Category: publishing

“A mere collection of bound pages may no longer suffice for entertainment in the information age. That is where augmented reality (AR) books come in. We are talking books, plus.”

“A court in Singapore today sentenced the British author Alan Shadrake to six weeks in prison after he was earlier found guilty of contempt over claims in his book about city-state’s application of the death penalty. Shadrake, 76, was also fined US$15,400 (£9,600) over allegations he made in Once a Jolly Hangman: Singapore’s Justice in the Dock.“

“In The Novelist’s Lexicon, published Tuesday by Columbia University Press, 77 authors each come up with a single word that creates a window on their work. To be fair, a few cheat – Booker prize-winning novelist A. S. Byatt uses four words, ‘the novel as web’ – but for the most part, it’s a fascinating and strangely disciplined set of responses.”

The rock musician Patti Smith won the National Book Award for nonfiction on Wednesday night for “Just Kids,” a sweetly evocative memoir of her relationship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe and life in the bohemian New York of the 1960s and ’70s.

The rules “don’t exclude ‘retellings of the Bible and Shakespeare’s plays,’ or, for that matter, retellings of any other literary form. The singling out of fairy and folk tales belies a long-standing uneasiness with the form, its vaguely disreputable air. The fairy tale plays havoc with the premium we moderns place on originality.”

“No one has ever given the lie more memorably, explicitly, and universally than Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) in ‘The Lie.’ The poem, among other things, demonstrates the power of repetition and refrain. The power, too, of plain rather than fancy or arcane words – for example, blabbing.“

“Book sales are declining–they’re down tremendously this year. The college stores have to find other ways and other categories to make money otherwise they won’t survive. So bookstores at many colleges are preparing for a bookless future with new services they hope will keep students coming.”

“An initial print run of 1.5 million copies has been increased to 1.85 million. E-book sales alone have topped 100,000.”

“Eyebrows were raised tonight when judges for one of the UK’s most important book prizes failed to find enough biographies of merit to fill their shortlist.”

“At Sami Abu Hossein’s cramped bookstore, the hundred or so book titles listed on a wall aren’t bestsellers. They’re banned. … ‘There are three no-nos,’ the owner of Al Taliya Books explains with a big smile. ‘Sex, politics and religion. Unfortunately, that’s all anyone ever wants to read about’.” (His top seller: The Satanic Verses.)