Category: publishing

“Joe Keenan, an Emmy-winning writer for the comedy Frasier, has won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. He earned the $5,000 award for his novel My Lucky Star, a satire about Hollywood involving two luckless screenwriters, an aging glamour actress and a leading man with a secret.”

“A poor range of books and inconvenient opening hours are putting children off libraries, while some schools are becoming overprotective of the few books they have and refusing to lend them out.”

“The founders of Lonely Planet have sold up to BBC Worldwide in a deal that will see the full text of the guidebooks going online. The BBC’s commercial arm plans to launch a Lonely Planet magazine and develop the firm’s existing television programming.”

“It may come as no surprise, in an age defined by mouse-clicks, that bookmobiles are disappearing. Once mainstays in Massachusetts and across the country, part of an exuberant movement to evangelize the joys of reading, bookmobiles are increasingly seen as irrelevant, and have been retired one by one.”

“Writer Colleen Dunn Bates … thought she had a good idea: to put together an upscale guidebook about her city — a kind of travel book for people who live there. And given the intensely local focus of the project, rather than dealing with a big New York publisher, she decided to publish it herself…. Almost a year later, ‘Hometown Pasadena’ has not only sold 10,000 copies, it has also turned into a small empire….”

“A few decades ago, before TV commercials became obsessively concerned with prostate problems, Jack Kerouac wrote a book called ‘On the Road.’ It was greeted rapturously by many as a burst of rollicking, joyous American energy. … ‘On the Road’ turned 50 last month, and over the past few weeks a line of critics have taken another look at the book, and this time their descriptions of it, whether they like it or not, are very different.”

“Amazon.com, Penguin Group (USA) and Hewlett-Packard Co. have launched the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, which offers a contract with Penguin and a small advance, $25,000. Meanwhile, Borders Group Inc., Court TV and Gather.com announced “The Next Great Crime Novel” competition, with the winner receiving $5,000 and a publishing deal through Borders, the superstore chain.”

At San Francisco’s first Literary Death Match in July, “author Stephen Elliott was so offended by judge Howard Junker’s put-down – ‘As a writer, I think he has no literary merit’ – that Elliott tossed a glass of beer in his face during intermission.” The rest, as they say, is history…

“Who bans books? … The mass media. Which books do they ban? Scholarly books. Virtually all of them.” Scholarly books, you see, don’t get coverage in the mass media. “In short, we, the mass media, ignore what our best and brightest produce.”

Carlin Romano argues the case for book reviews, which are disappearing in American newspapers. “If you declare in your Weekend section that people should do anything but read on the weekend – catch a movie, watch a DVD, hit the music clubs, go cycling – readers will listen, and many will stop buying your paper.”