Big publishers count on big blockbuster fiction to make their profits – your Tom Clancys, your John Grishams – their megasales are what puts the shine on a bookseller’s holiday season. Except this year. The big pop fiction isn’t selling like it usually does…”Crichton appears down. Clancy is down. The Turow is not making its numbers. All the big-ticket fiction has been suffering the last six to eight months.”
Tag: 12.10.02
SF Symphony In The Black
Though orchestras across America are reporting financial troubles, the San Francisco Symphony says it posted a small surplus for 2002 – $112,000 on a budget of more than $45 million. Income was almost evenly split between earned income and contributions.
Poetry – Writing On Without The Millions…
Of course the hundreds of small poetry publications that struggle on year after year would like a piece of the $100 million Ruth Lilly recently gave Poetry magazine. But it’s not all about the money. “They write because they love it with no expectation of making money. Even the big poets don’t make much. While novelists or even some non-fiction writers can fantasize about a possible movie contract, for poets, there’s the cold reality that winning a multi-state lottery is more likely.”
Protesting The Protesters
Over the past year Boston public radio station WBUR has lost about $2 million in underwriting grants, the station says, because of underwriters charging that the station’s news coverage of the Middle East has been anti-Israel. Monday there was a protest on Harvard Square outside a large independent bookstore that had pulled its funding over the issue. Activists handed out leaflets reading “Sells Words but Suppresses Words.”
Fire Destroys Fringe Venues
A fire in Old Town Edinburgh damages a number of venues that host events for the annual Fringe Festival. But a Festival spokesman says “it would only be a handful of venues out of 183 that we had on board last year, so we don’t expect it to affect the festival in any way.”
LA County Museum Kills New Home?
“The decision last Wednesday by the board of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to put on hold its extensive $200 million-$300 million renovation and expansion plans at its Hancock Park campus is all but a death knell for the project, one of the city’s most important cultural initiatives.”
Turner Winner Unfazed
Just who is Keith Tyson, this year’s Turner Prize winner? For one thing, he’s unfazed by controversy: “The Turner is an important prize precisely because it keeps interest frothing away at the top end. And to ask ‘Is that art?’ is pointless. If you went to a Mercury Music Prize, you wouldn’t say: ‘Is a country-and-western album better than a punk album?’ You wouldn’t ask: ‘Is it music?’ You would just think: ‘It’s not my kind of music.’ What do I feel? How do I respond to it? Is it interesting? Those are the questions to ask.”
The Secret Bestsellers
Yes there’s the prestigious New York Times Bestseller List. And the names that appear on it are generally known to one and all. But talk to the people who are actually in the bookstores selling books, and you hear about an entirely different list… Are these the “real” bestellers?