Category: publishing

“Ask yourself this: is anyone, even the grittiest of Scandinavians, ever going to write a thriller about this week’s murders in Norway? Of course not. It would be like a murder mystery set in Auschwitz. Thrillers operate according to a set of rules, if not always to a formula. The reason that we love them is that they are not, fundamentally, going to surprise us.”

“Brewster Kahle, 50, founded the nonprofit Internet Archive in 1996 to save a copy of every Web page ever posted. Now the MIT-trained computer scientist and entrepreneur is expanding his effort to safeguard and share knowledge by trying to preserve a physical copy of every book ever published.”

“Could reading groups be losing their sway in our culture? On one hand, this is a reasonable question; on the other, it’s like asking whether the United States should worry about being out-powered by Belgium.”

The most notable feature of this year’s list, however, is the cheeringly high level of entries from independent publishers and, even better, small presses.

“The ruling declares comics and characters created by Jack Kirby — who helped give birth to the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk and the X-Men, all of which now underlie valuable movie series — were works for hire under the Copyright Act of 1909, and cannot be reclaimed by the Kirby family.”

“Has a vernacular style become the standard for the typical fiction writer? Or is literary language still a distinct and peculiar beast? Scholars in the growing field of digital humanities can tackle this question by analyzing enormous numbers of texts at once.”

“Untitled,” by Anonymous, was described as a 320-page, nonfiction, hardcover book with photos that will retail at $26.99. Order the book now, the publisher said, to ensure delivery by its November release date. It is, the e-mail said, “the inside story of life with one of the most controversial figures of our time.”

“Given the current state of the Poetry Society’s Arts Council funding (suspended until further notice), the Board’s ‘no-one need know’ approach does not appear to have served the Society well. Out of concern for my colleagues I have been wary of making the Board’s actions public. It seems quite clear, however, that funding cannot flow again, until the truth is out and a new Board is up.”

“Does the way the novel is constructed from the ebb and flow of its characters’ inner lives capture something of human existence, just as pictures composed according to the rules of perspective capture something about the relationship between object and viewer?”