A Plan For More Book Reviews? "In smaller towns, newspapers have rarely paid much attention to reviewing books or much else, for that matter, using national press services when needed. That's not likely to change. Suddenly, however, a white knight has emerged on the scene to fill that void of reviews at the hometown paper. I'm just not sure he's riding the right horse." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 05/04/08

email this story | Posted 05/08/08@06:54PM

Airport Books Get Special Cover Consideration "Publishers, especially the purveyors of what some derisively refer to as 'airport books,' actually want you to judge their books by the covers. They've arranged the jackets with that very plan in mind... Imagery, fonts, type sizes and color palette conspire to telegraph whether the stuff inside is concerned with code-crackers and shoe phones, spirits and trapdoors or rich widows and pool boys." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 05/08/08

email this story | Posted 05/08/08@06:31AM

Does English Dominate The World? "We are used to hearing about globalisation and the Americanisation (and therefore the Englishing) of popular culture. Opponents of these forces perceive the spread of English as linguistic imperialism; it erodes traditions and cultural identities. Those who fear this spread connect it with Christianity, colonialism and America's political and military interventionism. But is this right?" Financial Times 05/07/08

email this story | Posted 05/07/08@05:48PM

Book Banning Down, But Gay Penguins Still Unpopular "A children's story about a family of penguins with two fathers once again tops the list of library books the American public objects to the most... Overall, the number of reported library challenges dropped from 546 in 2006 to 420 last year, well below the mid-1990s, when complaints topped 750." Toronto Star (AP) 05/07/08

email this story | Posted 05/07/08@05:56AM

"Gay Penguins" Kids' Book Is "Most Challenged" In Libraries And Tango Makes Three, "released in 2005 and co-written by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, was the most "challenged" book in public schools and libraries for the second straight year, according to the American Library Association." Yahoo! (AP) 05/06/08

email this story | Posted 05/06/08@03:52PM

A Literary Crisis Of History "Authors face a dilemma of the imagination today. The crux of this dilemma is the literary imagination's relationship to the historical imagination." The Guardian (UK) 05/06/08

email this story | Posted 05/06/08@03:11PM

The Insane Policy Of Book Returns "Publishers have convinced retailers that stacks of books piled high in the aisles will attract customers and spawn bestsellers. It's a leaky theory posing little risk for booksellers. If the books don't sell, they're only out the cost of shipping and handling the returns." Bloomberg 05/06/08

email this story | Posted 05/06/08@02:58PM

The Writers Famous For Anything But Writing "A new breed of female authors are, shall we say, predominantly famous for other things. Now, Coleen and Geri have joined Madonna and Katie Price on the bookshelves with their first offerings as children's authors." The Independent (UK) 05/04/08

email this story | Posted 05/05/08@07:26PM

Reviews Help Sell Books, Here Are More Reviews "Venues for book reviewing seem to be increasing exponentially on the Web. And though online book reviewers in the past often seemed amateurish in the extreme, quality as well as quantity is improving all the time." Denver Post 05/04/08

email this story | Posted 05/05/08@06:03PM

Powerful Random House Exec To Depart Peter W. Olson, the chief executive of Random House and one of the most powerful figures in American book publishing, will step down in the next few weeks, according to two executives at Bertelsmann, the German media conglomerate that owns the division. The New York Times 05/05/08

email this story | Posted 05/05/08@05:33PM

Print-On-Demand - The End Of Out-Of-Print Books "For lower distribution academic presses, and self-publishing imprints, the benefits of a technology designed to remove almost all risk from the decision to publish lower profile titles has been welcomed with open arms." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/04/08

email this story | Posted 05/04/08@07:50PM

Harry Potter Finally Falls Off Bestseller List After 10 enviable years of sales, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books have fallen off the New York Times best-seller list for the first time. New York Sun 05/02/08

email this story | Posted 05/04/08@11:06AM

Schiller's Tomb (Er, Not) "After two years of painstaking DNA research, experts have determined that none of the remains billed as those of Schiller belong to the German writer, who died in Weimar in 1805." Yahoo! (AP) 05/04/08

email this story | Posted 05/04/08@11:05AM

New York Passes New Libel Protections for Writers "The Libel Terrorism Protection Act prohibits the enforcement of a foreign libel judgment unless a New York court determines that it satisfies the free speech and free press protections guaranteed by the First Amendment and the New York State Constitution." Publishers Weekly 05/01/08

email this story | Posted 05/02/08@06:10AM

When Writers Use Their Private Lives For Their Writing "Annie Proulx, Uzodinma Iweala, and Michael Ondaatje -- talk about the role of privacy in the public world of literature and the media. Is it ever right to tell private stories for the public good?" NPR 05/01/08

