Category: publishing

“Digital literature, online scientific research and internet journalism that should have been saved in the nation’s main libraries over the past five years may have been lost because ministers have failed to give them the legal power to copy and archive websites.”

“You can buy The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown, as an e-book for $9.99 at Amazon.com. Or you can don a pirate’s cap and snatch a free copy from another online user at RapidShare, Megaupload, Hotfile and other file-storage sites.” Will publishers suffer the piracy woes that have afflicted the music industry?

“Independent booksellers have gained market share during the first half of the year, despite a reduction in the number of independent bookshops trading … [and] increased discounting from competitors such as the supermarkets, Amazon, and chain booksellers.”

“The Stanford scholar who wrote a controversial biography of James Joyce’s daughter has settled her claims for attorneys’ fees against the Joyce Estate for $240,000. The settlement successfully ends a tangled saga that has continued for two decades.”

“[A]fter facing strong opposition in federal cabinet to the idea of scrapping import restrictions altogether,” the country’s Competition Minister suggests “that the government could keep import restrictions in place but require local publishers to make new releases available simultaneously with their overseas release.”

“Publishers are turning down titles they would previously have published because of increasing numbers of highly expensive ‘no win, no fee’ legal claims. The development, particularly strong over the past 18 months, poses a serious risk to free speech, according to English PEN.”

“The London Evening Standard was always the great survivor. Since it first hit the streets 182 years ago … it has seen off 13 rivals, absorbed nine other titles and thwarted the ambitions of all who would do it down, from Robert Maxwell to Ken Livingstone.”

“Described as a stickler for etiquette, Lottie the otter will be only the second female character to populate the world of Winnie-the-Pooh (after Kanga the kangaroo), when Return to the Hundred Acre Wood – the first new Pooh book in more than 80 years – starts showing up in stores [next week].”

Oxford English Dictionary editor-at-large Jesse Sheidlower discusses the challenges – for the purposes of an unabridged reference work – of defining all those words that ArtsJournal can’t include in its e-mail newsletters.

“Fans of ebooks are always on the lookout for a magic bullet — a killer app, a brilliant new device, a groundbreaking title — to bring them to greater prominence. With the out-of-the-gate Kindle sales of ‘The Lost Symbol,’ it looked like they’d found their rocket.” And yet they hadn’t.