Category: publishing

Former New Yorker Magazine staffer Lawrence Weschler is trying to launch a new magazine called Omnivore: A Journal of Writing & Visual Culture. Weschler is “dissatisfied with current newsstand choices, contending that extended nonfiction reportage intended for general-interest magazines has atrophied amid ‘the increasingly peg-driven, niche-slotted, attention-squeezed, sound-bit media environment of recent years.’ In short, writers such as A.J. Liebling, John Hersey, and Joseph Mitchell would feel crunched for space today.”

A new biography of James Farrell harkens back to a time in American history “when an author’s political convictions genuinely mattered. Nowadays, far from changing anybody else’s mind, the typical writer is too apolitical even to think of changing his own.”

“A French children’s book author told a Paris court yesterday that the main fish character in the Disney film Finding Nemo, which has so far grossed $850m (£457m), was a direct copy of his own creation, a cheerful orange and white clown fish named Pierrot.”

An 800-page novel about magicians looks to be a blockbuster. First0time writer Susanna Clarke has written “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which has already been sold to a dozen countries and attracted interest from Hollywood, looks set to make her a millionaire and has enabled her to quit the day job to become a full-time writer.”

Amazon’s technical glitch that revealed the real names of reviewers on the website last week confirmed the behavior of ego-driven writers. “Those less inclined to fume about unethical behaviour point to the long history of literary fakery, which takes in everything from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the Hitler Diaries. In the rabidly competitive and cliquey world of American publishing, they say, Amazon is not just a website that sells books – it is a well known battleground of the backbiting literati.”

Is serious fiction in danger? There does seem to be less of an audience. “It’s not that serious fiction no longer has a mass audience. It never did. Most readers prefer storytelling of the John Grisham and Stephen King variety because they want to be entertained, not challenged. Literary fiction is more demanding and complex.”

Rick Warren’s “The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?” sold 11.3 million copies in 2003, making it one of the biggest best-sellers of all timke. “Unabashedly religious, the book is being read and studied by millions of people in and out of churches across the country. Readers are buying extra copies at churches and in bookstores and passing them along to friends. As a crossover bestseller, flying off the shelves in both the Christian and mainstream markets, it is a modern marketing miracle.”

What accounts for the enormous explosion of book publishing in recent years? “There are many possible explanations for the Triffid-like growth of the book trade. You might blame the quest for the fool’s gold of turnover. You could point to the global expansion of the English language and the consequent search for new markets. Follow this logic and you could also cite the opening up of new independent markets in Ireland, Scotland, India and China, indeed virtually anywhere in the known world. Beyond the hectic traffic of the marketplace, the IT revolution has liberated the business from the restrictive practices associated with hot metal. The new technology has accelerated book production. It has also speeded up the editorial side.”

Magazine newstand sales are down substantially in the past year. In the last six months, “according to official figures released Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, out of the 472 magazines it tracks, 319 reported newsstand declines and their combined newsstand sales fell 5.9 percent (3.3 million copies), not counting new titles reporting sales for the first time.”