Category: publishing

“In a very competitive culture that emphasizes newness and fashion, and promotes the reading of a current blockbuster which is forgotten in a moment’s time, the backlist is a vanishing phenomenon. The volume of sales of one-year-old or older books is shrinking, while newer books capture an increasing share of the market.”

“Virtually every major publisher, from Random House Inc. to Scholastic Inc., has announced environmental goals, mostly through the increased use of recycled paper and fiber from forests certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, an international environmental organization. But the revolution has not quite arrived at BookExpo.”

“When I joined The Observer in 1996, the world of books was in limbo between hot metal and cool word processing, but it would have been recognisable to many of our past contributors. Now that world is more or less extinct. Many of the great names from those times (Hughes, Murdoch, Mailer, Heller, Gunn, Miller, Vonnegut) are gone. Books, meanwhile, have been pushed to the edge of the radar.”

Gradually, the memoir changed. I don’t know who gave permission to the thousands of unhappy, ill, abused or just dissatisfied people to feel it was OK to reveal in raw, vivid — and as it turned out, sometimes fictional — words their dark secrets, or just a bad day at the office, to the masses, but the technique proved successful.

NASA stocked its Mars lander with a libary of books. “Take me to your leader” was the classic introductory gambit of many a B-movie alien. Now that we’re doing a bit of planet-invading ourselves, “Let me take you to our library” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

“An odd book fell into my hands recently, a doorstopper with the irresistible title 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. That sounds like a challenge, with a subtle insult embedded in the premise. It suggests that you, the supposedly educated reader, might have read half the list at best… The book is British. Of course.”

“With the number of literary awards and bookish bonanzas growing every day, the introduction of a little action into the proceedings seems like a good bet for increased publicity. Indeed, when it comes to the promotion of literary awards these days, if William Hill haven’t opened a book on it, the chances are the PR department isn’t doing its job properly.”

“The problem with your common or garden synopsis is that it boils off all the stuff that attracts me about fiction – style, wit, inventiveness, rhythm – and leaves the bare bones of plot and/or setting, which I couldn’t care less about.”

“In all, Gutenberg’s press is believed to have produced about 180 Bibles, a quarter of them on vellum and the rest on paper. Fewer than 50 copies survive today, and many of these only as fragments. The Morgan is the only institution in the world to possess three copies, and each is in remarkably good condition and boasts unique characteristics.”

There have been 22 male British Poet Laureates. Now many are urging the Queen to appoint a woman. “There has been no female poet laureate since the Royal household created the formal position for John Dryden in 1668. Nothing in the rules actually debars women and there are many splendid female poets from all generations writing and performing in Britain today.”