By Chip Rossetti If you were watching Good Morning America yesterday, you might have seen a plug for a media company that was recently featured here on Publishing Perspectives: OpenSky, a platform that helps create tailored Web stores by pairing up content publishers with product suppliers. On Monday’s program, GMA’s workplace contributor Tory Johnston talked about OpenSky as a great …
About the Author
Melville House on How to Market Foreign Fiction by a Dead Author
By Chip Rossetti I want to thank Ed for letting me take a turn guest-editing Publishing Perspectives while he takes a well-deserved break — even if, in Ed’s case, it’s a working vacation. It’s been amazing to witness the growth of Publishing Perspectives in the last year-and-a-half: it’s hard to believe it was only at BEA 2009 that Ed first …
Middle East Graphic Novelists Push Boundaries
By Chip Rossetti • Last week, we looked the market for comic books and graphic novels in the Middle East is small, but growing. • In this, the second part of our two-part series, we examine how graphic novelists in the Middle East are pushing the boundaries of publishing by tackling controversial topics in their work, but also paying a price …
Undiscovered Art: Comics and Graphic Novels Emerge in the Middle East
By Chip Rossetti • The market for comic books and graphic novels in the Middle East is small, but growing. In this, the first part of a two-part series, we report on a recent conference in Cairo for comic book artists writing in Arabic, and look at Samandal, a popular bilingual comics magazine published in Beirut. • Next Tuesday we …
Bloomsbury Qatar Parties with the Queen, Launches First List
by Chip Rossetti Not many new publishing imprints are feted with a launch party at Windsor Castle hosted by Queen Elizabeth II, but Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing (BQFP), a unique joint venture between the Qatar Foundation and Bloomsbury Publishing, got the royal treatment when it launched last week. The Windsor reception was attended by Sheikha Moza, the consort of the …
Junkies on the Nile: Egyptians Addicted to Drug-Fuelled Debut Novel
By Chip Rossetti CAIRO: For the past two years, Egypt’s bestselling novel has been a story about a group of privileged young Cairenes whose comfortable lives are shattered by heroin. Weighing in at a hefty 635 pages, Essam Youssef’s first novel, A ¼ Gram, sheds light on the taboo problem of drug use among Egypt’s upper-middle class. Set in the …
Krauss Leads Abu Dhabi Book Fair into a New Era
By Chip Rossetti In 2009, when Monika Krauss took the position of General Manager of KITAB, the organization that manages the annual Abu Dhabi International Book Fair (ADIBF), she was coming full circle. Although born in Iraq to a German father and an Iraqi mother, Monika Krauss had spent most of her life somewhere else, having been raised in Nigeria …
Looking at Arabic Fiction in Translation
By Chip Rossetti The January 18 issue of the New Yorker has a great piece by Claudia Roth Pierpont (already available online) on Arabic novels in translation: I worked with some of these authors during my time at the American University in Cairo Press, so it’s a pleasure to see the New Yorker giving this growing literary landscape some well-deserved …
A Free Library for Every Family (in Sharjah)
By Chip Rossetti SHARJAH, UAE: While many countries would like to encourage a “culture of reading” in their citizens, perhaps no government has taken a more direct role in promoting reading than the United Arab Emirate of Sharjah, through its official initiative known as “Knowledge Without Borders.” Conceived under the auspices of the ruler of Sharjah, H.H. Sheikh Dr. Sultan …
Bonus Material: Lebanon’s New Database for Arabic Publishing
By Chip Rossetti A new collaborative online platform for the Arabic publishing industry, Mubtada wa Khabar, is expected to launch in advance of this year’s Beirut Book Fair, which runs from November 28 to December 11. The project is being developed by Yasmina Jraissati, founder of the Paris-based RAYA literary agency, and Nadim Tarazi, founder of Lebanon’s La Maison du …