Category: publishing

Top Russian writers are protesting plans by their government to remove Russian literary classics about the repression of the Soviet era from school curriculums. “The protesters allege that bureaucrats are trying to keep literature dealing with the purges of the Soviet era away from schoolchildren, presenting an anodyne version of the nation’s former imperial glory.”

So you thought libraries were staid, quiet places? “In Library: An Unquiet History, Matthew Battles, the Harvard rare-books librarian tells the story of that peculiar institution, whose fortunes, since man first etched a symbol in stone, have been governed as much by mass uninterest and bureaucratic incompetence as by war and natural disaster. ‘Libraries are as much about losing the truth … as about discovering it,’ writes Battles, pointing out that much of what has survived through the ages is owing not to public institutions but to private collectors, who were better able to weather the tides of biblioclasm – the destruction of books – that have periodically swept the world.”

The best writers prefer ideas to brand-name description. “Perhaps one could say that a classic novelist recreates an era from the inside out and concentrates on rendering rather than discussing the great social and political and intellectual currents of the period, whereas a lesser novelist attempts to make up for an insufficient grasp of the Zeitgeist by devoting himself or herself to its upholstery. Today the historical novel has been rehabilitated because it has radically changed its ways. The new historical novel is shorter or at least more crisply written than ever before, full of unexpected twists and turns in language, and rich in those ‘little true facts’.”

Chinese fans of Harry Potter are impatient. The book hasn’t been published in Chinese yet. “The English-language edition of the Order of the Phoenix was published worldwide in June by Bloomsbury, but an official Chinese translation is not due for publication until September. Chinese fans of the teenage sorcerer have decided they cannot wait and amateur translators have so far posted 35 of the book’s 38 chapters on the Internet.”

It’s a grand experiment – last month a small derelict mining town tried to reinvent itself as a town of books – opening nine bookstores. “Can books rejuvenate the depressed town and revitalise the local economy? July in booktown saw hostile locals and tarot card wars.

There have been some very big-selling books this summer, and you’d think the publishing industry would be happy about it. Not exactly. They’re cutting staff and complaining of a slump. Big “sales don’t necessarily mean big profits, especially if everyone is expecting a hit. With Hillary Clinton receiving an $8 million advance, Simon & Schuster needed hundreds of thousands of sales to make money on the book. And Amazon.com, anticipating tremendous competition for the Potter book, offered a 40 percent discount on the $29.99 suggested price. The result: Despite more than 1 million sales worldwide, the online retailer announced it essentially broke even with Order of the Phoenix.”

“Increasingly, academic journals are published online; many are not even available in print. As a result, libraries are losing the option of maintaining local collections—but are leery of discontinuing paper subscriptions. That makes them sound like Luddites stuck in a world of paper. After all, they could make digital back-ups. What is more, publishers often grant perpetual access to their journals and provide subscribers with CD-ROM versions. As a last resort, there is always the Library of Congress in America and other national libraries around the world where copies of most publications are kept. In the very long run, however, such solutions are not all that viable…”

New York City libraries are seeing their budgets slashed and their services to the public cut. So “for the first time, neighborhood branches are putting out donation boxes, in a desperate effort to offset budget cuts that mean 3,000 fewer books a year for each branch, reduced hours of operation and interminable waits for best sellers.”

Book dedications can be over the top, but they often express a little piece of the writer’s personal situation at the time the book is published. Looking back over a career of books written, one can see an archaeology of personal fragments expressed in dedications…

It’s the 200th anniversary of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s birth. John Updike notes that Emerson is much honored, but less often read these days. “Emerson, with a cobbled-together mythology, in melodious accents that sincerely feigned the old Christian reassurances, sought to instill confidence and courage in his democratic audience, and it is for this, rather than for his mellowed powers of observation and wit, that he is honored, if honored more than read.”