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 …
A Contemporary European Fiction Primer
By Chad W. Post Referred to as “the start of the most ambitious editorial project in Dalkey Archive’s history,” the Best European Fiction 2010 anthology is an attempt to bring a wide range of project European authors to the attention of English readers. Or, in the words of series editor Bosnian-born American émigré Aleksandar Hemon, “at the heart of this …
Russia Predicting 20% Drop in Book Sales in 2009
By Chad Post “Market Trends in Russia and Digital Publishing” was the topic of Wednesday’s Business Breakfast, kicking off a hectic few days of Professional Programs at the Fair with an introduction to the contemporary publishing scene in Russia. Vladimir Grigoriev, the Deputy Head for the Federal Agency of Press and Mass Communication, presented a lot of summary data, using …
Seen and Heard: Frederike Doppenberg, Editor, Athenaeum – Polak & Van Gennep, Amsterdam
“I’m here trying to discover new, contemporary classics from countries whose literature is not so well known, such as India, China and Turkey. But a personal interest of mine is Italy. I speak Italian and think there are some wonderful books from there that still need to be discovered and translated. One example which we’re publishing is Andrea Bajani’s Se …
Tough Times, But Europe Is Coping Best: The Global Publishers Ranking Report
By Andrew Wilkins Pearson is the largest conglomerate in publishing, with a turnover of over five billion euros, and all but three of the top 10 publishing businesses are European, according to the recently released 2009 Global Ranking of World Publishing, which lists and assesses the world’s top 52 publishing conglomerates. Now in its third year, the ranking was started …
Dark Horse Comics Hits the Ground Running (and Jamming)
By Emily Williams In the US the comic book industry is known for its own giant fair, San Diego’s ComicCon, which this year attracted over 100,000 attendees (most of them readers and fans) who revel in the glitter of outlandish costumes and exclusive Hollywood screenings. So what happens to comic book types, steeped in movies and gaming and increasingly grappling …
Letter from the Editor: Chinese Fireworks
By Edward Nawotka, Editor-in-Chief, Publishing Perspectives We’ve all been waiting for the fireworks to start, but so far no one has lit a fuse. As a journalist looking for the big story, the question casting a long shadow over the Fair is what effect the co-mingling of official and “unofficial” Chinese delegations would have on the Fair. Would dissidents shout …