Category: publishing

Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” is 50 years old this year. But a researcher has dug up “a 1916 short story by the aristocratic German writer Heinz von Eschwege (1890-1951), a German newspaper journalist (and descendant of the Grimm Brothers) who wrote under the pen name Heinz von Lichberg and later became a Nazi Party propagandist. The story involved a cultivated middle-aged man bewitched by a preteen beauty named Lolita. It appeared as one of a collection of 15 tales published by Falken Verlag in Darmstadt under the title, ‘The Accursed Giocanda’.”

“As Daniel Handler and his editor, Susan Rich, laugh together and share anecdotes about how they launched A Series of Unfortunate Events, it’s apparent that they’re both still gobsmacked by their success. The Lemony Snicket books have sold 46 million copies, and the total is ballooning every day with the release this month of the 12th of a projected 13 in the series, The Penultimate Peril.” Handler actually didn’t start out with the intention of being a children’s author, but after several failed attempts at getting publishers interested in his adult fiction, he pitched his “terrible” idea for the Lemony Snicket series, and in no time, he was one of the hottest commodities in young adult literature.

Politicians do not generally make great novelists. (Heck, for most of them, getting through a speech without falling all over themselves constitutes a minor victory.) So one could be forgiven for sneering a bit at California Senator Barbara Boxer’s debut novel, which pits a liberal senator (surprise!) against an arch-conservative nominee to the Supreme Court. But wait – Boxer wrote the novel over a year ago, long before the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and the subsequent death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. The parallels to the current dust-up over Court nominee Harriet Miers are palpable, and make the book worth a look. Of course, Boxer is a blue-state pol first and foremost, so red-staters looking for a sympathetic (or realistic) portrayal will be sorely disappointed.

Traditionally, Canada’s Governor General’s Award poetry shortlist “offers a mix of old hands and new faces, a modest range of styles and at least one what-were-they-thinking title. Extravagantly experimental work seldom gets a mention, but inventively tweaking the standard lyrical narrative often helps a book stand out from the crowd. (And it is a crowd: the 2005 jury read 144 collections.) This year’s list follows suit, though there’s neither an oddball choice nor a brand-new ‘It’ poet to be found.”

Publishers are suing Google over the company’s plans to digitize libraries of books. Says Google: “The world would be a much worse place if the card catalog in a library only contained the books that the publisher had come by and put in” Some authors agree with the search giant, and believe that making their work freely searchable online will boost their stature and sales.

Why do people buy books? To look good. A new survey reports that “driven partly by pressure from incessant literary prize shortlists, more than one in three consumers in London and the south-east admit having bought a book ‘solely to look intelligent’, the YouGov survey says.”

“Random House has ended a literary dispute over a biography of Carl Gustav Jung by publishing a new version this month in Germany without special annotations and material from the Swiss heirs who had complained about ‘factual errors’ and ‘misleading’ information about the psychiatrist.”

The Village Voice and its chain of five other alt weeklies is merging with the New Times chain. “The deal would create a chain of 17 free weekly newspapers around the country with a combined circulation of 1.8 million.”

Critics worry that the merger of Village Voice and New Times will corporatize the alternative weeklies. “Despite their liberal, anti-establishment pedigree, alternative weeklies such as New Times and Village Voice long ago became big business. They are free and stuffed with music and arts coverage, they rake in piles of cash from entertainment ads and personal classifieds. Village Voice Media is owned by a consortium of investment banks that beat out New Times five years ago.”

Even in the era of instant electronic communication, the annual five-day Frankfurt Book fair is still the publishing world’s event of the year. “In a way, the parties are now the real business. ‘It’s the chance to rub shoulders with these really intelligent writers and publishers, and to talk about books that you care deeply about. That’s the reason you’re in this field. You forget that sometimes in New York because of the overwhelming business-ness of it’.”