Category: publishing

“Some — by now perhaps all — cultural prizes have had the shine rubbed off them by having been given to undeserving people, an ample number of serious jackasses among them. Everyone knows that the list of writers who did not win the Nobel Prize — Tolstoy, Proust, Henry James, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, W.H. Auden — is much more impressive than the list of those who have. Moreover, there is something about winning the Nobel Prize in literature that makes one posthumous no matter how much longer one goes on to live.”

David Bergen beat out four other finalists Tuesday night to take home the 2005 Giller Prize, Canada’s preeminent award for fiction. Bergen’s novel, The Time In-Between, finished ahead of books by Joan Barfoot, Camilla Gibb, Lisa Moore, and Edeet Ravel in the lavish award ceremony broadcast across Canada. Bergen receives CAN$40,000 in prize money.

The best part about winning a major literary prize is usually the increased sales that go along with the honor. And this year, the candidates for Canada’s Giller Prize have even more reason than usual to lick their chops at the prospect of a win. This year’s shortlist is jam-packed with authors most of the public has never heard of, and such little-known writers are traditionally the ones who benefit most from the exposure a major award affords. Publishers are gearing up for tomorrow night’s announcement as well: the winner will see an immediate additional print run of 20,000 copies, to be on shelves within two days.

“About one month after reports began to surface that Amazon was developing a pay-per-view program for reading books online, the company unveiled Amazon Pages, a program that will let consumers view parts of a book online for a fee. Amazon provided no details on how it will price the service and no major publishers have yet agreed to be part of the program. In a second initiative, the e-tailer announced Amazon Upgrade, which will allow customers who buy a print book to also buy access to the work online. For its part, Random has put its stake in the ground about how it expects to be compensated for books that are viewed online.”

Canada’s Giller Prize will be awarded on Tuesday, which means the window for guessing the winner is closing quickly. But handicapping the Giller has always been tricky, and this year, even picking a frontrunner is a struggle. “What drives the Gillers? According to Calgary novelist Aritha van Herk, it’s ‘a weird mixture of circumstance, accident, the chemistry of jury members and the books published, what the publishers chose to submit, and the publishers who have the money to pay the entrance fee. There must be a math equation for that.'”

How popular is The DaVinci Code? So popular that there are actually authors other than Dan Brown getting rich off it, apparently. Books about the book have been flying off the shelves, and now, two writers are about to come out with new books dedicated to speculating about what the upcoming DaVinci sequel might be about.

With the help of Microsoft, the British Library is digitizing its books that are out of copyright. “The Microsoft deal means that 25 million pages from the British Library’s collections will be put online and made searchable for anyone. More works will be scanned in the future. ‘This is great news for research and scholarship and will give unparalleled access to our vast collections to people all over the world: they will be available to anyone, anywhere and at anytime’.”

Amazon says it will start selling some books by the page. “The Amazon Pages service will let customers buy portions of a book online, as little as a single page. The cost for most books would be a few cents a page, though it might be higher for more specialized works.”

“Michael V. Korda will step down at the end of the year as editor in chief of Simon & Schuster’s trade books imprint, a post he has held since 1968, the company said yesterday. He will remain as editor in chief emeritus, editing the books of about a half dozen writers, including David McCullough, Larry McMurtry and Mary Higgins Clark.” The move appears to be entirely voluntary on Mr. Korda’s part.

China’s most successful novel in years, which is shortly to be published in the U.S., is called Wolf Totem, and serves as a surprisingly sharp allegorical critique of Chinese culture even as it celebrates aspects of the country’s long and colorful past. But perhaps the most fascinating thing about the novel is that its author has chosen to remain entirely anonymous, even in the wake of the book’s stunning success, and that he has, up to this point, succeeded.