Category: publishing

“The Romans may not have defeated Asterix, but his creator, Albert Uderzo, stands accused of surrendering to the indomitable Gaul’s worst enemies: businessmen and financiers.” The specifics of the illustrator’s crime, for which his daughter pilloried him yesterday in Le Monde? He has “given authorisation for the bestselling series to continue after his death.”

“It remains to be seen whether anyone will read Poe in the distant future. As we approach the bicentennial of his birth on Jan. 19, however, it’s obvious that Poe is far from ‘nameless here for evermore.'”

“November bookstore sales were as bad as people thought they were. Preliminary figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show that sales dropped 13% in the month, falling to $1.05 billion.”

“Karen MacNeil, a food and wine expert who was given the title of editor of the project, beneath the two executive editors — Mrs. Madoff and her friend Idee Schoenheimer — disclosed in an interview with The New York Times that she was paid to write the cookbook in its entirety. She said Mrs. Madoff ‘was interested in having her name on something that would allow for some sort of fun.'”

“The financially struggling Chicago Tribune will undergo yet another metamorphosis, announcing Tuesday that it will launch a smaller, tabloid-size version in an apparent bid to deliver a blow to the rival Chicago Sun-Times.” The new version, intended for newsstand sales, will carry the same content as the broadsheet edition, which will be available for home delivery only.

Responding to a new NEA study reporting an increase in “literary reading,” David L. Ulin says: “I’m not so sure reading really was in crisis – any more than it ever has been. Laments over the death of reading are as old as mass literacy; ever since we began to consider culture as a social value, we’ve fixated on the way it falls apart. But what is it exactly we’re lamenting?”

“A relative newcomer to poetry who has been widely praised for her passion and awareness of the natural world has tonight won one of the genre’s grandest awards – the TS Eliot prize for poetry. Shetland-based Jen Hadfield was given a cheque for £15,000 but she will doubtless be just as grateful for the sales and profile boost that winning the prize will bring about.”

“It’s been so long since a talented writer last occupied the White House; no wonder, then, that American writers have been among the most prominent of all the demographic groups claiming a piece of Barack Obama for themselves,” Jonathan Raban writes. So who — besides Lincoln — were the others? And what does Obama’s writing portend for his presidency?

Oprah interviews the author, a.k.a. Sparky the penguin: “You were a meth-snorting sex addict with an insurmountable gambling debt, framed for a crime you did not commit! How did you ever manage to turn your life around?”

“There were two things we learned from Bill and Hillary’s ginormous book advances: The couple was enormously popular worldwide, and publishers liked to throw around a lot of money. So, on the heels of Laura Bush’s considerably more modest windfall (a reported $1.5 million), we had some book honchos take a wild stab at what President Obama will be looking at — presuming reelection — for his memoirs in eight years.”