Category: publishing

“For the better part of a century, a certain type of young person has learned to drink from the pages of Ernest Hemingway. I should know. I’ll sheepishly admit that I was once that certain type of young person. The Sun Also Rises might do more to spark an interest in spirits and cocktails (and wine) in people like me than does an entire library of mixologists’ guides.”

“An open-border policy could easily speed up the rationalization that is already threatening to erase Canada as a distinctive market in the publishing multiverse – further reducing opportunities for Canadian writers and choices available to Canadian readers.”

“Nothing beats real objects, so the trick for most artists is learning how to leverage these new printing tools into marketing opportunities, rather than straight up revenue services.”

“There are 3,500 libraries in England costing £900 million a year. The question is can this amount be justified given the number of people visiting libraries has declined steeply in the last 20 years.”

“As the prize formerly known as the Orange continues its hunt for a headline sponsor, it’s interesting to see that Canada and Australia have both just launched women-only literary prizes.” The Stella Prize, worth A$50,000, covers either fiction or nonfiction, while the Canada’s Rosalind Prize, for novels or short stories, carries no cash award as yet.

“E-books accounted for 22% of all book spending in the second quarter of 2012, only a one percentage point gain from the first quarter of the year, but up from 14% in the comparable period in 2011.”

The stated policy: “We do not allow reviews on behalf of a person or company with a financial interest in the product or a directly competing product. This includes authors, artists, publishers, manufacturers, or third-party merchants selling the product.”

Amazon inspires anxiety just about everywhere, but its publishing arm is getting pushback from all sorts of booksellers, who are scorning the imprint’s most prominent title, Timothy Ferriss’s “The 4-Hour Chef.” That book is coming out just before Thanksgiving into a fragmented book-selling landscape that Amazon has done much to create but that eludes its control.

“In the long view of history, the Bertelsmann-Pearson deal will be seen as just the latest instalment of a long-running story: a tale of formerly dominant industries trying to prevent their venerable business models being dismantled by the internet. The early victims were travel agents, record labels, newspapers, magazines and broadcast networks.”

“‘At a certain point you have to decide how far you want to nail your own coffin shut,’ said Michael Tucker, owner of the Books Inc. chain here. ‘Amazon wants to completely control the entire book trade. You’re crazy if you want to play that game with them.'”