Yes, the latest Harry Potter book is practically leaping out of its cardboard boxes, twitching with excitement. Yes, lots of parties tonight. Many children will be up past their bedtimes. One would think the publisher would have set a more reasonable release time for the book, knowing how cranky children can be without a full night’s rest. And by children, we’re not just talking about the under-18 set. As we will not be able to stay up that late, nor will we be inclined to watch breathless local news accounts of pre-party planning and long lines, we are filing our […]

The LA Indpendent has a nice profile of local blogger Kevin Roderick, proprieter of LA Observed, a site that has earned a spot in a very special “check early and often” folder in our RSS reader. About his site, Roderick says: “It really started for selfish reasons,” he explains. “I wanted to stay more connected to my colleagues and the city and keep up with what people were doing. “Every morning I wanted to read something like (the Poynter Institute’s) Romenesko, but more locally based, and there really wasn’t anything being done like that, so I thought — I’ll try

Author Chris Cleave has a problem, one that ties in to one of our earlier posts. Cleave’s novel, Incendiary, had the misfortune of being released on the day of the London bombings. In a second setback, the subject matter just happened to deal with the idea of bombings in London. The publisher reacted appropriately: All advertising was pulled by the publisher Chatto & Windus, a division of Random House. (The novel is scheduled to be released next month in Canada by Random House.) The ads showed the book’s British cover depicting smoke billowing up from a burning London skyline. Print

For further proof that getting an entire species to behave in accordance with a single set of rules, we point to a recent mistake by a grocery store in Canada (names, except Canada’s and one judge who’s due for her fifteen minutes are excluded to protect the innocent). Yes, it appears that someone accidentally shelved the new Harry Potter and, gasp!, someone accidentally bought it. You’d think with all this modern technology and the ability to send a man to the moon and whatnot, there’d be a way to stop customers from buying books. Oh wait, there is: the legal

If you’ve been paying attention to the news recently, you’ve noticed two major stories: Shrek2 and The Incredibles were victims of stronger-than-expected DVD returns. There are all kinds of questions being asked of the studios behind these films, but, oddly, nobody’s asking about overproduction. Nobody’s asking why the system isn’t more efficient. Hollywood is lucky in that a few films making it big can pay a lot of bills. But you have you understand that there’s a long revenue stream attached to every movie and television series. For one or two books to carry a publishing house in the same