Category: publishing

Crime novels are gaining in popularity in Scottish libraries as romance novels wane. “Total loans for the year were 341 million, or more than five books for every man, woman and child. This year sees crime fiction stealing a march on romance. Maybe this is an indication that national tastes are becoming increasingly macabre.”

The American Association of Petroleum Geologists has awarded its annual journalism award this year to Michael Crichton, the science fiction writer whose latest book, “State of Fear,” dismisses global warming as a largely imaginary threat embraced by malignant scientists for their own ends. “It is fiction,” conceded Larry Nation, communications director for the association. “But it has the absolute ring of truth.”

Thanks to its 170 Narnia titles, HarperCollins has had one of its most profitable quarters ever. “Operating income jumped 24% at HarperCollins in the second quarter of fiscal 2006 ended December 31, to $77 million, despite revenue increasing less than 4%, to $390 million.”

Carol Sarler doesn’t read books. Really. She blames it on school. “We read the books, we were tested on them and we passed or failed accordingly. Reading books was, therefore, the stuff of school in exactly the same way as was trigonometry or chucking a javelin — and since leaving my esteemed seat of learning, I am as likely to curl up with Jane Austen for the fun of it as I am to flirt with a cosine or risk the wrong end of a spear.”

European companies are buying up US publishers. “Why do foreign media firms find American publishers attractive even as U.S. media conglomerates look to dump them? For American companies, book publishing is a slow-growth niche business. For the Europeans, it’s something quite different. These foreign companies that now own U.S. publishers generally lack the scale of U.S. media conglomerates.”

Publishers are experimenting with pairing classic books with DVD copies of the movies. So far sales have been mixed (and for various reasons). Still, putting books and movie together seems like a smart idea. “Academics used to heap disdain on movie versions of great literature, but no longer. In contrast to their predecessors, many college literature professors today routinely bring films into the classroom to complement the reading of the classics.”

Zadie Smith beats Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro and Nick Hornby to win the Eurasian regional heat of the Commonwealth Writers’ prize with her latest novel, On Beauty.

Where do books fit in to the modern culture? “Nobody, not even academics, who are hardier than most, want books in any other form than books. At the same time, we acknowledge that books have become as throwaway as everything else in our culture, so what do we do? First, we stop publishing books that needn’t be books. People who don’t really read don’t really need books — so let them have Jordan and Becks in lots of other ways. Audio, animated-audio, that is, audio with pictures — is just about right for most celebrity publications.”

“A central figure in the case of the mysterious writer JT Leroy has come forward to say that no one named JT Leroy exists, and that the books published under that name were actually written by a San Francisco woman named Laura Albert.”

Harper Collins has announced plans to offer excerpts of books it publishes for free on the internet. “We hope this pilot will demonstrate a win-win for publishers, authors and search engines. The new era does not need to be a zero sum game.”