Category: publishing

“A French-language novel by Calgary-born Nancy Huston that was awarded France’s prestigious Prix Femina this week was expected to be published in English first — but the novelist’s Canadian publisher and New York agent held off doing that this year because they wanted Huston to change portions of her text to avoid offending U.S. readers.”

In an age when books are more accessible than ever, but independent booksellers are an endangered species, publishers are trying ever more innovative techniques to get their product in the hands of readers. The latest trend is books as a lifestyle accessory, sold alongside clothing, coffee, even lunch meat. “What began as a trickle of cookbooks in kitchen shops and do-it-yourself titles in hardware stores has become, in recent months, the fastest growing component in many major publishers’ retail strategies.”

There may be more unlikely publishing moguls than Viggo Mortenson, but you’d have to look hard for them. The Lord of the Rings star launched his Perceval Press shortly after the film trilogy made him an international superstar, and since then, the business has carved out a small but important niche in the industry. “The point of the enterprise is to cast light on work that might not otherwise be published, and to present artists’ work as it was intended to be seen.”

“One Philadelphia business owner makes his views known with a sign reading, ‘This Is America. When Ordering Please Speak English.’ Two towns in the region have laws intended to drive out illegal immigrants. On the statewide political trail, two Senate candidates swap heated words about immigration issues. The question of who belongs here and who doesn’t, who is American and who isn’t, is dominating much local and national debate. Which makes the latest selection for ‘One Book, One Philadelphia’ all the more appropriate. Carlos Eire’s ‘Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy’ is the citywide reading program’s featured book for 2007.”

A new report “accuses publishers of undermining the used book market and unnecessarily inflating prices. Studies show that the cost of textbooks is rising faster than the rate of inflation, and the price issue has gained traction with at least one lawmaker this year.”

A group of famous writers show up to participate in a charity spelling bee. How’d they do? Well, it’s good writers have spell-checkers…

“Recently I’ve noticed a disconcerting trend for publishers to tell literary critics exactly what they should be saying about a new book. Instead of letting reviewers get on with their job of reviewing, publishers are behaving like anxious children, pulling at the journalist’s sleeve and suggesting what should come next.”

“We had a policy on books from the very beginning with our children; they are an essential need not a luxury. You can have as many as you like. A Christmas tradition soon developed. Each year they got a book stack – a selection of books wrapped individually in different coloured tissue paper and joined into a bundle with a large gold ribbon with the largest book at the bottom, the smallest at the top. … Not cheap, since you need at least eight books to make an impressive stack, but one that has, I think, helped to keep their love of reading going.”

“A Harvard student newspaper cartoonist has been suspended from the paper and two of her cartoons retracted after editors learned of their resemblance to ones published in other media outlets. Harvard Crimson staffers found that four cartoons by Kathleen Breeden , a sophomore, bore striking similarity to cartoons shown on a website that compiles cartoons from around the world. … The incident comes less than a week after Harvard Crimson staff members said they discovered that a columnist, Victoria Ilyinsky , had failed to cite literary references that she had lifted from a column posted to the online magazine Slate.”

“An unpublished sonnet that Sylvia Plath wrote in college while pondering themes in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel ‘The Great Gatsby’ will appear Wednesday in a Virginia online literary journal. Plath, who committed suicide in 1963 at 30, wrote ‘Ennui’ in 1955 in her senior year at Smith College.”