Category: words

• Is the electronic book really going to democratize publishing, as its proponents hope? Or simply flood the market with content, without a filter for quality or a universal format for downloading and reading? “Last week’s e-Book World Conference showed an industry riven by as much schizophrenia as the presidential elections. For now, anyway, the e-book industry is more rumpus than reality.” – Village Voice

Just who is Gao Xingjian, the Chinese writer who won the 2000 Nobel for literature? “Mr. Gao has 18 plays, 4 works of literary criticism and 5 books of fiction to his name, but his entire oeuvre has been banned on the Chinese mainland since 1985, while his best-known novel, ‘Soul Mountain,’ a lyrical account of a long journey through the Chinese backlands, has so far been published only in Taiwan, Sweden, France and Australia.” – New York Times

The struggling Chapters, Canada’s largest bookseller, announces it will lay off 18 percent of its online workforce and that it hopes to become profitable by Christmas of 2001. – National Post (Canada)

Sales of books over the internet in Korea have taken off. But “threatened by the booming e-sales performance and its increased recognition as a reliable retail source, some of the largest book stores are accusing their new rivals of destroying the existing status quo built around the mandatory fixed retail price system. Late last month, the Association of Comprehensive Bookstores (ACB), an industry group of 11 largest bookstores in Seoul, announced that they will not carry books published by companies that also have deals with online book retailers.” – Korea Herald

“A shiny medallion-shaped sticker, stamped with the word ‘winner,’ affixed to the otherwise enigmatic cover of a new novel, has a formidable power to sell books – sometimes thousands of them. But what do these prizes really mean? How are they chosen, and which of them, if any, is the most reliable?” A look at the prizes and their processes. – Salon

— for her novel “In America.” The nonfiction award went to Nathaniel Philbrick for “In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex;” the poetry prize went to Lucille Clifton. – New York Times

In the mid-’80s minimalism was a force one had to contend with – fer or a’gin. “By now, of course, 1988 seems like old times; and while these sorts of aesthetic wars are never actually won, so to speak, it’s safe to say that the bells have indeed tolled for minimalism’s reign over American fiction.” – Salon

She is 34, the youngest ever to be appointed to such a senior position in the Canadian publishing industry. Maya Mavjee is the lead editor behind the Giller Prize-winning “Mercy Among the Children” by David Adams Richards and the newly appointed publisher of Doubleday Canada, which makes her a star just beginning her ascent. – The Globe & Mail (Canada)

He’s already won two Pulitzer Prizes, but John Updike may soon have another, altogether stranger, honor to his name: the 2000 award for the worst sex in fiction. “To make the shortlist, an author must be deemed to have written the worst or the most embarrassing sex scene in a book published this year.” – CBC