Category: words

Xlibris, the book self-publisher believes it will make money in increments. “I’d say it’s around two bucks for each copy of each title. Let’s say I make $600 per title and I have 250,000 titles. Okay, well my calculator just broke, so it’s a big enough number that my calculator’s not happy. I think it’s about $150 million. So, you see, the whole industry only makes sense if you believe that in, say, six to seven years, there will be close to half a million books published every year. We’re doing 500 titles a month by ourselves, and our growth rate is around 20 percent a month. So, you do the math.” – Inside.com

There are, of course, all the standard reasons for a publisher to turn down a book. “But what, I wonder, are ‘all the standard arguments’? The notion that fortune – in the shape of a huge advance and a lot of hype for an unwritten first novel – favours the young? That the winner, so long as he or she has no literary record, takes all? That what sells a book is a pretty face on the jacket? No publisher would dare reject a book because the author was the wrong colour or the wrong gender, but to be the wrong age is unforgivable.” – The Observer (UK)

Thriller-writer Tom Clancy shocked the publishing world Friday by leaving his long-time agent for super-agent Mike Ovitz. – The Telegraph (UK)

The Canadian distributor of “Harry Potter” refused last month to ship more copies of the book to the Chapters book superstore chain until Chapters paid some of its large outstanding debt, says the distributor. – National Post (Canada)

National Writers Union makes deal with Stephen Brill’s Contentville to pay freelance writers a fee every time their work is downloaded from the site. – Variety

Some writers insist if you want to be a writer, you must write everyday. Nice theory, says playwright Zinnie Morris, but it’s not the way it always works: writing is a creative force with a will of its own. “My own experience of writing plays has taught me that it will come in its own time, but unfortunately also on its own terms. No amount of pencil-sharpening, toe-tapping, or switching the computer on and off will quicken the process.” – The Guardian

Chinese Books Cyberstore (CBC), which may have been the largest Chinese-language online bookstore, has declared it will go into voluntary liquidation. The site, which offered over 200,000 titles, video disks, Chinese comic books, and arts and crafts, failed to secure additional funding from shareholders, who are still reeling from the international tech-stock slump. – South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)

Canadian bookstore giant Chapters sues National Post after stories alleging the chain was behind in payments to a large publisher. “CEO of Chapters says that the articles painted a distorted picture of his company.” – CBC

The American Booksellers Association rolled out its new site to sell books from independent bookstores. “The ABA’s ‘save the indies’ plan (nearly half of such stores have disappeared since 1994 due to the rise of chain stores and online booksellers, the organization estimates) has found some adherents while others remain skeptical.” – Inside.com

— at age 91 on Monday. Accomplished novelist and revered editor at the “New Yorker” for 40 years, Maxwell honed the prose of some of this century’s finest American writers, J.D. Salinger, John Cheever, and Harold Brodkey among them. – CNN