Category: publishing

“We all know that words change their meanings all the time, sometimes glacially (the prescriptivists have been fighting on behalf of the original sense of disinterested for centuries), sometimes relatively quickly (that nonplussed thing snuck up on me). But this fact raises a question (it doesn’t beg the question–that means something else): How long should we hold on to a word’s old meaning?”

“[It] is very difficult to sympathize with or even understand Rimbaud as a human being. I suspect it is impossible. His poetry will not be understood either. It isn’t written for understanding.”

“The remarkable announcement this week by the Bodleian Library and the German Literary Archive at Marbach that they have agreed jointly to purchase a collection of more than 100 letters and postcards from Franz Kafka to his sister Ottla will cause great excitement amongst Kafka biographers and scholars.”

Dr Seuss’s art director Cathy Goldsmith was on eBay when she stumbled across a sale for tearsheets from 1950s magazines, purporting to be stories by the author, who was born Theodor Seuss Geisel in 1904. She bought the stories, and discovered that the seller, dentist Charles Cohen, was a huge collector of “Seussiana” and an avid Seuss scholar.

“I should be grateful that I’ve been given the same space as the big boys to display my covers and my reviews. I should say thank you for the sale. But I don’t. Because each time I sell a book on Amazon, I lose money.”

Collins has sold more than one million books of poetry. He says radio has been instrumental in building his audience. “Radio is such a perfect medium for the transmission of poetry, primarily because there just is the voice, there’s no visual distraction,” he says. But there’s also the appeal of the unexpected — it’s unusual to hear poetry on the radio.

Or will it? “Customers who pay the $100-plus for e-readers such as the Kindle or Nook are especially loyal to authors and their rights.”

“Borders presented a restructuring plan to its creditors on Wednesday that promised publishers and landlords a sleeker, more efficient company … But publishers characterized the plan as unrealistic and said they were more convinced than ever that Borders would be forced to sell itself or liquidate.”

“With more people using the internet, an online booksharing scheme might appear to be the perfect solution for people unable to visit their local library. But the idea has caused dismay among some library campaigners.”