Category: publishing

Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan tried and tried to get a Canadian publisher to take her book “Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World,” a revisionist history of the Treaty of Versailles, but without success. Finally she flew to London and sold it there. The book has since become a big bestseller and once again editors whose job it is to pick out books to publish, missed out. How does this happen?

The shakeup at Random House in the past few weeks has many fuming about the health the quality book publishing business. But is that really what the message of this story is? So “the country’s major publisher made no bones about what’s important – profit. And, is that a bad thing? There’s no reason why a quality piece of fiction can’t make money, and so far, despite the schlock and superficiality found in the bookstores, publishers will continue to offer books worth reading because they sell, too.”

Australian non-fiction has taken over publishing. “Book after book indicating a renaissance in Australian non-fiction, incorporating everything from narrative journalism to memoir, rock’n’roll, history, philosophy, the essay and political biography. Works that often blurred the territory between these forms and fiction, part and parcel of a radical hybridisation of style and content affecting literature internationally and sending our old generic orders into meltdown. When compared with this catalogue, recent local literary fiction was not up to the same consistent standard, let alone able to match en masse the furious energy our literary non-fiction exudes.”

These days culture is big business. Yes, that extends to poets, too. Even dead poets. A BBC documentary estimates that Scottish poet Robert Burns brings about £157m a year into the country.”The biggest single source of income is Burns-related tourism. It brings in £150m, two-thirds of which goes straight to Ayrshire where Burns was born and lived most of his life.”

How will the New York Times’ cultural coverage change under new Arts & Leisure editor Jodi Kantor? “I do think you’ll see us playing around with the format, thinking up novel ways to cover culture, and developing more regular features and columns.” Staffers are eager to see how Kantor reshapes her influential section, deals with senior critics and shakes up the ranks of freelance contributors while navigating the paper’s often-choppy waters.

The Frankfurt Bookfair is staying in Frankfurt. The fair had threatened to move to Munich because Frankfurt hotels had inflated their prices. Last week, representatives of the book fair, the city of Frankfurt, its hotel and gastronomy industry, the German publishing association and the operator of the Frankfurt fair came to an agreement.”

“What constitutes literary publishing? Is there such a thing as a purely literary publishing house? Is there a literary DNA or special skill set required to publish so-called literary fiction and nonfiction as opposed to broad mainstream books? Some publishers can be driven absolutely crazy by the notion that they aren’t considered literary enough. The reality is that there is no longer any such thing as a purely literary publishing house.”

Books like the upcoming Harry Potter become bestsellers long before they even hit stores. “The growth of pre-sales is an interesting development in publishing. Of course in the eighteenth century an author could pre-sell his book by subscription as a way of supporting himself, but this is a different kettle of fish. Publishers love it because it lets them lock in sales without having to worry about returns. With enough hype or a strong enough brand name the whole enterprise can turn into a form of print-on-demand. It’s quite a testimony to the importance of marketing.”

Would you pay $5 a book to check out books from your public library? That’s what the State of California proposes. Under Governor Grey Davis’ proposal released Friday, “the state would cut in half the amount of money it gives California’s 179 library systems, reducing annual subsidies from about $32 million to $15 million a year. To recoup some money, Davis proposed legislation allowing county libraries to charge $1 to readers who check out books in libraries outside the county where they live, and $5 to readers who have a book sent to their home library from another county.”

It appears as though it’s the moment of truth for Salon, the online magazine. “Once the Web was crowded with nervy upstarts such as Suck and Feed, new media sites that disparaged their traditional rivals as dinosaurs but were actually the first to disappear. Salon was one of the most celebrated – and, with 30 million page views a month, one of the most popular – but the online magazine has been struggling for years to reach profitability and recently has been teetering on the edge of insolvency. Now in what may be a last-ditch effort to stay alive, Salon is about to dramatically change its business model.”