Category: publishing

“The sixth annual Laura Bush National Book Festival Sept. 30 in Washington, D.C., will give new U.S. poet laureate Donald Hall his first public platform since he was named to the ceremonial post last month.”

It’s really difficult to get a piece published in the New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town.” “The section receives upwards of 100 pitches and submissions weekly, while only greenlighting about 10 unsolicited contributions per year.” So one frustrated contributor-wannabe decided to build a website to publish rejected “Talk” pieces, in something he calls a tribute to the real thing…

“After falling for three consecutive months, bookstore sales rose 1.2% in May, to $1.11 billion.”

“Contemporary memoirs tend to be either convalescent or nostalgic in mood. Suffering produces meaning. Life is what happens to you, not what you do. Victim and hero are one. Hence the preponderance of memoirs having to do with mental illness, sexual and other violence, drug and alcohol addiction, bad parents and/or mad or missing loved ones.”

“Where indeed in the independent ‘little’ literary magazines does the pleasure lie? The exercise of judgment, the settling of scores, the advocacy or the pillorying of the new: each magazine has an area of rhetorical specialism, a politics, and advances or counters the interests of a movement or a generation. In the past three decades, which magazines have made a substantial mark, a difference, a contribution?”

Toronto Life’s last annual fiction issue has gone to press. Why no more? Not enough good writing to be found? “Spurred by the realization that Toronto had become one of the world’s literary hot spots, the annual fiction issue was launched in 1997, and has received as many as 200 submissions annually. The magazine canvassed publishers, agents, members of the Writers’ Union and others to gather a range of material. The idea was to find stories consistent with the mandate of the magazine, and for the first three years this proved feasible. But by the fourth year, the magazine was inviting submissions from across the country.” And not finding them.

Last month Indigo, Canada’s largest bookstore chain, decided to ban Harper’s Magazine from its racks because of some of the magazine’s content. But the controversy over the move helped make the June issue of Harper’s a best-seller in canada, as readers flocked to other outlets to buy the magazine.

A rare folio of complete Shakespeare has sold for $5 million. “London dealer Simon Finch Rare Books purchased the book — still in its original 17th-century calfskin binding — during a sale at Sotheby’s. The book is one of about 40 complete copies known to exist and one of the few in private hands. Its value was estimated at between $4.6 million and 6.4 million.”

A 200-year-old poem by Shelley had been found. “The 172-line poem was included in Shelley’s pamphlet Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things, which was printed in Oxford in 1811. The political work was never published again and its existence has been doubted by some until now.”

Student magazines used to trend either to the ultra-serious or the supremely satirical. But these days, there’s a new campus publishing trend in the mix, and it’s enough to make the boys at the Harvard Lampoon blush. Student-run sex magazines have been around for years, but never before have such erotic publications gained such legitimacy as they now have on college campuses across the U.S.