Category: publishing

“What’s not so good is that writers write for whatever audience is left. In too many cases, that audience happens to consist of other writers and would-be writers who are reading the various literary magazines (and The New Yorker, of course, the holy grail of the young fiction writer) not to be entertained but to get an idea of what sells there. And this kind of reading isn’t real reading, the kind where you just can’t wait to find out what happens next. It’s more like copping-a-feel reading. There’s something yucky about it.”

“Having just passed the 2-million article mark last week, Wikipedia is not the virginal expanse it once was. As Wikipedia’s knowledge base has expanded to cover the highest-profile people, places and things, making an original contribution becomes a lot tougher.”

“Is there any purpose in translating poetry? … It is perfectly true that you will never get a replica of the original – nor would you wish to. The way it works, when translator and original are in tune, is that a third poem is created. It is the child of two parents and simply couldn’t exist without them.”

“Love Sky (1.3m ‘copies’ sold, a film in the offing) is the latest of a new best-selling type of story, the keitai shosetsu, literally ‘portable (phone) novel’, read not on a page but on your phone screen. Armed with the latest in mobiles, Japan’s ‘oyayubi zoku’ or ‘thumb tribe’ are lapping up these novels, often written by teenage first-timers, themselves reared on the fast-paced, melodramatic world of anime….”

“The board of the 97-year-old Poetry Society of America, whose members have included many of the most august names in verse, has been rocked by a string of resignations and accusations of McCarthyism, conservatism and simple bad management. The recent turmoil was driven, partly, by fierce discussion among board members earlier this year after they voted to award the Frost Medal, an annual honor given by the society, to John Hollander, a prolific poet and critic.”

Katha Pollitt’s confessional collection, “Learning to Drive,” a departure from her usual political writing, has been met with derision and discomfort. “So why would someone like Pollitt — so far out of the trenches of confessional journalism — dive in headfirst? Well, perhaps she feels she has a lot to say about the way human beings trust and love and how the smartest among us willingly go deaf and dumb, how the most confident of us go soft, how the savviest get blindsided.”

Book critics and the publishing world seem to be split over whether the decision by the New York Times to split its paperback bestseller list in two is a positive development or not. “These lists do give crucial exposure to new books, but they are also just one more marketing tool for publishers.”

And if there is, “what will a New Yorker poem be when Paul Muldoon is in charge? David Remmick has said that the appointment does not mark “some sort of radical aesthetic or theoretical shift … It’s not as if we went from a structuralist to a post-structuralist or a Beat to a conservative.”

Channel 4 chairman Luke Johnson will buy Britain’s third-largest books chain. “The deal secures the future of the chain’s 70 bookshops, which were put up for sale by its American parent six months ago amid increasingly tough trading. Like other booksellers, Borders has been hard hit by competition from supermarkets and internet retailers.”

“The library has an enormous impact on the cultural and economic life of the nation. Through our doors pass around half-a-million readers a year: authors, entrepreneurs, scientists and family historians, all enjoying unparalleled access to the world’s largest, most comprehensive research collection. All this is threatened by the prospect of cuts in the current government spending round.”