In Open Library, Imagining Books As Networked Objects The Open Library's goal "is to create a single page on the web for every book that has ever been published; an enormous, searchable catalogue of information about millions of books. ... But with information about books already being processed by hugely popular websites such as Google and Amazon, the question remains - why bother?" The Guardian (UK) 07/01/09

email this story | Posted 07/02/09@07:59AM

Salinger Wins Preliminary Injunction Vs. Swedish Author "In a victory for the reclusive writer J. D. Salinger, a federal judge on Wednesday indefinitely banned publication in the United States of a new book by a Swedish author that contains a 76-year-old version of Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of 'The Catcher in the Rye.' ... While the case could still go to trial, [the] ruling means that [Fredrik] Colting's book cannot be published in the United States pending the resolution of the litigation, which could drag on for months or years." The New York Times 07/02/09

email this story | Posted 07/02/09@05:05AM

Amazon.com Fights Back Against Sales Taxes In Three States "Seattle-based Amazon notified associates" - independent Web sites which link readers to the e-tailer in exchange for a commission on any resulting sales - "in Rhode Island and Hawaii that the company was no longer working with them as of Monday and Tuesday, respectively, because the states have passed laws to collect sales taxes on these transactions." This move follows similar action by Amazon against associates in North Carolina. Forbes (AP) 06/30/09

email this story | Posted 07/01/09@09:37PM

Authors Lobby For Children's Right To School Libraries "A high-profile group of children's authors, publishers, teachers and librarians is calling on the government to make school libraries statutory." Campaign supporters "are concerned that while prisoners have the statutory right to a library, schoolchildren do not, and they believe it is essential that children get the habit of reading for pleasure." The Guardian (UK) 07/01/09

email this story | Posted 07/01/09@08:17AM

With New Magazine, Fiction Gets A Jolt Of Electricity "Amid all the dismal reports about the death of fiction, here's a refreshingly bold act of optimism: a new bimonthly magazine called Electric Literature. And it's not just MFA kids self-publishing their diatribes against Mom and Dad. The first issue sports stories by such heavyweights as Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Cunningham and National Book Award finalist Jim Shepard." To contributors, Electric Literature "pays real money: $1,000." Washington Post 07/01/09

email this story | Posted 07/01/09@07:03AM

As Richard & Judy Sign Off, Book World Prepares To Mourn "There's a certain thread running through a lot of novels that have sold well in the UK in the last few years. They share nothing so exact as a genre or type, but they have exotic titles, a powerful story and a literary bent. Oh, and a badge. A badge that says 'Richard and Judy'." Now the daytime-TV duo's show is ending. What's the publishing industry to do? BBC 07/01/09

email this story | Posted 07/01/09@05:46AM

Oxford Press President: Google Settlement Is A Good Thing "It has taken many months for the import of the settlement to become clear. It is exceedingly complex, and its design -- the result of two years of negotiations, including not just the parties but libraries as well -- is, not surprisingly, imperfect. It can and should be improved. But after long months of grappling with it, what has become clear to us is that it is a remarkable and remarkably ambitious achievement." The Chronicle Review 06/29/09

email this story | Posted 06/30/09@08:07AM

Hoffman Outburst Proves Author-Critic Feuds Alive & Well "Authors generally try to stay classy in the face of negative feedback, bravely showing up for their readings and working the publicity circuit despite whatever Michiko and company proclaim. When they do respond to a critic, it's more likely to present a clarification or correction of something the writer has apparently gotten wrong. ... Sometimes, however, the quarrel is less about being right and more about lashing out." Salon 06/30/09

email this story | Posted 06/30/09@05:07AM

Vermont Indie Bookseller Is Print-On-Demand Guinea Pig "The Northshire Bookstore, in quaint Manchester Center, Vt., has all the classic trappings: exposed beams, wood tables stacked with hardcover bestsellers, comfortable leather chairs nestled into alcoves." It also has a print-on-demand Espresso Book Machine, a first for an independent bookstore in the U.S. If its experiment is successful, "it will show how small brick-and-mortar bookshops might be able to match the overwhelming variety of products offered by a giant online retailer like Amazon.com." Boston Globe 06/29/09

email this story | Posted 06/29/09@06:50PM

Angry Alice Hoffman Tweets Book Critic's Phone Number Furious about a negative Boston Globe review, novelist Alice Hoffman took to Twitter to write nasty things about the critic, whose phone number and e-mail address she gave out. "Tell her what u think of snarky critics," she tweeted. But Hoffman "comes off like an aspiring literary gang leader, dispensing orders 140 characters at a time." And not being all that cautious about those characters, either: She got the critic's phone number wrong. Los Angeles Times 06/29/09

