Category: publishing

“To communicate its strength and scope, every culture needs interpreters whom outsiders will trust. And, in the half-millennium of suspicion and conflict that followed the downfall of Moorish civilisation in Spain, the absence of such honest brokers has bedevilled every stage of the perpetually rocky relationship between the Arab and European worlds.”

J.K. Rowling testified before a packed courtroom in a lawsuit to block publication of a Harry Potter lexicon, telling a judge that the book amounts to a “wholesale theft” of nearly 20 years of her hard work. “We all know I’ve made enough money. That’s absolutely not why I’m here,”

J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, has agreed to testify against the publishers of an encyclopedia of the Potter lexicon. Rowling has supported many of the fan-produced spinoffs of her work, but she and her publisher call the new lexicon copyright infringement. “Their objection is that the book merely repackages Ms. Rowling’s work and, unlike the free fan sites, is intended to make money for its publisher.”

Yang Tongyan, a Chinese writer serving a 12-year prison term for posting anti-government articles on the Internet, will receive this year’s PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award.”

“Harry Potter author JK Rowling has received an outstanding achievement prize at the 2008 Galaxy British Book Awards in London. The writer was one of several honoured at the event, which also saw awards go to Ian McEwan, Afghan novelist Khaled Hosseini and actor Ewan McGregor.”

“Junot Diaz has won the Pulitzer fiction prize for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, an ambitious novel that took him 11 years to complete… The poetry prize was shared between two authors: Robert Hass for Time and Materials and Philip Schultz for Failure.”

“Selexyz Dominicanen – a store created from a merger between [a Maastricht bookseller] and the Dutch Selexyz bookshop chain – is housed in the thrilling setting of a 13th-century Dominican church… Church and bookshop look as if they might have been made for one another.”

“Pop star Lily Allen has withdrawn ‘by mutual consent’ from the judging panel of this year’s Orange Prize for Fiction, blaming ill health.”

“Happily, if the computer processing of words is killing reference books, it’s also making them better. In particular, word reference is morphing faster and smarter than any other kind of compendium out there. … The digitization of words in time allows us to see language as it really is–not so much an abstract code as a dynamic system.”

“On Nov. 30, the glamorous, impetuous Kendall Hart — wife, mother, founder of a highly successful perfume company, woman in despair and one of the lead characters on the ABC soap ‘All My Children’ — decided to try a little creative writing as a distraction from the pain of her husband Zach’s sudden (and of course mysterious) disappearance.” The character’s novel, “an actual hardback with a list price of $21.95 … made its debut in February at No. 13 on the New York Times best-seller list.”