Category: publishing

“An open letter of love and despair written by renowned French philosopher André Gorz to his British-born wife, Doreen, has become an overnight bestseller in France after the couple were found dead in their home east of Paris.”

The government of the Canadian province of Ontario says it “will provide $80-million in new funding for books for Ontario school libraries over the next four years” if it gets re-elected for a new term. But publishers are crying foul. Under the scheme, book giant Indigo “is to be the sole supplier of books to school libraries.”

“The latest inclusion in the Library of America, that clothbound hall of literary fame, is two big volumes of Edmund Wilson’s critical writings. It’s about time, considering that the Library of America was Wilson’s idea in the first place.”

“The short list for the 10 million Swedish crown ($1.54 million) prize is closely guarded and the winner is often a surprise — sometimes obscure enough to send reporters and literary scholars scurrying to reference books or the Internet.”

“Last year, Americans over age 18 averaged 3,530 hours with all forms of media — playing video games, paging through magazines, watching television and DVDs and chatting online. Books captured just 108 of those hours, about 3 percent. From that narrow perch, books stubbornly cling to an outsized importance. So while American lives grow more wired, books remain — barnacle-like — as the weighty coin in the marketplace of ideas.”

“For 30 years an old orthodoxy ruled American poetry. It derived from the orthodoxy of TS Eliot and the new critics … it asked for a poetry of symmetry, intellect, irony, and wit. The last few years have broken the control of this orthodoxy. It’s hard to imagine this sentence being written today. It’s not that there isn’t any orthodoxy – rather that there are too many of them.”

New Hampshire’s legendary MacDowell Colony, where artists, writers, and poets are invited to work in seclusion, “relieved of all domestic distractions,” turns 100 this year. “During the past 100 years, more than 5,500 artists have become MacDowell Fellows, and while gaining admission is based upon accomplishment, talent, or promise, once in residence, a spirit of equality reigns.”

Sean O’Brien has pulled off an unprecedented third victory in the Forward prize, cementing his place as a Forward favourite by winning the £10,000 prize for best collection with The Drowned Book.

Jon Krakauer is suing Houghton Mifflin, publisher of books and software, and R.R. Donnelley, the largest North American printer, saying that they “made more than 1.2 million unauthorized and impermissible reproductions of Into Thin Air in a textbook.”

“Today, any book bought online in England, even one published exclusively in another country, can ostensibly be subject to English libel law. As a result, publishers and booksellers are increasingly concerned about ‘libel tourism’: foreigners suing other foreigners in England or elsewhere, and using those judgments to intimidate authors in other countries, including the United States.”