Category: publishing

“Frankfurt, attended by 300,000 people from 108 countries, is where the inner workings of the publishing industry are laid bare, where traditionally the big deals are done; and where everyone schmoozes with everyone else until five minutes later when they turn round and stab each other in the back. And this year, at least, everyone’s been unanimous about which back to stab: the dying corpse of what was once the biggest and one of the most prestigious literary agencies in Britain, PFD.”

“Though I can’t help but bristle when I come across people being dismissive of Canadian writing – I was disheartened when I worked in publishing to find that “Canadian” is an adjective often used to justify not publishing a book in the UK – I can’t really blame those who overlook CanLit. I was once equally uninformed.”

“In Europe, the term ‘Nobelisable’ is used freely to mean a writer who could perfectly well win the Nobel prize. Every small country has one – sometimes two. Writers are often identified as being Nobelisable for similar reasons. The Nobel prize carries an aura of the writer’s life as a public one; of collective identity voiced, shaped or advocated by a visionary, perhaps even brave, individual. The writer as unacknowledged legislator, maybe, but nevertheless visibly engaged with their own society. There is something of this aura behind suggestions that the decision-making of the Nobel committee is ‘politicised’. But maybe these suggestions have it back to front.”

“The National Book Foundation announced the 20 finalists for the National Book Awards, at the Library Company in Philadelphia by author and social critic Camille Paglia. Authors including Joshua Ferris, Tim Weiner and Christopher Hitchens are among the finalists and three of the finalists, Edwidge Danticat, Robert Hass and Ellen Bryant Voigt, have all been finalists in the past.”

“Almost a quarter of the 1,324 industry professionals who took part in the survey predicted that the high street bookseller would no longer exist in 2057, while only 11% thought that the printed book would be obsolete. However, nearly as many – 10.5% – also thought that the electronic reader would be superseded.”

Canada’s most prestigious literary award for fiction, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, named its five finalists Tuesday. “All the nominated books are novels – three by men, two by women – and of the five, three are by Ontario authors who have either won the Giller or been named to previous short lists. These include Toronto’s Michael Ondaatje… and M.G. Vassanji, a Torontonian and the only two-time Giller winner.”

“Juergen Boos, the fair’s director, said some 770 million people worldwide are illiterate. An important element of this year’s book fair is a Literacy Campaign that hopes to help combat the problem.”

“Why does the art that adds so much to the texts published in The New York Times disappear? Why cannot Times simply index the art that it publishes, at least leaving the bibliographic tracings of the work in their newspaper? As they solve the rights problems and publish more art online, why not add “search images” as a option in advanced search?”

Christopher Kelly just had his novel published. “I probably won’t be turning up on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and I spent most of my advance while shopping for groceries last week at Target. But the realization of this goal has been tremendously gratifying, especially considering how many times I sank into a pit of despair, convincing myself that the book would never see the light of day. Now I even find myself in an odd and very enjoyable position: People are asking me how they should go about trying to write a novel.”

“They’re designed to appeal to upscale, professional and educated readers with high incomes: their media kits list annual incomes starting in the $75,000 to $80,000-plus range. It’s a segment of the population that marketers covet and that niche magazine publishers contend local newspapers and television can’t fully serve.”