Category: publishing

In a statement, Borders said the delay was “intended to help the company maintain liquidity while it seeks to complete a refinancing or restructuring of its existing credit facilities and other obligations.”

Neil Genzlinger: “There was a time when you had to earn the right to draft a memoir, by accomplishing something noteworthy or having an extremely unusual experience or being such a brilliant writer that you could turn relatively ordinary occurrences into a snapshot of a broader historical moment. Anyone who didn’t fit one of those categories was obliged to keep quiet. Unremarkable lives went unremarked upon, the way God intended.”

“The annual Cairo book fair, due to have been held this week, has been abandoned, with many foreign exhibitors left stranded after failing to secure flights to take them out of the country.”

“After four years and the donation of 100 carefully chosen books, Yann Martel, author of the 2002 Man Booker prize-winner Life of Pi, has finally ended his self-appointed role as the literary mentor of Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper. Martel has been sending Harper one book every fortnight since April 2007.”

“Following the successful uprising in Tunisia and the biggest demonstrations in Egypt for decades, protests have spread across the Arab world. Will other regimes fall? Ten leading writers from the region respond.”

“By rethinking the kind of information a printed atlas should contain, and creating new ways of presenting it, [Joost] Grootens has reinvented the old-fashioned atlas to make it useful and relevant in an age when we can call up digital maps instantly on satellite navigation systems and the Internet.”

“Make no mistake: It will be your responsibility to market it. Many reviewers and bookstores won’t take you seriously. And you may never earn back your investment, which could be as high as $20,000. Is it worth it? Apparently, it’s at least worth the risk.”

“It is a book full of sound advice addressed to a class of all-male Ivy-Leaguers wearing neckties and with neatly parted hair. This, of course, is part of its continuing appeal. It is spoken in the voice of unquestioned authority in a world where that no longer exists.”

“In what could be a landmark moment in the struggle between old versus new technology, Amazon has announced that it now sells more copies of its Kindle ebooks than traditional paperbacks.”

“The author of the anonymously-written novel O, billed as offering the inside story of the current US president, has been widely identified in the US press as Mark Salter, a former aide to Obama’s Republican opponent in the 2008 presidential race, John McCain.”