Category: publishing

Today “natural” expression–in language as in art–is preferred to artifice. We unreflectively suppose that truth no less than beauty is conveyed more effectively thereby. Alexander Pope knew better.

“By now we are all well aware of the trouble with Amazon” – its aggresive pricing, hardball business practices and crowding out of independent booksellers. “The real trouble with Amazon, it seems, is that nobody truly believes we were better off without it.”

France’s journal de référence has seen its circulation fall by more than a third over the last decade – a decline “aggravated by an over-staffed, outdated printing plant, archaic labour policies and substantial debt.” Yet there’s a battle on to buy the paper, involving “Paris’s power-hungry nouveau riche and intrigue at the highest levels of political power.”

Mon Quotidien, a daily paper aimed at an audience aged 10 to 14, has a circulation of 60,000. While there is a small editorial staff of adults, the final choice of stories is often made by a rotating panel of the paper’s young readers.

“It was one of the most elegant hotels in the world, the setting for Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice and the residence of choice for Hollywood stars from Clark Gable to Keira Knightley. But Venice Lido’s Grand Hôtel des Bains is no more after quietly closing its doors several months ago – to be reopened as a luxury apartment complex next year.”

“A court in Norway has ordered Ã…sne Seierstad, author of the Afghanistan-set bestseller The Bookseller of Kabul, and her publisher, Cappelen Damm, to pay 250,000 kroner (£26,276) in damages to a woman portrayed in the book.”

As World War II began, Miller escaped Paris and took a trip through Greece with pal Lawrence Durrell. “Miller, being Miller, didn’t merely nibble and float in Lotus-land: First published in 1941, [this book] … documents his attempt to devour the Hellenic experience and turn it to advantage.”

“Yes, absolutely. One of the things people … were working on in 2001 when I was actually halfway through Oryx and Crake, is the ability to create diseases. We can do that now. … People thought when I wrote Oryx and Crake that I made all this stuff up. I actually hadn’t. Year of the Flood? Granted I stretch it a bit, but these things are quite doable.”

“The Library of America, the nonprofit publishing house dedicated to creating an in-print library of editions of America’s greatest works, launched its first blog Friday. Called Reader’s Almanac, it focuses on joining the current online discussions that touch on the works and authors in the publisher’s catalog, such as William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman.”

The late Chilean author’s first book, written in the late 1970s but only just published, “is called Antwerp and it is but 78 pages, even with the generous margins. … Antwerp is the creation of themes and characters that will reappear throughout Bolaño’s writings. It is also the creation of Bolaño the writer, a statement about the kind of writer he wants to be.”