Category: publishing

Oppressive Ghosts – The Art Of Invisible Writing

“Most ghostwriters are broke, young journalists. They do it once, for the money. Perhaps twice for the show: to see how the rich and famous live. Most never do it again, because celebrities take as much pleasure in sharing the limelight (and the profits) as journalists do in restraining their opinions. Yet as long as there are people with stories to sell and no time or no talent to tell them, the products of such precarious partnerships continue to sell.”

Finally – Harry On Review

“A considerably darker, more psychological book than its predecessors, ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’ occupies the same emotional and storytelling place in the Potter series as ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ held in the first ‘Star Wars’ trilogy. It provides a sort of fulcrum for the series, marking Harry’s emergence from boyhood, and his newfound knowledge that an ancient prophecy holds the secret to Voldemort’s obsession with him and his family.”

Harry By The Numbers

So how popular is the new Harry Potter book? One major bookselling chain has already declared it to be ‘the fastest-selling book ever,’ outpacing even the frenzied buying that accompanied the release of the previous installment of the Potter series. At W.H. Smith, another chain, managers estimated that they were selling eight copies per second. Amazon has taken orders for 1.3 million copies. The first printing run of the book was for an astounding 13 million copies, and author J.K. Rowling is expected to net £30 million from book sales alone.

Kids’ Books – Into A Sea Of Difficulty

The odds against the author of a kids’ book are enormous. “Those of us who review children’s books jettison books we dislike, unwilling to waste time and limited space on squashing reviews because we know that it’s our recommendations that are most useful. Information about children’s books – genuine, independent, informed and balanced – is hard to find. The job of children’s bookseller may not feature in many careers advisers’ files, but it’s one that benefits from a vast panoply of skills – interpersonal to intellectual – that create the right environment for perfect retailing: a successful sale is of a product that won’t come back to a customer who will.”

Harry Publisher Sues Newspapers – 1st Amendment Be Damned

Harry Potter author JK Rowling and her publisher are suing the New York Daily News for $100 million for printing details of the new Harry Potter story before it hits stores. Simon Houpt writes that other media outlets have been intimidated into not publishing plot details, and then Houpt throws in some plot details of his own to illustrate. Is it not a first amendment issue, he asks?

Potter – Underneath The Hype, Something Truly Worth Celebrating

The clamor over the Harry Potter books may be a little (ok, a lot) over the top. But Norman Lebrecht says that it’s important to celebrate a publishing phenomenon that flies in the face of what the conventional wisdom about books – and children’s books particularly – insisted was true. “While it is futile to predict the thought processes that will prevail a century hence, when books may have been supplanted by chips and authors by robotic processors, one certainty can be safely asserted. A hundred years from now, millions of people will still be reading Charles Dickens, and they will still be reading Harry Potter, the written word triumphant.”