Category: publishing

Okay, so we all enjoy a good scandal book to one degree or another. But will disgraced New York Times reporter Jayson Blair make his fortune on a tell-all book? “The success of a mea culpa manuscript is as much a case of where as of who, how, or when. ‘A story about someone who’s been in a scandal or any sort of bad experience of whatever kind, for it to be an effective story the person has to have come out on the other side. The problem with Jayson Blair, he’s still right in the middle of whatever he’s going through. Clearly, he’s thrashing around. To be an effective story, a book has to have a post-thrash perspective.”

Publishers meet to discuss how to revive their waning business. “Consumers now occupy some 300 more hours per year with ‘entertainment’ activities, compared to 15 years ago. It’s a full plate of entertainment choices. Not surprisingly, consumers have an attention span of ‘maybe 10 days,’ which might explain why big authors aren’t selling as well as in past years. The public is increasingly disenchanted earlier, and then rushes off to the next new thing. Consumers are no longer loyal to products or channels.”

The Australian Society of Authors conducts a poll of its members to decide on a list of 40 favorite Australian books. “While it includes some of the big names in our national canon – Christina Stead, Henry Handel Richardson and Patrick White all make the top 10 – there are no books by Henry Lawson and none by Banjo Paterson. Nor are there any by Les Murray, Thomas Keneally or Robert Drewe. There are some surprise inclusions…”

“Chick Lit is a literary genre that has been demanding attention for about four years. Since then, an explosion of books with candy-colored covers and sassy girlfriend titles have appeared on bookstore shelves across the nation. And now, Pocket Books, a division of publishing giant Simon & Schuster, is launching a new imprint called Downtown Press, symbolized by a shopping-bag logo and devoted exclusively to the genre.”

“What really is the Great American Novel? It seemed elusive to me, considering the wealth of good novels in the last century and a half. There’s no such thing as The Great American Novel, only several good-great American novels, I’d declared, quibbling with the article ‘the.’ All we can do is trace the threads that run through these novels, isolate them as a scientist isolates germs in a petri dish, and see if that amounts to an American tradition, or an American canon, in the novel. Find what’s quintessentially American – if it’s there.”

Wal-Mart accounts for about 15% of Amnerica’s single-copy magazine sales overall. ‘They’re the biggest newsstand vehicle in the country for magazines. Thus, Wal-Mart can be not only the country’s biggest retailer but its biggest censor as well.”

Discussions at this year’s Hay literary festival in the UK seem to have a common theme as it becomes “embroiled in heated slanging matches about anti-Americanism.

James Wood is described as “the most brutal, the most loathed, the most respected literary critic of his time.” He has been “merciless in debunking many esteemed writers of the age — Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie. Now the New Republic book critic is about to publish his own first novel, and James Wood the novelist is fair game. “A critic writing a novel is like William Bennett in a casino. All eyes are upon him.”

Queen Elizabeth wrote a poem:
“To leafy Balmoral,
We are now on our way.
But our hearts will remain
At the Castle of Mey.
With your gardens and ranges,
And all your good cheer,
We will be back again soon
So roll on next year”
And the Guardian canvased poets for reaction…

“Performing shameful, humiliating acts and then writing about it for profit are not new, perhaps, but the trend seems to be accelerating with the recent crop of sinners clutching book contracts. Such books seem to revel in their authors’ surpassing badness, in an unashamed — indeed, almost gleeful – recitation of sins. The public, presumably, goes tsk-tsk – and then turns the page for more.”