Category: publishing

“After a shake-up involving the sudden bankruptcy of book distributor Publishers Group West — and worries that their own finances and stock would be tangled for months to come — independent publishers are guardedly optimistic about a new distribution arrangement worked out last week in a Delaware courtroom.”

“At a time when other newspaper companies lament a loss of readers and advertisers, Schibsted is thriving. Its earnings rose 28 percent in the fourth quarter. Online operations will generate about 20 percent of the company’s revenue this year. Perhaps more important, at least for investors, online businesses will provide nearly 60 percent of the company’s operating earnings by next year.”

Sure, Jane Smiley thought a lot about sex as she was writing her new novel, but the more she wrote about it, the less it had any shock value for her. “Then, just as the book was about to be published, it was declared by no less than Mr. John Updike (in a review in the New Yorker) to ‘set a new mark for explicitness in a work of non-pornographic intent.’ What was I doing?”

“A rare edition of John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath has sold for $47,800 (£24,380), doubling the estimated price and setting what is believed to be a world record for a book by the Nobel Prize-winning author.”

“Kodansha Ltd., Japan’s largest publisher, said Friday it had dropped plans to release the translation of ‘Princess Masako: Prisoner of the Chrysanthemum Throne’ next month because of author Ben Hills’ refusal to publicly admit mistakes in the book and apologise. ‘The real reason is that they have submitted to bullying by the Japanese government not to publish the book,’ Hills says.”

“The book’s heroine, a scrappy 10-year-old orphan named Lucky Trimble, hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the ‘scrotum’… The inclusion of the word has shocked some school librarians, who have pledged to ban the book from elementary schools, and reopened the debate over what constitutes acceptable content in children’s books.”

“There were $10 billion worth of books sold last year, a negligible slip of 0.02 percent over 2005. One of the encouraging signs was the adult hardcover (not that kind of “adult”) segment, which showed a 4.1 percent increase. Adult paperbacks posted an 8.5 percent rise for the year. On the down side, books for young and high school readers seemed to be losing ground.”

A German neo-Nazi publisher has been sentenced to five years in prison in Germany for inciting racial hatred and denying that the Nazis murdered six million Jews. “Ernst Zündel, who was extradited from Canada to face trial in Germany in 2005, received the maximum sentence available for the crime of Holocaust denial after being found guilty on 14 counts.”

Williams wrote in his notebooks. “By the end, his diary writing has become a means of self-sedation. On planes, he scurries to the lavatory to drink from his contraband flask of liquor, and scribbles as he does so. ‘Now we are rocking a bit,’ he woozily notices. Turbulence or delirium tremens? In one of the last entries, he asks an almost posthumous question: ‘Did I die by my own hand or was I destroyed slowly and brutally by a conspiratorial group?”

“The much-borrowed Brown formula involves some very specific things. The name of a great artist, artifact or historical figure must be in the book’s story, not to mention on its cover. The narrative must start in the present day with a bizarre killing, then use that killing as a reason to investigate the past. And the past must yield a secret so big, so stunning, so saber-rattling that all of civilization may be changed by it. Probably not for the better.”