Category: publishing

A brief filed in a London court details author Dan Brown’s process in writing the Da Vinci Code. It’s a 69-page, unofficial memoir from an author who has rarely spoken to the media since his novel became an international sensation, a document intended not for reporters or general readers but for the officials of a British courtroom.

The bookseller’s income was up 6.3 percent in the last quarter of 2005. “For the quarter ended Jan. 28, Barnes & Noble earned $122.98 million, or $1.76 per share, helped by strong book titles across all categories and a robust online business. That compares with $115.63 million, or $1.56 per share, in the year-ago period.”

Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown spends a third day in court defending himself against plagiarism charges. “Brown’s cross-examination has been dominated by detailed questions about punctuation, spelling, and to what extent the language and ideas of The Da Vinci Code mirror those of the Holy Blood. At times showing signs of impatience, Brown sighed, shook his head and joked that his eyesight had deteriorated during the case as a result of the minutiae he had been forced to study.”

Dan Brown continued to insist in court, defending himself against plagiarism charges, that he and his wife, Blythe, had not bought or even read a copy of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail until a late stage of the research, long after he had submitted the synopsis for his own proposed book. He said the “clear point of evidence” was he had not included HBHG in the bibliography in his synopsis for the publishers. “I was very eager to impress my publishers with a longer list of bibliography … if I had read it I would have included it.”

More young teen readers are turning to adult fiction. “The growing exodus of young adults to adult books might be partly attributable to how bookstores display Young Adult fiction. Many lump YA in with baby lit. The YA sections in many Indigo stores, for example, are either swarming with ankle-biters or utterly deserted. Either way, it’s anathema to attracting teens.”

Australian writer Kate Grenville has won this year’s Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. “Grenville’s winning book is a historical novel looking at the competing claims of Aborigines and settlers in 19th Century Australia. The award comes five years after Grenville won the Orange Prize for Fiction for The Idea of Perfection.”

“Is all this fretting over lies in nonfiction giving fiction a bad name? I fear it is. And I’m afraid that our lack of regard for fiction actually may be hindering us from sorting out what is true and what is a lie. Fiction, after all, is the one lie that can tell us a truth. Unlike nonfiction — memoirs included — fiction makes no claim to reality. Works of the imagination — better known as literature — are totally unfettered from what actually has happened.”

Google is offering to broker sales of books online for publishers. “The new offering would allow people to sign in and purchase immediate, browser-based access to books, Google said on its site. Purchasers would not, however, be allowed to save a copy of the book to their computer or to otherwise copy pages from the book. Google is marketing the new program as the first of several tools intended to help book publishers boost their revenues, though it was unclear Monday how many had signed up. Pricing would remain entirely at the book publisher’s discretion.”

Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown started testifying in his plagiarism trial. “Mr Brown said Mr Baigent and Mr Leigh were just two of a number of authors who had written about the theory. ‘Yet I went out of my way to mention them for being the ones who brought the theory to mainstream attention. I would like to restate that I remain astounded by the claimants’ choice to file this plagiarism suit. For them to suggest, as I understand they do, that I have hijacked and exploited their work is simply untrue’.”

“An auction of first-edition books, handwritten manuscripts and letters by Beat Generation writers Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Charles Bukowski raised $225,000 in San Francisco to benefit a publisher left homeless by Hurricane Katrina.”