Category: publishing

“Magistrate Judge Dave Whalin had previously ruled that the threat wasn’t protected [speech] merely because it appeared in a poem, saying it wouldn’t have mattered if Spencer ‘carved the message into a stone sculpture’ or ‘cross-stitched it on a pillow.'”

“In an age of literary festivals in every provincial town, and writing courses at every red-brick university, everyone is encouraged to be a writer, and writing is considered a sacred art. Well, if everyone writes, there’ll be more bad novels. And if writing is thought sacred, they will become more boring.”

“The education ministers, who came from Bahrain, Lebanon and Jordan, drew up a list of 27 ‘no-nos,'” a Scholastic VP explained. “‘No dogs, no pigs, no boys and girls touching, no magic,’ she said, naming a few. They liked values and talk of honesty and cooperation among children,” but not “overly independent children or religion.”

“We won’t miss a third of our librarians and branch libraries the way we’d miss a third of our firefighters and firehouses, the rationale goes … but I wonder.”

“The “Academy” is intended to give aspiring writers a literary experience which, like a good book, both educates and delights. Part workshop, part retreat, part literary tourism, the Faber teaching model has proven so successful in Britain and Europe it is now expanding across the pond, starting with Canada.”

“Stemming from the edgiest enclaves of the book-loving universe, a glut of new literary magazines is giving a home to freshman writing and established prose.”

“Newspaper coverage of books no longer sets the cultural agenda in the way it did as recently as 15 years ago. As a corollary, second, literary publishers are feeling the pinch. Ignored by the mainstream media, and squeezed commercially by the innovations of the IT revolution, traditional book publishers are beginning to show signs of losing confidence in their vocation.”

The book “was being described as an authorised biography of the celebrated novelist. A stickler for precise use of language, Amis argued that he had not actually authorised the book, even though he agreed to give five face-to-face interviews to Bradford in return for having an “editorial say” over the contents of the biography.”

Here’s just one Dishonorable Mention: “Living next door to the Lesters for nearly twelve years now, Mrs. Nestor, fully aware of her husband’s fondness for pulchritudinous posteriors, was unable to deter Chester Nestor’s constant quest for Mr. Lester’s sister Hester’s monster keister.”

Amazon’s hefty rate is in part “a play for established authors who have not yet published electronic versions of their books. Many of those authors are haggling with their publishers over the royalty terms for digital books. … Amazon is throwing down the gauntlet by promising to give authors 70% of the sale.”