Category: publishing

“According to Nielsen BookScan data, 16 of the 25 books have enjoyed month on month sales boosts in February and 12 of the 25 have stronger sales in February 2011 than February 2010. In total, the 25 books have sold 53,000 copies in the first three weeks of last month, worth £322,000.”

“Its sales president, Josh Marwell, believes that’s only fair: 26, he claims, is the average number of loans a print book would survive before having to be replaced. HarperCollins UK won’t rule out applying this ebook strategy to British libraries – and should it do so, it can expect a frustrated reaction.”

“The translation was believed to have been lost in a bonfire in 1964, a year after the author’s death. Now, nearly 50 years later, it has resurfaced. The work was apparently rescued by Lewis’s former secretary, Walter Hopper, 79.”

“Can Atlas Shrugged find love with the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test? … In a kind of hearts-and-flowers literacy drive, public libraries across the country are sponsoring speed-date nights to draw more young professionals into reading rooms.”

Laura Miller on the danger: “no sooner does [a writer’s] narrative work up a little momentum or present a masterful scene than it hits a patch of long, dozy paragraphs filled with way too much detail about the scenery.”

“Publishers have stocked books in nonbook retailers for decades — a coffee-table book in the home department, a novelty book in Urban Outfitters. In the last year, though, some publishers have increased their efforts as the two largest bookstore chains have changed course.”

“Furious librarians are calling for a boycott of publisher HarperCollins over its decision to put a limit on the number of times its ebooks can be loaned.”

“Television is currently in the throes of a heady love affair with the book. For the last few months it has explored the joy of reading and sharing; of turning the pages and entering another world. The result of this passionate pairing has been a spectacle as exciting as any Treme knees-up.”

The Nobel-winning Australian author’s “The Hanging Garden is to be published next year, the centenary of his birth. Barely a dozen people have read the little masterpiece that turned up in the hoard of his papers in the National Library.”

“A number of highly political titles censored by the regime of ousted Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali are now returning to the country’s bookshop shelves. … Anecdotal reports are also emerging of once suppressed titles appearing for impromptu sale on street corners and newspaper kiosks across Egypt.”