 German literary award.

It’s different, if not necessarily better or worse. “The party’s still on. It’s not quite the same party, the drink’s a good deal cheaper and we’ve got crisps, not caviar. But there are more people invited, and some of them look pretty groovy. I’ll not get my coat just yet.”