Category: publishing

Why do filmmakers cast pretty women for movies of great novels? “Books link readers directly to the interior lives of their heroines, but the camera needs the beauty out on the surface, where the audience can fall in love with it faster. In novels, other characters are wooed by wonderful minds, and infer beauty from what’s within. On film, a plain face has to work so much harder to persuade people. It’s so much easier to start with the lovely, but it loses so much. The great women novelists of the 19th century had no great interest in the great looking; among the first to trade on their brains rather than their appearance, they created characters who also had greater interior than exterior worth.”

Geraldine McCaughrean, who won in a worldwide competition to write a sequel to Peter Pan has revealed a few details of her plans. “McCaughrean says she has rewritten the final pages of Peter Pan to help transport readers back to Neverland, to a setting 25 years after the boy who never grew up apparently vanquished his pirate foe. She hints that the character of Wendy will be a stronger, more modern woman, while – in a remarkable twist – the immortal Peter may be transformed into his dastardly nemesis, Captain Hook. While some aficionados may be shocked by the revelations, experts are excited and insist McCaughrean is doing justice to Barrie’s modern interests in issues of gender and humanity’s struggle with inner demons.”

The UK’s National Short Story Prize is the world’s richest. “In what organisers hope will one day grow to the size and prominence of the Booker Prize, the competition aims to honour the country’s finest writers of short stories so is only open to authors with a previous record of publication who are either UK nationals or residents.”

Where are this year’s literary hits? “The big books have been thrillers, such as “The Da Vinci Code” and “The Historian,” and the fantasy blockbuster “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” Not only have established literary authors disappointed critics, no major new literary voices have emerged. ‘I think a lot of editors will tell you that 2004 and 2005 haven’t been very good for fiction acquisitions. There weren’t a lot of huge auctions or books that publishers got really excited about’.”

Booksellers were expecting a blockbuster summer with a new Harry Potter in play. But Barnes & Noble reports disappointing sales “The company’s sales rose just 6 percent, to $1.17 billion. Analysts had been expecting sales of $1.18 billion on a bigger boost from the sixth volume of the Harry Potter saga, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” The new book about the boy wizard sold more than 8.9 million copies in the first 24 hours it was on sale in the United States and Britain, becoming the fastest-selling book in history, according to publishers. But retailers cut heavily into their profits on the book, selling it at discounts of more than 50 percent to lure customers into stores.”

“Peter Meltzer decided the modern thesaurus was so flawed, there was only one way to fix it: He would have to write a new one. Next month, some 10 years and 12,000 entries later, The Thinker’s Thesaurus: Sophisticated Alternatives to Common Words (Marion Street Press), will land on bookstore shelves. Instead of following each entry with five or six more-or-less accurate synonyms, The Thinker’s Thesaurus offers but one choice – an exact, albeit unusual, synonym.”

The most eagerly awaited book in France this year is by Michel Houellebecq, the enfant terrible of modern French writing. But the book has had an early entry into public by a critic who claims he found a copy of the book on a park bench. “M. Rinaldi’s account of how he came by the book was, therefore, treated with some scepticism. The headline above his review read ‘A Houellebecq fallen from a lorry’. M. Rinaldi, one of the best-known and most acerbic literary critics in France and an outspoken enemy of Houellebecq’s writing, claimed he had found the review copy by pure accident.”

Why was everyone so apalled with Posh Spice confessed she’d never read a book? “Since when did a regular quota of suitably serious reading matter become obligatory? And who decides what’s worthy anyway? If Victoria Beckham swallowed a regular dose of sugary chick lit or violent slasher chillers, for example (well, they’re books too), would it somehow make her reading habits more acceptable than the fact that she happens to “love fashion magazines”?”

The cost of textbooks has gone up twice the rate of inflation each year since the late 80s, says a new report. “The average annual cost of textbooks for a student in 2003-04 was $898 at a four-year college and $886 at a two-year college, the report found. While overall prices have increased 72 percent since 1986, the report said, college tuition and fees have increased 240 percent and textbooks 186 percent.”

You’re writing an autobiography. You’re writing about people around you. But some of it might not be flattering. Indeed, some of it might be bizarre. So how much do you have to disguise your descriptions of these people, and will you be sued? These are the issues in a case brought against a best-selling memoir “Running With Scissors.” The book world is following it closely…