Category: publishing

“A U.S. court was wrong to award rights to some of John Steinbeck’s best-known novels, including The Grapes of Wrath, to his son and granddaughter, a federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday. The appeals court said Penguin Group, a unit of Pearson Plc, can retain publishing rights to about 10 early works by the author.”

Scholars today, using multi-spectral imaging technology, are able to decipher the otherwise inscrutable surface of black ink on black fabric of the papyrus scrolls. A multinational team has assembled to transcribe the collection. But work has stalled as they await refinement of a new technique, an application of the CT scan, which will allow some of the untouched texts to be deciphered without exposing them to the risk of further damage.

“Ever since the biographies of writers came to be seen as an aid to appreciating their writings, their places of birth, education and residence have been scanned for presages and echoes. Because admirers bring custom, institutions and municipalities eagerly advertise associations. On occasion, indeed, they have exaggerated the links.”

“A debate over the book is slowly growing in Germany, in part because the date for the expiration of Mein Kampf’s copyright, held by the state of Bavaria, will end in 2015. From then on the book will enter the public domain and anyone will be able to reprint the text.”

The 1930s “were the golden age of the New Criticism, the intellectually rigorous, closely analytical style of reading that grew up alongside modernism in poetry. Today, when baffling masterpieces such as “The Waste Land” and “The Cantos” are ensconced at the very center of the canon, it is hard to recapture just how embattled the New Critics must have felt.”

“Newsstand sales of U.S. magazines fell 6.3 percent in the first half of 2008, an industry group said Monday, as rising gas and food costs led consumers to cut back on nonessential spending.”

“Of 62 English- and French-language magazines sold on Canadian newsstands and audited for sales between Jan. 1 and July 30 this year, 27 – almost 44 per cent of the total – experienced double-digit declines. Only 18 magazines reported increased newsstand action.”

“Amazon will sell up to 380,000 Kindles in 2008, up from a previous forecast of 190,000, noting that adoption rate would be similar to the first year of sales for Apple’s media-playing iPod.”

Interest in the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee is so strong that even an upcoming policy book, usually the toughest of sells, is catching on.

“Literary or art history without ‘quite of bit of sex’ is, it would seem, fries less the tomato ketchup. It won’t sell, they think, unless they put some naughty bits in – even if they have to invent the naughty bits. Why cannot we accept that there is sexless greatness as well as hyper-sexual greatness?”