Literary Secret Santa
I’ve heard that today is a big shopping day (or used to be at least, pre-everyone losing all their money and jobs), so to get in on the action I thought I’d point out the “First Annual Secret Santa Gift Exchange” that is orchestrating: Here’s how it works: 1) If you want to participate, ...
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Day Off
Seeing as that today is a national holiday, we’re not going to be posting anything new today. We’ll be back tomorrow with a review and the next part of the “Publishing Model” speech. Next week is a big week for Three Percent, with the announcement of the Best Translation Book of 2008 fiction longlist . ...
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Publishing Models, Translations, and the Financial Collapse (Part 8)
This is the eighth part of a presentation I gave to the German Book Office directors a couple weeks ago. Earlier sections of the speech can be found here. There are still a number of parts left to post, but these should all be up before the end of the month. The most frightening news of recent times involves the Borders ...
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Borders Update
As reported in Publishers Weekly,: sales at Borders fell by 10% in the third quarter to $693.4 million, resultiing in a net loss of $172.2 million for the period. And in terms of being for sale? Well, that’s now a thing of the past: Borders also announced that it is no longer for sale. Company CEO George Jones ...
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Congrats to Iowa City
From the University of Iowa news service: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has designated Iowa City, Iowa, the world’s third City of Literature, making the community part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. “This is at once a celebration of the literary ...
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Top Ten Literature Blogs
Over at Blogs.com, guest list-maker David Gutowski of Largehearted Boy came up with a list of the “10 Best Literature Blogs”: 3 Quarks Daily Bookslut Ed Champion’s Reluctant Habits Emerging Writers Network ...
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Book Industry's Schizophrenia, and Hey, That Sounds Familiar
Motoko Rich’s piece in yesterday’s New York Times points out the crazy extremes of the book business in these times, comparing Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s “temporary” acquisitions freeze with the situation at Hachette: As first reported by Publishers Lunch, an industry newsletter, Hachette ...
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