Category: publishing

“The poem ‘Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam’ by Edward FitzGerald has gone interactive, courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center in Texas. Visitors to their website can compare the five different versions of the text, tag the poem and leave comments, almost as though FitzGerald had blogged his work, rather than publishing it on paper.”

A British scholar who specializes in the history of witchcraft and magic offers his list of the ten best grimoires, collections of “spells, conjurations, natural secrets and ancient wisdom [whose] origins date back to the dawn of writing” and whose history is closely tied to that of religion and the development of science.

“[T]he consumer advocacy group Consumer Watchdog has sent a letter to the Justice Department asking the department to delay the settlement, which still needs court approval.” The organization wants to ensure that the agreement raises no barriers for any future competitor to Google.

“It gives the home ballast. It lends the basement the appropriate air of mystery, history, and parental dreams deferred that all basements should have. The longer the book, the better. Epic works of over 400 pages, like mine, really serve to anchor a house. That’s why the proliferation of self-publishing makes me uneasy.”

“The digital generation has sparked a revivial in Britain’s love of audiobooks as figures from the BBC show there have been one million downloads of spoken word titles. … The US remains the biggest consumer of BBC audio books,” but the trend is picking up here.

“Opponents of gay marriage generally have relied on two authorities, the Bible and the dictionary–the divine word and the defined word. A 2006 friend-of-the-court brief filed on behalf of anti-gay-marriage organizations in a Maryland marriage case cited no fewer than seven dictionaries to make its point. … But in their latest editions, the dictionaries have begun to switch sides–though until recently, no one seemed to have much noticed.”

“At a time when booksellers are struggling to lure readers, sales of romance novels are outstripping most other categories of books and giving some buoyancy to an otherwise sluggish market. … Like the Depression-era readers who fueled blockbuster sales of Margaret Mitchell’s ‘Gone With the Wind,’ today’s readers are looking for an escape from the grim realities of layoffs, foreclosures and shrinking 401(k) balances.”

Silicon Valley company Plastic Logic “is building what they hope will be a Kindle killer – the first mobile digital reader made specifically for newspapers and magazines.” The plastic device, with a flexible screen roughly 8½x11 inches, is designed to fit “those full-page, color pictures, ‘charticles’ and information graphics, not to mention leggy models splayed across two-page spreads.”

“You’ve heard the quote: Don’t judge a book by its cover. But what does the author’s photograph say about the book?” And how important is the photo to marketing the book? Very.