Editorial by Richard Eoin Nash The book business is a tiny industry perched atop a massive hobby. But rather than celebrate and serve the hobbyists, we expect them to shell out ever more money for the books we keep throwing at them (a half million English-language books in 2008 in the U.S.). Cutting back might work for individual companies, but …
Canada’s Suite101 Writers Profit, Expanding to France, Spain
by Craig Morgan Teicher VANCOUVER, B.C.: “I sometimes see us more like a service to writers than just a publication. We want to make them successful,” said Peter Berger, the German CEO of Suite101, a company whose online magazine features articles on, well, just about everything — from choosing the best fly-fishing vest to doing PR for a small business during a …
Hyperbolic Heidelberg Appeal Distracts from Real Issues in Germany’s Literary Future
Editorial by Rüdiger Wischenbart Is the glass half empty or half full? At the moment, German publishing circles are absorbed in a very public debate over the digital future, one that threatens to split the literary establishment from the younger generation of “digerati” and “digital natives.” The debate was prompted in March after literature professor Roland Reuss (at left) published …
Clarice Lispector’s Biographer on the Thrill of the Hunt
By Benjamin Moser UTRECHT, THE NETHERLANDS — Nobody’s ugly at two a.m., so the t-shirt slogan goes. One evening a few years ago, I was sitting in my Dutch garden, talking to some friends about Clarice Lispector, the Jewish-Brazilian mystic writer. Having recently left the security of my publishing job in order to devote myself full-time to writing, I’d been …
Accra Provides Mysterious Milieu for Ghanaian-American Novelist
By Kwei Quartey ACCRA, GHANA: About 10 years ago, I wrote a novel set in Africa. An agent to whom I sent the first pages turned it down and told me, “There are two places on earth that no one has the slightest interest in reading about: Afghanistan and Africa.” What a difference a decade makes: Khaled Hosseini’s smash hits …
Will Holden Caulfield be Hijacked?
By David L. Fox The pending U.S. publication of 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, a self-described “sequel to one of our most beloved classics” that portrays the adventures of an aged Holden Caulfield of The Catcher in the Rye, has brought a court challenge by the famously litigious J.D. Salinger. Each side is accusing the other of hijacking …
Revamped Granta to Focus on International Literature
by Craig Morgan Teicher LONDON/NEW YORK: On May 29th, The New York Times reported that Alex Clark, the first female editor of the London-based international literary quarterly, was resigning after less than a year, leaving the magazine’s recently appointed American editor, John Freeman, in the post of acting editor. According to Freeman, Granta, which has a circulation of about 50,000 …
Mexico Deemed Too Dangerous for Novelist to Tour
By Dylan Foley MEXICO: In his new novel Into the Beautiful North, the Mexican-American writer Luis Alberto Urrea has created a satirical tale about three teenage girls who, after seeing a screening of the classic Steve McQueen classic film The Magnificent Seven, leave their small southern Mexican town of Tres Camarones — itself overrun by drug dealers and corrupt cops …
Hashtags and Cocktails
By Jerome Kramer, special to Publishing Perspectives If you were to judge an industry by its parties, consider this: The last time BEA was held in New York, the “hot” Friday night party was held by Google, the then-reigning king of the future of publishing. This year it was Twitter. “That’s how much things have changed in two years,”said Rebecca …