Category: publishing

“It’s a lot of pomp and circumstance for a corner of the culture that seems increasingly uncertain of its role in contemporary society, where the slow, immersive satisfactions of reading are easily overwhelmed by the onslaught of the information stream. In such a landscape, readers look to awards for reassurance, as arbiters of whether a book or author is any good.”

The characters from the books “are still in my head,” she told Winfrey in an appearance broadcast Oct. 1, according to the show’s website. “I’m not going to say I won’t,” Rowling said. “I loved writing it. So I feel I am done, but you never know.”

“A brother-sister act from Newfoundland stole the limelight at the announcement of this year’s finalists for the $25,000 [Cdn] Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, with both Michael and Kathleen Winter earning spots on the five-book shortlist.”

“If ever an age called for the kind of self-conscious maximalism pioneered by Wilde, Baudelaire and Huysmans, it is ours. Instead, we are beset with dreary naturalism.”

“In 1980, convinced that Ronald Reagan’s references to ‘the American people’ were not intended to include gay citizens like him, Larry Kramer began writing a book called The American People, envisioned as a national history of homosexuality.” He worked on it for 30 years, and Farrar, Straus and Giroux now plans to publish the book – which it is classifying as fiction – in 2012.

“In the long night of culture, we knowledge workers are restless sleepers. We need dreamers–in technology and science as well as the arts. Right now we are walking through two great dreams that are shaping the future of scholarship, even the very idea of scholarship and the role “the book” should play within it.”

“Around six out of 10 of those between ages 9 and 17 say they’re interested in reading on an electronic device such as the Kindle or the iPad. Around one out of three from the same age group say they’d read more “for fun” if more books were available on a digital reader.”

“Priced much lower than hardcovers, many e-books generate less income for publishers. And big retailers are buying fewer titles. As a result, the publishers who nurtured generations of America’s top literary-fiction writers are approving fewer book deals and signing fewer new writers. Most of those getting published are receiving smaller advances.”

“The suicide of [the Virginia Quarterly Review‘s] managing editor has been blamed on workplace bullying. New details suggest the real story is much more complicated.”

“Some will say it’s unfair, random and capricious, but I disagree. As readers we pay a lot of attention to (and love to quote) those striking first lines.”