Category: publishing

Tamim al-Barghouti, an Egyptian poet and professor, wrote a poem about the protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square – the title translates, roughly, as “O Egypt, [The Time] Is Near” – that has become wildly popular. Copies are made and distributed hand-to-hand, and a recording of the poem is played repeatedly in the square.

“The producers are unapologetic for this exercise in literary populism: who needs to apologize when a total of 1.75 million people listened to the broadcasts on radio last year and another 250,000 accessed podcasts online.”

“The incidence of mood disorders, suicide and institutionalisation was 20 times higher among major British and Irish poets between 1600 and 1800 according to a study by psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison. In other words, poets are 20 times more likely to end up in an asylum than the general population. Science has puzzled to explain it.”

“One hundred years after her birth … [she] is admired in every critical camp – from feminists to formalists – who agree on little else. … Bishop is, for the time being at least, the most popular woman poet in American literature after Emily Dickinson. … What makes her pre-eminence particularly remarkable is that she wrote so little.”

“With the publishing industry in turmoil, … the long-lunching gentlefolk who once managed the mysterious process of literary midwifery are being replaced by fast-paced production workers, paid by the paragraph and often operating from home.”

“There was something snarky and unkind, perhaps even verging on rudeness, in Mr. Martel’s gift of 100 books, and in the accompanying letters, well-written and insightful but too often containing a chest-poke of condescension, or irony.”

“In a tough week for high-street bookselling, it was announced yesterday that 11 branches of Waterstone’s – including two in Dublin – are set to close on 6 February.”

“Up to the minute it may be, but Julian Assange’s new media sensation will need traditional print to come into clear focus.”

“The sorry exception to e-book universality is, as usual, Apple. Books you buy from the company’s iBookstore will only work on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. If you’ve got one of those devices, you’re actually better off buying books from Google and Amazon; those books, after all, can be read on your Apple devices and everywhere else. That makes Apple’s iBookstore pretty much useless.”

David Schoen, a Montgomery, Ala., attorney who filed the suit, said by telephone that the book was falsely marketed as an accurate account of peace negotiations in the Middle East. “You cannot market it as the absolute truth on something when it’s not.”