RotisStephane Reynaud
The CanalLee Rourke
Historian Orlando Figes is in trouble again. Figes, who was last in the spotlight when he admitted writing flattering reviews of his own books on Amazon and bad reviews of books by rivals (after first saying it was his wife’s doing — see the earlier…
In a sprawling, two-page article Daily Beast critic Mark Wortman laments the recent glut in extremely long books. In this epically long blog post titled “Are books becoming too long to read?”, Wortman points to a series of culpably grandiose books that include the likes…
In a Publishers Weekly opinion essay, indie publisher John Oakes of OR Books argues that publishers can best fight Amazon by cutting them out of the equation entirely and selling books direct to their customers. Oakes argues that battling with Amazon over terms of sale,…
This coming Sunday San Francisco marks The Golden Gate Bridge’s 75th birthday with a series of tributes, festivals, and readings. The suspension bridge is known across the globe for its grand towers and sweeping beauty, but also for its place in popular culture, including literature. It would…
Just last December, it was the talk of not just the UK but New York when James Daunt, legendary London indie bookseller and currently head of chain retailer Waterstones, publicly attacked Amazon as a “ruthless, money-making devil.” As Ellie Robins reported here on MobyLives, Daunt used…
In an article on the Columbia Journalism Review website Ryan Chittum takes on a spate of recent tech posts “arguing that production costs (you know, minor details like advances, editors, etc.) don’t or shouldn’t factor into the end price” of an ebook. He wags his…
Well, strange that it took this long, I guess: Amazon is planning to add advertising to the Kindle reading experience. According to a report from — where else? — AdAge by Jason Del Rey, they won’t be cheap, either: Amazon is pitching ads on the…
“The Vatican has denounced as ‘criminal’ a new book of leaked internal documents that shed light on power struggles inside the Holy See and the inner workings of its embattled bank, and warned that it would take legal action against those responsible,” according to this…
Alison Flood reports in the Guardian that a Harvard Business School study finds that “Amazon reviews are just as likely to give an accurate summary of a book’s quality as those of professional newspapers.” The study, “What Makes a Critic Tick? Connected Authors and the…
Frederic Mitterand, the outgoing culture minister of France, has written a letter to the EU’s Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia critical of the EU lawsuit against publishers (see the earlier MobyLives report), saying it could foster “predatory pricing” by Amazon. According to a report (in French)…