Category: publishing

“A study announced Tuesday estimates that a record 195,000 new works came out in 2004, a 14 percent jump over the previous year and 72 percent higher than in 1995.” But a previous study says that while more titles are being published, fewer books are actually being sold…

Penguin is celebrating 70 years in publishing. “To celebrate the birthday, Penguin is issuing 70 new short titles, or Pocket Penguins, drawn from its back catalogue or new work. Now, unexpectedly, the titles have provoked outrage and surprise because they include work by only two authors who are not white.”

Library use is in decline for British public libraries. “Book borrowing fell by a further 5% last year, maintaining a disturbing 20-year trend, official figures showed yesterday. But for the first time in their long decline there was hard evidence that libraries are winning back popularity with the public. An extra 4% of people walked through their doors in 2003-04, giving them a total of 337 million visits.”

Where do Britons get their information? Not generally from libraries. It’s tabloids. Why? A new study says that “this is because the sources the public trusts most, notably public libraries, are closed when it most needs them. The study follows official figures showing that only a tiny number of libraries and other archives are open as long as shops.”

“Beat Generation, written in the autumn of 1957, the same year as the publication of Kerouac’s breakthrough work On the Road, was unearthed in a New Jersey warehouse six months ago. An excerpt will appear in the July issue of Best Life magazine. The play recounts a day in the life of the hard-drinking, drug-fuelled life of Jack Duluoz, Kerouac’s alter-ego.”

Under an NEA program, US soldiers are learnign to write. “Is there any evidence that seeing a war first-hand will forge a better writer? Is there a correlation between what a marine experiences and what he or she writes, between seeing and doing, M-16 and pencil? Most of the writers I spoke to admitted that war had provided them with swathes of material, since, to paraphrase Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski, it is life lived at maximum tension. But this reality doesn’t necessarily translate into literature.”

Is it a novel? Is it a collection of short stories? “Genres don’t come into existence every day, but in the past few years a good number of writers have started exploring the previously blank territory that lies between the collection of short stories and the novel proper. It starts to look like a new form altogether.”

Sherlock Holmes has had one of the most enduring afterlifes in all of literature. “Holmes has become a one-man entertainment complex. He has been the subject of at least 100 movies and nearly as many plays and radio dramas, and he has inspired an entire library’s worth of books. There have been countless sequels and knockoffs…” So why does Holmes continue to fascinate us?

Our hunger for happiness books is virtually unslakable. “It seems to be an American phenomenon. We buy can-do books that teach us to fix our problems. It’s like having your own personal life coach, and it’s less expensive than seeing a shrink.”

Penguin Paberbacks are 70 years old this year. “Nowadays, there are some 5,000 different titles in print at any time, translated into up to 62 languages. But what makes Penguin one of the world’s most enduring publishers?”