Category: publishing

“The publishing world is linking up to the iPhone. HarperCollins announced Wednesday that it had set up a special link, http://mobile.harpercollins.com, that will allow browsers to view excerpts from more than a dozen new releases, including Michael C. White’s ‘Soul Catcher’ and Michael Korda’s ‘Ike,’ a biography of President Eisenhower.”

“Karl Rove has set imaginations ablaze with his recent comments that he plans to teach and write a book. Would Rove, the nation’s man of mystery who is legendary for his loyalty, actually write a book that revealed life behind the White House’s wrought-iron fence? That’s the question publishers are asking themselves and eager to take a chance on.”

Still selling briskly at 50, “On the Road” “has far outlasted many other cult classics. Part of the reason for the novel’s staying power is that popular artists keep referencing it. (A new movie version, directed by Walter Salles, who made ‘The Motorcycle Diaries,’ is scheduled to go into production early next year.) Everyone from Bob Dylan to the Beastie Boys has been inspired by Kerouac. … But keeping it on hand can be difficult: among book-world insiders, ‘On the Road’ is known to be a heavily shoplifted work….”

“Britain’s worst-performing train company has hired a poet to soothe the tempers of its frustrated customers. First Great Western, which operates services from Paddington to South Wales and the West Country, insisted yesterday that its decision to engage Sally Crabtree, a Cornish poet, to perform at selected stations over the next four days had nothing to do with its poor punctuality record, disclosed in The Times yesterday.”

After seeing both Alan Bennett and Norman Mailer at public events in Edinburgh (Mailer attending by video link), Sarah Crompton posits that “if you were searching for writers to represent their countries at some kind of authorial Olympics, Bennett and Mailer would be the perfect choice of contestants. … Both will be remembered and revered as long as people love books; but there could never be any mistaking which man was British and which American.”

Stephen Carter, the novelist and Yale law professor, “was never a neoconservative, except in the sense that some liberals really didn’t like him. His nonfiction has made him a fair number of enemies, but, he says, he didn’t mind because he could research and footnote everything. ‘With fiction I don’t have that protection. Part of what makes fiction more nerve-racking for me is that I make up the story. So what a lot of writers see as the freedom of fiction I see as the risk.'”

“The French publishers of the Harry Potter books said Monday they are not seeking damages from a 16-year-old who allegedly posted an unauthorized translation of the final book in the series online. … The case is still under preliminary investigation by the French judicial police, and it is up to investigators to decide whether to try to bring the case to trial.”

“Books about the Second World War, fiction and non-fiction, look set to be one of the hottest phenomena of the next decade.”

“By its thoroughly political, haphazard and self-congratulatory nature, the awards industry has tried to turn writers and artists into performing seals, groomed and prepped for the cameras.”

“Steep programming costs, problems with the Internal Revenue Service, debts of more than $400,000 and even a dearth of community support are being blamed for the demise of Foolproof Performing Arts, the Seattle non-profit that brought former President Bill Clinton and controversial filmmaker Michael Moore to local venues in 2003. … Foolproof initially produced a comedy series, as well as separate shows by such comics as Robin Williams and Jerry Seinfeld, but later held high-profile talks by politicians and authors.”