Category: publishing

“Like the racket of dozens of birds on a clothesline, the sound of doctors is filling the air. The strongest voices at the moment belong to Dr. Jerome Groopman and Dr. Atul Gawande, both clinicians at Harvard and writers for The New Yorker, both with articulate new books garnering impressive reviews and climbing in parallel to best-sellerdom. But they are only two of many doctors holding forth these days, in escalating volume.”

The British Library has damaged a historic diary from the 1700s. “Its private owner, a descendant of Thomas Tyldesley, the diary’s author, has described how he ‘wanted to weep’ when he collected the 96-page manuscript last week and discovered that someone had spilt oil across its pages – staining them and making some of them completely illegible. Its original leather front cover had also been cut off.”

“Best-selling crime writer Patricia Cornwell has filed a libel lawsuit against another author and is asking a federal judge to bar him from posting defamatory messages about her on the Internet.”

The final Harry Potter installment doesn’t enter the world until this summer but until then, “publishers are capitalising on ‘Pottermania’, with titles that anticipate what will happen in the final volume or provide behind-the-scenes analysis.”

There has been tension between book bloggers and reviewers for professional book reviews. “But now there is a growing sense that enough is enough — and that the friction between old and new book media obscures the fact that the two are in bed together now, for better or worse. Often the same people who churn out literary blogs are reviewing books for mainstream reviews.”

Why is it that books that are hot properties before publication fall flat in the stores? And why are books thought to have little sales potential suddenl bestsellers? “The answer is that no one really knows. ‘It’s an accidental profession, most of the time. If you had the key, you’d be very wealthy. Nobody has the key’.”

Cuts in newspaper book review sections have many worried about the future of American literacy. But “the future of books and reading was never in doubt. Literacy programs abound, both here and nationally. Despite fears of a digital takeover of our minds, finding information and entertainment on the Internet requires the ability to read.”

Perseus Books says it will close two imprints and cut 24 jobs. “Recent Perseus books include Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Second Chance, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus’ Banker to the Poor, and This Moment on Earth, by former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry.”

So England’s Orion Books is publishing shortened versions of classic literature. And what’s the harm? “Of course great art deserves to be experienced on its own uncompromising terms, flaws and all. But the older I get, the more I appreciate those artists who say what they have to say, then shut up. Is there a more powerfully moving novel than F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 56,000-word ‘The Great Gatsby’? Or a funnier film than Buster Keaton’s 44-minute ‘Sherlock Jr.’?”

Short fiction has always had a tough time finding a market. “Obviously, novels are more central in our culture. They’re easier to sell and they’re easier to make a living from. The question is: Why?”