Category: publishing

“At some level, Stephen King novels issued a necessary corrective to my wanton teenage materialism and overweening belief in American goodness. They did their own kind of national myth-making.”

“In an era of apps, tablets and Google Glass, typewriters are still clacking along with the help of an unusual coalition of customers. Police departments, law firms and government agencies still punch out forms on the machines.” Two of the biggest users of typewriters: prisons and funeral homes.

“Maybe you don’t care if Jeff Bezos knows what page you’re on as long as you can save a little money, but it’s something of a shock for an independent publisher to find the room stacked against him at a book festival.”

“A vast public library planned for Baghdad will be the centerpiece of a new culture hub under an ambitious new masterplan driven by the Iraqi Ministry of Youth and Sport.”

“Even people who don’t read crime fiction have felt Leonard’s legacy, which can be detected in everything from the films of Quentin Tarantino to the novels of David Foster Wallace. He wrote bestsellers and got called a ‘literary genius’ by that notoriously tough critic, Martin Amis.” And then there are those invaluable ten rules for writers.

Rachel Rosenfelt, editor of The New Inquiry: “We have no paywall, no advertisers, no benefactors, and we’re creative commons. Two dollars a month is $24 a year, and that’s actually pretty standard for a magazine subscription. But because we make it so low a barrier to support us, we’ve been doing very well with that.”

“The British prisoners’ rights group Reprieve has issued a statement accusing authorities at Guantánamo Bay of blocking the delivery [to a long-term detainee] of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Soviet-era classic The Gulag Archipelago.”

“The two companies said Monday that an eight-month-long dispute that had reduced the number of Simon & Schuster titles appearing in Barnes & Noble stores has been settled. The bookstore chain and the publisher had been at odds over various financial issues, including which of them would bear the burden of e-book discounting and in-store promotional costs.”

“Poet available to begin work immediately. Capable in rhyme and meter, fluent in traditional and contemporary forms. Quotidian observations available at standard rate of $15/hour; occasional verse at slightly higher rate of $17/hour. Incomprehensible garbage $25/hour. Angst extra.” Guess what: the ad has worked.

“Yep. I eagerly look forward to your book coming out. Going to make sure it’s flooded with scathing reviews. . . . Deluge of awful reviews unless that post comes down. Going to make it a top priority.”