Category: publishing

“Is there a model for success selling content? I think the answer to that question is “no.” I’ve spent my lifetime in book publishing and so did my Dad; I don’t like coming to this conclusion. But what I think I see is that selling content as a publisher is a business that is going to just get harder and harder until it won’t really be much of a business anymore.”

“The American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Association of Research Libraries said that there was unlikely to be an effective competitor to Google’s massive project in the near term. It asked the government to urge the court to use its oversight authority to prevent abusive pricing of the online book project.”

“Holmes is flashy, brilliant and extraordinary, but it is Watson’s blunter, quieter virtues of simple decency that we are called on to admire, and it is his voice that we trust. Being right is all very well, [Arthur Conan] Doyle seems to say through Watson, but being good is better.”

“A writer who thinks, who rewrites, isn’t just bucking an ugly trend. He or she is also taking control of a power that can delight the heart, encourage, entrance. That same power can deceive, betray and murder and it is a matter of basic self-defence to keep ourselves as literate as possible, as strong as possible in our words.”

Publishers, translators and agents on the titles that “should have gone on to take the world by storm. And never did, quite.”

“Granted, at Kirkus many of those critics were anonymous freelancers who were paid about $50 per review…. But as dangerous as it can be to instill power in reviewers who work for cheap (and are therefore less experienced), there’s now an even more menacing form of arbiter in our midst: the customer reviewer. And he works for free.”

“The magazine – which posted the cover image, as it does every week, on its own website – dedicates an issue annually to African American publishing. But something about the picture and the phrasing got on people’s nerves.” The cover headline is “Afro Picks!” (Click through to see the cover art.)

“The 19th century was a turbulent time for mathematics, with many new and controversial concepts, like imaginary numbers, becoming widely accepted in the mathematical community. Putting Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in this context, it becomes clear that Dodgson, a stubbornly conservative mathematician, used some of the [fanciful] scenes to satirise these radical new ideas.”

“There is a strong synesthesia that takes hold of the reader when food is described in literature. … But the corollary of this is that no cherries will ever taste as delicious as the ripe cherries in The Snow Queen and no Martini will ever be able to match James Bond’s in Casino Royale, shaken or stirred.”

SpokenInk.co.uk “allows users to download the works of authors including Anton Chekhov and D H Lawrence, which can be played on iPods, MP3 players, mobile phones and computers. The stories in its extensive library are narrated by famous actors such as Timothy West and Prunella Scales and cost between 49p and £1.99.’