Category: publishing

A “scent of frustration” was evident at the Romance Writers of America’s annual conference last week. “Despite all their success, despite accounting for one out of every four books sold, despite weathering this devastating recession better than any other segment of the publishing industry, this is still a group in need of some serious self-esteem building.”

“[M]uch in the way it has cultivated its image as a counterintuitive purveyor of Isaac Mizrahi clothes or Michael Graves tea kettles, Target has been building itself into a tastemaker for books. Through its book club, as well as a program it calls Bookmarked Breakout, both started in 2005, the company has highlighted largely unknown writers, helping their books find their way into shopping carts filled with paper towels, cereal and shampoo.”

Not so long ago, the Indian literature section of your average Delhi bookstore “would be a half-hearted affair, seemingly there more out of duty than joy, and usually it would be hidden away at the back of the shop.” No more: “A newly buoyant middle-class, better travelled, more curious and with more disposable income, has been devouring books like never before” and Indian authors can now aim at an audience of compatriots instead of writing for export.

“Barnes & Noble, the largest bookstore chain by revenue, just became the latest company to launch its own eBook store to compete with Amazon and its increasingly popular Kindle family of electronic readers. … Barnes & Noble says its new eBook store will let users download titles to a variety of mobile devices, including Apple’s iPhone, Research in Motion’s Blackberry, pcs and Macs.”

“Escorts immediately make you feel as if you had known them for decades. Their duties range from bypassing pileups on I-95 to purchasing double soy lattes to explaining why only one person showed up at your reading in Winnetka. … They are a vanishing feature of the landscape — even though most people are unaware of their existence — a testament to that amazing American ability to create niche careers where no such careers should exist.”

Author A.E. Hotchner, who delivered Ernest Hemingway’s manuscript of “A Moveable Feast” to publisher Charles Scribner Jr., writes that Scribner’s new “bowdlerized version” of the book is the result of a “frivolous incursion,” as well as a false assertion, by a Hemingway grandson. Contrary to the grandson’s claim, at Hemingway’s death the manuscript was not in shards but ready for publication.

Books, which as objects of desire have seemed to have scant place in Hollywood’s slick, visual sensibility, have a new role in the business of television. Reality stars, who as nonunion actors are unreliably compensated (mostly in perks), have begun to see books as nearly mandatory, if they’re to cash in on their celebrity.

“The coalition of presses plans to study how to bring together a wide variety of university presses of different sizes–a minimum of ten presses at launch–in an e-book publishing program that would launch with at least 10,000 e-book titles and add five to 10 new UPs each year over 5 years.”

“In the interactive and speedy environment of the blogosphere, audience participation influences and alters the course of events in a way that, whether one is committed to preserving the authority of traditional media or to its eventual erosion, is undeniably interesting.”

Their work must fulfill the vision for writing that Pinter set out in his 2005 Nobel acceptance speech – turning an “unflinching, unswerving” gaze upon the world, and showing a “fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies”.