The UK Booksellers Association has written a letter, calling the Google settlement a “monopoly” and telling British and Irish publishers to be as uncooperative as they can, and to “claim your titles and turn off all Display Uses pending a clearer vision of how the…
Kindle owners may soon “end up wishing they had waited on their purchase,” says David Coursey. Why? He says rumors are growing about “a ready-to-release” Apple device that would do much, much more tha allow you to read a book — although it could do…
In the past, I have kvetched when downsizing newspapers have justified shrinking book sections by saying “They don’t draw the ads they used to.” Pshaw, said I. They never generated that many ads. In the past, I have proclaimed, they never played up the appearance…
You know the legend: Lots of great writers have come out of the MFA program at the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop, including Flannery O’Connor, Raymond Carver, John Edgar Wideman, Kurt Vonnegut and both Dennises — some would say Denises — Johnson. At least one…
In 2003, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix topped the bestseller lists in Germany — in its English-language edition. Several more Potter titles have repeated the feat since then, and currently, Stephanie Meyer‘s “Twilight” series is up there, too. What the? “People’s ability…
When everyone went home last night, it looked like today’s big story was going to be the one that was breaking in mid-day: That a federal judge in New York had postponed the deadline for authors and publishers to opt out of the controversial settlement…
Morning Mobylivers! For once, this post is not written under bleak London skies but in the steaming heat of Kibaha, a small town on the Tanzanian coast. Although this may just seem like an opportunity to gloat (yay me!) I thought you might be interested…
As our intrepid author Ben Greenman begins his book tour for Please Step Back, Time Out New York chimes in with a profile noting that the novel started as something altogether different: “as a biography of the soul-funk legend Sly Stone,” with Greenman “logging countless…
Back in January an article entitled ‘New Yorker Fiction by the Numbers: The Many Stories by the Few’ reported on a certain Frank Kovarik’s six years of number crunching, and revealed some interesting facts about the breadth and depth of the esteemed magazine’s fiction selections:…
One of the original — and by most counts still the most popular — book blogs, Bookslut, is moving to Berlin. Or at least, founder and editor-in-chief Jessa Crispin is. It’s not the first time Crispin has uprooted — soon after she started Bookslut in…
“AÂ federal judge overseeing the approval process for the Google Book Search settlement has rejected an attempt by the Internet Archive (IA) to intervene in the action,” reports Jim Milliot in a Publishers Weekly story. In the ruling, Judge Dennis Chin says he saw the IA…
“Seeking to strengthen its presence on the iPhone and iPod Touch, Amazon has acquired Lexicle, the company behind Stanza, a popular free e-book application for the iPhone,” reports Brad in a New York Times story. The significance of this? Well, for one thing, “Stanza allows…
The Melville House project to revive the reputation of the late German writer Hans Fallada, particularly by bringing attention to his forgotten masterpiece, Every Man Dies Alone, continues to draw remarkable attention. A New Yorker review says “The book has the suspense of a John…
REPORTER: Do you find your second novel coming slow? MISS LEE: Well, I hope to live to see it published. From the transcript of press conference published in Rogue magazine December 1963. What everyone knows about Harper Lee, born on this day, April 28th in…
“Changes are coming to the publishing industry,” says Steve Haley. What kind of changes? “Big changes.” In a sensitive, insightful commentary on The Rumpus, Hely explains that, “It’s not just the Kindle. There’s the iPhone. Blogs. Facebook. Twitter. Blortcejil. If your company doesn’t already have…
In a now famous clip of Fox News anchor Shepard Smith saying, on air, “We do not fucking torture,†there’s also something else: Trace Gallagher, the co-host of The Live Desk, accuses former CIA case officer Robert Baer of distorting facts about torture to sell…
A new Melville House book out this week by New Yorker editor Ben Greenman takes the art of writing fiction about music to new heights. Called Please Step Back, it tells the turbulent tale of fallen American rock star, Rock Foxx, and is based on…
“A librarian at Oxford’s Bodleian Library has unearthed the earliest-known book dust jacket,” reports Michelle Pauli in a story for The Guardian. She says the jacket dates to 1830 and protected a book called Friendship’s Offering. The dust jacket had apparently lain unknown in the…
Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan were long the British equivalent of Oprah, better known as just Richard and Judy. But they’ve moved over from their popular big-time TV morning show to a “tiny audience on the digital channel Watch,” notes Nicholas Clee, and the British…
Minneapolis-St. Paul’s WCCO-TV reports ” An 11-year-old Farmington boy has written, illustrated and published his first children’s book.” Ben Heckmann, a fifth grader, has inked the first book in a planned series, Velvet Black: The Incredible Tale of Four Rock Stars. The book follows the…
CNN reported today that a new book from Harper Collins UK is making trouble in Kenya. It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower, by Michela Wrong, chronicles the culture of corruption in Kenyan politics, “making booksellers and government officials uneasy, but…
Just a few months after being unceremoniously fired by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, then being rehired a short time later, longtime HMH senior editor Drenka Willen was awarded the London Book Fair’s annual Lifetime Achievement Award in International Publishing yesterday. Willen, editor of Nobel winners including…
A Los Angeles literary agency, Vigliano Associates, is suing rock star Rogers Nelson — that’s Prince to you and me — for, according to them, using them to negotiate a two-book deal, “then cutting the agency out when it came time to sign,” as a…
According to this NPR story — which has been stirring up something of a fuss — you’re kind of a loser if you win the Pulitzer Prize yet don’t become a household name for the length of posterity.They offer the following list in evidence: His…
Don’t be misled by previous reports about the London Book Fair that make it sound as if British publishers were a bit stodgy about their electronic future. According to a Publishers Weekly report, the coolest and maybe best-attended event was the one hosted by Cannongate…
UNESCO has declared today World Book and Copyright Day. They explain on their site that they selected this date because it is “a symbolic date for world literature, for on this date and in the same year of 1616, Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de…
Good news from London yesterday, according to a Bookseller report by Catherine Neilan: The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, in a keynote address at the London Book Fair, declared that “I don’t think Google is going to destroy publishing.” Johnson, whom Neilan notes “has previously…
How have you made division of yourself? An apple, cleft in two, is not more twin Than these two creatures. Twelfth Night, Act V, scene1 The consensus seems to be that Miguel de Cervantes was unaware of William Shakespeare, but did Shakespeare read Don Quixote?…
The excitement of owning a new bookstore in a good bookstore town may be wearing off for Daniel Goldin. Soon after opening the Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee, he’s able to report on the store’s blog that he’s had his first shoplifted book. As he…
The poet and memoirist Deborah Digges has died of an apparent suicide leap from the football stadium at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. She was 59. A New York Times obituary by Margalit Fox offers no explanation, but it does offer a lovely remembrance…
