Category: publishing

One of Canada’s biggest textbook publishers – McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd. – has been “quietly trying to coax companies into buying advertising space in their texts. ‘Reach a hard to get target group where they spend all their parents’ money. Do you really think 18-24 year olds see those on-campus magazine ads? Do you really think they could miss an ad that is placed in a very well-respected textbook’?”

Poetry has not been truly hip since the late 1960s, when the Beats ruled and coffeehouses served up readings alongside the java. But all of a sudden, a new generation of young people seems to be embracing poetry in all its forms. “Poetry readings, poetry slams, and spoken-word performances attract sellout crowds in clubs and auditoriums locally and across the country. Poetry anthologies and audio collections are selling briskly. And the weekly HBO program Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry is entering its fifth season.” And this week, at the nation’s largest poetry festival, two new awards dedicated to promoting emerging poets were announced.

An Ontario judge has ruled in favor of a Mohawk artist in her copyright infringement case against Canadian publisher Key Porter. Tonya Maracle had agreed to allow some of her dreamcatchers to be photographed and used by Key Porter in a children’s book, if proper credit were given to the artist and her company. But when the book came out, it wasn’t for children (a significant point, since Maracle had only agreed to donate her work because the book would be aimed at kids,) and she was not credited. The judge called the publisher’s conduct “disgraceful,” and awarded Maracle $40,000 plus legal costs. Key Porter plans to appeal.

Amazon and Google have both launched major book-digitizing intitiatives in recent months, and that has publishers outside the U.S. concerned about increased competition and the further encroachment of American corporations on their turf. “Google’s ambitious undertaking has created unease in France over the hegemony of the English language and has led to a European effort to organize an alternative library scanning initiative.” Now, a group of German publishers have started their own digitizing project as well, in an effort to head Google off at the pass. Still, given the financial resources available to Google and Amazon, the European projects have to be considered a long shot.

Lionel Shriver has won the tenth £30,000 Orange Prize for Fiction for her seventh book, We Need to Talk About Kevin, a novel about a mother’s hatred for her son.

Eight decades ago, a book collector from Cleveland gathered an impressive array of medieval manuscripts, then divided them into 40 boxes and dispersed them to locations around the world, in an effort to increase the accessibility of such rare antiquities. But over the years, scholars had lost track of the boxes, and the collector’s vision was never truly realized. Now, two Canadian scholars are hard at work tracking down the boxes (they’ve found 33 already,) with the aim of digitally reconstructing the original manuscripts so that they can be shared with the entire world.

Authors of suspense novels don’t get a whole heck of a lot of respect from the rest of the publishing world, and even getting their books displayed can be a challenge. But the second-class status may be changing, at least if the authors themselves have anything to say about it. “Thriller writers across the country have formed a national organization to burnish their image, honor excellence in suspense writing, and create new ways for readers to discover their books.”

“The consensus on the annual three-day publishing and booksellers’ convention, which alternates cities like a traveling circus, was that there was no consensus—no standout theme, Bill Clinton memoir or looming election. The whole affair was a blur of cheap wine, mini empanadas and free books, punctuated by the odd wannabe author cruising the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center with a toilet seat around his neck. The fact that the expo took place in New York, as opposed to Chicago or Los Angeles, only lent a certain world-weariness to the proceedings.”

Letters written by poet Percy Bysshe Shelley have sold at auction for £45,600. “The letters, which provide an insight into Shelley’s views on atheism, were destined for a car boot sale until the owner contacted the auction house. They were found in a trunk at a house in south-west London alongside four written by Shelley’s best friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg.”

Chuck Palahniuk has been having difficulty reading from his story Guts on his recent tour. “So far, 67 people have fainted while I’ve read Guts. For a nine-page story, some nights it takes 30 minutes to read. In the first half, you’re pausing for so much laughter from your audience. In the second half, you’re pausing as your audience is revived.”