email this story | Posted 05/02/08@05:27AM

Scottish Arts Council Cuts £100,000 From Lit Funding Gavin Wallace, head of literature at SAC, today explained that the organisation had been forced to identify "efficiency savings" following a revised settlement from the Scottish government. The Guardian (UK) 05/01/08

email this story | Posted 05/01/08@05:52PM

Fictional Account (Based On...) Just who are the real-life writers who might be portrayed in the book All the Sad Young Literary Men? The book describes writers in the 1990s, and the game is on to spot the real world versions... InsideHigherEd 04/30/08

email this story | Posted 05/01/08@06:54AM

Share A Book, Save A Tree "One Canadian spruce produces just 24 books, which means that if you get through one book every two weeks your reading habits destroy almost one large tree every year." Something better? The Guardian (UK) 05/01/08

email this story | Posted 05/01/08@06:39AM

Self-Published Book Wins Major Canadian Prize Toronto author Terry Falls self-published his work after he couldn't interest an agent or a Canadian publisher. Now the book has won the $10,000 2008 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/01/08

email this story | Posted 05/01/08@06:33AM

Publishers Fight Oregon Censorship Law Publishers are challenging "a new Oregon law that criminalizes the dissemination of sexually explicit material to anyone under age 13, or the dissemination to anyone under age 18 of any material with the intent to sexually arouse the recipient or the provider. The new statute makes no provision for judging the material as a whole, nor for considering its serious literary, artistic or scientific value." Publishers Weekly 04/29/08

email this story | Posted 04/30/08@06:29PM

A Post-Oprah Tale (James Frey Returns) "An investigation by Vanity Fair suggests that the story is significantly more complicated than Man Cons World. There were no fake Web sites, no wigs worn, no relatives pretending to be spokesmen for nonexistent corporations. It is the story, first, of a literary genre in which publishers thought they had found the surefire recipe for success, but one with such dangerously combustible ingredients that it could explode at any moment." Vanity Fair 05/08

email this story | Posted 04/30/08@08:27AM

The LA Bookstore Scam Scammers are hitting Los Angeles area bookstores claiming to be authors in need of cash. The stories are pretty convincing... Los Angeles Times 04/29/08

email this story | Posted 04/29/08@11:14PM

How Did Libraries Lose Their Allure? "Everyone loves the idea of the libraries: they are the 'envy of the world'. The many endowed by Andrew Carnegie at the turn of the century have frequently been cited as the inspirational and practical source of both culture and education for many, and especially those who describe themselves as self-made. But despite their often grand appearance, somewhere along the line they lost their allure." The Guardian (UK) 04/29/08

email this story | Posted 04/29/08@07:17PM

Iran Tells Writers To Self-Censor Iran's culture minister says writers must censor their work if they want to be published. "It is a clear violation of the law to give an excessive portrayal of a man and woman's private relationships ... and subject our youth and adults to descriptions of intercourse," The Telegraph (UK) 04/29/08

email this story | Posted 04/29/08@07:06AM

Fake Documents Derail Much Anticipated Bio On the eve of publishing a new biography of Louis XIV's mistress, the volume is withdrawn. It seems that part of the book was based on a document long debunked as a hoax... The Guardian (UK) 04/28/08

email this story | Posted 04/28/08@07:08PM

Are Writers Leaving Publisher Over JK Rowling Treatment? Bloomsbury, the publishing house behind the Harry Potter phenomenon, is facing a growing revolt from some of its leading authors upset by its "obsession" with JK Rowling. The Telegraph (UK) 04/28/08

email this story | Posted 04/28/08@07:01PM

James Frey's New Foray Into Publishing A Novel Memoirist James Frey has a novel coming out next month, and it's a safe bet that Oprah Winfrey won't be selecting it for her book club. Frey's fudging of facts in his best-selling memoir got him in trouble in the publishing world. So his plan for the new book? Promotion in "non-traditional" venues... New York Sun 04/28/08

email this story | Posted 04/28/08@09:14AM

Finalists For UK's Oldest Lit Prize There are 12 finalists for the James Tait Black Memorial prizes. "The prizes are the country's oldest literary awards, comprising two £10,000 awards for books published in 2007, one for novels and one for biographies. The winner's purse was increased from £3,000 two years ago." The Guardian (UK) 04/28/08

email this story | Posted 04/28/08@09:06AM

Wikipedia As A Scholarly Tool? "For all the hand-wringing over whether Wikipedia is a legitimate source for completing college assignments, some professors are quietly incorporating it into their classrooms and even their research. Others, noting features of the Web site that contribute to inaccuracies and shortchange the value of expertise, are building variations on the model that are more amenable to academics and to peer review." InsideHigherEd 04/28/08

