Category: publishing

“Though the teaching of evolution makes the news when officials propose, as they did in Georgia, that evolution disclaimers be affixed to science textbooks, or that creationism be taught along with evolution in biology classes, in districts around the country, even when evolution is in the curriculum it may not be in the classroom, according to researchers who follow the issue.”

Michael Stadther’s new book includes a treasure hunt. Readers are given clues to a dozen tokens hidden throughout America. “The tokens can be redeemed for $1 million in jewels. So far, none has been found, but there’s plenty of time. The hunt won’t officially end until Dec. 31, 2007.”

“I often get letters from readers of the Sunday Telegraph literary pages complaining about misleading book reviews. Usually they say that a book they’ve bought on the strength of a favourable review was nothing like as good as our critic had made out. I have some sympathy for this, as reviewers on the whole want to be loved, like everyone else, and are rarely as harsh in print as they could be.”

“Could Steve Wasserman soon be leaving the L.A. Times? Buzz is getting louder that the head of the book review at the West Coast’s biggest paper could be getting ready for a departure, with sources reporting that over the last few weeks he’s had conversations with East Coast editors about other jobs.”

“Narrowing that cognitive gap between humans and machines — creating a computer that can read and learn at a sophisticated level — is a big goal of artificial intelligence researchers. The Pentagon has granted a contract worth at least $400,000 last fall to two Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professors who are trying to build a machine that can learn by reading. The academics hope to create a machine that can read sections of textbooks and answer questions based on the material. Down the road, professor Selmer Bringsjord believes such artificial intelligence, or A.I., machines might be able to read military plans or manuals and adjust on the fly in the heat of battle.”

Who says publishing is a genteel business? Numerous lawsuits over publishing projects are currently before the courts. And some of them are pretty amusing…

The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are – by some acounts – Britain’s most prestigious literary awards. Its list of winners is long and impressive. “Yet outside the world of the highbrow literary cognoscenti, few have heard of the awards, despite the fact that they are the UK’s oldest and, many would argue, most prestigious. Now one man armed with a grand vision and a plan to increase the prize money fivefold is aiming to take them out of the shadows.”

“Britain has great fiction. A lot of it. But what is the prize system which now dominates the British literary world doing to that fiction? One winner means all the rest are losers. Many don’t deserve that label. Fiction is, thanks to the Victor Ludorum ethos that now drives critical judgment, a gladiatorial combat. Is it a fair fight?”

Book clubs, book clubs, everywhere. But so what, writes Li Robbins. Why do you need or want a club in which to read? “Reading is the greatest of great escapes. Reading is permission to simply be, to exist in another world, the world of the book. But you can’t maintain that Zen state when someone is wittering away about plot, tone and setting as though they are the new holy trinity.”

The manuscript of a book critical of Disney was obtained by Disney, and the company is threatening legal action after regretting giving the author access to company execs and records. “Disney dashed off a letter to Simon & Schuster, warning that it would contemplate legal action if the book contained mistakes, according to several people involved in the book’s publication. Simon & Schuster is asking that Disney return the 780-page unauthorized manuscript it obtained, saying Disney should not distribute it to news outlets or other concerns.”