Category: publishing

“The embargo is the absurd practice by which publishers distribute advance copies of newsworthy new books to the media only after individual editors have signed a quasi-legal document denying their right as members of an otherwise free press from reporting or reviewing the contents of such titles.” But in the age of the internet, embargos (thank God) are becoming unworkable.

Two prominent French intellecftuals are brawling over protecting the French language. “The pair’s vitriolic if eloquent spat is the latest expression of a debate that is increasingly dividing French writers and intellectuals: how best to ensure that their language survives intact the onslaught of English at home, and does not disappear altogether abroad.”

It’s World Book Day. And who’s celebrating most? Accountants. Why? A new survey in the UK for World Book Day reveals that “accountants spend more time reading books for pleasure than any other profession.”

UK authors are protesting a plan to stop printing the prices of books on the books themselves. “The idea is that instead of being published with a suggested price, books should be published like eggs, as it were, so that the retailer alone would decide what to charge. But books are not like eggs. Every time we buy eggs, we are looking for the same thing we had last time; but every time we buy a book, we’re looking for something different. So when it comes to looking at the cost, we have nothing to go by, at the moment, except the recommended retail price.”

Edward P. Jones has taken the top fiction prize at the National Book Critics’ Circle Awards, for his acclaimed novel of slave life on a Southern plantation, The Known World. Non-fiction winners included Paul Hendrickson and William Taubman, and a lifetime achievement award was presented to Studs Terkel.

The Writers’ Trust of Canada has handed out its annual awards, with the coveted lifetime achievement prize going to British Columbia-based author Audrey Thomas. The prize, valued at CAN$20,000, is one of the most lucrative in the country. Other winners included Kevin Patterson, for his short-story collection Country of Cold, and Brian Fawcett for his non-fiction work Virtual Clearcut: Or, the Way Things Are in My Hometown.

A book of poems by Pope John Paul II has sold more than one million copies. “The pontiff first published the poems in 2003 but the print run was expanded after sales topped 300,000 in his native Poland.”

For years Arthur Gelb had idolized William Shawn and his New Yorker magazine. But when Gelb commissioned a profile of Shawn for the New York Times in 1966, he discovered another side of the legendary editor. Up close, Shawn was “ridiculously petty. He lived in a world he helped create, protected it against outsiders who might penetrate that world a little too deeply and might expose it.”

“From the day their book first lands in stores, most writers will start spending minutes, hours—nay, days, weeks, months and years—tracking its progress on Amazon.com. Never mind that the online retailer accounts for only about 10 percent of a trade book’s total sales (slightly higher for business books, somewhat lower for children’s). By my count, the reviews and the ranking system on Amazon.com count for about 95 percent of writers’ hopes, anxieties and dreams.”

Hip-hop has become a major part of the popular culture of music and movies. Now it’s taking on publishing. “To some they’re urban or street fiction; others prefer the term “hip-hop lit. It’s hip-hop fiction, because it’s mirroring the things you saw in the music.”