DebtDavid Graeber
He Died with his Eyes OpenDerek Raymond
So the Frankfurt Book Fair is long over, and all the stories that are coming out are out. As it’s become the event by which the world-wide book industry takes measure of itself — when key trends and issues are either born or go to…
A Digital Trends reports says that ASUStek Computer, Inc. is launching an e-book reader in March 2010 which is fabulously souped up. The new reader will include 3G, Wi-Fi, and WiMAX mobile technologies and will have a similar price point to Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s…
Confession: I watch terrible, terrible television. And for that, I blame the internet. Mostly because I simply don’t have time to sit down at 8:00 PM on Tuesday night to tune into my favorite show. Well, that and I don’t actually have cable (or, currently,…
On this day in 1821 was born the demi-god Fyodor Dostoevsky, about whom more than enough has been written. Nobelist J.M. Coetzee fictionalized him as The Master of Petersburg; Vladimir Nabokov, in a proof of the Freudianism he protested a mite too much, slagged him…
The first graphic version of a Tao Lin book has appeared. Well, the first graphic version of a scene from a Tao Lin book. Well, all right, the first graphic version of a sentence from a Tao Lin book. Spoiler alert (you didn’t look at…
The ever-vigilant Bookslut points us to an interesting piece by Stan Carey at his Sentence First blog about “a typo more mysterious than most” — typing “that” when you mean “than.” “If you Google “bigger that”, “more common that”, etc., and ignore the false positives,…
At an investor’s presentation Tuesday to discuss “digital issues,” Barnes & Noble executives announced that as “the company’s long-term health depends on the continued steady performance of its bricks-and-mortar stores” they foresaw having to, well, close some stores — or, as Jim Milliot puts it…
A United Press International wire story reports Vincent Bugliosi‘s book The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder has been made into a documentary film and is slated for US theatrical release this February, according to a release from NAFTC Studios. Former prosecutor Bugliosi, author…
In his new guise as an intellectual ethicist, Jonathan Safran Foer has not only published a new book to promote vegetarianism counter-intuitively titled Eating Animals, he’s taken on one of the most ferocious meat-eaters of them all: Kitchen Confidential author Anthony Bourdain. In an interview…
What do an author’s financial records have to say about their work? Plenty, says William J. Quirk, who found himself in a unique position to examine the career of no less than F. Scott Fitzgerald after coming into possession (via a colleague who worked with…
At the Swedish book site Bokhora, and via the magic of Google Translate, Helena offers Things I did instead of reading Dan Brown’s new novel The Lost Symbol: Drinking coffee. Combed the cats. Empty the litter box. Empty bläjhinken. Empty handbag. Empty gut. She does,…
From the beginning, observers have wondered about the seemingly treacherous place the country’s largest brick and mortar bookseller, Barnes & Noble, finds itself in — producing its own ebook reader (the Nook E-Reader) against the possibility that ebooks will damage the sale of print books,…
An Associated Press report says Sarah Palin received $1.25 million dollars from HarperCollins for her autobiography, Going Rogue before she left office as governor of Alaska, according to a “disclosure statement” released yesterday that discusses Palin’s finances from Jan. 1 to July 27. What’s more,…
“The release of two books by author and motivational speaker James Arthur Ray has been postponed in the wake of three deaths that occurred after a sweat lodge ceremony he led this month in northern Arizona,” says an Associated Press wire story by Bob Christie.…
There has been a lot of talk this week about the Target/Walmart/Amazon price wars, as there should be, and I agree with the ABA complaint that the loss-leader pricing of these books is predatory at best, and extremely harmful to our industry. However, I do…
In Columbia, Tennessee, one of the patrons of the Maury County Public Library has decided that there’s a problem with modern fiction, and has taken to signing out novels — especially mystery novels — with one particular word in them, blacking out the word, and…
In an interview with Tina Brown for The Daily Beast, Philip Roth says the book is doomed to obscurity. Just as his latest novel is coming out — which they seem to be doing fast and furious these days — Roth says he previously thought…
In an essay on his personal blog, Thomas Nelson CEO Mike Hyatt lays out perhaps the most concise detailing so far of how the Walmart/Amazon/Target price war is laying waste to the literary lanscape — threatening, he says, even the devil-may-care mega-retailers themselves. “The mass…
Photo MobyLives previously reported (here) on Juanita Castro, the estranged sister of Cuban strongmen Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro, and her forthcoming book. It is forthcoming no longer: It’s here, and among its revelations are that she “cooperated with the…
Bestselling crime novelist writer Jessica Mann — who also writes a regular column on crime fiction for the prestigious Literary Review — says she’s quit writing about new crime fiction because of increasing amounts of “sadistic misogyny.” “Each psychopath is more sadistic than the…
One thing no one has really discussed in all the furor over Google and its mad scientist plan to copy every book in the world is how, exactly, that copying gets done. It’s Google! It just kind of … happens … right? No one ever…
It’s one of the most stirring passages in all of English literature: From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered – We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood…
As the price war between Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Target continues, publishers see more clearly every day how it could spell their demise: As this story from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel notes, many indie booksellers are buying books from the warring parties because they are taking…
Late last Thursday a long list of critics of the Google Book Search Settlement asked the judge in the case to set aside plans for a final hearing about an amended agreement, saying that the deal was far too complex to be resolved by the…
The government has yet to do anything about the astonishing, predatory and anticompetitive price war over book prices going on in the US between Wal-Mart, Amazon, and Target, and so it continues unabated. In the US, that is. In Canada, it isn’t happening at all,…
The Wall Street Journal — like the Washington Post before it — has decided to scrap its own bestseller list and carry one from Nielsen Bookscan, as a Publishers Weekly report by Lynn Andriani details. (The new WSJ list is here.) BookScan’s senior v-p and…
Attendees at the recent Frankfurt Book Fair were witness to what was, hands down, the most bizarre and perversely brilliant publicity stunt ever at a book fair — events that are known more usually for publicity stunts that are, well, pitiful. As documented on this…
The American Booksellers Association has called upon the Department of Justice to investigate the price war between Wal-Mart, Target and Amazon, calling it, in a letter made public late yesterday, “illegal predatory pricing that is damaging to the book industry and harmful to consumers.” “We…
Given the last week’s vicious price war over the prices of bestsellers in the print world, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer asks, “Is it too much of a leap for a similar price war to hit the e-reader world?” In a post at the PI’s blog, bookseller…
Mexico’s secret intelligence service — the now defunct DFS — spied on Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez “for decades and considered him a Cuban agent,” according to this Guardian report about just-declassified government documents published in the El Universal newspaper. They reveal that DFS…