Category: publishing

While some book publishers are hurting with the down economy, the romance-novel business has never been better. Harlequin reports “a revenue increase of 3.5%, to C$618.1 million ($414 million), combined with better operating efficiencies to produce record operating profits of C$119.2 million ($80 million). The company’s 4th quarter was particularly strong, “when revenue increased by 8.6%, to C$164 million, and operating profit jumped 31.7%, to C$30.8 million.”

“Concerned over terrorism, a looming war in Iraq, and a sputtering economy, magazine readers are showing a new gravitas, boosting the circulations of text-intensive, highbrow magazines such as the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s and the New Yorker. Serious magazines saw circulations soar in the second half of 2002, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The Atlantic Monthly, published 10 times a year, saw a 5.1 percent increase to 529,834, and single-copy sales spiked 52.4 percent, the second-largest percentage increase in newsstand sales for general-interest magazines behind celebrity suck-up Us Weekly.”

Booksellers are protesting that the Scholastic, the publisher of the Harry Potter books, has been taking orders for the book directly from schools, bypassing the booksellers. “Publishers have an obvious motive to sell direct: They keep more of the money. Scholastic has been selling books, including the earlier Potter works, at fairs for years. But this is the first time a Potter book has been pre-sold, offered before publication. And some retailers say they can’t afford to lose any sales during a difficult economic time.”

Some of Australia’s most famous writers have withdrawn from consideration for the country’s richest fiction prize. Why? “The novelists have withdrawn their names in protest at Forestry Tasmania practices, specifically the clear-felling of native forests for woodchips, and the use of 1080 poison which is claimed to be killing native and endangered animals in Tasmania’s wilderness.”

“Today it’s common to walk into any public library in America and see adults and teenage students openly viewing hardcore pornography that is unavailable at home on any premium cable channel, is restricted to “adults–only” sections of video stores and, at least before the advent of the Internet, used to be purchased by church–going folks who felt compelled to don hats and fake mustaches to avoid shameful recognition. The situation is tearing at the very soul of librarians, most of whom were raised in a reverential atmosphere of uplifting ideals and lofty debates about how literature can shape and elevate the mind of man. The elevation of his other organs was simply not discussed.”

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is suing a Russian author and a Dutch distribution company in an effort to stop the global release of a book she says plagiarises her tales of magical teens. The book in question features a character named “Tanya Grotter,” a stunningly familiar-looking cover, and several plot twists mirroring the Potter series. The book’s author claims that his work is parody, and therefore protected under publishing law.

Library patrons in Santa Cruz, California are seeing signs warning them about the snooping powers of the US Patriot Act, which allows governments authorities to see who has checked out which books. “The signs, posted in the 10 county branches last week and on the library’s Web site, also inform the reader that the USA Patriot Act “prohibits library workers from informing you if federal agents have obtained records about you.”

More books are being sold, thanks to a broadening of outlets and the superstores. But the personality is being wrung out of the business, and we’re increasingly buying a narrower range of book. “According to a recent Bookseller, gamely surveying the trends of 2002, the range of titles sold in the high street fell by 5 per cent last year – from about 437,000 to just over 417,000. At the same time the number of different ISBNs assigned to fiction fell by 1,000, while – perhaps the most sinister figure of all – ‘frontlist’ sales accounted for nearly 44 per cent of total revenue. We may be buying more books, but they are increasingly the same books, sold by shops that are differentiated only by the sign on the door.”

An Iraq war will hurt the book industry in a big way. “Book publishing is almost entirely dependent on the free publicity that authors receive in newspapers and on television and radio. On important programs, the time devoted to entertainment features will shrink considerably if a war occurs,” as time is given to covering the war.

Judges for this year’s Booker prize have been chosen, and jurors include a mountaineer and a philosopher. “The judging panel should reflect the widest possible range of experience and taste, compatible with wanting to read 150 books very fast. I think we meet those requirements pretty well – better than last time I was in the chair, when we lacked both a philosopher and mountaineer.”