Category: publishing

“Much is being said this year about “Don Quixote,” in celebration of the 400th anniversary of its publication. And indeed, much has always been said about this extraordinary epic, narrating the misadventures of a half-mad hidalgo who seeks to re-establish the traditions of knight errantry. Faulkner reread it annually; Lionel Trilling said all prose fiction was a variation on its themes. But aside from its literary achievements, “Don Quixote” sheds oblique light on an era when Spain’s Islamic culture forcibly came to an end.”

The increasingly reclusive JK Rowling is limiting her contacts with the press. “Rowling has refused to grant interviews to British journalists for two years. Her only contact with the media on the release of the new book will be through ‘cub reporters’ under 16, who will be selected for a ‘press conference’ through competitions. Emerson Spartz, an 18-year-old student from Indiana, was asleep at 9am when his telephone rang. A Scottish voice asked ‘Hello, Emerson? This is Jo. You believe me, don’t you’?”

The New York Public Library says it is “making 700 books — from classics to current best sellers — available to members in digital audio form for downloading onto PCs, CD players and portable listening devices. Users can listen to digital audio books through a computer, burn them to CDs or transfer them to many portable devices, library officials said. Digital audio books are available for free to members through the library’s Web site. Users can borrow up to 10 digital books at a time, and after 21 days the materials will be automatically checked in and made available to others.”

Is the gay male romance novel coming into its own? It’s “a world where there are never cowards, only condoms; each of the heroes has a brain, even if it takes until the end of the story for one of them to use it; and the abs, if not tin, most likely resemble iron.” This month, encouraged by successes so far, publisher is “aiming for the big time, with 12,500 copies of ‘Hot Sauce’ in print and fervent hopes that with gay marriage in the news — and legal in their own state — gay men may be more willing than ever to claim their inner Cinderella and read up on Prince Charming.”

“The race to find the secrets of Kryptos, a sculpture inside a courtyard at the CIA’s heavily guarded headquarters in Langley, Virginia, may be reaching a climax. And interest has soared since Dan Brown hid references to Kryptos on the cover design for his bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code, and suggested it might play a role in his next novel, The Solomon Key.”

Where once crime fiction came from downtown Los Angeles, or the east end of London, these days the best are from Europe. “Traditionally, British readers have a horror of translated novels. Europeans have always bought up our crime writers, from PD James to Ian Rankin, but we’re a nation for whom the words ‘French exchange’ still have the power to instil terror. Yet sales of translated European crime fiction have increased fivefold in the past four years.”

“A new bookstore such as the latest Barnes & Noble behemoth — 36,000 square feet spread out across two floors — that opened a week and a half ago in the Chicago Loop neatly encapsulates the 21st Century booksellers’ problem: Is it all about the classics — or the cappuccino? And how can an establishment that sells books — each one a rectangular homage to intellectual independence — be cogs in a bland, homogenous corporate machine that has been accused of mashing smaller independent bookstores into goo?”

“For years, Oprah reigned supreme as the city’s bookselling heavyweight, metaphorically speaking, only to take a break and then return to the classics–Faulkner anyone? While this was happening, an heiress to a pill-pushing fortune turned the world of words on its head when she made Chicago’s venerable little Poetry magazine the Valhalla of verse by giving it a god’s fortune. So there you have the beauty and mystery of Chicago’s book world: Oprah and Poetry.”

“The London Evening Standard has paid undisclosed compensation to publisher Jonathan Cape after the newspaper broke an embargo and threw the release of its star author Ian McEwan’s latest novel into chaos.”

Robert Chalmers’ book has been a critical success, but it hasn’t been selling well. So he’s decided to hit the streets of London to give it away. “The likes of HarperCollins and Macmillan can blanket-bomb towns with those huge bookshop displays. I’ve always wondered whether ‘ordinary people’ with no influence or literary connections would actually like my books – I mean, it’s not like they’re Dostoyevsky or something. So, we had this joke in the pub a while ago… and now, well, here we are.”