Category: publishing

“The Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize will now award each winner $25,000 and finalists $3,500 (up from $15,000 and $2,000).” The Canadian-based literary awards were already among the richest in North America.

“The poet laureate is charged with bringing poetry to the forefront of the American consciousness, as well as playing consultant to the Library of Congress — which includes giving a reading at the beginning of the term and a lecture or reading at end of term, organizing monthly readings and overseeing the Library’s poetry fellowships and prizes. And, of course, he or she should continue to write poems. Sounds simple enough. Still, many laureates have found the demands of the position overwhelming.”

“As libraries shift more of their resources to holdings that either originate as digital or become digital through scanning, it’s become clear that just because something lives in the virtual stacks doesn’t mean it will be around forever. Now librarians are having to… determine how digital holdings fit into their central mission: preserving works so that they can be accessed not just today, not just tomorrow, but indefinitely.”

“Amis & Son (the ampersand, neatly hinting at the “family firm”, as Martin once referred to it, is a good touch) is about parenthood in the modern British intelligentsia and the huge cultural shift between the 1940s and the 60s, and an analysis of the way in which a celebrated father and son, each producing comic and satiric fiction, could come up with such disparate results.”

“Small publishers get an amazing boost from selling on Amazon, in that it gives them instant worldwide distribution. Amazon should be applauded for the ease with which they grant access to this network. However, there’s a price for entering such a spectacular marketplace; one so steep that it could be argued that all the economic advantage goes to Amazon alone.”

That’s how America’s new Poet laureate sees herself. “In truth, Ryan’s as much a part of the Establishment as her 15 predecessors in the honorary position. She published her first collection in 1983. What she lacks is a literary position in a university, teaching remedial English part time at a California college.”

“Under the guise of a reader’s handbook, an introduction to the primary elements of fictional narrative (voice, detail, character, dialogue), [James] Wood has written a manifesto – one with the singular feel of an etiquette manual, though none of its fussiness.”

According to a former editor, book coverage will be placed in the Calendar section of the paper where it will share space with features. The paper responds, “The Times remains committed to book review coverage. What form that takes is what’s under evaluation.”

“Due to hit the shelves in September, a published encyclopedia of German Wikipedia entries, the first of its kind, will list in a single volume the 50,000 most commonly searched terms on the German Wikipedia website over the past two years.”

People whose body art is inspired by their favourite novel, poem or song are posting pictures on their tattoos on number of new blogs and websites devoted to the trend.