Editorial by Chad W. Post ROCHESTER, NEW YORK: For years, people have speculated that the number of literary works in translation being published in the United States has been in decline. I say “speculate,” because the publishing industry — which is notoriously poor at market research and data gathering — didn’t really keep track of how [...]
By Edward Nawotka One point on the globe where translation is booming is the United Arab Emirates. There, two translation programs, Kalima from Abu Dhabi and Tarjem from Dubai, have made it a race to see who can translate literary works the fastest and while maintaining the highest quality possible. The first out of the gate (ahem, [...]
By Edward Nawotka In the US, leading publishing trade magazine Publishers Weekly has been up for sale by its parent company Reed Elsevier, which says it is divesting itself of properties not related to its “core businesses” (which apparently still includes high profile movie trade Variety, which will co-exist along with a catalog of construction trade [...]
By Siobhan O’Leary On the heels of Chris Anderson’s much-tweeted-about interview in Der Spiegel, Buchreport interviewed Franziska Schiebe, the online representative of Anderson’s German publisher, Campus Verlag. Schiebe announced that Campus has moved up publication of Anderson’s Free to September (from Spring 2010) to take advantage of the buzz that has erupted in the wake of the 300,000 [...]
By Chris Artis A book publicist is only as good as his or her Rolodex. That was one of the first things I learned nearly two decades ago, when I was an assistant in a two-person publicity department in a small New York publishing house. My boss’s Rolodex was large and overstuffed with the business cards [...]
By Chris Artis As discussed today, publicity lists are among the most essential tools a publicist has to promote a new book. But how much do they cost? Peter Grand, Inc. charges a one-time fee for installing the Publicity Assistant 2000 program. The amount is based on a per user basis and can run from $6,500 per user [...]
By Hannah Johnson The latest stories that have everyone atwitter in the social media-o-sphere… Why do we even care about Twitter? According to a Harris Interactive study (via Mashable), 69% of adults have no opinion about Twitter because they don’t know enough about it. A now infamous 15-year-old intern at Morgan Stanley said that “teenagers don’t use [...]
By Siobhan O’Leary The Research Services group of the German Parliament is now weighing in on the pros and cons of Open Access and Google Book Search. As reported in Boersenblatt, the group has issued a 19-page letter stating that opposition to the concept of Open Access is nearly impossible to comprehend. The report praises the [...]
By Edward Nawotka “In the UK, retailers have been very introverted. That’s what we’re trying to change by working with international customers,” says Kieron Smith, managing director of BookDepository.co.uk, an online bookseller best known for its free shipping to more than 90 countries around the world. “More than half of our customers are overseas and it’s [...]
By Edward Nawotka While the recent recommendation by the Australian Productivity Commission seeking to lift the ban on parallel importation ultimately threatens to flood the country with cheap US and UK editions of books — the changes won’t take place for three years. At the moment it is still possible to get reasonably priced editions shipped [...]
