Category: publishing

Neale Donald Walsch published a story written by Candy Chand as his own. “Finding it utterly charming and its message indelible, I must have clipped and pasted it into my file of ‘stories to tell that have a message I want to share.’ I have told the story verbally so many times over the years that I had it memorized … and then, somewhere along the way, internalized it as my own experience.”

“Cuba has opened up electronic access to thousands of documents belonging to the writer Ernest Hemingway, who wrote some of his greatest works on the island.
The archive includes photographs, letters and manuscripts, as well as an unpublished epilogue to Hemingway’s novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls.”

“The consensus of the economic pundits seems to be that 2009 is going to be awful – every bit as bad as 2008. … In the search for silver linings, I conclude that this can only be good news for secondhand book dealers. So my prediction for 2009 is that the devoted book reader will beat a path ever more urgently to those forgotten, out-of-the-way corners of musty tranquility of which the shopping class knows nothing.”

“On the 200th anniversary of the birth of Braille’s inventor, bestselling crime writer Ian Rankin has launched a campaign calling on writers, publishers and booksellers to make more books available to the visually impaired. Rankin is also backing an appeal to raise £2m to rehouse the UK’s leading Braille printing press, the Scottish Braille Press, which is struggling to meet demand with its current premises.”

“Author Sebastian Barry and 91-year-old Diana Athill have been shortlisted for the Costa Book of the Year. Sadie Jones, Adam Foulds and Michelle Magorian complete the nominees for the prize, to be announced on 27 January. The five writers have been revealed as winners of the Costa Book Awards’ individual categories.”

“Laura Bush has sold a memoir of her eight years in the White House, allowing the battered book industry the light relief of speculating on the size of the advance paid to a high-profile author.” In the first lady’s favor: “the success of American Wife, a fictional account of Mrs Bush’s life by novelist Curtis Sittenfeld, indicated strong interest in the first lady that could justify a high fee.”

“The way we read is changing. Time once spent curled up with a good book is now often devoted to catching up on blogs, and browsing Web sites. One publishing company is trying to take advantage of those habits, offering fiction in serial form, online.”

“Wired, which is usually thick with consumer electronics ads, was the worst hit, down 47 percent from a year ago to 43.6 ad pages. Architectural Digest fell 46 percent, to 63.2, from 116.8. Vogue and Lucky were both down about 44 percent.”

“Amid a relentless string of layoffs and pay-freeze announcements, book publishers are clamping down on some of the business’s most glittery and cozy traditions. Austerity measures are rippling throughout the industry as it confronts the worst retailing landscape in memory.”