Category: publishing

Scotland’s “foremost expert on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has launched a last-minute campaign to ensure that recently-discovered papers by the Sherlock Holmes author, which are due to be auctioned by Christie’s, are saved for the British nation.”

“The simple but profound problem with many novelists, as James Wood reads them, is that they have failed to realise the true nature of their chosen form; they are artists who have not yet learned how to reply to their calling. Stendhal once famously compared the novel to a mirror being carried down the road, innocently catching all the angles of life. By contrast, Wood argues, contemporary novelists too often treat their pages more like flypaper, ready to cling on to any randomly floating bits of cultural debris.”

Hari Kunzru “received a sum approaching £1.25m for the UK, American and European rights to his first novel, The Impressionist, and, around the time of its publication, he was so predictably and so tediously hyped, there was every reason for assuming that he would soon disappear – yet another literary shout reduced to a whisper. For the truth is that however many long-haul air fares and pieces of groovy Sixties furniture an advance buys you (I gather he likes Verner Panton), such immensely fat deals are more a curse than a blessing. Even if, by some miracle, the first book is a hit, the second is doomed.”

A new report in the UK argues that, “although the use of museums and archives in Britain has doubled in Britain during the life of this government, there is an urgent and imminent library crisis. ‘If we do not address the fundamental structural problem of the library service,’ says the report, not mincing its words, ‘there may be no libraries in 10 or 15 years’ time’.”

“Literary magazines play an ever more indispensable role in the publishing food chain. And recently, especially here on the West Coast, they’re starting to swarm…”

Archaeologists have discovered what they claim is the long lost great Library of Alexandria. The Library is often described as the first great university in the world. “The 13 lecture halls uncovered could house as many as 5,000 students in total. A conspicuous feature of the rooms was a central elevated podium for the lecturer to stand on. It is the first time ever that such a complex of lecture halls has been uncovered on any Greco-Roman site in the whole Mediterranean area.”

“In recent weeks, serious political books have flooded the best-seller lists, replacing the rants from left and right — the Michael Moores or Bill O’Reilly’s — with reasoned and supported arguments. During that shift, the television book tour has been more crucial than ever in generating news from these works.”

“With a struggling economy and competition for time from other media, 23 million fewer books were sold last year than in 2002, according to a report issued Wednesday by the Book Industry Study Group, a non-for-profit research organization. Sales fell to 2.222 billion books, down from 2.245 billion in 2002. The decline was in both hardcovers and paperbacks, in children’s books and general trade releases. Even sales of religious titles, often cited as a growing part of the publishing industry, were flat.”

“First, there was the novel written without using the letter “e”. Now a French author has produced what he claims is the first book with no verbs. Perhaps inevitably, critics have commented unfavourably on the lack of action.”