Booksquare

As most of you know, a little Book Fair is happening right now in Frankfurt. What happens there will likely stay there, and much of the news trickling out of the event seems to indicate that the conference has a bit of a “same time, next year” feel to it. Especially when it comes to [...]

There is a saying that, if we recall correctly, suggests that closing the barn door after the horse escapes is rather foolish. Unless you are really trying to protect hay, in which case, you may ultimately be seen as practical. We are not sure the latest scheme initiated by publishers will be seen as practical, [...]

We’re going to do something dangerous. We’re going to make an assumption (yes, yes, we know): we’re going to assume that a few of you are old enough to remember the olden days. Those halcyon moments of yore, when watching television meant taking what they wanted to show you, when listening to the radio meant [...]

We were intrigued by the idea that the publishing industry is essentially squeezing itself out of the backlist market — at first thought, it seems almost impossible. After all, aren’t the publishers producing all those lovely books? Surely they are making oodles of money.
Of course they are. Such is the beauty of backlist. Advances are [...]

Last week (so long ago), we pointed you to a little piece from Engadget about the iPod and its possible future as an e-reader. Other than our fascination the weird phrasing associated with publisher compliance — “…according to a source at a major publishing house, they were just ordered to archive all their manuscripts — [...]

So, yeah, it’s 2006, and the Association of American University Presses (c’mon, you’ve heard of them) got together to talk about “Transforming Publishing”. It turns out this digital future thing is now and university presses need to get on board. Shouldn’t they have had this conversation back in, oh, 1996?
But let’s let bygones be whatever [...]

As we all learned with last week’s Britney Spears meltdown, it is important that you have people — those mysterious creatures who make life run smoothly — to halt the growing epidemic of foot-in-mouth disease. We believe that if John Updike’s people would simply step forward and whisper something like “John, you sound like an [...]

Reading is a funny thing. If you can do it (and, sadly, not everyone can, but that’s another post for another day), you do it without thinking. All day long, you take in letters forming words forming paragraphs forming stories. When you’re reading, you’re at the car wash, the dentist, work, home, on the subway, [...]

As we all know, it is BS policy to right wrongs, protect truth, justice, and whatnot, and set people straight when they are confused. Our tasks are humble, but we perform them with dignity. Thus we find ourselves delving deep into the comment section of a recent post by the Publishing Contrarian*.
We have, over time, [...]

As our faithful readers know, we have been strong supporters of Project Gutenberg — Gutenberg’s mission is to digitize public domain books and make them available for general usage. This volunteer-driven effort still seems to fly under most radars, but we will happily admit to utilizing this service frequently.
From July 4 through August 4, 2006, [...]