email this story | Posted 06/29/09@06:32PM

The Art Of Book Recommendations (Or Is It?) "Book Seer prompts a question above and beyond the functionality of its algorithms. Namely: what methods do most people actually employ to move from one book to another? Is it the "if you liked this, try this" suggestions of online retailers such as Amazon? Or perhaps newspaper and journal reviews, a bookseller's expertise, serendipitous browsing or the opinion of friends? Could it even be, flying in the face of the maxim, a book's cover?" The Guardian (UK) 06/26/09

email this story | Posted 06/28/09@01:12PM

How Google Helped Me Understand The Bomb Using Google for research? Google Earth helps give an author a sense of a place he was looking for... The Guardian (UK) 06/28/09

email this story | Posted 06/28/09@07:15AM

Does The Kindle Help You Concentrate? "Much has been made already of the Kindle's significance for publishers. By creating a payment infrastructure for digital reading matter, the Kindle is helping prod many to reconsider charging for their wares instead of relying on advertising revenue. Less discussed has been the Kindle's tendency toward unitasking--but it's clearly part of the device's appeal, and it, too, offers lessons for publishers." PaidContent 06/25/09

email this story | Posted 06/26/09@04:57AM

Roy Blount: Orphan Books No Obstacle To Settlement Authors Guild president Roy Blount Jr. has posted a letter in support of the Google books settlement. "Blount played down concerns expressed by some over orphan works, writing, 'I can't see any reason to dissent from the settlement over the matter of orphan books.' Blount wrote that he is confident many of the rightsholders of orphan works will be found. Authors, he said[,] 'are all findable.'" Publishers Weekly 06/25/09

email this story | Posted 06/25/09@07:21AM

Discussion Turns To 'Stolen' Rather Than 'Free' "It's in matching the fluidity of Wikipedia with the static fixity of a book" that Wired editor Chris Anderson -- caught copying portions of his new book, "Free," from Wikipedia -- "has gotten into trouble, which says something about the digital-analog divide. ... Still, the fluid media of the Internet has proven itself to be unexpectedly sticky. The news about Anderson's book broke on a website, and the Internet is where much of the discussion about it is taking place." Los Angeles Times 06/25/09

email this story | Posted 06/25/09@06:06AM

Fun With Dick And His Book "News item: Former vice president Dick Cheney has signed a contract to write a memoir about his long career in government and industry, from his years as Gerald Ford's chief of staff to his prominent role in shaping the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policy after Sept. 11, 2001. Your challenge: Propose the first paragraph of Cheney's book!" Washington Post 06/25/09

email this story | Posted 06/25/09@05:45AM

Down With The Michelin Guide! A growing number of France's gastronomes think that the once-all-powerful guide has "become a dead weight for French cuisine. It discouraged creativity, demanded a level of opulence that made fine dining appealing and accessible only to rich fogeys, and was unacceptably opaque about its reviewing methods." Slate 06/24/09

email this story | Posted 06/24/09@09:27PM

NEA Handing Out More Than $3 Million For Bigger Big Read "The National Endowment for the Arts is giving out funds totaling over $3 million to 269 organizations as part of its latest Big Read initiative. The program, which launched as a pilot initiative in 2006, has grown exponentially since its inception; in its first Big Read push in 2006, the NEA gave $265,000 to 10 cities to start community reading programs." Publishers Weekly 06/23/09

email this story | Posted 06/24/09@07:08AM

Passages In Chris Anderson's Free Appear Plagiarized "In the course of reading Chris Anderson's new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price (Hyperion, $26.99), for a review in an upcoming issue of VQR, we have discovered almost a dozen passages that are reproduced nearly verbatim from uncredited sources. ... Most of the passages, but not all, come from Wikipedia." Virginia Quarterly Review 06/23/09

email this story | Posted 06/24/09@06:00AM

Pittsburgh's Carnegie Library Sees $6.1M Deficit By 2014 "As the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh continues to serve more and more people and to renovate its aging branches, it anticipates a sharp decline in government support, including a $1.6 million cut in 2010 with more to follow, library leaders warned yesterday." The library's board chair "predicted a $6.1 million budget deficit by 2014 in an economic climate of declining revenue and rising expenses." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 06/23/09

