Category: publishing

“Almost Banned in Harvard Square Booksellers, a sidewalk bookstall run by a homeless man … is closing today, and with it goes one more quirky piece of Harvard Square. Ken O’Brien, who has sold or given away tens of thousands of books since opening nearly three years ago, is giving away the last of his stash. O’Brien, the first and only homeless person to belong to the Harvard Square Business Association, said he is tired of fighting City Hall.”

“[W]hen George Orwell sent Animal Farm to TS Eliot for consideration, the poet – then a director of Faber and Faber – rejected it as ‘unconvincing’. In a letter from 1944 explaining why he would not be publishing the work, Eliot told Orwell that he was not persuaded by the ‘Trotskyite’ politics which underpin the narrative. To publish such an anti-Russian novel would jar in the contemporary political climate, explained the poet.”

“The publishers of bestselling authors JK Rowling, Aravind Adiga and Ken Follett have been shocked by the news that their authors’ latest books are available to read for free on a US website. Internet users can not only read free copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, The White Tiger and World Without End at Scribd.com, but also download the text onto their computers to edit as they see fit.”

“Why is it that Stephenie Meyer, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Stephen King are joining forces with the new website FiledByAuthor, now in beta? They aren’t. At least, not intentionally. Without permission or advance notice, FiledByAuthor has cataloged the information of about 1.8 million authors into individual pages.” The authors can pay to have some control over the content, but “they can’t be removed from the site.” Meanwhile, the author photos appear sans credits.

“Charging 20 cents a page, paid only when a customer orders a copy, H.P. dreams of turning MagCloud into vanity publishing’s equivalent of YouTube. The company, a leading maker of computers and printers, envisions people using their PCs to develop quick magazines commemorating their daughter’s volleyball season or chronicling the intricacies of the Arizona cactus business.”

By May 5 “every author and publisher in America is supposed to decide whether to “opt in,” “opt out,” or simply “ignore” a vast compulsory licensing scheme for the benefit of Google. Most, about 88%, are expected to “ignore.” That’s because they know their online display rights have value, and the last thing they want is to be herded like sheep into a giant contract commitment.”

Poetry, for all its merits, has no program or volume to rival the current popularity of Oprah and Harry Potter, but even so, the decline of its already modest following is noteworthy. Some critics and readers claim that most poetry today is too cloistered and inaccessible, or that it is just plain bad. Yet a telephone survey conducted in 2005 by the National Opinion Research Center on behalf of the Poetry Foundation found that only 2 percent of respondents said they didn’t read poetry because it was “too hard.”

“As the metabolism of the culture has sped up in the digital age, pockets of the publishing industry are prodding themselves out of their Paleolithic ways and joining the rush, with more books on current events coming out faster than ever before.”

“It’s a widely held belief that if Charles Dickens were alive today, he would be working in television. But quite possibly, he might also be writing cut scenes for adventure games.”

“We can’t discount the fact that readers — of newspapers, magazines and books alike — now have better alternatives than ever to satisfy their information appetites. Google, Sony, Amazon and others are pushing very hard to get us to change our reading habits in a decidedly digital way.”