Category: publishing

The halting of filming of a popular book by Monica Ali in London has provoked a debate about cultural sensitivities and freedom of expression. “In some ways, the debate has revived a much wider discussion in Europe about whether free speech may be limited by the sensitivities of people who feel affronted by it. Should old Western societies, in other words, rewrite their definitions of liberty to accommodate the sensitivities of others?”

There are conventions of adults taking the Potter ouevre seriously. Really seriously. “We need to recognise that just because something’s popular doesn’t mean it’s bad. There’s a great deal we can learn about things that are popular. And it’s popular among such a diverse group of readers.”

“When the federal Department of Canadian Heritage surveyed Canadian reading habits last year, it found a distinct gender gap. Women accounted for 60 per cent of the daily readers and 70 per cent of the heavy readers who had read 50 or more books in the last 12 months. Women also outnumbered men two to one as regular readers of both classic and contemporary novels.”

Why are so many books set in Paris? “People who read these books aren’t interested in what really happens at different levels of society. They’re into the fantasy Paris, the Paris of sophistication and magic and Champagne drinking.”

“If anything shows how Library and Archives Canada needs to upgrade its cataloguing systems, it could be the fact that staff realized that they had not one but two originals of a valuable 16th-century map only when they read about it on July 27 in The Globe and Mail. … Outside archivists and researchers say these problems result from too little care being taken in translating, cross-referencing and proofreading entries when putting catalogues on-line.”

The publisher will give readers internet access to “the first three pages of most chapters in 135 titles by 10 authors, including well-known writers like Michael Crichton, Lisa Scottoline, Bernard Cornwell and Paulo Coelho.”

“The travails of independents in today’s market are well-known, but for specialty children’s bookstores, survival is even more precarious. Kids’ books are priced lower than adult fare, yet the overhead is the same. And the young clientele has a pesky way of growing up and moving on.” But Seattle’s oldest children’s book store is doing fine…

“Just as America has turned into a ‘sink or swim’ society, publishers keep abandoning worthy authors to a marketplace stacked against them. And they do this while newspapers and electronic media are ditching arts coverage. In such a world, a little barnstorming self-promotion is a basic survival skill.”

It’s come to this: authors Stephen King and John Irving have publicly pleaded with J.K. Rowling to spare the life of the boy wizard Harry Potter in the final installment of her bestselling series. The plea, which was made straight to Rowling’s face at a charity reading in New York, may have fallen on deaf ears, however, as the famously secretive Rowling refused to make any promises.

“Perseus Books Group, one of the largest independent publishers of general-interest books, is expected to announce today that it has acquired Consortium, a St. Paul-based provider of sales, marketing, distribution and bill collecting services to 100 small independent publishers across the country.” The acquisition is expected to improve Perseus’s ability to market itself and widely distribute its product.