Category: publishing

“Scholastic Inc., the children’s publisher of favorites like the Harry Potter, Goosebumps and Clifford series, may be best known for its books, but a consumer watchdog group accuses the company of using its classroom book clubs to push video games, jewelry kits and toy cars. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood” charges that one-third of items sold through Scholastic’s monthly fliers “were either not books or books packaged with other items.”

Live blogging, via text, photos and video, with the new gadget in hand: “Hey, it’s downright iPod Touchy. Nice rounded aluminum back with a plastic top. Will it stay on the toilet seat?”

“One of the subtler pleasures of the movie Milk is its vivid portrayal of those small rooms where the conspirators of the gay liberation movement first came together. Sadly, one of those sanctums, the Oscar Wilde Bookshop, announced it was closing last week, after 42 years. As it happens, the place has a direct link to the film: Its founder, Craig Rodwell, was an early boyfriend of Harvey Milk, at the time a closeted actuary in Brooks Brothers drag.”

“More than 10,000 works in Yiddish – perhaps more than half of all that was ever published in the language – are now accessible online as part of a joint project between the National Yiddish Book Center, based in Amherst, Mass., and the Internet Archive in San Francisco, the two institutions announced on Friday.”

“On 14 February 1989Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie and his publishers over The Satanic Verses. Twenty years on, it has become commonplace to assume that the fatwa and the climate of offence that took hold in its wake has narrowed minds and tied tongues.” But has it?

For all the book industry’s financial woes, publishers competed hard for the inside story from the new President’s campaign manager. Plouffe’s agent says 17 imprints bid for the title.

“More and more of our reviewers are complaining that too many elementary mistakes — clichés, faulty grammar, even errors of fact — are finding their way into finished books. … Some readers — and probably a lot more authors — may shrug and say, so what? Isn’t editing an extra, and a pretty artificial one to boot: lofty standards imposed upon manuscripts by prissy librarian types who love to justify their existence by catching errors? But editing, I believe, is something we all do, a fundamental human tendency.”

“The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum said it will display, as part of a weeklong celebration of Presidents’ Day, a 1930 biography of Abraham Lincoln that was apparently borrowed by Kennedy, or a member of his staff, when he was serving in the Senate in the 1950s. … It has been listed as missing in the Library of Congress online catalog, and will be returned to its collection after the display.”

“The Oscar Wilde Bookshop in Greenwich Village, which is believed to be the oldest gay and lesbian bookstore in the country, will close on March 29, its owner announced on Tuesday, citing economic troubles. The store nearly closed six years ago, only to be sold and given a last-minute reprieve.”

“A Stanislaus County school board banned a celebrated but controversial piece of Chicano literature from its high school classrooms this week because trustees and the superintendent believe ‘Bless Me, Ultima’ contains too much profanity. … [T]he 1972 novel … was spotlighted on former First Lady Laura Bush’s must-read list and is also the literature selection for this year’s state high school Academic Decathlon competition.”