UK's Indie Bookstores Shuttering At Rate Of Two Per Week "With independents blaming increased competition from the internet, supermarkets, a declining British high street and the credit crunch for their troubles, figures from the Booksellers Association show that 102 independent stores closed in 2009, leaving just 1,289 left in the UK - a decline of 27% since 1999." The Guardian (UK) 02/09/10

email this story | Posted 02/09/10@08:13AM

In Japan, Cellphone Novels Find Their Way Into Print "[L]ast year, 15-year-old 'Bunny' became one of Japan's top authors of a genre called keitai -- cellphone -- novels." Likened to "Harlequin romances for young girls," keitai novels aren't great literature, but the audience for them is passionate, and it seems to be quite large. Los Angeles Times 02/09/10

email this story | Posted 02/09/10@06:39AM

iPad Strengthens Publishers' Hand Against Google, Too "Now, as publishers enter discussions with the Web giant Google about its plan to sell digital versions of new books direct to consumers, they have a little more leverage than just a few weeks ago -- at least when it comes to determining how Google will pay publishers for those e-books and how much consumers will pay for them." The New York Times 02/09/10

email this story | Posted 02/08/10@06:33PM

Afterlife Of A Writer's Work "If the manuscripts exist, and if they ever come to the market, they are likely to become the next posthumous publishing sensation - regardless of how good they are." BBC 02/08/10

email this story | Posted 02/08/10@08:02AM

What's An E-Book Worth? "The question of whether e-book prices should be significantly lower than their print analogs has become a fundamental divide in a simmering dispute between book publishers and the 800-pound-gorilla that is Amazon.com. In part the issue is about consumer choices but like the other digitization wars which preceded it -- and continue -- in music, television, film and even news, it's also about ensuring that a creative industry survives." Wired 02/05/10

email this story | Posted 02/07/10@10:18PM

Now Open For Business: E-Books "A host of rivals to the market-dominating Kindle electronic reader has given newfound hope to publishers that they will finally be able to dictate their own terms after being at the mercy of Amazon." Yahoo! (AP) 02/07/10

email this story | Posted 02/07/10@09:34AM

The Odd Dynamics Of Making A Great Book "Among the strange fates of many great books, the bizarre afterlife of Moby-Dick stands out as a classic example. The first edition of the novel, originally called "The Whale" (1851), was a horrible combination of a flop and a botch." The Observer (UK) 02/07/10

email this story | Posted 02/07/10@09:29AM

Writing A Book? How Depressing "To begin to write a book these days seems more than the average folly. Publishing appears to have been hit by a storm similar to the one that tore through the music industry a few years ago and is now causing unprecedented pain in newspapers We are told that fewer people are reading, that book sales are down, that the supermarkets which sell one in five copies of all books care more about their cucumber sales." The Observer (UK) 02/07/10

email this story | Posted 02/07/10@09:27AM

British Library To Post 65,000 E-Books "While some other services, such as Google Books, offer out-of-copyright works to be downloaded for free, users of the British Library service will be able to read from pages in the original books in the library's collection." The Times (UK) 02/05/10

email this story | Posted 02/07/10@08:57AM

We Miss Books "And he's not alone. Just about everyone I know complains about the same thing when they're being honest--including, maybe especially, people whose business is reading and writing. They mourn the loss of books and the loss of time for books." The New Yorker 02/05/10

email this story | Posted 02/07/10@08:26AM

Animalit. Really? I Mean, Really? "Sales of celebrity memoirs might be down, says the Bookseller, while the misery memoir bubble has burst, but what it dubs "animalit" helped to save the biography genre last year." The Guardian (UK) 02/05/10

email this story | Posted 02/05/10@08:10AM

Amazon Close To Settling Pricing Dispute For e-Books Amazon, in an open letter last week to it customers, indicated it would "have to capitulate" to Macmillan's demands because the publisher "has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books." Yahoo! (AP) 02/04/10

email this story | Posted 02/05/10@06:25AM

Portions Of Ancient Roman Law Book Discovered In 16th-Century Book Binding "Fragments of a lost ancient Roman law text have been rediscovered in the scrap paper used to bind other books. The Codex Gregorianus, or Gregorian Code, was compiled by an otherwise unknown man named Gregorius at the end of the third century A.D. It started a centuries-long tradition of collecting Roman emperors' laws in a single manuscript." National Geographic 02/03/10

email this story | Posted 02/04/10@09:53PM

A Brief History Of Restaurant Criticism In New York Robert Sietsema: "[In the 1970s, m]ost of the verbiage devoted to food in local newspapers concerned easy-to-make recipes, human interest stories, food travel writing, kitchen advice to housewives, and the occasional piece that sought to get you interested in wine. Every Friday, there would be a restaurant review in The New York Times." My, how things have changed … Columbia Journalism Review January/February 2010

