It was no mystery, but now it’s official: “Oprah’s recommendations had a bigger impact on the sales of books than anything we have previously seen in literature, or seen since,” according to a survey by a Brigham Young University economics professor, Richard Butler. As an…
It was one of the very first novels, and certainly ‘the world�s first best-seller,” and now cities on five continents are planning celebrations for the 400th birthday of The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha. As an Agence France Presse report notes, Miquel de…
After winning this year’s Bad Sex in Literature award from what he called a “very small, rather old-fashioned magazine,” Tom Wolfe says, “There’s an old saying — ‘You can lead a whore to culture but you can’t make her sing’. In this case, you can…
Shares of Scholastic and Bloomsbury—the American and British publishers of the Harry Potter books—”surged” after Monday’s announcement that author J.K. Rowling had finished the manuscript of the sixth book in the series, and the announcement yesterday morning that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will…
The subject of Asne Seierstad‘s first book is not happy. The real-life Bookseller of KabuL, she says, told the her, “‘Asne, I don’t like this book so I’ll come to Norway and we’ll sit down for two weeks and we’ll rewrite it,’” says Seierstad. “He…
“That is so sleazy,” says one resident of the apartment building overlooking Ground Zero where Bernard Kerik and Judith Regan used an apartment set aside for rescue workers as a trysting place. Another says, “What a bastard is all I can say to that.” In…
Random House CEO Peter Olson‘s brief but pointed comment in his year-end letter to employees that the company has “tentative plans to sell books directly to consumers through its own Web site” has elicited a sharp reply from Barnes & Noble CEO Stephen Riggio. In…
“From erecting a statue of his favorite horse to renaming the months of the year after himself and his mother, Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov has long been a gift to dictator-watchers,” notes Anna Malpas. And now, she reports in a Moscow Times story, Niyazov is…
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is writing a little faster these days: unlike the “seemingly interminable three-year wait” between her last two Potter book, she announced yesterday that she has finished Potter VI, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. As Hillel Italie reports in an…
The Association of American Publishers has announced an offer of $10,000 dollars in assistance to any U.S. publisher that would translate and publish any one of three Iranian novels, “to help open up a tight market for books in translation,” according to an Associated Press…
Failed Bush-appointee Bernard Kerik‘s “affair with Judith Regan, the editor who published his autobiography, Lost Son, continues to generate headlines,” observes a Newsweek story hitting newsstands today, before going on to make its own headlines. The magazine’s Charles Gasparino reports that just after Kerik’s nomination…
He’s not quite even a senator yet, but Illinois Senator-elect Barack Obama “has landed a three-book deal worth $1.9 million,” reports Nicole Ziegler Dizon in an Associated Press wire story. The Crown Publishing Group and Random House Children’s Books announced that “Obama will write two…
In England, “A book-writing kit for children has proved a massive hit — dispelling the myth that youngsters no longer want to read.” A Sky News report says, “More than 40,000 My First Novel packs have been snapped up since it went on sale at…
“Borders wants to sell jazz records to aging boomers . . . Tattered Cover wants to discount best sellers as it expands into the suburban market . . . Amazon.com wants harried buyers to pick up their books at the local chain store . .…
“Anyone who believes the war on terror has shut down terrorist propaganda centers in U.S.-friendly countries should visit the Maktabah al Ansar bookshop in Birmingham, England,” says Mark Hosenball in this Newsweek report. “Amid shelves of Qur’anic tomes and religious artifacts are bookshelves and CD…
While the heads of some of New York’s biggest publishers, such as Simon & Schuster and Random House, are “crowing” in year end reports about having had very successful years—as a Crain’s report by Matthew Flamm notes—one Internet commentator says the publishing business is about…
Feeling his home had become “overrun” by books, John Updike, who “counts himself a supporter of independent booksellers,” has decided to sell them to a local bookseller. “They were just collecting dust and mouse droppings,” he explains in an Associated Press wire story. The bookseller,…
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Kristen Millares Bolt visits the Amazon.comdistribution center in Fernley, Nevada, along with Jeffrey Wilke, the company’s senior vice president of worldwide operations, and finds ” thousands of employees are working feverishly in round-the-clock shifts to meet the Christmas-list demands of millions of…
“After any suicide, survivors feel guilty,” writes Scott Herhold in a San Jose Mercury News commentary on the late Gary Webb. Herhold, Webb’s one-time editor, says, “I’m convinced that part of what made him great destroyed him. He was an immensely talented reporter, a good…
“After any suicide, survivors feel guilty,” writes Scott Herhold in a San Jose Mercury News commentary on the late Gary Webb. Herhold, Webb’s one-time editor, says, “I’m convinced that part of what made him great destroyed him. He was an immensely talented reporter, a good…
Esteemed poet and publisher Sam Hamill is leaving the Copper Canyon Press, “the publishing company he founded 32 years ago, to focus on his organization, Poets Against the War,” according to a Peninsula Daily News report by Nick Koveshnikov. Hamill started Poets Against the War…
The tawdry affair between Judith Regan and Bernard Kerik, conducted in an apartment overlooking Ground Zero, continued to make headlines around the world yesterday. Despite issuing a press release about one of her new book as if it were an act of defiance—putting herself in…
For a Westerner, a review in Lebanon’s Daily Star newspaper by Jessy Chahine of a new book by a popular author of political books gives a glimpse into some of Lebanese culture’s key social issues. The book, General Theory on The Lebanese Constitutional Regime by…
The oldest known copy of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, a proof copy containing handwritten corrections by the author (see Monday’s MobyLives digest), was auctioned Thursday for $545,100, nearly double the expected amount, according to an Associated Press report by Pat Milton. The amount, paid…
As Stephen Moss of The Guardian observes, in dictionary pages over the centuries, “language has been a battlefield.” (He cites Dr. Johnson, whose dictionary defined oat, for example, thusly: “a grain which in England is generally given to horses but in Scotland supports the people.”)…
“It was only sex,” complains Rush Limbaugh in a tirade on his website (“Left Feeds Off Bernie Kerik Story As If Bill Clinton Never Happened”) about the way “the media continues to focus” on the story of Bernard Kerik and his affair with right wing…
The world’s biggest publisher may be about to go head to head with the company that calls itself the world’s biggest retailer and the company that calls itself the worlds biggest bookseller: Random House CEO Peter Olson says the company is thinking of selling its…
“Facing a barrage of calls from the media and the public,” the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office has issued a statement confirming the rumors “flooding” its office: former investigative report Gary Webb, a supposed suicide, had two gunshot wounds to the head. Nonetheless, a Sacramento Bee…
In seeming reaction to a suit brought by Nobel Peace Prize-winner Shirin Ebadi against the U.S. government for blocking the American publication of her memoirs, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control yesterday “eased a controversial ban on publications from Iran, Sudan and…
Technical glitches are continuing at Amazon.com, to a degree that “have stopped some holiday shoppers from completing purchases,” according to a Reuters wire story by Martha Graybow. One analyst, Gomez, Inc., which “tracks Internet shopping,” said that during the last two weeks it was “unable…
