Category: publishing

Well, the man has provided a pull-quote for his own screen adaptation of Midnight’s Children – “I am very proud of this film” is right there on the posters. So one blogger suggests how he might do the same for his novels.

“Why is our devotion to this lovely, affirming storytelling something we should hide, or apologize for? Why this intellectual idea that romance is something to look down on? We know that many intelligent, educated women read it. They must: Romance continues to dominate the publishing industry, accounting for nearly $1.4 billion in sales in 2011, a full 14.3 percent of all consumer book sales.”

“Am I being duped by pro-People’s Republic of China propaganda as Mo’s detractors might claim or did I discover the carefully crafted criticisms of the regime that my mother’s Taiwanese neighbor claims are there?”

“What is annoying about people advertising their hatred of small grammatical errors is that it’s a fairly transparent status thing. Where once the aristocracy used to make a point of getting twitchy when others poured the milk in before the tea or had supper at 6 rather than 8, the intelligentsia now mark themselves out by being, by nature, “unable to stand” certain phrases. Why?”

“In the 10 months since the New York Public Library announced plans for a $300 million renovation of its Fifth Avenue flagship building, scholars and writers have accused the library of abandoning its commitment to research and questioned how the circulating library across the street could be shoehorned into a treasured landmark.” Now the NYPL is ready to show them how.

Part 1: Rushdie joins chorus of criticism over Mo’s Nobel Prize, calling him “a patsy of the [Chinese] regime.” Part 2: Mishra, mentioning Rushdie among other writers, argues that writers criticizing Mo should look at their own governments’ faults before condemning Mo’s accommodation with China’s government. Part 3: Rushdie retorts, “It is not for Mishra to tell me not to criticise Mo Yan.”

A lot of “50 Shades” dominate..

“Puffin Post, the much-loved children’s books magazine which has been running for more than 40 years, has breathed its last. … [The title] was discontinued in 1982, but relaunched in 2009 through The Book People as a bi-monthly magazine including contributions from Charlie Higson, Cathy Cassidy and Michael Morpurgo.”

Bookscan figures for 2012 “provide a snapshot of the fragmented holiday sales picture as a whole: independent bookstores report that a range of books are moving nicely, but there are mixed numbers from Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest book chain, and solid but not stellar growth in digital sales.”