email this story | Posted 02/04/10@09:49PM

Someone Had To Open Salinger's Mail -- And Answer It "The letters came from Sri Lanka or the Netherlands or Arizona. They included deeply personal admissions--cancer diagnoses, bankruptcy, divorce--and were often written in Salinger's own brash style or, at the very least, incorporated the slang of the period he chronicled. 'Dear Jerry, you old bastard,' they tended to start. 'I gotta tell you.'" Slate 02/03/10

email this story | Posted 02/04/10@05:39AM

Countless Authors Are Forbidden In Texas Prisons "Novels by National Book Award winners Pete Dexter, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx and William T. Vollmann have been banned in recent years. Award finalists Katherine Dunn and Barry Hannah are on the Texas no-read list, too, as are Pulitzer Prize winners Alice Walker, Robert Penn Warren and John Updike." Austin American-Statesman 01/30/10

email this story | Posted 02/03/10@07:30AM

$100,000 Poetry Prize Goes To D.A. Powell The 46-year-old poet, "who teaches at the University of San Francisco, has won the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award from Claremont Graduate University. His books include 'Tea,' 'Lunch,' 'Cocktails' and 'Chronic.'" Los Angeles Times 02/02/10

email this story | Posted 02/03/10@06:22AM

How The Iliad Is Reflected In Wars Throughout History Alexander the Great "esteemed it a perfect portable treasure of all military virtue and knowledge." The death of Gorgythion prefigures the poppies of Flanders Field. West Point cadets study the epic. The scene of Achilles dragging Hector's body from a chariot has been replayed in Mogadishu and Fallujah. There's even "spin": a 1st-century historian argued that Homer "suppressed the truth," which was that the Greeks lost. The Guardian (UK) 01/30/10

email this story | Posted 02/02/10@09:35PM

Dante's Inferno, The Video Game "It's true. Inferno is now a video game, with a brawny, armor-clad Dante as its protagonist. … [The] game's creators say there's an audience for it. Their research showed that most people had heard of Inferno but few knew what it was about. This, they say, gave them license to make a few improvements." New York Times 01/30/10

email this story | Posted 02/02/10@09:25PM

In Amazon's Game Of Chicken, Content Owners Won "Macmillan's success in bending Amazon to its will represents a tipping point in the book industry -- a shift in power from online distributors to content owners, who after all, have an effective 'monopoly' on every product in their catalogs." Wired 02/01/10

email this story | Posted 02/02/10@06:21AM

How The iPad Has Already Changed The Publishing Game Laura Miller: "Ultimately, if the iPad takes off, the Kindle is in serious trouble. In order to maintain the complete, current selection of titles that is one of its device's great features, Amazon has to be willing to come to terms with publishers." Salon 02/01/10

email this story | Posted 02/02/10@06:09AM

Scuffle With Macmillan Was A Public Loss For Amazon "Amazon, which pulled Macmillan's titles from its site, came out of the fight with egg on its face. The publisher, meanwhile, won new fans. ... Amazon also lost the public relations battle with literary agents, a group that the giant retailer has been trying to woo in recent months." Crain's New York Business 02/01/10

email this story | Posted 02/01/10@08:09PM

Va. School System Won't Ban Anne Frank's Diary After All A parent's very specific request that her eighth grader not be required to read aloud from "The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition" sparked a swift, blanket decision to ban the book from the school system. After intense criticism, it's reversing course. Washington Post 02/02/10

email this story | Posted 02/01/10@07:17PM

The Year The Booker Prize Lost Itself "The date on which the award was given was also moved from April to November, creating a gap when a wealth of 1970 fiction could not be eligible. Among the big names in the running for the Lost Man Booker - which will be awarded in May - are Iris Murdoch, David Lodge, Muriel Spark, Joe Orton, Melvyn Bragg, HE Bates, JG Farrell, Ruth Rendell, Nina Bawden, Brian Aldiss and Susan Hill." The Guardian (UK) 02/01/10

email this story | Posted 02/01/10@06:31AM

Amazon Gives In To Macmillan On E-Book Pricing "Amazon [had] shocked the publishing world late last week by removing direct access to the Kindle editions as well as printed books from Macmillan, one of the country's six largest publishers, which had said it planned to begin setting higher consumer prices for e-books." By Sunday evening, the online retailer relented, agreeing to restore Macmillan titles "even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books." New York Times 02/01/10

email this story | Posted 01/31/10@11:18PM

Does Catcher In The Rye Speak To The Twitter Generation? "Does the Holden Caulfield version of alienation speak to a generation connected on Facebook?" A group of five contributors - teachers, authors and an editor - consider the question on the New York Times's Room for Debate blog. New York Times 01/29/10

email this story | Posted 01/31/10@09:42PM

Amazon Drops Macmillan Books Over Pricing Dispute "A person in the industry with knowledge of the dispute, which has been brewing for a year, said Amazon was expressing its strong disagreement by temporarily removing Macmillan books. … Macmillan, like other publishers, has asked Amazon to raise the price of e-books to around $15 from $9.99." New York Times 01/30/10

