Category: publishing

“The Ann Arbor News will close in July after publishing as the city’s daily newspaper since 1835, publisher Laurel Champion announced today. […] A new Web-based media company called AnnArbor.com LLC will be launched later this year. In addition to publishing continuously online, AnnArbor.com will publish a print edition twice a week.”

Jacob Weisberg: “The Kindle 2 signals that after a happy, 550-year union, reading and printing are getting separated. It tells us that printed books, the most important artifacts of human civilization, are going to join newspapers and magazines on the road to obsolescence.”

“This is a year for celebrations, from the centennials of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin to the 30th anniversary of The Library of America. While those black-jacketed books with their simple, elegant type didn’t appear until 1982, the nonprofit publisher with the lofty goal of republishing the literature of a nation began in 1979 with seed money from the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.”

“‘When reality stinks,’ the crusty old novelist quipped, taking a quick drag on his cigarette, ‘write fiction.’ … [A]s stock markets tank, newspapers go bankrupt, and city services vanish, the humble, bracingly personal act of trying to write fiction – preferably with the support of a writers’ workshop – appears more popular than ever.”

“The Christian Book Expo, a first ever ‘fan event’ for evangelical Christian book lovers, drew only about 1,500 people to the Dallas Convention Center during a three-day run that ended Sunday.”

“For a man of few words, Beckett wrote an awful lot of them. To date, some fifteen thousand letters have been found, and, from that trove, the more pertinent have now been plucked. The question is, to what do they pertain?” Here’s a snippet: “When I’ve posted this I’ll go & have a Turkish bath & stupefy my nerves in sweaty duration. My person is developing dirty habits.”

“As he spent 2008 campaigning for his new job, he also earned nearly $2.5 million in royalties from the sale of his books. And he added $250,000 more just before taking office, signing a Jan. 15 licensing deal with his publisher for an abridged version of Dreams From My Father.

A study of reading habits showed almost half of women are ‘page turners’ who finish a book soon after starting it compared to only 26 per cent of men.

“Whereas most of my predecessors had interpreted the post as an honour, I felt from the start that it was more like a call to arms. In fact, my main reason for accepting in the first place was that I thought it was time for a respectful kind of revision. Specifically, I thought the laureateship needed to be changed from a courtier-like role into something more appropriate to modern times, which would be of benefit to poetry.”

“A lot is happening in the world of libraries right now, and while some of it is good, a lot of it is very bad. Marvellous ritzy new libraries will soon open in Newcastle and, eventually, in Birmingham, and marvellous ritzy new libraries have already opened in Whitechapel and Brighton. So, money is being spent on buildings. Meanwhile other libraries – small, much-loved local libraries – are closing.”