email this story | Posted 06/23/09@06:54AM

Sherman Alexie Book-Ban Effort Fails In Suburban Illinois "Despite objections from several parents who find its language vulgar and racist, an award-winning book will be kept on the summer reading list at Antioch High School while an alternative will be offered for those who request it, officials said Monday. The book, 'The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian' by Sherman Alexie is a coming-of-age story about a 14-year-old boy who triumphs over obstacles after leaving an American Indian reservation to attend an all-white school." Chicago Tribune 06/23/09

email this story | Posted 06/23/09@06:19AM

Are Cave Carvings Sequoyah's Syllabary In His Own Hand? Sequoyah's translation of the spoken Cherokee language into a written system, which he devised over a decade in the early 19th century, may be "the only known instance of an individual's single-handedly creating an entirely new system of writing. An archaeologist and explorer of caves has now found what he thinks are the earliest known examples of the Sequoyah syllabary," in a Kentucky cave. The New York Times 06/23/09

email this story | Posted 06/23/09@05:48AM

Aleichem Morphed Habits Of Faith Into Cultural Identity "This season marks 150 years since the birth of Sholem Aleichem, whose appeal to 'something more cheerful' made him the most popular Yiddish writer at a time when more Jews spoke Yiddish than any other language. Known to modern audiences mostly through 'Fiddler on the Roof' -- the Americanized musical adaptation of his stories of Tevye the Dairyman -- Sholem Aleichem cast the Jews as a people who would live through laughter -- or die trying." Wall Street Journal 06/23/09

email this story | Posted 06/23/09@05:14AM

Court Slaps Simon & Schuster For Text-Message Ad "A federal appellate court has reversed a lower court decision that had exonerated Simon & Schuster of breaking telecommunications law when it sent cellphone text messages to promote Stephen King's novel 'The Cell' three years ago." The New York Times 06/22/09

email this story | Posted 06/22/09@07:35PM

Lying Back, Thinking Of England, And Taking Notes "Sex writing, as we all know so well from the Literary Review's annual Bad Sex Awards, is hard to do well. But for women, it now seems it's getting even harder, thanks to recent remarks from Kate Copstick, the new publisher of the Erotic Review, who's declared her intention to scale back on female writers in the magazine - apparently, we can't write about sex because we don't like it that much." The Guardian (UK) 06/19/09

email this story | Posted 06/22/09@07:09PM

Sci-Fi Author Alastair Reynolds Signs Million-Pound Deal "As banks struggle and businesses collapse, the science fiction writer Alastair Reynolds is making his own contribution to the flagging UK economy, signing an unprecedented ten-book deal with Gollancz worth £1m. Reynolds, who has published eight novels with the Orion imprint Gollancz since his 2000 debut, Revelation Space, said he was 'amazed and thrilled' to commit himself to the same publisher for the next decade." The Guardian (UK) 06/22/09

email this story | Posted 06/22/09@07:03PM

University Presses: In A Death Spiral? The reality is that "university presses aren't just being hurt by the bad economy, but by changes in reader habits. While many continue to discuss the primacy of the printed book, some see grave danger for university presses holding on to the print model -- with one speaker going so far as to predict a 'death spiral' for presses if they don't move within the next few years to an online, free model." InsideHigherEd 06/22/09

email this story | Posted 06/22/09@07:30AM

Ray Bradbury Fights For Local Library Ventura, California's library is under threat of closure for lack of funds. "Fiscal threats to libraries deeply unnerve Mr. Bradbury, who spends as much time as he can talking to children in libraries and encouraging them to read." The New York Times 06/21/09

email this story | Posted 06/21/09@06:24PM

A New Culture Of Book Events As Performances Recently there has been "a shift away from the traditional model of book readings and for-and-against Oxford Union-style debates and towards a showier kind of speaking event, in which bookish ideas and themes are lifted off the page and into the stuff of rhetoric and performance." Financial Times 06/21/09

email this story | Posted 06/21/09@10:21AM

Why Place Is A Literary Character "For authors, tapping the power of place is not simply a matter of naming a town and then moving on with the story. The place is the story. Fiction is already ephemeral enough; the incidents therein never happened in the first place. What gives it gravity, what endows it with shape and mass and meaning, is its location." Chicago Tribune 06/21/09

email this story | Posted 06/21/09@09:51AM

The End Of The Weekly News Magazine? "In the digital age, with its overabundance of information, the modern newsweekly is in a particularly poignant position. Designed nearly a century ago to be all things to all people, it Chaplin-esquely tries to straddle thousands of rapidly fragmenting micro-niches, a mainframe in an iTouch world." The Atlantic 06/09

