Category: publishing

“With many authors voicing their concerns about possible violence during the festival due to the heightened nature of the debate, and a call for protest at the venues, we neither have the desire to be responsible for yet more unrest in the valley nor to propagate mindless violence in the name of free speech.”

Madonna’s “Sex” leads the list…

“A fall so sudden and dramatic is perhaps best told in fiction. So we asked eight top novelists to imagine this moment from [the Libyan dictator’s] perspective. What is the ‘King of Kings’ thinking as he fights for his life?”

“Although China is one of the largest publishers of books, magazines and newspapers in the world, Chinese authors still receive little recognition in literary circles outside of China, which some attribute to a lack of translations.”

Geoff Dyer: “These days, unless I find myself in very unusual circumstances, I’m reluctant to read a book that shows any sign of prior occupancy. Mainly but not exclusively cosmetic, this aversion has proceeded in tandem with an increasing unwillingness to take other people’s readings — their opinions of what they have read — at face value.”

“Often one senses in such pronouncements that rush to judgment – it’s crap! – so typical of immature reading, lazy and disrespectful – qualities frequently fostered by the instant response culture of the internet,” says Rick Gekoski. Booker Prize judges must do better than that.

Despite works such as Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the decade since 9/11 might not have captured the decade. “The novel which comes to define the 9/11 era may have nothing to do with the event itself – at least in terms of plot.”

“A novelist without a publisher is like a singer without a microphone – mouth going, arms waving, nothing coming out – frankly, an embarrassment to herself and everyone else,” says writer Jane Rogers.

Novelist Ann Patchett goes on tour and discovers that “just because some people like their e-readers doesn’t mean we should sweep all the remaining paperbacks in a pile and strike a match. Maybe bookstores are no longer 30,000 square feet, but they are selling books.”

“Every time I finish the Big Important Issue Novel of the Month I lurch to the non-fiction shelves like a lost Bedouin who’s spotted an oasis.”