Category: publishing

“With the earth trembling beneath them, it is no wonder that publishers with one foot in the crumbling past and the other seeking solid ground in an uncertain future hesitate to seize the opportunity that digitization offers them…. New technologies, however, do not await permission.”

“The clue can’t be in the name: on the shelf, the most dust-prone part of a book is the top, which a jacket doesn’t cover. … Decoratively, too, they are a recipe for disappointment. … That, at least, is how it has always seemed to me – and some in the book trade appear to be reaching the same conclusion.”

“If you want to see what a 21st century reading experience should look like — one that enables you to bookmark, notate, listen to, and share passages instantly on Facebook and Twitter — the marketplace you’re looking for is e-Bibles. At the time of this writing, six of the top 20 most popular paid e-books in the Apple App Store are Bibles.”

Ron Rosenbaum considers how the Post‘s status as America’s iconic tabloid daily is bolstered by the paper’s moral sense. (Yes, he’s serious.)

“[Sherman] Alexie’s short-story collection ‘War Dances’ and [Barbara] Kingsolver’s historical novel ‘The Lacuna’ are in contention for the $15,000 prize along with [Lorraine M.] López’s ‘Homicide Survivors Picnic and Other Stories,’ [Lorrie] Moore’s ‘A Gate at the Stairs’ and [Colson] Whitehead’s ‘Sag Harbor.'”

Laura Miller: “Readers are what every novelist really wants, so isn’t it about time that a reader offered them some advice? … I can tell you why I keep reading, and why I don’t, why I recommend one book to my fellow readers, but not another. I’ve also listened to a lot of other readers explain why they gave up on a book, as well as why they liked it.”

“We turn off TV shows without a second thought. We walk out of movies on a whim. Concerts and plays? Sometimes, we don’t even wait for intermission. But abandoning a book feels different. It feels shabby and small-minded and short-sighted. Like a character flaw.”

Tracy Kidder, T.R. Reid and Kate Walbert are among the finalists. Graphic novels will compete in a category of their own for the first time this year, while “the LA Times will present its first Innovators Award to author and publisher Dave Eggers for his multifaceted, spirited commitment to literature.”

“A federal public defender for Johnny Logan Spencer Jr. said in court Friday that while the poem might be offensive, it has not incited violence and should be protected under the Constitution as a work of art. … Spencer’s poem describes an assassin’s mission to kill a president who is black.”

“Get an accountant, abstain from sex and similes, cut, rewrite, then cut and rewrite again – if all else fails, pray. Inspired by Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, we asked authors for their personal dos and don’ts.”