Category: publishing

“Amazon.com Inc. has started a program with publishers that allows out-of-print titles and lower-volume books to be printed and shipped on demand when consumers place orders… Amazon.com is helping publishers cut costs by eliminating the need for inventory. The Internet retailer acquired BookSurge in April 2005 to enter the print-on-demand book business. BookSurge has more than 10,000 titles, many of them out of print.”

If the Catholic Church really wanted to expose the controversy behind The DaVinci Code, says Dominic Papatola, they could leave all the religious babble behind, and just point out what a truly awful read it is. “The book seems to be written at about a sixth-grade readability level. The plot advances in a series of enough improbable ‘a-ha!’ moments to burn through a couple of grosses of light bulbs. And the galloping, thinly strung conspiracy theory makes your typical Kennedy assassination theorist look scholarly by comparison…”

“Early this year, the New York Times Book Review’s editor, Sam Tanenhaus, sent out a short letter to a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages, asking them to please identify “the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years.” The results – in some respects quite surprising, in others not at all – provide a rich, if partial and unscientific, picture of the state of American literature, a kind of composite self-portrait as interesting perhaps for its blind spots and distortions as for its details.”

“There is a quality of melancholy to sitting alone at a little table with your ego and a year’s work piled in front of you and no one paying a lot of attention. Some authors have no trouble selling themselves, but I’m not a born book hustler. I sit there like an abandoned dog, waiting for someone to buy the book, at which time I sign it.”

A whole mini-publishing industry has sprung up around the Da Vinci Code. “Many of at least 20 Da Vinci Code titles have found success by glomming onto the mania surrounding Brown’s successful and controversial thriller. More are being squeezed out, thanks to big buzz for the movie adaptation starring Tom Hanks and due in theaters today.”

“The Literary Ventures Fund is a tiny nonprofit, founded last year with offices in Boston and New York, that ‘seeks to challenge the status quo of literary publishing,’ as its Web site boldly proclaims. LVF hopes to help exceptional works of fiction, literary nonfiction and poetry find the readership they deserve — by using an economic model more frequently associated with Silicon Valley.”

Why don’t UK publishers publish more black and Asian poets? Arts Council England wants to know. “The move comes after research indicated that 8% get work into print despite their popularity at poetry readings.”

Robert Lennon is “becoming the first writer in 50 years to have his fiction serialized in the pages of Harper’s Magazine. While the serialization is noteworthy—the magazine will run Lennon’s Happyland over the course of five issues starting in July—how Lennon’s novel wound up at the magazine is almost more so.”

“Ever since the rise of the book superstore in the 1990s, we have been flooded with lamentations for the rapidly disappearing independent booksellers. The real change in the book market is not the big guy vs. the little guy, or chain vs. indie stores. Rather, it’s the reader’s greater impatience, a symptom of our amazing literary (and televisual) plenitude.”

“With authors fiercely battling for attention in a media-saturated world, an increasing number of writers — from first-time novelists like Ms. Dean to celebrities like Madeleine K. Albright, the former Secretary of State — are visiting people where they spend much of their time: at work… A growing roster of corporations, including Microsoft, Boeing, Google and Altria, the owner of brands like Philip Morris and Kraft Foods, have played host to writers in their offices. Even the United States Treasury Department has invited nearly 40 authors to speak over the last two years. Executives see the author readings as akin to other perks like in-house gyms, subsidized cafeterias and financial advice.”