Category: publishing

“Almost alone among the output of his eminent contemporaries – including Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh – Powell’s documents are to stay in Britain thanks to the loyalty to their country of the author, his wife and their two sons. But they will be available to the public in the British Library, the national book depository, rather than at Eton, Powell’s old school, thanks to the culture secretary, Tessa Jowell.”

JK Rowling has thrown her support behind the city of Edinburgh’s campaign to get UNESCO to name it the first World City of Literature. “It seems eminently sensible to me to recognise this, along with the contemporary literary life here, with a permanent title that can inspire and inform other places around the world.”

A poem by an Iraqi exile that was published with only 1000 copies has become famous in Iraq. “Brother Yasin and Brother Yasin Again became part of the body of work that has come to represent the secret, silent fight against Saddam Hussein’s regime. It is one of the most important poems exploring, in a revolutionary way, the link between man’s ethereal, spiritual nature and his everyday, habitual life. It expresses simple sentiments while yielding something new with each reading. The Iraqis, who love tragedy, find themselves drawn to this.”

“Frank Conroy, the longtime head of the celebrated Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, will step down at the end of the year.”

Plagiarism is big business. And there are plenty of websites waiting to help you out. “Many companies sell term papers, essays and book reports by the thousands, for as much as $250 a pop, all just a click and Mom’s credit card away, and all in the privacy of an undergraduate’s dorm room.”

When there’s money to be made, there’s no reason for publishers or booksellers to be coy. “A wave of confessionals and self-help guides written by current or former stars of pornographic films is flooding bookstores this year, accompanied by erotic novels, racy sexual-instruction guides, histories of sexual particulars and photographic treatments of the world of pornography.”

Small literary journals are a precarious enterprise. “Circulating only in the low thousands (most of them), subsisting more on donations and patronage than subscription income, kept viable largely through low-paid or even unremunerated labor by devoted staffers, these quarterly or biannual compendia of fiction, poetry, essays, and art are showcases of idealism begotten upon unlikelihood. Yet for all this, in spite of the myriad ills that under-funded ventures are heir to, in spite of the fact that our info-environment is now so paced to the fleeting quick fix, the double-barreled snort of gloss, these journals do survive. Better, they persist.”

The US military has lists of books it recommends to troops. In 2000 Army Chief of Staff Shinseki detailed his list. These are the books that the chief of staff thinks his colonels and generals should be reading. Now an update by the current Chief, and the changes are interesting. “The Army’s reading list is actually a collection of four sublists, each designed for personnel at different stages in their career.”

Trustees of the estate of JM Barrie have asked three of the UK’s top children’s book authors to take a try at writing a sequel to “Peter Pan” as the story’s 100th anniversary approaches. The trustees aim to commission a new story which will “share the same enchanting characters as the original, the same longevity, and be just as valid in a hundred years as the original is today”.

Book sales comparisons between this June and last are difficult because last year offered a new Harry Potter book. But even without one this year, Barnes & Noble has a good quarter. “The hit may have been only a single, but a 5% jump in bookstore revenues to $961.3 million and a 1.4% rise in comps still look pretty good in the scorebook.”