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It hasn’t been hard to predict the slow demise of the standalone book section in major newspapers — the Chicago Reader reports that only five such sections still exist. And one, belonging to the Chicago Tribune is undergoing stomach stapling surgery. To save on the cost of newsprint. Apparently a brilliant plan to move the […]

As discussed last week (you do remember last week, right? It was the one with the holiday), the LitBlog Co-Op has planned a wide range of interesting and fun activities for each of this quarter’s nominated titles. Discussions, podcasts, editors, publishers, and even authors will be posting to the Co-Op site about their books. This […]

Maybe it’s the wind, we don’t know, but this article about the Catholic Church calling for The Da Vinci Code to receive an adult rating tickled our funny bone. We agree that protecting children is important — in fact, we think children should be protected from movies with violence, especially gratuitous violence. But we don’t […]

Random House and a group of UK agents convened for a summit regarding the future of publishing. Or rather, the future of publishing as it relates to author compensation. We were taken by this rather prosaic comment regarding money or lack thereof: Transworld Publisher Larry Finlay said: “There’s no reduction of advances for the big […]

The LitBlog Co-Op unveils its final nominee for this quarter: Rupert Thomson’s The Divided Kingdom. Check out Bookdwarf’s description of this excellent book. But wait, there’s more! At the end of her post, there’s a link to discover your quarter. In light of recent discussions here, our region (helpfully revealed above) should come as no […]

We have a friend — let’s call him Peter — who has been trying to get us worked up over the James Frey flap. Other individuals have given up on the goal, but Peter keeps trying. It’s simply not going to happen, but he’s stubborn. He tries little things, like pointing out that he was […]

To recap so far, you have purchased Garner,

We have long admired Jennifer Crusie both personally and professionally, and were elated to discover that one of her early novels, Anyone But You, was being re-released. Of course, as discussed here earlier this month, HQN chose to release this book as a hardcover. Sure we questioned the wisdom of paying hardcover (well, closer to […]

We’ve had Garner, we’ve met Other Electricities. . .what book will you be charging on your credit card today? LitBlog Co-Op

It is no secret that publishing is a commercial endeavor, but often editors like to pretend it isn’t. If you had to publish a roman a clef written by Nicole Richie, you’d want to live in an alternate reality, too. Jeremie Ruby-Strauss has skipped the inner turmoil that marks an editor’s rite of passage, and […]