email this story | Posted 06/21/09@09:18AM

Canada's National Archives Stops Buying Paper Books (At Least Temporarily) "Because we live in a rapidly changing digital context in which more and more material is available through different means than before, and we have a responsibility to ensure that we're using our money as effectively and efficiently as we can." CBC 06/18/09

email this story | Posted 06/19/09@07:43AM

Are University Presses Endangered In The Tough Economy? "Utah State University Press narrowly escaped the chopping block this year. Eastern Washington University Press is being phased out as that school copes with budget cuts. Even the most prestigious presses are feeling the pinch: Yale University Press reported in March that revenue was down nearly 8 percent, and the State University of New York Press announced five layoffs in December." Philadelphia Inquirer 06/18/09

email this story | Posted 06/19/09@07:34AM

The Kindle DX? Newsprint Is Still Better (This From A Tech Columnist) Farhad Manjoo says that Amazon's new newspaper reader "presents news as a list--you're given a list of sections (international, national, etc.) and, in each section, a list of headlines and a one-sentence capsule of each story. It's your job to guess, from the list, which pieces to read. This turns out to be a terrible way to navigate the news." Slate 06/18/09

email this story | Posted 06/18/09@09:42PM

British Library Puts 19th-Century Newspapers Online "Bad news is never new, but anyone overwhelmed by today's political scandals, wars, financial disasters, soaring unemployment and drunken feral children can take refuge in the 19th century - and its wars, financial disasters, political scandals, soaring unemployment and drunken feral children. Over two million pages of 19th and early 20th century newspapers go online today, part of the vast British Library collection." The Guardian (UK) 06/18/09

email this story | Posted 06/18/09@07:17AM

Judge Temporarily Blocks Publication Of Catcher 'Sequel' A federal judge yesterday "granted a 10-day temporary restraining order forbidding publication in the United States of a new book by a Swedish author that contains a 76-year-old version of Holden Caulfield while she considers arguments in a copyright-infringement case filed by [J.D.] Salinger. ... 'It does seem to me that Holden Caulfield is quite delineated by words, that is a portrait by words,' Judge Batts told the lawyers. 'It would seem that Holden Caulfield is copyrighted.'" The New York Times 06/18/09

email this story | Posted 06/18/09@05:37AM

Those Indie Best Sellers Might Not Be Best Sellers After All "When writer and Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Lisa Scottoline (Look Again) asked who she had to sleep with to get on the Indie Bestsellers Lists at the opening panel of the day of education at BEA, she pointed up what some consider to be a flaw in the American Booksellers Association's bestsellers list: it is weighted so that it doesn't reflect raw sales." Publishers Weekly 06/17/09

email this story | Posted 06/17/09@07:25AM

Poets Tell Weirdest Places They've Done It (No, Not That) "Benjamin Zephaniah did it stuck in a lift with a drag queen, Phillis Levin in a car on the side of a mountain, Patience Agbabi 20,000 feet above sea level in a spasm of guilt about her carbon footprint, and Kenneth Steven did it in his head during a sermon in church. Poets don't need a tranquil room of their own to write, the Ledbury Poetry festival has proved, by asking this year's participants for the most unlikely physical location in which they have practised their art." The Guardian (UK) 06/16/09

email this story | Posted 06/17/09@06:34AM

Who Ever Thought Holden Caulfield Would Make It To 76? "'60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye,' by J. D. California, a 33-year-old humor writer from Sweden who uses that gimmicky nom de plume, might be read as an update of sorts to [J.D.] Salinger's 1951 classic, 'The Catcher in the Rye,' which has sold more than 35 million copies. The new work centers on a 76-year-old 'Mr. C,' the creation of a writer named Mr. Salinger." The New York Times 06/17/09

email this story | Posted 06/17/09@05:09AM

Legal Brief: Salinger 'Sequel' Author Says It's Not A Sequel "An author who is being sued for a coming novel that J.D. Salinger says is 'a rip-off pure and simple' of 'The Catcher in the Rye' will argue that his book is a legally protected literary commentary on Mr. Salinger's original novel." The author "says that his novel is not a sequel ... but rather 'a complex and undeniably transformative exposition about one of our nation's most famous authors, J.D. Salinger, and his best known creation, Holden Caulfield.'" The New York Times 06/16/09

email this story | Posted 06/16/09@08:04AM