By Edward Nawotka ISRAEL: Hebrew Book Week started yesterday and — not unlike the Jewish holiday of Chanukah, where oil meant for a single day burned for eight — will miraculously last for ten days. Festivities are spread out across nine cities, while forty smaller towns will be hosting smaller three day events. Established in 1926 in Tel Aviv, it …
Harper UK’s Lucy Vanderbilt on Chinese Opportunties
By Roger Tagholm LONDON & BEIJING: At a time when ‘flat’ is the new ‘up’ in the UK, publishers are eager, some might event say desperate, to find new markets – and as relatively untapped markets go, none comes bigger than China. HarperCollins has been quick to realise this and is already reaping the benefits. At last week’s British Book …
Douglas Rushkoff Dissects Publishing Inc.
By Edward Nawotka NEW YORK: “About half to two-thirds of the publishing industry needs to disappear,” says Douglas Rushkoff, professor of media studies at the New School in New York City and author of eight books, including novels, nonfiction and comics. “There is an oversupply in the market. What we’re learning is that publishing is an industry that doesn’t scale-up …
EBF/IBF Director Dubruille on Bookselling’s Future
by Edward Nawotka BRUSSELS: “The problem in Europe is that booksellers don’t know what strategies to use when coping with digitization,” says Françoise Dubruille, director of the European Booksellers Federation and the International Booksellers Federation, “There are 25 languages for 27 countries, there are 27 national cultures and literatures, and not all have the same challenges.” She adds, “One thing …
Weekly Recap: BookExpo America, Google, UK’s Hay Festival
By Edward Nawotka (Read the recap in Chinese here) This week marked the official start of summer in North America, and it couldn’t have come a moment too soon for the tens of thousands of American publishing people who were undoubtedly still recovering their voices from the four day extravaganza known as BookExpo America. The consensus on BEA was…no consensus. …
Hay Festival Panel Ponders Our Digital Future
by Tolu Ogunlesi HAY-ON-WYE, WALES: While many in the publishing industry were in New York last week for BookExpo America, other book lovers gathered on the Welsh border for the annual literary extravaganza known as the Guardian Hay Festival. This year, amid the author presentations featuring figures as diverse as Desmond Tutu and Stephen Fry, a publishing panel entitled “Brave …
UK Publishers Association’s Juden on Google Settlement, Copyright
By Edward Nawotka LONDON: “It’s the least bad outcome from where we got started,” says Simon Juden, Chief Executive Officer of the UK Publishers Association, with regard to the Google Books Settlement. “That is,” he reminds me, “a personal opinion.” “In continental Europe there is almost a religious opposition to the settlement,” continues Juden, “The UK reaction is much more …
Bonus Material: Away We Go
By Edward Nawotka In 2007 the indie movie Juno, about a quirky pregnant teenager, went on to earn an astonishing $250 million worldwide. Away We Go could easily be its sequel: The film stars John Krasinski (from the American version of The Office television show) and comedienne Maya Rudolph as a thirtysomething couple who, six months pregnant with their first …
The European Point of View on BEA
By Edward Nawotka Next year BEA will return to New York City, where it will remain at least through 2012. On the face of it, the decision to stop moving it around seems like a good idea, particularly as travel to New York is cheaper than it has been in recent memory. As a consequence, one constituency Americans may see …
Obama’s Super Secret BEA Party, Small Publishers Schadenfreude
By Edward Nawotka NEW YORK: On Saturday, US president Barack Obama arrived in New York City to take his wife Michelle to see August Wilson’s play Joe Turner’s Come and Gone on Broadway. Soon, the rumor spread that the President planned to visit Random House, his book publisher, for a super-secret party. True or not — we couldn’t get confirmation …