Category: publishing

“Some libraries, fed up with software that doesn’t fully meet their needs, have decided to take matters, figuratively, into their own hands. With a bit of grant money and some eager developers, institutions have begun creating their own open-source solutions that are fully customizable, free for others to use and compatible with existing systems.”

Japan’s Supreme Court has ruled that a collection of erotic photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe does not violate obscenity laws, “a decision that should allow the sale of the book for the first time in eight years.”

“In recent years, the founding generation has come to the fore . . . but Lincoln is perennial. He never goes out of fashion.”

“Have you seen the latest issue of Paranoia magazine? No? Well, that’s not surprising, is it? There’s a very good reason why you haven’t seen it: They don’t want you to see it.“

If indie bookstores really are dying out, as conventional wisdom swears they are, they’re certainly taking their time doing it. “The trade group for independents reported 115 new members last year, the third year in a row that more than 100 openings were recorded.” Sales are up, too…

“Specifying a character’s brand of lipstick, shoes or handbag is a commonly accepted way to add an aura of reality or consumer aspiration to books aimed at young readers… But what if writers and publishers enlisted companies to sponsor those branded mentions, as is the widespread practice in Hollywood?”

“Lewis Lapham’s zeal to combat the creeping debasement of truth in the culture, combined with his passion for history, drove him to leave Harper’s after nearly thirty years and found Lapham’s Quarterly. The Quarterly is billed as a historical journal and looks something like The Paris Review.”

“Someone who’d never read a novel would come away from James Wood’s criticism with little awareness that writers tell stories as well as brood over characters “like God over the face of the waters”. Seemingly uninterested in non-literary history, he comes back again and again to style.”

Meet the growing clique of “hic lit” authors who have forsaken the demon drink and are saving themselves fortunes in therapists’ fees by writing about their travails. Publishers are falling over themselves in the hunt for the next big title in the “painful lives” genre that has so captivated readers since bursting on to the book scene a couple of years ago