email this story | Posted 01/31/10@09:37PM

Auntie Mame Suddenly A Bestseller In Italy (Go Figure) A new translation of Patrick Dennis's 1955 novel, which inspired a Broadway hit and two Hollywood film adaptations, is the surprise sensation of the Italian fiction market. "Even after 15 reprints and sales of 280,000 copies since May (30,000 during the pre-Christmas rush), publishing pundits are still puzzling over the book's popularity." Says the translator, "We're completely mystified." International Herald Tribune 01/29/10

email this story | Posted 01/31/10@09:06PM

Will The NY Times Paywall Be Revenue-Neutral? That's what the newspaper's top execs reportedly think. So why bother with it? "The answer is that a paywall comes with a certain amount of option value. Once it's implemented, nytimes.com will have two revenue streams rather than one, and diversification in and of itself is quite a good thing." Reuters 01/28/10

email this story | Posted 01/31/10@09:27AM

More JD Salinger? "There have been constant rumours for 45 years that Salinger went on working - some people have claimed that he had as many as 10 full-length novels in his safe. Will we now see the publication of some posthumous, full-scale works? Some clue to the quality of these works, if any, may lie in his last publication, never issued in book form." The Telegraph (UK) 01/29/10

email this story | Posted 01/29/10@08:56AM

Huge Surge In Book Business In India "The success of Jaipur's book bash, now the biggest literature festival in Asia, is in part thanks to India's burgeoning appetite for the written word. As the country's economy has boomed, and its middle class has grown, book sales have shot up. Most books in India are still sold in small family-run shops, but book chains are moving into malls and airports." The Economist 01/28/10

email this story | Posted 01/29/10@05:51AM

'The Best Story Salinger Ever Wrote' It "runs about 120 pages and has no appreciable form, reading like an unedited, freewheeling character description. I know several avowed Salinger fanatics who have never made it through the thing, and I don't blame them … I see the messiness of 'Seymour: An Introduction' as Salinger's final confrontation with all the strains of his earlier fiction: sentimentality, depression, Eastern philosophy, isolation, and the guilt of being happy." Slate 01/28/10

email this story | Posted 01/28/10@10:09PM

One Publishing Powerhouse Isn't Eager For The iPad "Possibly the biggest surprise about the new iBooks application of the new device was that Random House's logo was left out of the onstage display of the participating partners. All six other major New York publishers, including Hachette Book Group and Simon & Schuster, were included...." Crain's New York Business 01/27/10

email this story | Posted 01/28/10@07:35AM

An Author Frets: E-Books Will Offer Distracted Experience "The new generation of e-books will, in essence, merge the laptop and the book. Now if my narrative starts to drag, or I digress, readers can click onto their favorite news site to see what's up with health care, or click onto TMZ to see what's up with Brangelina. How do I compete with that?" NPR 01/27/10

email this story | Posted 01/28/10@06:56AM

What Will The iPad Mean For Book Culture? "The traditional book, judging by [Apple CEO Steve] Jobs's announcement, and a recent eulogy of sorts by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is headed for [the] cultural compost pile.... This raises two issues: what the loss of book stores does to communities, and what the brave new publishing world will mean to authors and readers." The New York Times 01/27/10

email this story | Posted 01/28/10@05:40AM

Will Apple Tablet Mean Better E-Book Deal For Publishers? "[U]ntil now, Amazon's grip on the e-book market has been so complete that publishers have had to accept its terms on everything, including the price of e-books." Apple may be offering a more palatable, profitable arrangement. NPR 01/27/10

email this story | Posted 01/27/10@07:12AM

On The Desperate Wrongheadedness Of Book Trailers "[A]uthors are commonly told by publishers and independent publicists that a trailer is now an essential element of any book's marketing campaign. ... There's a blind faith that book trailers, simply by virtue of being video and a form of new media on top of that, will magically" allow publishers "to partake of the mass market's bounty." Salon 01/26/10

email this story | Posted 01/27/10@06:51AM

Huntington Library Buys Cache Of Dickens Letters "Among the letters are Dickens' instructions ... about how a scene in a women's hat shop in 'Nicholas Nickleby' should look: 'there may be a cap on a block and a dress on a stand if it would improve the sketch,' the author suggests, adding, 'Please to take care that Miss Knag is not like Miss La Creevy.'" Los Angeles Times 01/26/10

email this story | Posted 01/27/10@05:12AM

World's Largest Book To Go On Display For First Time "It takes six people to lift it and has been recorded as the largest book in the world, yet the splendid Klencke Atlas, presented to Charles II on his restoration and now 350 years old, has never been publicly displayed with its pages open. That glaring omission is to be rectified" when the British Library features it in an exhibition this summer. The Guardian (UK) 01/26/10

email this story | Posted 01/26/10@10:02PM

In Upset, Book Of Poetry Beats Toibin's Novel For Costa Award A Scattering, Christopher Reid's collection of poems on the illness and death of his wife, defeated favorite Colm Tóibín's Brooklyn to take the £30,000 Costa book of the year prize. A Scattering has sold fewer than 1,000 copies. The Guardian (UK) 01/26/10

email this story | Posted 01/26/10@09:56PM