“It was the Great Train Robbery of French intellectual life: thousands of treasured documents that vanished from the Institut de France in the mid-1800s, stolen by an Italian mathematician. Among them were 72 letters by René Descartes, the founding genius of modern philosophy and analytic…
Now that the dust has settled from the first major battle of the “ebook pricing wars,” or whatever you want to call what went on between Amazon and Macmillan, one inquiring former bookseller — in this rather scathing but clear-eyed essay — has a question:…
What, exactly, is the point of a dustjacket, asks Peter Robins in this Guardian story. “The clue can’t be in the name: on the shelf, the most dust-prone part of a book is the top, which a jacket doesn’t cover … the jacket remains an…
Back in the early days of book blogging, Jessa Crispin on her Bookslut blog back set the standard for what most have come to think of as a book blogger: a too-smart person who can be wickedly funny and almost shockingly independent of mind, all…
In a wacky, retro 1960 interview from — we think — Canadian TV, the great writer and media theorist Marshall McLuhan talks about the future of books … or, whatever comes next ….
Tonight’s “Publishing in the Age of Blah, Blah, Blah: The Future of Book Journalism,” has been canceled. We are, meanwhile, retitling the series. The new series — “Publishing in the Age of Snow” — will include the journalism, at a date to be determined. Stay…
Is Barnes & Noble about to undergo a massive make-over? In a Publishers Weekly report headlined “Barnes & Noble to Become E-Commerce Retailer,” Jim Milliot says, er, maybe. Milliot details a conference call about B&N’s third quarter results (which were mixed, as PW reported a…
“In what was described as a ‘shot across the bow’ of digital pirates, six global publishers, including John Wiley, Cengage and McGraw-Hill, have obtained an injunction against Swiss-based Rapidshare ordering the company to prevent illegal file sharing of the 148 copyright-protected works cited in the…
In a presentation on Wednesday at the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference, Angela Bole and Kelly Gallagher presented the results and a bit of analysis of the Book Industry Study Group‘s most recent consumer survey of ebook users. Much of the data was discussed in…
In this report in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Author Salman Rushdie said that he is planning on writing a book about his time in hiding. “It’s my story, and at some point, it does need to get told,” he said. “My instinct is that point…
Let me start off by explaining that I am not a technophobe. Far from it. In some cases, I’ve even been an early adopter. My Blackberry is always on and I can’t go anywhere without my iPod playing in the background–in fact, I can’t imagine…
Henry Holt announced Monday that “it will correct all future editions of the Last Train from Hiroshima” by Charles Pellgrino after it was discovered that one of Pellegrino’s key sources for the book, Joseph Fucco, was a fraud, according to a Publishers Weekly report. As…
You can rest easy now: the ginormous Irish hedge fund that owns Houghton Mifflin Harcourt isn’t going under: Its own bankers are getting together to buy it, says a Bookseller report. CEO Barry O’Callaghan, “who created the group through a number of debt-financed deals, will…
In a controversy that brings to mind the recent contretemps in Denmark, in which the caricaturing of the prophet Muhammad led to widespread Muslim outrage, at least one-hundred deaths, and the attempted assassination of the cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard, The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India has…
For someone of a certain generation — say, that of Bret Easton Ellis — it’s a little hard to understand: The rise in influence of Bret Easton Ellis. Take Ellis’ American Psycho — “So long is its shadow, in fact,” says Stuart Evers, “that it’s…
An open letter from the MobyLives Australia correspondent to the apprehensive, openhearted writers of tomorrow, some of who are a little nervous that their aspirations for being in print are going to miss the last boat: If you’re a publisher at the moment, you’re having…
“Court documents related to the Fairness Hearing held in New York last week” have revealed that several major British publishers, agents, and authors — including bestsellers ranging from Lord Jeffrey Archer to John LeCarre and Zadie Smith — “have all opted out of the revised…
The following post by Edward Jay Epstein, author of The Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies (available from Melville House today, and reviewed in today’s Wall Street Journal), is the seventh in a series leading up to publication of the book —…
An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education warns that format wars are heating up among text book publishers: “Major textbook publishers are firing the first shots in a format war over their electronic editions, with several players hoping to control distribution to students and…
Finalists for Britain’s annual Diagram Prize for the oddest book title have been announced. According to an Associated Press wire story, the six top finalists are: Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots The Changing…
In an awkward yet amusing correction on the New York Times Arts Blog, readers were surprised to learn that David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, did not say that his new book on Barack Obama, The Bridge, would be a “pimped out” version of…
Though it’s not out until March 17th, Norman G. Finkelstein‘s forthcoming book This Time We Went Too Far: Truth & Consequences of the Gaza Invasion is already making news. A film about Finkelstein has just opened at Anthology Film Archives in New York, and was…
After a long day of testimony on Thursday in the Google Book Settlement case, Judge Denny Chin has gone off to the mountaintop to ponder his decision — which could come in mere days, or weeks, or months, or …. But meanwhile analysts were working…
It’s a publisher’s worst nightmare: A new book from Holt about the atom bomb attack on Hiroshima, Japan, The Last Train from Hiroshima by Charles Pellegrino, has gotten off to an amazing start, winning critical acclaim for “its heartbreaking portrayals of the bomb’s survivors,” landing…
Walter Kirn wrote the book that was the basis for one of the year’s most celebrated movies, Up in Air, which starred George Clooney and netted six Oscar nominations … but Kirn hasn’t been invited to the Oscar ceremony and he’s pissed off. What to…
A handwritten memoir by “the 18th century lothario, spy, writer and adventurer whose name has become an international synonym for lover”—Jacques Casanova—that “that shocked publishers two centuries ago,” and “was spirited away from the Nazis on a bicycle during World War II,” is about to…
According to this report on WMAZ TV of Macon, Georgia, people were lining up outside Central Park City Library for their annual book sale, “Hundreds of booklovers lined up in the cold this morning to be among the first through the door at the Friends…
As Michael Cader aptly put it in his Publisher’s Lunch newsletter yesterday, “in the publishing world, this is the closest thing we will have to the Olympics,” coming after “years of training, preparation, and negotiation”: the final installment in the Google Books Settlement case. According…
Conservative bloggers have their knickers in a twist over books spotted on the White House‘s library shelves, “because a blogger from sayanything.com snapped a photo of some old reference books about socialism in the White House Library, which the tour guide said was stocked by…
Kevin Trudeau, author of the book The Weight Loss Cure ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About, has been sentenced to 30 days in jail and fined $50,000 after inciting his fans to flood a judge’s e-mail account with letters of support, says a Reuters…
