Category: publishing

“South African writer J.M. Coetzee, whose stories set against the backdrop of apartheid tell of innocents and outcasts dwarfed by history, won the 2003 Nobel Prize for literature, the Swedish Academy said Thursday.”

Publishers are waking up to the promotional possibilities of the internet. “Creating promos like this sends a message to an author that you’re doing exciting, creative, new things to market their books. It also sends a message to a wider, younger, new web- and design-literate audience that these books are being addressed to them in their language.”

The Detroit Free Press has killed a review it had commissioned of a book by Mitch Albom, the newspaper’s star sports columnist, because the review came in negative. The paper’s executive editor “confirmed that she decided not to run the review by freelance writer Carlo Wolff simply because the reviewer didn’t much like the book. She said Albom was not involved in the decision. The book is titled ‘The Five People You Meet in Heaven.’ ‘I was not really comfortable with disparaging one of my employees that way. Yes, it’s because the review was negative’.”

The Nobel Prize for Literature – traditionally the first of the Nobels to be announced – will be revealed this Thursday. “The Nobel Literature Prize is the only Nobel Prize whose announcement date is revealed only two days in advance, and the prizewinner’s name is traditionally made public on a Thursday.”

Do book reviews matter one whit to anyone? Okay, maybe the author. But “I believe we are at best traffic wardens. It’s a free-for-all out there. I have seen books praised to the skies that have scarcely troubled the check-out clerks at Borders or Hatchards. I have watched books comprehensively ignored by The Observer, the Sunday Times and the Sunday Telegraph being lugged out of Waterstone’s, Books etc, Ottakars and Menzies by the bagload.”

Literary critic Harold Bloom has been quick to condemn awarding the National Book Award to Stephen King. While Steve Almond doesn’t necessarily disagree with Bloom about King, he is confused as to Bloom’s purpose in attacking: “What I don’t quite get—and maybe this is because I haven’t spent long enough in academia—is why Bloom feels it necessary to sound off against writers he deems inferior, as opposed to celebrating the writers (and the ideas) he admires. And, furthermore, why he chooses to do so in such a lazy manner.”

Amazon’s book-selling rankings are becoming increasingly influential in promoting a book. “Amazon is an early indicator of consumer enthusiasm. It’s a place where you look to for early signals as to a book’s potential in the marketplace.’ Authors indeed are paying increasing heed to Amazon’s unique and influential role in publicizing and selling books. While the company doesn’t break out its books sales, it sold $1.7 billion worth of books, music, videos and DVDs for the first half of the year.”

American librarians have been fighting Attorney General John Ashcroft and his attacks on readers’ privacy. But “for book lovers, Ashcroft versus the librarians is some thing else – one of those spectacles that manage, like book bannings in suburban schools or the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, to glamorize reading and make it seem to be, as it sometimes and in some places actually is, a high-stakes activity. Suddenly, your unprepossessing branch library – a low-slung 60’s building, perhaps, and not in the greatest repair – looms as an epic battleground of ideas.”

Paper that can display electronic “ink” is now advanced enough that it will be able to show video images. A single sheet looks pretty much like ordinary paper. But the ink can be rearranged electronically fast enough to show video movies.”