Category: publishing

Aaron MacGruder’s Boondocks comic strip runs in 300 American newspapers. “Taking on the prevailing American mainstream, as well as the establishments of both the liberal left and black America, has made his strip popular, but it must make him lonely. With so few black and leftwing voices out there, how does he balance the demands of the under-represented constituencies of which he considers himself a part, and the demands of his cartoon?”

Beijing-born writer Yiyun Li has “had stories published in prestige magazines such as the New Yorker and the Paris Review. She’s won the Pushcart Prize and the Plimpton Prize for New Writers. Random House has signed her to a $200,000, two-book contract. Her first book, a story collection called ‘A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,’ was published this fall to wide praise. Now she has another problem: How do you explain to the federal immigration bureaucracy what the word ‘extraordinary’ means?”

“Laurence J. Kirshbaum, who spent 30 years in the book business, nearly all of it at Time Warner and its corporate forebears, made his mark in the staid publishing world by signing up celebrity authors like Madonna and offering million-dollar advances to franchise writers like James Patterson and Nelson DeMille. Now he has become part of a steady stream of editors and publishers who, over the last two decades, have jumped to the agenting side of the business.”

“Having eschewed the traditional model of heavy, politics-laden prose in favor of light, even lively storytelling, German authors are in the midst of a breakthrough that is propelling their work to hitherto unfound success abroad.” The factors leading to the increased popularity of German literature abroad appear to be myriad, but there is little question that the influence of the Frankfurt Book Fair has played a role, as has Oprah Winfrey’s famous book club.

Crime writers have long been relegated to an unfashionable corner of the literary sphere, somewhere between political satirists and romance novelists. But why should great writing go unrecognized and unrewarded just because it happens to concern cops and robbers? At least one prominent author is speaking out.

A new Boston-based children’s magazine may be the ultimate in niche marketing, and it represents a fascinating crossover between the world of traditional publishing and the do-it-yourself ethos of the online world. “On several counts, Kahani is unusual. The founders knew nothing about magazine publishing when they started in 2004 but found their way with study, practice, and expert advice. They have no advertising; they’ve funded the project themselves, so far. Most unusual is the publication itself: the first children’s literary magazine for South Asian kids in the United States.”

From the moment Yann Martel’s Booker Prize-winning novel, The Life of Pi, came to public attention, it seemed to cry out for images to match the vivid prose. A deal for the movie rights predictably followed, and now, Martel is taking the unusual step of soliciting illustrations for a new edition of the book. Amateurs and professionals alike are invited to submit entries in the competition, which is being sponsored by Martel’s publisher in partnership with newspapers in Canada, Australia, and the UK.

We’ve all been there. You’ve been Christmas shopping for weeks, scouring the stores looking for just the right gift for that one impossible-to-shop-for friend, when your eyes light on a brightly colored, snappily titled tome in a stack of books by the register. In an instant, you know two things: 1) this is a decidedly useless book, devoid of any literary or substantive value; and 2) it’s pretty funny, it’s vaguely clever in a cynical, pop-culture-saturated way, and you are unquestionably about to buy it for your friend.

When it comes right down to it, imitation is not only the sincerest form of flattery, it’s also a surefire method of marketing success. So no one should be surprised that the publishing world is about to start churning out countless books whose plotlines sound an awful lot like a certain bestselling novel concerning religious sects, freemasons, and old Italian artist/inventors. Some are comparing the rush to duplicate the success of The DaVinci Code to the explosion of the “legal thriller” genre in the early 1990s, which was sparked by the commercial success of author John Grisham.

“The average American college graduate’s literacy in English declined significantly over the past decade, according to results of a nationwide test released yesterday. When the test was last administered, in 1992, 40 percent of the nation’s college graduates scored at the proficient level, meaning that they were able to read lengthy, complex English texts and draw complicated inferences. But on the 2003 test, only 31 percent of the graduates demonstrated those high-level skills. There were 26.4 million college graduates.”