Category: publishing

“Swedish author Fredrik Colting reached a settlement with Salinger’s estate to end a lengthy copyright dispute over the book, Publishers Weekly said. As part of the deal, the book cannot be published in the US or Canada. But it can be sold in other countries.”

“Canadians view themselves as readers, relatively speaking – only 13 per cent say they’re non-readers versus 43 per cent of Americans. But that level of professed participation doesn’t cut it with reading activists, who see both the pleasure and the social usefulness of books being downgraded in favour of low-fun literacy campaigns and textbook-guided teaching systems designed to conquer standardized tests.”

“The threat to hundreds of libraries is being recast as an opportunity to bring in volunteers, and finally provide concrete examples of how the “big society” may work in practice – and, though any library is better than none at all, you have to wonder about what will transpire. How volunteers will convincingly step into the space left by trained librarians, or maintain six-day-a-week opening, remains unclear.”

“The most literate city in America is Washington, according to a survey released Monday by Central Connecticut State University, followed by Seattle and Minneapolis.”

“Now that Professor Gribben has blazed the path, we can think of reworking more classics for the delicate sensibility of the modern American schoolchildren. Or, more probably, their modern American parents.”

“Brazilian author Paulo Coelho has said his books have been banned in Iran and has appealed to Brazil to intervene. … Coelho, whose 1988 allegorical novel, The Alchemist, is one of the best-selling books of all time, said he would make all of his books translated into the Persian language … available for free on the internet.”

Last year “Jonah Lehrer wrote that e-readers might be more effective if they were less legible: ‘Our eyes will need to struggle, and we’ll certainly read slower, but that’s the point: … We won’t just scan the words – we will contemplate their meaning’.” Now some research is backing Lehrer – and the widely-detested font – up.

“Writers such as James Boyle are developing a theory of copyright which argues that “the commons of the mind” should be freed to liberate a moribund society. Open networks, runs the argument, will immediately have a positive effect on our culture. Indeed, it is now feasible that the copyright conventions by which publishers live and die will soon have the contemporary relevance of a papyrus.”

“Isn’t it amazing,” observed one, “how a voice can really jump off the page.” Another praised him as both “takedown artist” (but “the complete opposite of a sourpuss”) and “a great enthusiast” whose pieces, “even when the knives are out … remind you yet again of what amazing things words can do.

“App, which means “an application program for a phone or computer or other electronic device,” was proposed not because it is particularly new or groundbreaking, but because it came into its own and crossed into the wider culture in 2010.”