email this story | Posted 04/28/08@08:50AM

Arbiter Of Literary Greatness "As a founding editor of n+1, the literary magazine whose vocal fan base belies its twice-yearly 7,500-copy print run, Keith Gessen and his colleagues have assailed other publications they believe have squandered their eminence (The New Republic) or never merited it (McSweeney's and anything else associated with the writer Dave Eggers). And the idea of literary fame is central to "All the Sad Young Literary Men." The New York Times 04/27/08

email this story | Posted 04/27/08@11:56PM

When Everyone's An Author (A Glut) "In 2007, a whopping 400,000 books were published or distributed in the United States, up from 300,000 in 2006, according to the industry tracker Bowker, which attributed the sharp rise to the number of print-on-demand books and reprints of out-of-print titles. In short, everyone has a story -- and everyone wants to tell it. Fewer people may be reading, but everywhere you turn, Americans are sounding their barbaric yawps over the roofs of the world." The New York Times 04/27/08

email this story | Posted 04/27/08@02:20PM

Inside Google's Book Digitization Project "Many libraries began digitizing books a decade ago to preserve them. Funding from Google allows the 28 libraries it's working with to cut their digitizing costs because they don't have to pay for scanning the books Google wants to include in Book Search. More than 1 million rare or fragile books have been digitized through the Google-Michigan partnership since it began in 2004, with an estimated 6 million to go." Yahoo (AP) 04/25/08

email this story | Posted 04/25/08@07:37AM

When Artists And Authors Collaborate (It Isn't Pretty) "To authors, the text is sacrosanct, and any accompanying visuals - whether on the cover or the page - are there to serve it. To artists, the text is only one of several considerations: colour, shape, design, texture and technical innovation are at least as important. That's why authors can be less than thrilled when a Matisse, Picasso or Damien Hirst collaborates on an illustrated edition. The problem isn't so much competing egos as conflicting agendas." The Guardian (UK) 04/24/08

email this story | Posted 04/24/08@06:58PM

A Print Version Of Wikipedia? "German publishing giant Bertelsmann AG said Wednesday it planned to publish a one-volume reference book containing the best of the Germany version of the popular online encyclopedia. The 993-page book will contain approximately 50,000 definitions and 1,000 illustrations and will be priced at about 20 euros." CBC 04/23/08

email this story | Posted 04/23/08@07:09PM

Argentine Poet Wins Spain's Top Lit Honor Juan Gelman gets the 90,000-Euro Cervantes Prize. "His prolific work addresses among other issues the pain of loss under military juntas that ruled his country in the 1970s and 80s." The Guardian (UK) 04/23/08

email this story | Posted 04/23/08@06:38PM

A First: Self-Published Book Picks Up PEN/Ackerley Nomination Jane Haynes's Who Is It That Can Tell Me Who I Am? is on the shortlist for the prestigious PEN/Ackerley prize for memoir and autobiography. The Guardian (UK) 04/22/08

email this story | Posted 04/22/08@07:20PM

Nabokov's Son Decides Not To Destroy Author's Work Vladimir Nabokov's The Original of Laura will now not be thrown onto the flames, the 73-year-old has told Der Spiegel magazine, arguing that his father, the creator of Lolita and Pale Fire who died in 1977, would not want his son to suffer any more over his most tortuous dilemma. The Guardian (UK) 04/22/08

email this story | Posted 04/22/08@07:05PM

The British Library's Usability Woes "What is going on at the British Library? Two years ago, admission policy was changed: undergraduates and anyone engaged on research (even riff-raff like me) could apply for passes to the lovely St Pancras building. Since then, more scholarly library users claim it is harder to get a seat. But the situation is worse..." The Guardian (UK) 04/22/08

email this story | Posted 04/22/08@06:43PM

Study: Many Google Generation Students Are Illiterate Researchers "From undergraduates to professors, people exhibit a strong tendency towards shallow, horizontal, flicking behaviour in digital libraries. Factors specific to the individual, personality and background are much more significant than generation." The Guardian (UK) 04/21/08

email this story | Posted 04/22/08@06:40PM

Authors Complain British Library Is Intolerably OverCrowded "Two years after one of the world's greatest libraries opened its doors to undergraduates and anyone working on research, high-profile writers and academics say that the struggle to find a desk is now intolerable. Library directors stand accused of increasing visitor numbers to boost funds and performance bonuses." The Times (UK) 04/21/08

email this story | Posted 04/21/08@06:30PM