Category: publishing

“The winners of the general excellence award were Reader’s Digest, Field & Stream, Wired, Texas Monthly, Foreign Policy and Print. The general excellence awards are categorized by circulation, from the more than two million (Reader’s Digest) to the under 100,000 (Print).”

“Amazon has shown that an e-book reader can find customers, provided the content is available. Amazon has the content part nailed and will, presumably, be happy to see Apple create a much larger installed based of e-book-capable hardware than Kindle ever will. My prediction is that if Apple really does the mediapad, Kindle will go away.”

Four hundred years of male domination came to an end today with the election of Carol Ann Duffy as poet laureate. Duffy, the widely-tipped favourite for the post, only agreed to accept the post ahead of poets Simon Armitage and Roger McGough because “they hadn’t had a woman”.

“Four members of a library board in West Bend, Wis., were dismissed last week for refusing to remove controversial books from the library’s young adult section–and yesterday, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the Association of American Publishers and PEN American Center criticized the firings.”

“Carol Ann Duffy is expected to be named by Downing Street tomorrow as the first female poet laureate, the latest in a line that has included John Dryden, William Wordsworth and Ted Hughes. Duffy is thought to have edged ahead of Simon Armitage to succeed Andrew Motion, whose 10-year tenure comes to an end tomorrow. For her fans – and there are a lot – it will be justice at last.”

“An Iranian scholar who stole pages from priceless books at Oxford’s Bodleian library and the British Library has had his sentence halved. Farhad Hakimzadeh, 61, of Knightsbridge, central London, pleaded guilty to 14 counts of theft and was jailed for two years in January 2009. … The British Library said it was disappointed with the court’s ruling.”

E-books may be the wave of the future, but some important books and authors are not riding that wave. Some writers or their estates object to e-books on principle (J.K. Rowling, Tennessee Williams); some think the royalty rate is too low; some doubt the market for older titles is sufficiently large; sometimes the contractual issues are just too complicated. But such big-name holdouts as Tom Clancy, Danielle Steel, and the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien are starting to come around.

“Luckily, in the confusion and chaos of the current publishing rEvolution, there are some people who are profiting. Like me. I’ve been offering my services to various terrified publishing companies. I’m a Post-Paper Evolution Consultant. My credentials are impeccable: I’m 29. I was practically raised by an original Nintendo….”

“I don’t blame you for losing track, but today was supposed to be the day the English language reached 1 million words. For a few years now, Paul Payack of the Global Language Monitor in Austin, Tex., has been issuing these deadlines like a millennialist preacher predicting the end of the world. Don’t worry: He’s already moved the magic date to sometime in June.”

“Anne Frank is in there, as is Oliver Twist, the four March sisters, William and the Famous Five. But a certain Hogwarts wizard was notable by his absence from the list when the five past Children’s Laureates were asked to hand-pick their ‘favourite ever’ reads. … What is clear is that the classics dominate their tastes, with only five of the total 35 books having been published in the past 20 years and a fifth of the titles dating from the 19th century.”