Category: publishing

“Peter Olson, the C.E.O. of Random House, has no use for the sentimental yearnings of the book-publishing elite. They whipped him when he crudely fired Ann Godoff, but he’s in a different publishing business than they are, the only one he thinks can survive… In January, when Olson fired Godoff, editor in chief and publisher of the Random House Adult Trade Group division, many in the insular publishing world felt that Olson’s love of books was trumped by his crude business tactics… By firing Godoff, by stating plainly that he was in the book business, Olson was not so much revolutionizing the industry as giving vent to what it has long and carefully repressed. Book publishing has always been a mix of high and low, but the business side of the industry has been de-emphasized.”

“Nestled in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood, The McSweeney’s Store is a secretive enclave of extremely strange, random products. After the success of author Dave Eggers’ book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, the Forest Lake native launched his own publishing company, and with it, an eccentric flagship store. With items ranging from sanitary dental trays to magnetic powder dispensers, the store fascinates with the vast array of seemingly useless goods. And then, of course, there are the books.”

It wasn’t too terribly long ago that a German psychologist penned a best-selling book which announced as absolute fact that the comic books being devoured by America’s youth were turning our kids into a generation of delinquents, homosexuals, and worse. Such claims seem absurd and even quaint today, but in the 1950s, Dr. Fredric Wertham’s tome was taken very seriously, and the comic book industry fell all over itself to reassure the public that comics were wholesome. The unfortunate result of such obsequiousness was the Comics Code, with which the industry “castrated itself with a code that sent it into the dark ages for 10 years.”

No, you can’t major in Harry Potter. Not yet, anyway. But JK Rowling’s boy wizard is becoming a figure of increasing interest to academics and intellectuals who are spending hours at prestigious conferences deconstructing the world of Hogwarts and matching it up with minutiae from the history of various real-world intellectual movements. “A bit enthusiastic, perhaps, but such outsize claims may spring from insecurity. After all, no less a figure than Harold Bloom has derided Ms. Rowling’s writing as ‘goo,’ while William Safire… scornfully (though presciently) predicted that ‘scholarly tomes will be written about the underlying motifs of the Potter series,’ despite its being largely ‘a waste of adult time.'”

“At least one international author will not be coming to Harbourfront’s International Festival of Authors this fall as a direct result of the recent resignation of Greg Gatenby as the festival’s artistic director and the Harbourfront Reading Series. Argentinian-born author Alberto Manguel, who now lives in France, said in an interview he faxed a letter on Tuesday or Wednesday to Harbourfront officials saying his participation is off because Gatenby is no longer involved. Manguel’s decision follows the resignations of five festival board members, including three high-profile Canadian authors.”

“Scholars in the humanities spend much of their time writing, and are forced constantly to read the work of superb writers. Yet they pour out streams of gnarled and barbarous sentences and don’t even know they are doing it. Professors in English departments, after lives spent close to the best literature, usually produce the worst prose.” How could this be?

“Soliciting quotes for the jackets of books ahead of publication is an increasingly important part of the way books are now published. The novel, micro-history or popular science book which arrives on the shelf pre-approved by another writer established in the field stands a considerably stronger chance than the one which does not.”

Blockbuster books have led to huge sales this summer at places like Costco and Walmart – as well as smaller bookstores everywhere. But bookstore owners are not smiling. “The major discounting efforts of these non–bookstore chains are not stimulating and growing the market but simply shifting consumer dollars away from bookstores and other potential book sales. Consumers buying a mega–seller at a Walmart will not be discovering a book of promise, as such chains do not invest in authors and non–bestselling books. Bookstores do, and we are losing an opportunity to handsell other good books to these consumers who do not regularly visit and browse in a bookstore.”

The balance sheet for publishing is not looking good so far this year. Book sales were down again in May, and while Harry Potter sales should give the industry a bump, overall things are gloomy. “For the first five months of 2003, bookstore sales were down 1.7%, to $6.12 billion, with sales falling in three of the first five months of the year.”

“Fountain pens are no longer remembrances, as they were a generation ago. Nor are they simply faddish symbols of resistance to technology. That counter-trend peaked a few years back. Today, this old and stylish implement has achieved an uneasy peace with the PDA and the keyboard. We deploy our pens less often these days, true. But we find that this makes them all the more important when we do. At least that’s the rationale behind the lively and mostly under-noticed global enterprise of quality 21st century fountain pens.”