The novelist, who says it doesn't get any easier no matter how many you've written, has a few tips like, well, write what you know; stop drinking so much; and use his "patented technique called WNW." - LitHub
Following up on pledges made during protests in 2020, Penguin Random House did a self-audit for diversity. What it found: "The demographics of its authors, illustrators, translators, and other creators 'do not reflect U.S. reader demographics when it comes to race and ethnicity.'" - Publishers Weekly
The book's "widespread fame is relatively recent. Though Goodnight Moon was published in 1947, sales dropped low enough in 1951 that the book nearly went out of print—all because the children’s librarian of New York Public Library hated it." - LitHub
In 2020, both the United States and the United Kingdom saw their largest annual increases in over a decade — a worldwide paper shortage and a global shipping crisis mean they're having a difficult time keeping up with that demand. - CBC
Because younger people are starting to use it, lexicographers at Le Petit Robert added the pronoun iel (a portmanteau of il and elle). The education minister huffed on Twitter, "Inclusive writing is not the future of the French language," and one MP complained to the Académie Française. - AP
The price was $43.2 million, and the anonymous winner outbid an impromptu group of cryptocurrency players who raised money via blockchain over a few days and said they planned to put the document on public display. - Artnet
“We’re seeing an unprecedented volume of challenges. I’ve worked for ALA for 20 years, and I can’t recall a time when we had multiple challenges coming in on a daily basis.” - Time
Historically, in America, the true strength of the Classics and of a Classical education has not been among the elite but among the rising middle class. - Los Angeles Review of Books
Mott's Hell of a Book won for fiction; Miles's All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack for nonfiction; Lo's Last Night at the Telegraph Club for young people's literature; Espada's Floaters for poetry, and Elisa Shua Dusapin's Winter in Sokcho for literature in translation. - AP
BookTok, as it's known, is an unusually lively corner of the mini-video app's subculture: the most popular reviewers can get a couple hundred thousand followers, the most watched videos rack up a million or more views, and yes, they can affect sales. - The Guardian
The particular crimes he's accused of this time are insulting Atatürk and making fun of the Turkish flag in his latest novel, Nights of Plague. A judge in Istanbul had rejected the case, but the attorney who brought the charges successfully appealed. - The Guardian
Over the course of fifteen years, until his death in 1613, Bodley would oversee the transformation of Oxford’s library from this empty shell to the finest institutional library in Europe. - LitHub
From the start of World War I, for about 50 years, scientists and the government were convinced that using another language alongside English decreased brain function as well as making one less than fully American. Finally we're getting to understand why and how that's not true. - Literary Hub
The acquisition of audiobook platform Findaway lets Spotify "quickly bring a large catalog of audiobooks to its massive user base … in the way the company jump-started its push into podcasts with the acquisitions of Gimlet, Anchor, Parcast and The Ringer." - Variety
