Category: publishing

Borders said in March that it might sell itself as it has struggled with liquidity and economic issues that have cut into customers’ discretionary spending.

“Thomas Kohnstamm admits enjoying the hedonistic life of Brazil when researching for Lonely Planet, but he is fed up with suggestions he compiled a travel guide to Colombia with tips from a ‘chick I was dating’ rather than visiting the country.”

“The Big Read Egypt/US will involve reciprocal promotions of three celebrated American writers in Egypt, and just the one Egyptian writer in the States. Naguib Mahfouz’s The Thief and the Dogs will be America’s reading book, while Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath will be the focus of reading groups and other events in Cairo and Alexandria.”

Markus Dohle, “head of a printing unit at Bertelsmann’s Arvato division, replaces Peter W. Olson, who has had the job since 1998, but was hampered by losses at the unit amid a wider slowdown in sales of books. New York-based Random House’s imprints include Alfred A. Knopf and Doubleday, and its authors include John Grisham, Sophie Kinsella and Jonathan Kellerman.”

A broken water pipe flooded the main building of Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa early Tuesday morning, closing the building and causing a small amount of damage to some books.

“There used to be the option for people unsure of their titles to offer an either-or: Twelfth Night, or What You Will (Shakespeare); She Stoops to Conquer, or The Mistakes of a Night (Goldsmith); St Patrick’s Day, or The Scheming Lieutenant (Sheridan: the second title superseded the first). That practice is rarer now, as is the one that even earlier writers used to enjoy of providing titles that threatened at times to become almost as long as the book itself.”

“Literary criticism is famously red in tooth and claw. With the book market more crowded than ever before, a bracing and briny critique can be just the thing to cut through the prettily packaged chaff.”

William MacGonagall has “long been celebrated as Britain’s worst poet, inspiring satirical tributes to his doggerel awfulness from Spike Milligan, Monty Python and even the Muppets. Now the poet, who was once pelted with fruit during his readings and who his own appreciation society call ‘without talent’, is in demand.”

“Like many poets, William Topaz McGonagall struggled for his art. Against all odds, and despite evidence to the contrary, the former weaver spent more than two decades in the late 19th century trying to prove he was a literary genius.”

“A fire that destroyed the architecture- faculty building at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands may lead to the loss of 40,000 books and illustrated works from as early as the 17th century.”