By Edward Nawotka If Marcel Proust if famous for anything other than his novels, it’s the “questionnaire” that bears his name. The “Proust Questionnaire” was not, surprise, something Proust himself conceived of — it was, instead, a Parisian parlor game popular during the 1880s. “It is believed to have been popularized by the daughter of the 19th-century French president Felix Faure,” writes …
Global Trade Talk: Frankfurt Survey on E-book Pricing; BN’s Nook; Dan Brown Sales in Germany
By Siobhan O’Leary and Edward Nawotka At the Frankfurt Book Fair, Buchreport asked several agents and publishers for their thoughts on e-book pricing. Joachim Jessen of the Schlück Agency noted that “e-book prices in Germany are too high”, while New York agent Andrew Wylie said that publishers should not bend to the expectations of the public or the trade. While …
What Can Book Publishing Learn from Online Gaming?
By Liz Bury What can book publishers learn from online games developers? More than you might think. Book publishers consider a book’s ability to evoke emotions in the reader as one of its special qualities. Games publishers think along the same lines. Book publishers value books for the way they transport the reader to another world, enabling them to inhabit another life. …
The Red Piano Won’t Play in China
By Andrew Wilkins When I bought the English language rights to a beautiful children’s picture book, The Red Piano, from French publisher Editions du Sorbier earlier this year, I wasn’t really thinking I would have censorship problems. While the book is a fictional retelling of a real episode from China’s Cultural Revolution, the author is Canadian, the illustrator French and …
IPA Freedom to Publish Chair on China
On Wednesday at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Norwegian publisher Bjorn Smith-Simonsen, in his capacity as chair of the International Publishers Association’s Freedom to Publish Committee, suggested that one of the first potential steps toward resolving the issue of censorship in China was to encourage the Publishers Association of China [PAC] to join the IPA: “They [PAC] could eventually become a …
Download of Frankfurt Show Daily, October 16
Our final issue of the Frankfurt Edition show daily is hot off the press. In addition to covering two digital publishing companies present at the Fair, Open Road from the US and Shanda Literature from China, the October 16 issue covers STM e-book pricing, Estonia’s surprising publishing industry dynamics, and the IPA Copyright Symposium. You can also read about e-books …
“No digital solution for doing the dishes”
By Erin L. Cox Two things that don’t naturally go together are food and computers, but yesterday’s “Cooking Digital, Digital Cooking” in the Gourmet Gallery shared some innovative new ways to bring the experience of cooking online. Panelists Patrik Jaros, a Michelin-starred chef, and Rocco Georgi, co-founder and developer of PavingWays, have both created applications for smartphones. Jaros, author of …
Independent vs. Corporate Publisher? The Question is Moot, Argues Agent Ira Silverberg
By Chris Artis In the US, the conventional wisdom has always been that a writer must make his career either with a large corporate publisher or with one of the dozens of smaller independent houses. The thinking was that since the corporate and indie publishing worlds are so different in terms of priorities and styles an author and his collective …
Pikcha.tv Wins Books & Bytes Award
By Siobhan O’Leary The winner of the first NEWBOOK Books & Bytes Award announced yesterday at the Books & Bytes Stand in Hall 3 is pikcha.tv. Pikcha.tv’s goal is to provide younger children with their first contact to TV and the Internet by adapting picture books into digital moving images. Children encounter familiar topics, illustrations and characters in an online …
Books to Look For in the LitAg
By Edward Nawotka All week, LitAg—the center for literary agents and scouts—has been buzzing with activity, while others have been busy at their stands taking meetings with editors and publishers. Here’s a sample of some books being showcased for rights and translation sales throughout the fair—a list that includes a surprising range of topics, from a French cultural history of …