European Union ministers are “expected to call for an investigation into whether Google has breached EU law.” According to a report on The Bookseller, “In a note circulated prior to today’s Competitiveness Council meeting, the German government said that Google had ‘stolen a march’ on…
Well, it’s that time of year again: time for the muddle of ideas that is BookExpo America, which starts in New York City today. In a post on the IdeaLogical blog, Mike Shatzkin wonders aloud (my lips move when I read) how many more there…
The Christian Science Monitor reports that when Haruki Murakami‘s novel Kafka on the Shore was released, “fans complained that their response to it was dulled by too much advance press coverage.” Murakami’s publisher heard their cry. Murakami’s new novel, set to be released today, has…
SharedBook, a “custom publishing enabler,” has launched a website devoted to the Google Book Settlement debate. From yesterday’s press release at sharedbook.com: “For the first time, the full settlement, amicus briefs, and other relevant documents will be gathered on a single platform, http://gbs.sharedbook.com, which will…
“Is there a crisis in art book publishing?” asks Jamie Camplin in this report for The Art Newspaper. “Most people who love art — collectors, gallery-goers, curators, critics, dealers and artists themselves — understandably take it for granted that there is an audience for books…
Bookninja points us to this article by Sebnem Arsu, on the New York Times Arts Beat blog: “A Turkish author on trial after being charged with inciting religious hatred in a novel based on the birth of Islam said that his book was a work…
Andrew Norman says he’s discovered the identity of the mystery man who broke Jane Austen‘s heart. As Matthew Moore reports in this story for The Telegraph, Austen never married but “the emotional warmth of her romantic novels has always fed speculation about her private passions”…
“Books have had a kind of spooky power, embedded as they are in the very structures of learning, commerce and culture by which we have absorbed, stored and transmitted information, opinion, art and wisdom,” observes acclaimed FSG editor Elisabeth Sifton. “No wonder, then, that the…
How to make book into a hit: Get some lunkhead to ban it. Of course, in this instance the book — the Kama Sutra — was already pretty much a hit. But then, as this as this MacWorld report details, Apple went and banned its ebook app for…
“There are numerous ways for the appearance of a book’s page to turn off a potential reader,” says book designer Maggie Dana in an essay on the How Publishing Really Works blog. She doesn’t really get into how this works, and underplays the quality of…
Time to let her speak for herself? Ruth Padel sat down for several video interviews yesterday after holding a press conference at the Hay Festival. Unfortunately, none of the interviews are available as embeds, but you can watch a snippet of the press conference at…
Good news for America’s second largest bookselling chain yesterday: it, er, didn’t lose as much money as it was expected to in the first quarter. Yes, as this Reuters wire story reports, Borders Group Inc. ”reported a smaller-than-expected loss that beat Wall Street estimates as cost cuts offset a…
A Polish publisher who published extracts of Adolf Hitler‘s Mein Kampf without the permission of the copyright holder — the German state of Bavaria — has been convicted of copyright infringement and sentenced to three months in prison and a fine of €2,271 ($3,178). According…
Amazon sales rankings — the addiction of just about every writer out there, whether they admit it or not — are “the poor man’s Nielsen BookScan,” says Steve Weber in a report at Weberbooks.com. As he notes, Amazon’s numbers “reveal the rate at which a…
Amos Elon, one of modern Israel’s most renowned authors and public intellectuals, died Monday in Italy of leukemia. He was 82. As detailed in a New York Times obituary by Ethan Bronner, Elon rose to fame with the publication of his book The Israelis: Founders and…
Poet Ruth Padel resigned from her position as Professor of Poetry at Oxford University yesterday in the wake of the revelation on Sunday that she had discussed Derek Walcott‘s history of sexual harassment with two journalists. The revelation had quickly revived a virulent anger against…
Despite a massive plebiscite renouncing everything about the Bush-Cheney administration, Dick Cheney, you’ve no doubt noticed, is everywhere, including a “sustained blitz of television appearances and speeches” attacking critics of his torture policies and everything about the Obama administration, as Jim Ruttenberg and Motoko Rich…
Vincent and Palin: separated at birth? A week after signing a book deal (see the earlier MobyLives report)Â Sarah Palin has announced who her ghostwriter will be — or rather, her publisher, HarperCollins, announced it via the Christian magazine World, and it was then posted here:…
“Germany, the land of Goethe, Thomas Mann and Beethoven, has an unlikely pop culture hero: Donald Duck,” says well-known German translator Susan Bernofsky. In a Wall Street Journal commentary, she notes that “Comics featuring Donald are available at most German newsstands and the national weekly…
People who work in the publishing industry are among “the heaviest drinkers” according to a report by Tom Peck in The Guardian. Peck says Britain’s Department of Health found via a survey of drinking by profession that the worst offenders were those in the “media,…
While MobyLives is off for the Memorial Day holiday, we offer this blast from the past … It’s become one of the most legendary readings in New York: At some hipster location filled with, well, hipsters, Melville House author Tao Lin steps to the microphone…
The American book industry got a faint glimmer of hope yesterday — and the operative word is faint — in the news that Barnes & Noble‘s first quarter sales didn’t exactly halt its “multi-quarter slide,” but they did beat Wall Street expectations, losing 4 cents…
Today the Chicago Sun-Times reported that, “Impeached ex-Gov. Blagojevich won’t be able to cash in on any book or television deals borne from his alleged misconduct under legislation now on its way to Gov. Quinn.” Blagojevich has no friends left in the State Senate, it…
Forrest Smith III had an idea: he collected the signatures of Truman Capote, Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Clancy, Michael Crichton, Norman Mailer, Anne Rice, John Grisham, John Irving, Tom Wolfe, and others, and took them to a stamp-making shop and had them made into stamps. Then…
The New Yorker’s Book Bench blog reports that at the Tribeca Rooftop club “the other night,” at a black-tie gathering organized by the Authors Guild to honor Dave Eggers for his 826 National charity, Eggers “seemed slightly anxious, but excited, as he took the podium…
What other book blogger would make the nightly news in one of America’s biggest cities for — well, for anything? Yes, Chicago Tonight covers the departure of Bookslut doyenne Jessa Crispin.
Despite the fact that a federal court has delayed approval of the Google Book Search settlement (see the MobyLives report), and despite the fact that the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and a coalition of states attorneys general are investigating Google (see the…
Days after the conclusion of the race for Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, during which The Guardian ran numerous articles by reporter Alison Flood calling discussion of candidate Derek Walcott‘s history of sexually harassing his students a “smear campaign” and quoting Oxford professors implying…
Catherine Neilan reports on The Bookseller that the American publisher of the controversial novel by Sherry Jones, The Jewel of Medina, is denying reports the book is scheduled to be published in the UK in October. Neilan reports that Beaufort Books‘ spokesperson Erin C. Smith…
Ben Greenman, author of Please Step Back (Melville House) spills his inner-most in an interview with uber-hipster “L” magazine. There you can learn that the language of his main character, Rock Foxx (loosely based on ’60′s great Sly Stone) is inspired by Joseph Conrad. “Weirdly,…
