Category: publishing

“All wars have their bards, and Mexico’s narco wars are no exception. Since 2006, myriad fictions have been added to the torrent of news articles, academic studies, poetry, artworks, movies, telenovelas and music (the famous narcocorridos – corridos are narrative folk songs) about narco culture.”

“Years ago a shabby box appeared on my porch with no return address, and after hours of suspicious avoidance I opened it to find the manuscript of one of my mother’s novels, lots of notes, and half a dozen of her unpublished stories.”

“Andrew Carnegie was once the richest man in the world. Coming as a dirt poor kid from Scotland to the U.S., by the 1880s he’d built an empire in steel — and then gave it all away: $60 million to fund a system of 1,689 public libraries across the country.”

“While informal archives of McSweeney’s, the eclectic literary magazine created by Dave Eggers, can be found in living rooms, bedrooms and bathrooms of apartments across New York, a more proper collection of the assets of this prestigious journal and its sibling publications is headed to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.”

“Aggregators are parasites, only slightly more benign than plagiarists – and sooner or later, parasites kill the host.”

Amazon has begun “discounting many best-selling hardcover titles between 50 percent and 65 percent, levels we’ve never seen in the history of Amazon or in the bricks-and-mortar price wars of the past.”

“On the heels of press reports that Amazon has drastically lowered the price on many hardcover titles, on Monday, July 29, the Board of Directors of the American Booksellers Association and CEO Oren Teicher criticized President Obama’s decision to hold his jobs speech this week at an Amazon facility in Tennessee.”

“More than 500 years after Gutenberg, the Bible is having its i-moment. For millions of readers around the world, a wildly successful free Bible app, YouVersion, is changing how, where and when they read the Bible.”

“As God — along with Bach, Beethoven and Mozart — is my witness, you cannot “reach” a crescendo.”

“Although Penguin Random House insists it will continue to compete in auctions for authors’ work, not everyone is convinced. For serious non-fiction works, when Penguin and Random House’s Bodley Head are often the only two in the auction, competition will cease, says literary agent Clare Alexander.”