We like to think that someone at the Author’s Guild agonized over their decision to sue Google for copyright infringement. And while many will disagree with us, we believe this is a shortsighted reaction, if only because Google is doing something libraries can’t do — creating a modern, digital version of the card catalog. While an elegant solution in its day, the card catalog, even as it migrated to electronic versions, was lacking. Little things like searching by keyword and assessing relevancy are hard to accomplish. Google’s solution may not be the perfect answer either, but at least it’s providing […]

If you hang around fiction circles long enough, you hear an amusing little fact: romance novels are nothing but female porn. This is, of course, a response to the some of these books have sex in them. Or so we thought. A couple of, uh, brilliant, analytical thinkers have used a dictionary (Webster’s, which we do no have handy) to explain the sordid truth: Yet female pornography has for decades been an accepted pastime, sliding under the radar of the religious right and instead being promoted as an acceptable distraction from the worries of life. But what exactly is female

Our friend Kate Rothwell has done the unthinkable: she’s gone and taken a look at book promotion, examining what works and doesn’t work. We agree with one of her readers, Paperback Writer, who notes that tchotchkes aren’t the best use of your publicity dollar. Kate talks specifically about promotion for the romance market, but with some creative name changes (like, oh, probably you don’t want to promote straight science fiction in Romantic Times), the advice is portable. Often we encounter authors who blink in confusion at the notion that publicity isn’t part of the publishing package. Oh sure, there are

In these times of tight budgets, we can appreciate the need for creative fundraising approaches. Thus we point you to a new calendar. Yes, kids, just in time for your early holiday shopping comes “Desperate Librarians”. Twelve months of librarians and books doing things that, apparently, librarians and books do. “It’s probably going to be a collector’s item,” [Craig] Lahm said of the calendar. “I’m going to be eBaying it in 20 years.” All we can say is that we hope the mother and her friends don’t get any wild ideas the next time they get together for a little

If we were to be put in charge of the government (and let us assure that nobody would be that brave), two of our initial acts would be to modernize the Patent Office and revisit copyright laws. Probably in that order, but we can be capricious. Google’s plans to digitize the world continue at a breathtaking (from a whole of human history perspective) pace. At some point, Google’s ambitious goals are going to slam up against a bunch of “well, we never thought about that” bureaucracy. It will not be pretty. The arguments are laid out like this: The outcome

We are delighted to bring you a charming story of a deal that seems to be a little cozier than appropriate. We are sure that most of you out there are aware that publishers have international units. Not all of those sales to small countries such as Djibouti are done to unaffiliated third parties*. If that were the case, we wouldn’t need to maintain words like “subsidiary” in the English language. Two authors have sued Pearson for underreported royalties, in the range of of hundreds of thousands, due to apparent lowballing of sales. As always we remain fascinated but woefully