Category: publishing

Not that anyone was biting their nails waiting for this news, but The DaVinci Code is a hit as a paperback, too. Dan Brown’s insanely popular and occasionally controversial novel has sold half a million copies in its first week in paperback, and the initial print run has been increased from 5 million to 6 million.

Two years ago author Tony Hendra was promoting his bestselling book when his 39-year-old daughter said Hendra had abused her as a child. “Now, as Hendra prepares to promote his latest, a novel called The Messiah of Morris Avenue (in bookstores today), one question seems unavoidable: Will the new book be hurt by the old scandal?”

Sony is beginning to distribute a new e-book reader, which it hopes will popularize the devices. “Ever since they emerged in the late 1990s, when they were widely labeled as the future of publishing, e-books have suffered because there was no popular device to read them on. Previous readers have been criticized for being difficult to look at and for lacking the intimacy of a bound paper text.”

Four of America’s most serious magazines – the Atlantic, The New Republic, The Paris Review, and Harper’s – all have new editors. What do the new chiefs have in common? Well, they’re all male, they’re all white, and they’re young…

Earlier this year an amateur scholar in San Diego declared that some time this year the English language would get its one millionth word. Professional word mavens were not amused. The notion that English will soon achieve this milestone is… ridiculous?

The giant UK book chain Waterstone’s has been granted approval to acquire Ottakar’s, the specialist books company. “Small retailers warned that the deal would be another step towards ‘clone- town Britain’, further eroding the diversity of the high street, restricting consumer choice and, ultimately, leading to higher prices.”

Walter Kirn is writing a novel online, in real time. But is there any advantage to this, wonders Sven Birkets. “The traditional aim of art, in response to deeply planted human needs, has from the first been fundamentally contemplative. The work offers a deliberate distancing from the chaos and turbulence of the immediate and allows the reader or viewer to process its tensions through the recognition of underlying patterns.”

Two of the largest bookstore chains in North America say they will not stock the April/May issue of the magazine, Free Inquiry, because it contains reprints of the Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammed which sparked riots and protests around the world earlier this year. Borders and Waldenbooks, which ordinarily carry the magazine, say that they are acting out of concern for the safety of their customers.

Nobel novelist VS Naipaul has lashed out at literary greats, including as Jane Austin and Henry James. “Naipaul said Thomas Hardy was ‘an unbearable writer’ who ‘doesn’t know how to compose a paragraph’. And Ernest Hemingway ‘was so busy being an American’ he ‘didn’t know where he was’.”

JK Rowling’s sixth Harry Potter book has won book of the year in the abritish Book Awards. “Rowling won the public vote ahead of autobiographies by the late John Peel, Sharon Osbourne, Jeremy Clarkson and Piers Morgan, and Jamie Oliver’s Italy.”