Category: words

As the world of publishing slices and dices, recombining in multimedia mega-companies, the role of an author’s agent is changing. What are the new rules of the road? – New York Times

So what will the web mean to academics, always on the lookout for places to publish their work? “The biggest change is that publication is suddenly cheap. Academics have always had much more opportunity to write than they’ve had sponsorship for publication so books and articles have had to be concisely focused – optimised – to deliver the most information using the fewest words. The Web allows an entirely new, discursive style of presentation, where an author can take however much space she needs to be as clear as possible.” – The Idler

“Statistics clearly demonstrate that many people rely on libraries for their stories, and generally, librarians know what gets checked out. Unfortunately, librarians have little knowledge of why people read what they do. As a result, they lack a deeper understanding of how libraries already serve readers, and they miss evidence that they could use to convince state legislatures and other sources of financial support that spending money on stories is important.” – Chronicle of Higher Education

“The shortlists for Canada’s most prominent literary awards are often described like rival high school cliques. Giller Prize nominees are the cheerleaders, football captains and student council presidents with perfect teeth who wave out from the convertible at the head of every homecoming parade. Poor Governor General’s Awards nominees, on the other hand, enjoy far less prestige, like the nerdish greasers and trenchcoat types who hang out behind the portables, the jocks coming round every once in a while to bloody their noses and smash their Gothic punk CDs.” – National Post (Canada)

J.K. Rowling drew the largest audience ever to turn out for an author reading to hear her read from her Harry Potter series at Toronto’s SkyDome as part of the International Festival of Authors. An estimated more than 12,000 people attended. – Yahoo! News (Reuters)

Finalists for Canada’s Governor General’s Awards for literature are announced: Michael Ondaatje for “Anil’s Ghost,” David Adams Richards for “Mercy Among the Children” and Eden Robinson for “Monkey Beach”. “Margaret Atwood for “The Blind Assassin”, currently on the shortlist for Britain’s Booker prize. And Austin Clarke for “The Question”. – Ottawa Citizen (AP)

“Among the merchants who had come together in Frankfurt, it was not possible to determine whether they were doing any business at all. Everything that was dismissed here in the name of the entire publishing business (“…did all that in New York before the fair”) found powerful confirmation elsewhere (“…after New York, there’s always something new”).” – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

What is it that has got so many of Britain’s comedians writing novels? “Of course there’s cachet in having published a serious novel, but what jumps out from the current batch is how much there is to praise in many of them.” – The Telegraph (UK)

While the business of selling monthly, comic books flails, “its companion, the graphic novel market, especially in traditional bookstores, is booming. There are more hardcover and paperback collections of comics material than there have ever been in America before, and their sales have never been better.”- Publishers Weekly

“E.M. Schorb and David Maraniss shared the grand prize for best original e-book at Friday’s inaugural Frankfurt eBook Awards, the first designed to recognize achievements in the emerging e-book industry.” – Wired