Category: publishing

“Orwell’s assault on political euphemism, then, is righteous but limited. His more general attacks in Politics on what he perceives to be bad style are often outright ridiculous, parading a comically arbitrary collection of intolerances.”

The publisher’s “new edition of Otfried Preussler’s beloved 1957 tale “The Little Witch” (“Die kleine Hexe”) has been amended to remove certain questionable terms, including the word “negro.” The decision has sparked heated discussion over how to handle outdated, controversial language in classic children’s books.”

“On the topic of digital, a surprising shift back to print was seen since spring 2012, and for the year e-book adoption growth was flat among teens, with some evidence that teens liked print more in the fall than they did in the spring.”

“Whatever you thought of self-help–godsend, guilty pleasure, snake oil–the genre was safely contained on one eclectic bookstore shelf. Today, every section of the store (or web page) overflows with instructions, anecdotes, and homilies.”

Reading “chick lit” may lead women to think of themselves as less attractive and express more concern about their weight. That’s the conclusion of new research from Virginia Tech, published in the journal Body Image.

Not only did your great-grandparents’ favorite magazine “survive the shakeout of a few years past (and numerous other shakeouts before that), it actually turns a profit. The Post, as it prefers to be known these days, still reaches 350,000 subscribers … and is fat with advertising, hokey though some of it is.”

“In an effort to broaden the reach and impact of the National Book Awards, the National Book Foundation will select a longlist of 10 titles in each of its four categories (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people’s literature), beginning in 2013. The longlist (10 titles per category) will be announced five weeks before the finalists (five titles per category) announcement.”

“So: to recap. Writers can’t write anything because they keep looking at the internet, which, as it does with everyone, is making them stupid. If they do write something, no-one wants to read it. If someone does want to read it, they can’t, because the internet has permanently disabled the part of their brain that enables them to concentrate on any text longer than a tweet.”

“It was described by the Daily Mail as a “torrent of filth”. MPs called for it to be banned from the airwaves. But does Tony Harrison’s controversial poem V still have the power to shock?”

“This replacement of jacket covers for hard drives is a calculated choice that many other libraries and officials around the nation have also considered, yet — in most cases — quickly abandoned.”