Evelyn Waugh once said that the golden rule of book reviewing is that you should never give a bad review to a book you have not read. This is now seen as rather old-fashioned and romantic. No book reviewer ever has time to read the whole book, not for the money they are paying you. The vital thing is to give the impression that you HAVE read the whole book. Masterclass: how to write a book review
Either or, either or, either…what is it about the world we live in that every move is giant step forward with the potential to surpass the leader with just a little more effort? Or is it just that journalists spend a little too much time reprinting press releases and not enough time thinking about the information contained in said releases? Microsoft is not stepping further into Google’s territory; they are just moving forward with an ongoing project. Two technology giants — Google and Microsoft — are currently engaged in major book digitization efforts. While their approaches differ (slightly), they have
Way back when, possibly just before we were born (but more likely after), Pete Townshend wrote a phrase that roused a generation: “I hope I die before I get old.” As it turns out, Pete did not listen to his younger self, and The Who continue to tour and attempt to recreate old glory. This has lead to our friend Jim making a lot of “Last Who Tape Ever” mixes to celebrate final Who concert tours. Jim has only ever made one Last Jam Tape Ever in honor of a final concert tour. The Jam got out while the getting
Because we don’t want to create the impression that we think everything is bad in the world of publishing, we’d like to joyfully highlight something good: the juxtaposition of Penguin UK, Second Life, and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. If it is sounds like a cool party, it is. “Wha?” you say? “You mean someone’s finally put the pieces together?” Yes, that’s it exactly. The publisher of the book that introduced us to the Metaverse — a virtual world where people enter into personal and business transactions of all types — has created a special offer for residents of Second Life,
How many of the new words captured in 2006 will achieve permanence is anyone’s guess: only a tiny percentage of words will ever gain entry into the Oxford English Dictionary and the waiting list of words is long. Catherine Tate’s ‘bovvered’ set to be included in Oxford dictionary
While we hope beyond hope that the woefully misnamed “Fred Head”, an apparent candidate for Comptroller of Public Accounts in the State of Texas, is someone’s idea of a hoax, we can take no chances. We do believe that the fine people of Texas understand how books, specifically and generally, work, but since at least one candidate appears confused, we offer some explanation as a public service.
Yesterday’s news was all doom and gloom about the state of the independent bookstore — an entity that has been under siege since the dawn of the first superstore. We do not pretend to know the laws of economics (except to have a vague comprehension that projections always seem to be off for reasons nobody understands), but being independent is expensive. The problem, of course, is that there’s always a bigger, scarier monster in the closet, and even the superstores are nervous. As venerable institutions like Tower Records face the end of their storied lives, independents are growing increasingly…creative. And
Last week, we link to an article with the grand plan of returning to the topic later that day. Days have a way of getting away from us. As do weeks. But we have been dwelling mentally on the subject, and woke up this morning ready to write about the all-important topic of making money from blogs. Lynne Scanlon notes that making money the traditional way (selling a book to a publishers, receiving an advance, earning out an advance, waiting months and sometimes years for royalties to be paid) doesn’t really work for her. Let’s all face facts: if you’re
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 digital rights management. DRM. It’s a term you need to understand. Publisher’s Weekly reports that an entire session, thrillingly (and we do mean that sincerely) called “Publishers and Search Engines: Facing the Challenge” discussed an approach called Automated Content Access Protocol, or ACAP for short.
This week, the hot publishing news comes from Torstar: Harlequin will be cutting about 4% of its global workforce. This is a result of, yes, declining sales. And this, by the way, has been an ongoing theme for a few years. Harlequin, the world’s leader in romance fiction, is not selling books in sufficient numbers. It’s not that the audience doesn’t exist; it’s that the publisher can’t seem to find the readers. Looking back at our archives (we do not advise doing this without a stiff drink), we see that over and over, there’s a similar theme. Harlequin books are
