Category: publishing

“For every four Britons with their noses in a bestseller, there’s one adult in the UK who does not read books at all. Research by the Office for National Statistics, commissioned by the National Reading Campaign in 2001, found a quarter of adults had not read a book in the previous 12 months. The figure rose to almost half among males aged 16-24. This is despite soaring book sales – up 19% in the UK in the five years to 2004. This rejection of books is not connected to literacy – the number of adults with reading difficulties has decreased by two million in the past decade to about five million.”

Comic books… er… graphic novels are hot in the adult market right now. “In the United States, sales of graphic novels have leaped from $75 million in 2001 to $207 million in 2004. Booksellers in America, Britain, Germany, Italy and South Korea cite graphic literature as one of their fastest-growing categories. In Borders, one of America’s largest bookstore chains, graphic-novel sales have risen more than 100 percent a year for the past three years. In France, where comics have long been mainstream, sales are reaching record highs, up 13.8 percent to 43.3 million copies in 2004; indeed, five of the 10 best-selling books in France last year were comic books.”

“Next month, Stephen King, Amy Tan, Lemony Snicket, Nora Roberts, Michael Chabon and 11 other best-selling writers will sell the right to name characters in their new novels. Profits from the auction (at www.ebay.com/fap) will go to the First Amendment Project, whose lawyers go to court to protect the free speech rights of activists, writers and artists.”

“In books on sex, crime, psychology and the occult, and in more than a dozen novels, Colin Wilson has explored how pessimism can rob ordinary people of their powers. ‘If you asked me what is the basis of all my work, it’s the feeling there’s something basically wrong with human beings. Human beings are like grandfather clocks driven by watch springs. Our powers appear to be taken away from us by something.’ The critics, particularly in Britain, have alternately called him a genius and a fool.”

What’s hot in the magazine world? Celebrity magazines. The star-obsessed glossies are seeing huge circulation gains. What’s not? News magazines, which are seeing readers peel away to the internet…

The Society for Historians of the Early American Republic has a decidedly different take on American history than the popular historians. “Whereas popular historians like David McCullough and Richard Brookhiser turn out bios of the old white guys who stare back at us from our money, SHEAR members present papers with titles such as “Self-Help and Self-Determination: Philadelphia’s African American Community and the Abolitionist Challenge”, and “Hawking Hallowed Ground: Utopianism and its Discontents in Philadelphia’s Rural Cemeteries”. Is this a happy form of stereo – on one side, the founders, founders and more founders mantra of the media; on the other, the from-the-bottom-up social history of professional scholars? Or is it sheer dysfunctionality in the field of early American history?”

“In recent years, scholars have begun pursuing a more nuanced approach to discussing literary hoaxes than the knee-jerk disgruntlement of a reader scorned. Instead, literary scholars like Ohio State University professor Brian McHale and the Australian critic K.K. Ruthven are concentrating on the productive and beautifully unpredictable effects of hoaxing. Are all hoaxes the same? Should they all be judged by the same ethical standards? Do some hoaxes rise above being trifling pranks or bogus facsimiles to become serious acts of cultural criticism? What of an author’s intentions?”

“Books written by women have doubled their share of sales in the past 20 years and could overtake those written by men in the next 20. British trade magazine, The Bookseller, reports the same trend, with almost half the titles in its top 20 by female authors. And a couple of names in the top sellers are enough to make highbrow literary types tear out their hair – Danielle Steele and Maeve Binchy.”

Arundhati Roy’s huge success in 1997 sparked a frenzy of anticipation for more Indian writers. “The truth is, however, that since 1997 there has been no new galaxy of stars emerging to match the stature of those of the 1980s and 90s. Many of the Indian novelists who were signed up with such excitement 10 years ago failed to repay even a fraction of their advances. The only Indian-themed book to win the Booker – The Life of Pi – was written by Yann Martel, a white Canadian. In India itself, there is no new internationally acclaimed masterpiece, no new Roy.”

Why is it desirable to require book reviwers to have no “conflict of interest” regarding the books they review? “To begin with, the world of fiction is pretty small. The number of folks who are any good at writing reviews of fiction is smaller still. By the time you find one willing to review a book, it’s inconceivable that he or she not have preconceived notions about the author, the author’s work, or the proper way to write a novel. A hundred other conflicts may exist: relationships with literary agents, friends, or friends of friends; workplace affiliations; political sympathies, religious views; and on and on. Also, writers are notoriously petty people: I’d wager that nine out of 10 who receive a bad review can discover some undisclosed conflict or conspiracy that caused the reviewer to slag them.”