Category: publishing

“The Bank of Nova Scotia is preparing to unveil itself as the financial saviour of the Giller Prize, cementing Bay Street’s growing reputation as the deep-pocketed patron of the national arts community… The prize pays $25,000 to the best novel or collection of short stories written in English, but the cost of staging the extravagant black-tie event is said to be several times that amount.”

Google has been sued by two authors over its plans to create a searchable archive of academic libraries, and the editors at Wired say that the lawsuit represents a short-sighted attempt to stifle a worthy program. “There are fundamental differences between copying analog works into a digital format for the purposes of piracy, and copying the same works to create a service that conforms to copyright laws in making that data available to the public. What happens on the backend should be of little or no interest to copyright holders, so long as rights are respected on the front end, where control over a work really counts.”

Can you actually earn a reasonable income from your blog? That’d be news to ArtsJournal’s bloggers, but according to some in the blog biz, ad revenue for high-traffic blogs has been going up steadily, and some bloggers are even getting paid directly for their work. “On average, Weblog salaries are about a quarter to half what a mid-level editorial job would pay, without the daily office commute… What do you have to do to earn $500? Publish 125 entries a month, monitor comments, respond to readers and delete offensive comments — all for about $4 a post.”

The sixth installment of the Harry Potter franchise has sold more than 11 million copies. “Published nine weeks ago, the American edition of the book sold 6.9 million copies in its first 24 hours.”

Ian McEwan goes for a stroll in London trying to give away books. “We moved through the lunchtime office crowds picnicking on the grass. In less than five minutes we gave away 30 novels. Every young woman we approached – in central London practically everyone seems young – was eager and grateful to take a book. Some riffled through the pile murmuring, ‘Read that, read that, read that …’ before making a choice. Others asked for two, or even three. The guys were a different proposition. They frowned in suspicion, or distaste. When they were assured they would not have to part with their money, they still could not be persuaded. ‘Nah, nah. Not for me. Thanks mate, but no.’ Only one sensitive male soul was tempted.”

“A collection of letters written by poet T.S. Eliot to a beloved godson sold at auction Tuesday for $82,300, auctioneer Bonhams said. The series of 50 letters to Thomas Faber, a member of the Faber and Faber publishing family, includes poems and illustrations that formed the basis of Eliot’s 1939 children’s book, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, which was dedicated to Faber.” The amount of the sale was nearly double the estimated value of the collection.

John Berendt, the popular and controversial author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, has a new book out focusing on the fire that destroyed Venice’s Fenice Opera House in 1996, and like his earlier blockbuster, it purports to be a work of nonfiction that reads like a novel. Berendt admitted in an author’s note that some of the events of Midnight were made up or reordered for “storytelling effect,” an admission which may have cost him the Pulitzer Prize. And, while he insists that he hasn’t done the same with the new book, there’s little question that Berendt’s work, while undeniably engaging to read, treads that uncomfortable line between reportorial fact and factually inspired fiction.

Norman Mailer has been chosen to receive the 2005 medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters by the National Book Foundation. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the poet, publisher and bookseller at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco gets the foundation’s first Literarian Award.

The 8000-member Authors Guild has sued Google to block it from copying books in big libraries. “The lawsuit asked the court to block Google from copying the books so the authors would not suffer irreparable harm by being deprived of the right to control reproduction of their works. It sought class-action status on behalf of anyone or any entity with a copyright to a literary work at the University of Michigan library.”

Scott Pack buys books for Waterstone’s, which means he has a lot of power over what people in the UK will read. He is “keen to suggest, of course, that he does not have anything like the power that publishers and authors ascribe to him, that he is simply one more filter for the ridiculous volume of books that are published. All he does really, he says, is decide which books Waterstone’s will promote, which ones will make it on to the coveted tables that greet customers as they walk into the shops. He thinks it fair enough that publishers should fork out to have their books included in these promotions and, stubbornly, does not see how this policy might favour the big corporate publishers who can afford to pay over the odds.”