Category: publishing

The BBC has hired prominent writers to write first-parts of stories and will challenge listeners to complete them. “Eight novelists who will each write the first half of a short story for BBC Three. Their work will be published in a leaflet and distributed to coffee shops, libraries and on the internet. Readers will have six weeks to complete their chosen tale, with the winners showcased on BBC Three later this year.”

Those “customer reviews” on Amazon.com may seem like a harmless way for readers to have their say about the books they purchase, but to book publishers, they represent a very real expansion of the traditional critical press. In fact, the most prolific of Amazon’s amateur reviewers now receive upwards of 60 free books every month from publishers hoping for a favorable nod. As the culture of online media continues to evolve, and the notion of “expert” commentary and analysis becomes ever more blurred, these unpaid book critics are starting to have a palpable effect on the industry they cover.

A newly deciphered story by Rudyard Kipling is being published. “Kipling wrote the story in 1897 when he was 32, apparently as a draft introductory tale for the Stalky & Co volume. “Deciphering Kipling’s handwriting was fiendishly difficult. I doubt whether he himself could have read it. He was in such a hurry – his mind was running faster than his hand.”

Publishing on demand has resulted in a flood of self-published books. The three biggest self-publishing companies have produced a combined 47,000 titles since the late 1990s. “There’s an awful lot of people out there that have something to say.”

Where do most of the New Yorker magazine’s readers live? Obvious, right… but only if your answer was California. According the magazine’s “latest publisher’s statement, almost a million copies were sold during the second half of 2003. During the same period, the magazine’s total paid circulation in California reached 167,580, exceeding sales in New York for the first time. (Paid circulation in New York for that period reached 166,630.)”

Plenty of adults read kids books. But, in a search for crossover audiences, can publishers turn kids on to adult books? Maybe a little different pacakging helps?

There has been much criticism of Lit Idol as a way of judging literary talent. But “Lit Idol, for all the apparent crassness of its format, is as good a means as any to truffle out new talent, and is only a pop-culture-friendly revamp of the short story competitions run by newspapers in the old days. But it has reinforced the perception that in contemporary writing, the words are no longer enough. The author must be all-singing, all-dancing, good looking if possible and, if not, with a sufficiently troubled past to keep the public interested.”

No one likes to be sued, right? Usually. But some publishers find that being sued over a book is a big boost for sales. “Paradoxically, a lawsuit, especially a flimsy one, can be a boon to a book’s fortunes. And increasingly, some writers and publishers admit to hoping they’ll attract one.”

“In Paris, throughout the U.S. and elsewhere, insatiable fans are exploring the controversial themes in “The Da Vinci Code,” even pulling members of the intelligentsia into the novel’s energy field. The book’s grip on the popular imagination is so fierce that academics and theologians are putting aside their ancient Greek and Latin texts and boning up on Brown’s characters, including a self-mutilating, white-haired albino villain.”

The reality of the publishing business these days is that it’s the rare “little” book that gets any traction in the marketplace. All the more remarkable then, for Matthew Sharpe’s “stunning, offbeat coming-of-age novel,” The Sleeping Father, which, though rejected by 20 publishers and published by a small press for only a $1,000 advance, has become a hit.