Earlier this week Publishing Perspectives offered you stories you’re not likely to read anywhere else. If you missed any of them, please click on any of the links below. And then, if you like what you read, please forward the link to a friend and encourage them to sign up for our daily newsletter. (Read the recap in Chinese and …
How the Tokyo Book Fair Helps Rights Seekers
By Edward Nawotka “Japanese publishers don’t have a lot of experience selling rights, so we did what we could to make it easier,” said Eiko Han, spokesperson for the Tokyo International Book Fair, which opens tomorrow and runs through Sunday. “We’ve made it so exhibitors and visitors can put their rights information online. Businesses can search and, if they are …
Macmillan’s Caribbean Dream
By Edward Nawotka PORT-OF-SPAIN, TRINIDAD: “I visited a library in Cedros on the southern most part of our island,” said writer and editor Joanne Gail Johnson,”from the outside it looked like an old hut, one with all the filigreed carving on the eaves. You stand there and you can see the sea through the palm trees. It looks almost dilapidated. …
UK’s Myebook Attracts DJs, Gamers, South Americans
By Edward Nawotka CHESHIRE, UK: User generated e-book sites are extremely popular in Asia, where widespread access to cheap broadband connections as well as cutting edge telephone and computer hardware have made them the preferred self-publishing platform for writers. The rest of the world is now picking up on the trend, with new sites launching seemingly every week. Myebook.com is …
Weekly Recap: Salinger’s Law, China’s Internet Boycott, Ghana’s New Sleuth, Training CEOs
By Edward Nawotka This week at Publishing Perspectives we were hot on the trail of a number of developing stories; including J.D. Salinger’s lawsuit against his nemesis Fredrik Colting and artist Ai Weiwei’s call to boycott the internet in protest of China’s Green Dam computer filtering software (It worked! – see Bonus Material below). We also offered Ghanaian-American novelist Kwei …
Iraqi, Egyptian Publishers Enthuse Over New CEO Training Program
By Chip Rossetti ABU DHABI: KITAB, the joint venture of the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage and the Frankfurt Book Fair, recently held the first of two five-day CEO-level training programs it has organized this year for publishers from the Arab world. Nineteen publishers from eight Arab countries attended a series of workshops in Abu Dhabi from June …
Will 360 Million Chinese Boycott the Internet?
By Edward Nawotka BEIJING: Today is the day China turned off the internet. Or at least that is the hope of artist Ai Weiwei. Weiwei called on China’s 360 million internet users to “stop working, reading, chatting, blogging, gaming and mailing” to protest the Chinese government’s demand that computers users have to have installed its controversial Green Dam Youth Escort …
Weekly Recap: Losing Dust Jackets, Africa’s “It” Girl, PubMatch and Granta Go Global
By Edward Nawotka (read the Arabic version here) (read the Chinese version here) This past week in Publishing Perspectives we covered paper-over-board printing, spoke with Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi, looked at PubMatch.org and considered the international expansion of Granta literary magazine. Next week, we’ll start with a consideration of the legal ramifications of J.D. Salinger lawsuit against Nicotext, as well …
PubMatch Promises Year-Round Online International Book Fair
By Edward Nawotka NEW YORK: “We were at the Beijing Book Fair last year in a meeting with Chinese, US and UK publishers and the question that most often came up was who do we deal with, which department and which division do we deal with,” says Jon Malinowski, president of the Combined Book Exhibit, a company that displays US …
Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Straddling Continents
By Edward Nawotka TORONTO: “In the West we have constructed a narrative where African wars and poverty are meaningless, with no real political or historical context, which suggests misery is this atavistic thing,” says Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. “But what gets forgotten is at the same time all this is happening, people are falling in love, people are still …