Category: publishing

“Has there ever been a linguistic phenomenon that has aroused such curiosity, suspicion, fear, confusion, antagonism, fascination, excitement and enthusiasm all at once as texting? And in such a short space of time. Less than a decade ago, hardly anyone had heard of it. People think that the written language seen on mobile phone screens is new and alien, but all the popular beliefs about texting are wrong.”

“An Indiana teacher who used a much lauded bestseller, The Freedom Writers Diary, to try to inspire under-performing high-school students has been suspended from her job without pay for 18 months. The effective book ban by the school authorities in Perry Township has outraged teachers and education reformers.”

“Recently, a decree went around to local authorities in England and Wales – town and county councils, mostly – from the body that governs them, forbidding use of a long list of popular crapspeak terms. The Local Government Association sent out a list last week of 100 “non-words” for councils to avoid.”

The petition argues that imposing an age-guidance figure on children’s books is “ill-conceived, damaging to the interests of young readers and highly unlikely to make the slightest difference to sales.”

Some 300 rare books confiscated from Iraq’s Jewish community by Saddam Hussein’s regime have been secretly spirited into Israel, an Israeli newspaper says.

“In the suit filed in Monmouth County Superior Court earlier this year, Barbara Bauer named 19 bloggers and website administrators who she said posted negative comments about her. She also sued the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America website and Wikimedia, the owners of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. The entries on Wikipedia can be written by anyone, including anonymous users of the site.”

Thirty years ago dozens of scholars, critics, authors and publishing types gathered for four days in Calgary for what was billed as the National Conference on the Canadian Novel. They chose a list of the country’s best books. So what would a current list look like? “.As it turned out, not all of the 1978 canon ended up on the trash heap of history. Still, 70 per cent of the works chosen 30 years ago didn’t receive any “votes.”

A federal judge threw out a new Indiana law requiring bookstores and other retailers to register with the state and pay a $250 fee if they want to sell sexually explicit material.

“The truth is that bad novels sometimes happen to good novelists. Absolute consistency is the hallmark of very few writers, particularly the more prolific ones. Must we, as readers, suffer bad prose for the sake of loyalty?”

National Public Radio has expanded the book coverage on its website, adding weekly book reviews, and has hired six new book reviewers–including a graphic novel reviewer–and added more features to an already existing lineup of author podcasts, critics’ lists and other book-focused content.