Category: publishing

Genres may come an go, but the memoir is an enduring form. “The well-written memoir has continued to promote the not-entirely-outrageous view that a properly interesting life is a worthwhile thing to read about. It also plays with the notion that sometimes (just sometimes) people might want to read about a life whose values are not like theirs. More often than not, innovation comes before a fall, but not so in the memoir game, where some of the best British writing finds its audience.”

A contest in the UK to find the best reading group had to disqualify the group originally chosen as winner. “The High Down Prison Group from Surrey was judged to be the best in the competition, but its members were prevented from accepting the top prize as it involved spending two days and a night in Edinburgh.”

An American judge has ruled that “The Da Vinci Code” did not infringe on the copyright of a book published in 2000. “Although both novels at issue are mystery thrillers, ‘Daughter of God’ is more action-packed, with several gunfights and violent deaths. ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ on the other hand, is an intellectual, complex treasure hunt, focusing more on the codes, number sequences, cryptexes and hidden messages left behind as clues than on any physical adventure.”

At the beginning of the summer John Twelve Hawks’ “The Traveler” seemed an obvious summer smash. The author is anonymous, but it has failed to take off and “the novel’s disappointing start illustrates the risks and advantages of having an unknown author. With luck and the right story, an anonymously written book can seem like a secret everyone is dying to learn, a book that sells itself. Otherwise, the publisher has to depend on the slow, uncertain process of reviews and word of mouth.”

Increasingly, editors are MIA at publishing houses. Many publishers don’t even really employ traditional editors anymore. “If editing is in decline, that’s bad for literature. History suggests that while some authors work alone, more or less unaided, the majority benefit from editors – and that a few are utterly dependent on them.”

“The internet is a library, a reference library, brilliantly adapted to looking something up, creating inventories, updating catalogues, adding new entries in a dictionary or an encyclopaedia, and consulting directories. The web serves magically to store knowledge that would be costly in paper, in volume, to print: references, appendices, original background sources, documentation of a detailed kind, extra apparatus in general. But I don’t think that writing and reading as acts of imagination can exist in cyberspace only; words don’t become flesh for me unless I print out and read the materialised text; but even so, the uniform, ugly look of the copies does not draw me into the mood of the work and its meaning or imprint its contents on my memory as deeply as reading it in a book.”

Former Booker judge Jason Cowley writes that after a post-9/11 funk, writers have roared back with some of their best work. “I think, perhaps the richest year for contemporary British and Commonwealth fiction since the launch of the Booker Prize in 1969, with most of our best novelists – Ian McEwan (Saturday), Kazuo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go), Zadie Smith (On Beauty), JM Coetzee (Slow Man), Julian Barnes (Arthur & George), Salman Rushdie (Shalimar the Clown), Hilary Mantel (Beyond Black) – publishing exceptional new works.”

“Authors ranging from Bob Dylan to Stephen King and J.K. Rowling on Thursday made the Quills short-list — a new American literary award pitched as a populist event with a touch of Hollywood glitz. Readers will vote for the winners in 19 categories that include graphic novels and romance, as well as the more traditional fiction and biography categories from established prizes such as the Pulitzer and the National Book Award.”

“Science fiction is booming and the British writers are leading the pack. For the first time in its 63-year history, all the writers nominated for the prestigious Hugo award for the best novel are British. The Hugos, named after science-fiction publishing legend Hugo Gernsback, are the genre writing equivalent of the Oscars.”

It seems that no niche is too small to have its own magazine these days. Among titles launched in recent years: “Face Painting International”, “Russian Bride of New York”, and “Modern Ferret”. Of course, launching a mag is comparatively simple. Keeping it afloat for more than a few issues is another matter entirely…