Category: publishing

Su Tong’s “The Boat to Redemption,” a novel about “a playboy Communist party official who castrates himself after he is banished to live on a river barge,” has won the Man Asian literary prize,” which “goes to an ‘Asian’ novel unpublished in English.”

Three paragraphs after Sarah Palin begins her acknowledgments with a nod to herself, “[Lynn] Vincent’s name is mentioned with several others. (At least she made it before the thanks to flight attendants, ‘Big Dipper Construction’ and ‘everyone who values good customer service.’)”

“Poligny residents’ effort to preserve an old-fashioned Main Street bookstore may seem eccentric in an age of electronics, instantaneous communication and discount giants. But not in France, a country that is unusually fixated on its centuries-old traditions and is determined to safeguard its cultural heritage.”

“The aroma of an old book is familiar to every user of a traditional library. A combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness, this unmistakable smell is as much part of the book as its contents.”

“Right now, we have this vision of the publisher as a monolithic service entity that proves everything from typesetting and printing to distribution to sales support, marketing and PR. But there’s no reason it has to do all those things in one go. Or even the basic ones – like providing its products to retail outlets.”

“It’s always a pleasure to discover a formally gorgeous, subtly expressive typeface while walking along a street or leafing through a magazine. But that joy is swiftly obliterated by the sight of a typographic howler. It’s like having a heightened sense of smell. You spend much more of your time wincing at noxious stinks, than reveling in delightful aromas.”

“A high school librarian in Phoenix says a former student at the school returned two overdue books checked out 51 years ago along with a $1,000 money order to cover the fines.”

“Google, the internet’s search leader, is hoping to keep the deal alive with a series of new provisions. Among other things, the modified agreement provides more flexibility to offer discounts on electronics books and promises to make it easier for others to resell access to a digital index of books covered in the settlement.”

“Blyton, who died aged 71 in 1968 and has sold 600 million books, was a trailblazer. After training as a teacher, she got her first break thanks to Pollock, who worked at the London publishers George Newnes and helped her publish her first stories in 1924. But it was her own ruthless business acumen that helped her become the most popular children’s author of the era.”

Kaylie Jones, daughter of author James Jones: “My father agreed to eliminate a certain number of F-words – in part because there was a question whether the US postal system would even deliver the book to stores because of its ‘salacious’ nature – but there was another battle he was waging with his publisher. Apparently Scribner’s had a ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ policy about depicting homosexuality in the Army.”