Category: publishing

“The publishers said widespread use of their work by online news aggregators and other Web sites was undermining their efforts to develop an online business models at a time when readers and advertisers are defecting from newspapers and magazines.”

“BookGlutton.com, a Web site that permits readers to chat about books as they read, may be transforming a lone activity into a communal one. The site was born out of co-founder Travis Alber’s desire to talk about books with friends who had moved away. Her solution? A Web site that allows multiple users to write in the margins of an online book.”

“[T]he prize, known as the Ted Hughes award for new work in poetry, will be awarded annually throughout Duffy’s 10-year term as laureate. … The prize, worth £5,000, will go to a UK poet working in any form – including poetry collections for adults and children, individual poems, radio poems, translations and verse dramas – who has made the ‘most exciting contribution’ to poetry that year.”

“Some of the Penguin job cuts will come from Dorling Kindersley, which publishes illustrated reference books, and its Rough Guide travel publication business, where the group will move some of its publishing to an existing center in New Delhi. The job losses amount to around 10% of Penguin and Dorling Kindersley’s staff in the U.K.”

“Enterprising fiction writers are marketing themselves to book groups in person, by phone, and over Skype to boost sales. Meet the new breed of literary types on the make.”

“Three Muslim men were jailed today for an arson attack on the home of the publisher of a novel about Aisha, the child bride of the prophet Muhammad. The trio poured diesel on the front door of the house in Islington, north London, and set it on fire. The attack in September last year took place days before Martin Rynja’s company, Gibson Square, was scheduled to publish The Jewel of Medina, by the American author Sherry Jones.”

“Hugh Hefner’s Playboy has acquired the first serial rights to The Original of Laura, the final, unfinished novella of the late [Vladimir] Nabokov.” Also known as the book Nabokov wanted destroyed, a wish his son ultimately decided against.

“Several Journal sources have confirmed to Off the Record that a weekly New York-only arts-and-culture section is in the planning stages up at The Journal‘s new Sixth Avenue headquarters. It’s early yet, but in the very near future, a budget will be drafted for the product, an indication that the effort is a serious one. The new section could be introduced into the newspaper early next year, according to our sources.”

The website Five Chapters, started in 2006, each week “publishes a five-part story, serial-style, Monday through Friday. It’s Charles Dickens for the 21st century. And what’s more, [founder Dave Daley] has managed to attract some of the country’s hottest writers, including Stewart O’Nan, Arthur Phillips, Curtis Sittenfeld, John Wray, Wells Tower, Julia Glass, Darin Strauss, Jay McInerney and Kate Christensen. All for free.”

“The man who inspired Asne Seierstad’s smash hit The Bookseller of Kabul, Shah Muhammad Rais, is to start selling Afghan books into the UK, including the memoir he penned as an angry response to Seierstad’s book.”