Category: publishing

Critics are oohing and ahing over Amazon’s new search feature that throws the pages of thousands of books in a search engine. One of the things you can do is find which public intellectuals get the most citations. Probably doesn’t mean anything, of course. A few years ago Richard Posner came up with a ranking of intellectuals based on article mentions. The new ranking? It’s different…

So much controversy and hoopla over who wins a literary competition like the Booker. “Perhaps the Booker wars would end if the participants realized that, according to a recent study by one economist, very little is at stake: Judges in aesthetic competitions, according to Victor Ginsburgh, a professor at the University of Brussels, are simply not very good at identifying art works that future generations will acknowledge as great.”

The New York Review of Books celebrates its 40th birthday; since 1963 it has been “the closest thing to a national literary journal in America, its distinctive white-paper bound magazine appearing at two-week intervals. Today, it’s a thick publication with 115,000 subscribers. It features lengthy reviews, journalism and commentary by an international list of writers both literary and political, and illustrations by David Levine.”

“In China, as in America, there is a debate about what constitutes popularity in fiction: Are Yu Hua’s best-selling novels a concession to China’s newly consumerist culture or a necessary response to the intellectually serious but hopelessly academic “postmodern” fiction in fashion 20 years ago in China? Whereas in the United States this discussion is an aesthetic one, the debate in China has sharper teeth; American writers may fear the culture mafia, but at least they don’t have to worry about the Ministry of Culture.”

Margaret Atwood is Canada’s reigning literary institution, writes Philip Marchand. “Atwood’s place on so many book prize short lists is indicative of her unique position in Canadian letters. Especially since the deaths of Robertson Davies and Mordecai Richler, she has no rival as premier Canadian novelist. Atwood’s product clearly has wide appeal, and even those who have strong misgivings about her work, like me, must acknowledge that she has some powerful and exceptional gifts — literary gifts that are particularly suited to a writer of novels.”

“That Argentine, or Australian, or Iranian, or Afghan author you have bought a ticket to hear is probably flying in from his or her home in the United States — the world’s most powerful author magnet. Not only does the place offer freedom to write, but it also offers an abundance of publishers, lots of creative writing programs where authors can find a day job, and a large literary marketplace.”

The economics of being a writer in Canada just don’t add up. Out of that $32 book price, the author gets $3.20. “In Canada, a country of more than 30 million people, a novel is considered to have sold respectably if three thousand copies leave the shelf. You do the math: 3,000 x $3.20, minus 15 per cent, minus hundreds of dollars in expenses, minus your advance on these royalties, divided by four or five (depending on how many years the book took to write), equals, on a bad day, a fairly deep sense of futility.”

For the first time, the Britih Library has put the full 748-page text of the Canterbury Tales online. The book is believed to be the first book printed in England (in 1476). “The library’s copies of the first and second editions – so rare that no visitor is allowed to touch them – are now expected to be read electronically by up to a million people in the next six months.”

“An ingenious attempt to illuminate the dark region of books is under way at Amazon.com. Over the past spring and summer, the company created an unrivaled digital archive of more than 120,000 books. The goal is to quickly add most of Amazon’s multimillion-title catalog. The entire collection, which went live Oct. 23, is searchable, and every page is viewable.”

“France’s most important literary prize has this year been characterised by intrigue, subterfuge and drama – not because of the novels, but the unusual handling of the award announcement.”