Category: publishing

“A look back at the fall publishing season, when publishers typically release their biggest books hoping to cash in on the holidays, reveals that the publishing industry is still struggling. The Association of American Publishers reported last month that sales of adult hardcover books, sluggish for several years, have fallen by 2 percent so far this year. Similarly, the American Booksellers Association, a trade group representing bookstores, said that overall bookstore sales in the first nine months of 2005 declined 2 percent from a year ago.”

“The new digital technology eliminates the need for printing plates, which are so costly to create that many copies of a book need to be produced to justify the expense. Now publishers can go more directly from a computer file to the printed page — a technological process not so different from using a high-quality copy machine. The data can also be stored digitally indefinitely, allowing for quick reprints down the road. The same systems, however, allow anyone to publish, using so-called vanity presses that have sprung up to print books with little or no editorial review, a trend that worries some academic publishers.”

Iranian-born writer and English professor Azar Nafisi dreams of an international book club, enabled by the internet. “Just imagine, she muses, the potential for global enlightenment if millions of people came together as a community of readers to discuss the words and ideas of international authors, both living and dead, who can provoke the shock and recognition that how alike we are is far more than our differences.”

Plagued by complaints of misinformation, Wikipedia will “now require users to register before they can create articles. The website hopes that the registration requirement will limit the number of stories being created. ‘What we’re hopeful to see is that by slowing that down to 1,500 a day from several thousand, the people who are monitoring this will have more ability to improve the quality. In many cases the types of things we see going on are impulse vandalism’.”

“Teen pulp, which evolved out of children’s books and rebelled against their supposed strictures, appears to take up far more real estate on the shelves of bookstores than books of more subtle literary bent for the pre-adult set. The genre also reflects a different set of expectations about how books are read and why.”

Nine years ago Britain institutes a national literacy framework for teaching English. “But the framework has now become a double-edged sword – it provides schools with a common programme to ensure that children have a broad diet of fiction, non-fiction, plays and poetry. It has helped us think about the way in which words, sentences and texts weave together. However, for many teachers the framework has become a strait-jacket that limits children’s progress. It has trapped us into ‘delivery’ mode with teachers trotting through objectives without thinking about whether these are relevant to children’s needs.”

“These days, a decade is a long time to be editor of one magazine, and Lewis Lapham has been editor-in-chief at Harper’s for 28 of the last 30 years. But now he is handing the job to his deputy, a man whose byline—Roger Hodge—I once assumed to be a twee Canterbury Tales pseudonym. It turns out Hodge is not only real but intelligent and thoughtful. He grew up on his family’s ranch in Texas and started at Harper’s as an intern at 29, in 1996.”

“International demand for English-language literary fiction has gone seriously south. Although hard numbers for the fall season won’t be available until January, the anecdotal evidence is not encouraging. Agents and retailers are complaining that sales for new fiction are soft, that orders for reprints and back-listed books are down, and that publishing houses from Berlin to Boston are becoming choosier about what novels they buy, when they are willing to buy them, and what they are willing to pay.”

November was National Novel-Writing Month. “Nearly 60,000 people around the world set out Nov. 1 to reach the goal of writing 50,000 words in 30 days. About one in six made it. Students could enter under less-strict guidelines.”

Jon Carroll has had it with the trend of writers writing about writers and writing and expecting the rest of the world to give a damn. “Writing is not an inherently interesting profession. It’s very boring to watch. Writers do not dress well, and they frequently mumble. Periodically, a writer goes into rehab or opens an antique store; it’s not exactly cinematic. It’s not like freeing the virtuous farmers from the yoke of oppression by wearing a mask and engaging in swordplay. It’s the life of the mind. It’s paint drying.” But then, people in nearly every profession seem to be obsessed with their own importance these days…