Category: publishing

“Story collections, an often underappreciated literary cousin of novels, are experiencing a resurgence, driven by a proliferation of digital options.”

“Few companies of any kind survive five generations of family ownership without celebrating their longevity. The Browns refuse to boast about it.”

“Bill Spence, a grandfather from Ampleforth, North Yorkshire, … was told by his publishers that he would need to write under a female name in order for the books to sell.”

“The most frightening thing about Amazon’s latest move is that it reminds us that it’s all too late. It is already Amazon’s world and we just live in it.”

“he bookless library is not a contradiction in terms, but a continuation of the library’s core purpose.”

“The Justice Department imposed no conditions on the German media company Bertelsmann, which owns Random House, and its British counterpart Pearson, the parent of Penguin, thereby removing a significant hurdle to the deal.”

“It is in publishers’ best interest to help readers find a not-so-well-known book, but it is not necessarily in readers’ best interest to read that book. It’s also unclear whether the average reader is really having all that much trouble finding the next book he or she wants to read.”

“Ask not for whom the earth moves. Donne was, in fact, a rake and a bawd before he became a preacher and, in the fullness of time, the dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral.” And some of his verse is very bawdy indeed.

“There are whole imprints of publishing houses devoted to so-called “young adult” (YA) fiction, and they are retooling their arsenals, shifting the paradigm from werewolves and wizards to hospitals and suicide plans.”

The traditional rivals “joining forces to prevent what will now be called the Lewis-Gibson Genizah Collection” – a huge collection of documents from Cairo’s old Jewish quarter covering centuries of history – “being sold to a foreign institution or, even worse, split up.”