Category: publishing

Many businesses have joined online virtual worlds. Now a big publisher has set up virtual shop and created an online community…

Microsoft is ramping up its efforts to digitize books and make them available online. The company has made a deal with a digital-scanning company to produce a vast library of online-accessible digitized books.

A major Mexican city has “become a crucible for an unusual experiment in enlightened police training.” It is sending its officers to school to get culture. “The experiment began early in 2005 with reading and writing classes. It has since mushroomed into an entire literature course with its own constantly expanding editorial series. The principle is that a police officer who is cultured is in a better position to be a better police officer.”

“All over Britain, tens of thousand of teenagers have begun working their way through books that have been chosen by exam boards as the best examples of contemporary literature. Anyone who has done Eng Lit A-level will know how these books – even the necessary “quotes” from these books – can become the ones you remember for the rest of your life. No author can foresee the judgment of posterity, but there is one certain way of extending the lifespan of one’s literary creations: become a set text.”

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin, first published in 1852, sold 10,000 copies within days of publication, 300,000 within a year. In a few decades it had been read in dozens of languages and so inspired Tolstoy that he regarded it as a model. But during the last half-century, the book has come to be seen almost as caricature.”

Last week, the University of Minnesota announced with much fanfare that it would pay $750,000 to acquire the personal archive of author Robert Bly. But at least one observer says the acquisition is yet another example of academia’s disconnect from truly good writing. “The literature and creative writing departments of our universities deserve a lot of the blame for this. For decades now, they’ve lavished praise and professorships on authors who dress up tedium with tortured syntax and mystical posturing, the sort who — like Bly — promulge the stereotype that contemporary literature is a pursuit suited only for pseudo-intellectuals in silly vests who go into raptures at the prospect of yet another eight page description of a snowy day.”

China’s publishing industry is expanding at a startling rate, and “many consider the greatest loophole in Chinese-English publishing efforts to be contemporary Chinese voices in English.” As such, Western publishers are lining up to translate the works of China’s top young writers.

“Dutch libraries are giving away 575,000 copies of a 1973 bestseller in the hope of turning the nation into one big book group and getting more people to read long-term.”

“When George Plimpton died, the literary world wondered: What will happen to the Paris Review? Now we know the answer. It has gotten even better.”

Robert Bly has sold his archives to the University of Minnesota Libraries for $775,000. “While other organizations, including the Library of Congress, expressed interest in the collection, fundraisers said it was Bly’s wish to house his life’s work in his home state.”