Category: publishing

“Psychologists at Dundee and St Andrews universities claim the work of poets such as Lord Byron exercise the mind more than a novel by Jane Austen. By monitoring the way different forms of text are read, they found poetry generated far more eye movement which is associated with deeper thought. Subjects were found to read poems slowly, concentrating and re-reading individual lines more than they did with prose.”

Publishers and book stores are bracing for a run on books about Pope John Paul II. “Sales of books by and about Pope John Paul II have soared since his death Saturday, with several quickly reaching the top 20 of Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com.”

It’s been a year since Adam Moss took over as editor of New York Magazine. “New York has enjoyed some journalistic success under Mr. Moss, with three National Magazine nominations. But it has been slower to find financial success. Though its advertising is up, the level is not as high as it was as recently as 2001, and circulation is flat, with newsstand sales down. The magazine is losing money, although executives would not say how much.”

Could it be? Salinas, California, the place that proudly calls John Steinbeck its native son, may close its public library? “Unless the city can raise $500,000 by June 30, the John Steinbeck, Cesar Chavez and El Gabilan Libraries will be shuttered, victims of the city’s $9 million budget shortfall. If the branches are closed, Salinas will become the nation’s largest city without a public library.”

Canadians are voracious readers, spending $1.1 billion on books last year. “In fact, money spent on books is the third-highest category of cultural spending in the country, just after newspapers ($1.22-billion) and visits to movie theatres ($1.18-billion). Significantly more dollars are shelled out for books than are spent on live performing-arts events ($824-million) and more than double the amount spent on live sports events ($451-million).”

Samuel Johnson was a failed teacher, who, in 1746 began work on his monumental Dictionary of the English Language. It was a labor designed to rehabilitate his reputation and redefine use of the English language. It took him nine years. April 15 marks the 250th anniversary of its publication.

Bookstores are heavy currently with books having to do with 9/11 in some way. “These books are at the forefront of a second wave of creative works related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The first wave included predictable spasms of simple-minded jingoism and commercial calculation, from bullying country music ballads to cloying hagiographies of political figures eager to make hay out of the nation’s grief. But now we’re getting the good stuff.”

Graphic novels – comic books – are a big and growing market. “Big sales and increasing interest from movie studios in recent years – to wit, Sin City, a movie opening today, based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller – has helped transform these book-length comics from the butt of the joke to the belle of the ball.”

A new generation of non-fiction advice books does a disservice to women. “Pink is the colour of chick lit, that universe of trade paperbacks covered in cartoon martini glasses and lipstick tubes. Faced with these new self-help books, each a litany of romantic woes and female humiliations not unlike those that befall Shopaholic and co., it seems apt to borrow phrasing from Sex and the City heroine Carrie Bradshaw: Could it be that non-fiction is the new chick lit?”

One of Canada’s acclaimed small presses The Porcupine Quill, says it is radically downsizing in order to survive. The imprint blames book giant Indigo. “The press typically takes in $350,000 a year, $150,000 in sales and the remainder in public support, ‘but sales are dropping like a rock’. He blames the policies and practices of Indigo Books & Music Inc., the nation’s largest bookseller. He says that last year Indigo cut its orders dramatically, ordering only 2,797 units of his press’s 11-book list, which included critical favourites So Beautiful by Ramona Dearing and Emma’s Hands by Mary Swan. Meanwhile, Indigo’s returns of unsold books were 1,415, more than 50 per cent of its order. By comparison, in 1998, Indigo and Chapters (absorbed by Indigo in 2001) ordered 13,293 copies of the press’s books and returned 4,052, or less than 30 per cent.”