Category: publishing

“Because we live in a rapidly changing digital context in which more and more material is available through different means than before, and we have a responsibility to ensure that we’re using our money as effectively and efficiently as we can.”

“Utah State University Press narrowly escaped the chopping block this year. Eastern Washington University Press is being phased out as that school copes with budget cuts. Even the most prestigious presses are feeling the pinch: Yale University Press reported in March that revenue was down nearly 8 percent, and the State University of New York Press announced five layoffs in December.”

Farhad Manjoo says that Amazon’s new newspaper reader “presents news as a list–you’re given a list of sections (international, national, etc.) and, in each section, a list of headlines and a one-sentence capsule of each story. It’s your job to guess, from the list, which pieces to read. This turns out to be a terrible way to navigate the news.”

“Bad news is never new, but anyone overwhelmed by today’s political scandals, wars, financial disasters, soaring unemployment and drunken feral children can take refuge in the 19th century – and its wars, financial disasters, political scandals, soaring unemployment and drunken feral children. Over two million pages of 19th and early 20th century newspapers go online today, part of the vast British Library collection.”

A federal judge yesterday “granted a 10-day temporary restraining order forbidding publication in the United States of a new book by a Swedish author that contains a 76-year-old version of Holden Caulfield while she considers arguments in a copyright-infringement case filed by [J.D.] Salinger. … ‘It does seem to me that Holden Caulfield is quite delineated by words, that is a portrait by words,’ Judge Batts told the lawyers. ‘It would seem that Holden Caulfield is copyrighted.'”

“When writer and Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Lisa Scottoline (Look Again) asked who she had to sleep with to get on the Indie Bestsellers Lists at the opening panel of the day of education at BEA, she pointed up what some consider to be a flaw in the American Booksellers Association’s bestsellers list: it is weighted so that it doesn’t reflect raw sales.”

“Benjamin Zephaniah did it stuck in a lift with a drag queen, Phillis Levin in a car on the side of a mountain, Patience Agbabi 20,000 feet above sea level in a spasm of guilt about her carbon footprint, and Kenneth Steven did it in his head during a sermon in church. Poets don’t need a tranquil room of their own to write, the Ledbury Poetry festival has proved, by asking this year’s participants for the most unlikely physical location in which they have practised their art.”

“’60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye,’ by J. D. California, a 33-year-old humor writer from Sweden who uses that gimmicky nom de plume, might be read as an update of sorts to [J.D.] Salinger’s 1951 classic, ‘The Catcher in the Rye,’ which has sold more than 35 million copies. The new work centers on a 76-year-old ‘Mr. C,’ the creation of a writer named Mr. Salinger.”

“An author who is being sued for a coming novel that J.D. Salinger says is ‘a rip-off pure and simple’ of ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ will argue that his book is a legally protected literary commentary on Mr. Salinger’s original novel.” The author “says that his novel is not a sequel … but rather ‘a complex and undeniably transformative exposition about one of our nation’s most famous authors, J.D. Salinger, and his best known creation, Holden Caulfield.'”