Category: publishing

Novels that mix Christianity and romance are no longer a niche to be ignored. “The Christian Booksellers Association estimates that total sales of Christian fiction have topped $2 billion a year, and the market share of Christian romance has grown 25 percent a year since 2001, the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association reports. As a result editors have begun targeting younger people who enjoy both Christian and romantic fiction.”

“Best-selling author Dan Brown is suing a California novelist who accused him of stealing ideas for his blockbuster ‘The Da Vinci Code’ from two 1980s novels.”

Two recent cases of scholarly plagiarism at major American universities have been mostly focused on the role of graduate assistants in manuscript preparation. But is the larger issue being missed? According to at least one scholar, “the costs imposed upon those who are caught cheating are often insufficient to outweigh the objective benefits of cheating,” and so plagiarism can often be a risk well worth taking for many writers.

“The number of people who read books is getting smaller and smaller, but the size of the books they read seems to be getting bigger and bigger. Step into a Barnes & Noble or a Borders and you will see shelves sagging with supersize works, some so back-breakingly heavy they are shipped in boxes with plastic handles. Search online and you’ll discover larger-than-coffee-table tomes. The illogic of this phenomenon speaks volumes — ever-expanding volumes — about the state of reading in contemporary civilization.”

Why do so many of the detectives in English fiction seem to have a big interest in classical music? Indeed, “the detective as musical amateur is an affectionate tic in British crime fiction…”

The Da Vinci Code has been banned in Lebanon because church officials call it ofensive to Christians. “Catholic leaders called for the book to be withdrawn because of its depiction of Christ marrying Mary Magdalene and fathering a child. Shop owners said security officials had told them to pull French, English and Arabic copies off their shelves.”

Seattle comics publisher Fantagraphics has always had a lot of critical respect. But its finances were perilous. Indeed, its survival was just about a constant question. But then it “nailed down the multiyear rights to reprint, in its entirety and in chronological order, another newspaper classic: Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts. It’s a blockbuster deal that guarantees Fantagraphics will actually be around for another 12 years. Until this spring, no one at the company was certain if it would be around another 12 weeks.”

Indigo Books, Canada’s largest bookstore owner, says its diversifying its store offerings, de-emphasizing books. “We imagine over the next three or four years that books, which are now 80 or 85 per cent of our offering, will evolve to be approximately 60 per cent of our offering, although the selection will still be as meaningful.”

US librarians are getting radical in their fight against the USA Patriot Act. “What got many librarians’ dander up was Section 215 of the law, which stipulates that government prosecutors and FBI agents can seek permission from a secret court created under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to access personal records — everything from medical histories to reading habits. They don’t need a subpoena. In fact, they don’t need to show that a crime has even been committed. And librarians, stymied by a gag order, are forbidden to tell anyone (except a lawyer).”

Children’s book writer Judy Blume known for candid tales such as “Deenie” and “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” has been named this year’s winner of an honorary National Book Award for contributions to American letters.