Rumor Mill Resurfaces From The Dead

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The Rumor Mill tells us that Tor is not looking for NC-17 books — they are seeking straight erotica. While you will find many useful explanations of this distinction, in situation like this, we always turn to the Supreme Court: you’ll know it when you see it. For those keeping score at home, there are now exactly three New York publishers who have declined to jump on the erotica bandwagon. Their names are changed to protect their stockholders. Tor (aka Tom Doherty Associates LLC)

Publishers and Editors

A Different Kind of Reading

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All week long, we’ve been bringing you stories and glimpses into the wonderful world of the future. Which reminds us, not a single story on a flying cars has crossed our desk this year. What’s up with that? We really want our car to float high above traffic. We’ll work out those pesky, plaguing navigation problems later. Instead, we’ll bring you an insider’s look at the (legal) book scanning industry. Dark, dusty tomes. Windowless, airless compartments. Not the greatest of pay. Books that simply do not lend themselves to easy imagining. Ms. Ridolfo scanned her first book — an early

Our Continuing Fascination With Copyright

What We’ve Been Doing

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A few may have wondered what we do with our days. Funny story, that. We’ve gotten involved in a cause: protecting the rights of journalists to keep their sources confidential. Oh, yes, we know — that’s last month’s news. We’re behind on everything in life. Sue us. Now that we’re on the project, we’re on it with gusto. We have been studying picketing and chanting, discovering in the process that like most bloggers, we cannot do picket and chant at the same time. We’ve also learned a valuable lesson: the principle is far more important than the details. We will

Square Pegs

Presumably Books Contribute To IP Numbers As Well

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It turns out that intellectual property is the stuff that drives the American economic engine. Oh, man, we so have to stop typing sentences like that. They are painful on so many levels. NBC Universal went out and did a study on how much IP contributes to the economy. It turns out to be a number with a whole lot of zeroes. More than we can recall, so how ever many a trillion is, that’s what we’re talking about. Without the contributions of motion pictures, music, software, and the like, things would be bleak. We are assuming that books and

Our Continuing Fascination With Copyright

There Is No Honor In Killing

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KABUL, Afghanistan Nov 8, 2005 — Poet Nadia Anjuman was beaten to death, and her husband and mother have been arrested. The United Nations condemned the killing Tuesday as symptom of continuing violence against Afghan women four years after the fall of the Taliban. UN condemns sexist killing of Afghan poet

Square Pegs

And Then There’s Reality

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What with all the brouhaha over the notion of Google Print, it nearly went unnoticed that the actual service went live this week. Now is the time for friends and countrymen to actually check out the service; there is a rumor that facts help with the decision-making process. While we don’t subscribe to this notion, we understand that others enjoy having real information. So yes, the service is live. It’s cool. It requires a login for certain searches. You get limited results. You can’t grab text. You have links to purchase the book. You can read the cover copy, flip

Our Continuing Fascination With Copyright

The Poor Books Starving In Garretts

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There is a lot of innovative thinking going on the world of publishing these days. Oh sure, the media is all hot about a dozen other topics, but those of us who care seek out the news we need. Hmm, maybe that should be those of us who care clearly need to get lives. Or at least hobbies. The notion of orphaned art is gaining traction with the public — so much so that NPR did a segment on the topic last night (forgetting to discuss books, thereby invoking our right to exhibit laziness and not search for the link).

Our Continuing Fascination With Copyright, Square Pegs

There Is Weird, Then There Is Weird

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When a book goes directly to the remainder bin, generally there is a good reason. By all accounts, the novel by Irve Lewis “Scooter” Libby did not pass go, did not collect 00*. It was yet another novel doomed to die unlamented. Then the author went and got himself indicted — great news for the book, not so much for the writer. Now the world is taking second look at the first novel by a famous politician. And the world is wondering about the weird sex. Wondering how such things can come from the mind of a nice guy like

Square Pegs

The Downside of Books By The Page

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It is somewhat sad, but we can see how this is going to work: the girl you’re trying to score with calls, all excited. “You’ll never believe this, but Kurt Vonnegut will be coming to my dinner party. You’ll be sitting right next to him — how cool is that? You can talk about Welcome to The Monkeyhouse all night.” It is only after she hangs up that you realize that your little white lie has come back to haunt you. You were trying to impress her with your intellectual intellectualness and hoped that she’d never heard of the book

The Business of Publishing

Why The Patent Office Needs To Modernize (Or At Least Computerize)

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If you pay attention (and surely you do), you know that the World of Patents is where the strangest and most dangerous battles are fought. Patents are dangerous because they don’t necessarily involve things as much as ideas. You cannot copyright an idea, but you can patent one. Appropriate caveats duly noted. This plays out all the time in the world of technology: overly broad ideas are patented and held like gold* until someone else builds something similar and makes lots of money. It is especially interesting when the patent is filed long after the technology has been in place.

The Business of Publishing
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