Category: publishing

“This year’s Kitab festival – held in Mumbai from February 22-24 – was remarkable in pleasing no one. Its founder Pablo Ganguli, the 24-year-old former darling of the literary circuit, now stands accused of mismanagement, failing to pay his debts, and favouring British authors over Indian ones.”

“Not much was expected from the program upon its debut in April, 2002 but it’s steadily grown in both popularity and clout, to the point that it’s now second only to the Scotiabank Giller Prize in drawing attention to the splendors of Canadian fiction.”

The Quills were meant as a kind of people’s choice awards for the books world. “The first Quills event took place in October 2005 to celebrate the best in book publishing while promoting the cause of literacy in the U.S.”

With Harry Potter in retirement, the next book by Dan Brown is threatening to become the publishing world’s own Holy Grail, both in anticipation of its potentially magical commercial powers and the fact that, for the moment at least, no one but the author himself seems certain when it might materialize.

“Some of the most popular British crime novels these days are being written by Yanks. In spite of its small murder rate and tighter restrictions on civil rights, Britain is the ancestral home of the mystery and crime genre in fiction. Not only are American writers appropriating and replicating the English character of that genre, they’re succeeding at it.”

Reading is dying, asks Tim Egan. “For most of my lifetime, I’ve heard that reading is dead. In that time, disco has died, drive-in movies have nearly died, and something called The Clapper has come and gone through bedrooms across the nation. But reading?”

The 103-year-old Hollywood trade paper Variety went on the auction block Thursday when Anglo-Dutch company Reed Elsevier put its publishing unit up for sale.

Odds are already being taken on which book will be declared the best of the 40 Bookers. “Next in line to scoop the award was Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children” which won the Booker in 1981. Third came Michael Ondaatje’s “The English Patient,” the 1992 Booker winner which was adapted into an Oscar-winning film.”

The Booker Prize wants to declare the best book out of the 40 that have won the prize. “Members of the public will be invited to vote for their favourite novel via the Man Booker website after the shortlist has been made public in May.”

The publishing juggernaut that is James Patterson began branching out into young adult literature a few years ago, and sales have been brisk. But Patterson wants more, and his latest marketing strategy involves getting mothers to buy his latest book for their kids.