Category: publishing

One of the original online magazines is for sale. Slate, the web-only mix of politics, news, arts, and humor which was created by Microsoft in 1996, isn’t actually losing money, but in a year in which Microsoft’s MSN business division, which includes Slate, is looking to tighten up operations, the company is listening to offers for the first time. Microsoft is stressing that Slate will continue to be published, regardless of whether a buyer is found, and there will not be a sale just for the sake of a sale.

“Screenwriter David Sheffield won this year’s Faux Faulkner contest by imagining what it would have been like if William Faulkner… had written for the Three Stooges. Sheffield’s 550-word script, “As I Lay Kvetching,” has Moe, Larry and Curly renovating a home with the eye-gouging, nose-twisting slapstick guided by plenty of Faulknerian stage directions: ‘At last it is Curly who picks up the plank, rough hewn and smelling of sweet gum, and — feeling the weight and heft and fiber of it — swings it innocently (bending to retrieve the tool, the ball-peen hammer dropped casually on Larry’s toe) and feeling the awful force of the blow as it (the plank) catches Moe upside his head.'”

Bill Clinton’s 900-page memoir may not be a critical favorite, but it has been a runaway bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. But critics recently noticed that the version of “My Life” being enjoyed by readers in the UK differs in several important respects from the stateside version. The changes, which are almost all in passages in which President Clinton pointedly criticizes Whitewater special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, are due to the differing libel laws in the two countries. Whereas the burden of proof in a libel case falls on the complainant in America, UK law forces the defendant to prove the veracity of contested statements, which Clinton’s people feared could have opened the door to a Starr lawsuit.

So you’re a good parent who wants your children to experience the wonder of reading exciting books featuring heroic children and supernatural enemies, but you’re also a devout Christian who is convinced that Harry Potter is a witchcraft-dabbling heretic who will cause your offspring to turn away from God? Fear not: a new bestseller written by an Anglican vicar is “deeply imbued with Christian imagery and set on the 18th-century Yorkshire coast in Britain with its rugged cliffs, hidden caves and smuggler’s legends. It is about an evil vicar, Obadiah Demurral, who tries to take over the world but is thwarted by three teenagers and a smuggler.”

Ruminator Books, a Twin Cities institution and a nationally known indie bookseller, is closing its doors forever this week, but the man who has steered it for its entire 34-year life insists that he isn’t despairing. In fact, David Unowsky admits that it wasn’t competition from big chain bookstores that drove the store into insolvency, but a series of business mistakes and good ideas implemented at the wrong time. “One of his problems was running a 21st-century bookstore on 30-year-old ideals.”

A new study says America is reading less. But the number of books being published is soaring. “In a market where people are reading less, not more, there are 20 books published every hour in the day, every day. Why the outpouring of books? For some reason, everybody thinks they can write a book, and book publishing seems glamorous to them. But there’s no way the market can absorb all those books.”

“A recent poll suggested that Americans are reading less. But since Oprah Winfrey picked Anna Karenina as her book club choice on May 31, Tolstoy’s Russian novel, rich with characters, relationships and details about blizzards, samovars and mazurkas, is flying off the shelves.”

Who knew you could make millions by insulting your customers? “Today, the “For Dummies” series has 125 million books in print, with an estimated 68 million buyers in the United States proudly proclaiming themselves to be dummies. Now a global phenomenon, the books have been translated into 39 languages and are easily recognized by their black-and-yellow covers and the “dummy” character in geeky oversized glasses guiding readers along.”

“A group of robotics researchers at University Jaume I in Spain is working on a robot librarian which could deliver the promise of a helpful bot. The prototype has cameras, sensors and grippers so it can locate and collect a book. The hope is that one day teams of service robots could work in libraries.”

“Antoine de Saint Exupéry was the author of ‘Le Petit Prince’ and, in France, a war hero. But 60 years after his mysterious death, the wreckage retrieved from his watery grave is threatening to destroy his reputation.”