Category: publishing

“The 1543 copy of Copernicus’ “De revolutionibus orbium coelestium” (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) was among more than 300 books offered Tuesday at Christie’s auction. It was expected to sell for up to $1.2 million.”

“According to Rowling’s agent, Christopher Little, the seven Harry Potter books have so far been translated into 67 languages, amassing the 400 million figure since the publication of the first book in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, in 1997.”

“The concerns largely relate to a potential loss of control over content as the industry increasingly becomes digitized. No one predicts anything as dire as the havoc that unauthorized downloads have played on the music industry, but the introduction of the Sony e-reader into the Canadian market last month has helped focus the conversation.”

“It’s odd, isn’t it, how squeamish we are about love as a topic. It’s fine for a hallmarked classic – Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina – but if the heroine is a modern girl commuting in to a dull job on the Central Line from Epping, we come all over contemptuous. We use words and phrases like shallow and frothy and only fit for women on sunbeds (so RUDE to readers).”

“Back in the 18th century, when many of the freedoms we currently struggle to preserve enjoyed life merely as so many ideas printed in pamphlets, anonymity – or, more often, pseudonymity – was one of the writer’s most secure defences.” Today, not so much…

The National Endowment for the Arts announced Monday that more than 200 organizations nationwide will receive grants totaling $2.8 million to host “The Big Read,” an initiative meant to restore book reading in American culture.

“These are boom times for celebrity authors and the ghostwriters who, in most cases, stand in their shadows. The growth of celebrity fiction in both the adult and children’s markets has led to a wider acknowledgement of the ghostwriter, who has partially come in from the cold; celebrities, their publishers and those who buy their books are quite knowingly and willingly colluding in a kind of illusion.”

“Since its invention centuries ago, the sentence has brought order to chaos. It’s the handle on the pitcher, a tonic chord in music, a stair step chiseled in a mountainside. But above all, what really scares a lot of scholars: the impending death of the English sentence.”

“In the latest in a series of disputes over the division of revenue from online sales, Amazon has disabled the “buy now with 1 click” icon on its British Web site for hundreds of books published by the British unit of Hachette Livre, from back-list Stephen King novels to, naturally, The Hachette Guide to French Wine.”

According to the figures, bookstore sales jumped 8.0% in April, to $1.0 billion, while sales for the entire retail segment increased 3.6%.