Category: publishing

Public defender and first-time novelist Sergio de la Pava published A Naked Singularity himself after repeated rejections from publishing houses. “The book slowly generated buzz on blogs before being picked up by the University of Chicago Press, a distinguished publisher not known for its contemporary fiction. Writing for Slate, Paul Ford called it ‘the sort of book you write if you’re not sure anyone will ever let you write another one’.”

“We’ve always been able to read and access the classics. However, the cost in both time and money of accessing literature from the 19th century that didn’t fall into the canon meant it was unlikely that we would pore through anything else.”

“The upgraded service has a web filter to ensure that inappropriate content cannot be viewed on-site. We’ve received feedback from a number of users about sites which were blocked, but shouldn’t have been. We’re in the process of tweaking the service to unblock these sites.”

“Dame Barbara Cartland published an unprecedented 723 books in her lifetime. Her Who’s Who entry claimed she had achieved sales of 750 million, although some disputed the figure.”

“A new book about Gandhi says that he was worried about people skim-reading his work back in the early 20th century. As a publisher in South Africa at the time, he tried to design and write in ways that slowed readers down.”

“So there really is not much we can do with the word “literally”, other than avoid it completely. At the moment it is irredeemable. It is a moot word. We just have to leave it up in its bedroom for a while until it grows up a bit.”

“It came to Germany almost a decade later than America, but the newspaper crisis is sweeping the country, with plummeting circulations and revenues.”

“The British writer earned $95m (£61.5m) last year, the business magazine said. She knocked crime author James Patterson off the top spot after three years. He took second place with $91m.”

“The brainchild of a longtime U.S. expat, Cuba Libro launched Friday as a bookshop, cafe and literary salon that offers islanders and tourists alike a unique space to buy or borrow tomes in the language of Shakespeare. Cuba Libro also gives customers an occasional glimpse of opinions hard to find elsewhere on the island.”