“If anyone who declares herself to be a writer is one, then what is the point of a professional organization? Will the group be taken at all seriously?”
Category: words
Saudi Book Fair Yanks Mahmoud Darwish’s ‘Blasphemous’ Poetry
“The publications administration at the [Riyadh International] book fair, one of the biggest of its kind in the Arab world, ordered the removal of all books containing [the Palestinian poet’s] work after youths from the religious police complained about the content of the books. … Darwish, who died in 2008, is considered a modern Arab literary giant.”
Amazon Publishing Makes a Move Into Germany
“Amazon Publishing is starting a new German-language publishing program that will be based in Munich … Many of the titles first released in Germany will [subsequently] be published in English-language editions by AmazonCrossings.”
It’s Awkward to Be Writing a Novel Set in Present-Day Crimea
David Bezmozgis: “As I was writing the book, I kept changing when the action was set, constantly pushing the date ahead by another year … I closely followed the news to see if real events had yet outpaced my inventions. I expected this to happen at any moment in Israel, … [not in] Ukraine and Crimea, places I’d believed to be locked in a dismal kleptocratic stasis.”
John Banville Talks About The Agony Of Being A Writer
“Doing what you do well is death. Your duty is to keep trying to do things that you don’t do well, in the hope of learning.”
Canada Gets Its Version of the U.S. Justice Dept.’s E-Book Price-Fixing Suit
“Kobo is beginning to feel the pinch of prospective lower profit margins in Canada. The Canadian Government is forcing them to renegotiate contracts with all of their major publishing partners.”
When Was the First E-Book, Anyway?
Well, that depends on what you think qualifies as an e-book …
The Future Of Books: A Netflix-Like Subscription Model?
“So now that we know that it’s possible to deliver books like magazines, to sell them like magazines, and to target them at clusters of readers like magazines, the big question looms: Do book enthusiasts actually want to engage with literature the way they engage with magazines? And can they afford to?”
How Do You Write a Realistic Novel About North Korea?
“The problem with North Korea journalism is that you can write almost anything and almost nobody knows if it’s bunk. Then you have North Korea fiction, where you can paint a very vivid reality and readers, I imagine, will want to believe that it’s 100 percent true.” Adam Johnson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Orphan Master’s Son, talks about how he dealt with the challenge.
Haves/Have-Nots: Here’s Who Reads In England
“More than one in four (27%) of adults from the poorest socio-economic backgrounds said they never read books themselves, compared with just 13% of those from the richest socio-economic backgrounds.”