Category: publishing

Michael Shur, co-creator of the television comedy series Parks and Recreation, has based his video for The Decembrists’ “Calamity Song” on the game Eschaton, which David Foster Wallace described in his novel.

“How he both inadvertently created the voice of the Internet and ruined a generation of writers.”

“Aerodrome and charabanc are among the words presumed to have become extinct in the past year, according to lexicographers. Collins Dictionary experts have compiled a list of words which have fallen out of use by tracking how often they appear.”

“Boys need to be approached individually with books about their fears, choices, possibilities and relationships — the kind of reading that will prick their dormant empathy, involve them with fictional characters and lead them into deeper engagement with their own lives.”

Best paid author in the world can’t write novels fast enough to please fans — and that’s good news for libraries, bookstores, readers and even other authors.

“Children’s books provide ripe material because literature deals with everyday life — a terrain shared with economics.”

The James Tait Black Prize for fiction goes to a novel about an American photographer in Vietnam. “Tatjana Soli, a Californian novelist and short story writer, based the story on intense research of the Vietnam War and experience of the immigrant Vietnamese community in her home state.”

“The acquisition of a potential print bestseller that could mark a decisive point in publishing. Will authors begin to deal not with agents and commissioning editors, but with the companies that sell their work direct to the public?”

“Judith Palmer has been reinstated as director of the Poetry Society after some of the country’s best known poets, including Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy and George Szirtes, came together to call for her to be returned to the post she resigned from earlier this summer.”