January 2010

29 January 2010

You're an Idiot of the 33rd Degree

Angry letter from Mark Twain to snake-oil salesman.

Letters of Note

27 January 2010

Confessions of a Book Pirate

"A recent study by Attributor, a firm that specializes in monitoring content online, came to some spectacular conclusions, including the headline claim that book piracy costs the industry nearly $3 billion, or over 10% of total revenue. Of all the conclusions in the Attributor study, this one seemed the most outlandish, and the study itself might be met with some skepticism since Attributor is in the business of charging companies to protect their content from the threat of piracy."

The Millions

21 January 2010

When an Adman Becomes a Best Selling Author

"Patterson and his publisher, Little, Brown & Co., a division of the Hachette Book Group, have an unconventional relationship. In addition to his two editors, Patterson has three full-time Hachette employees (plus assistants) devoted exclusively to him: a so-called brand manager who shepherds Patterson’s adult books through the production process, a marketing director for his young-adult titles and a sales manager for all his books. Despite this support staff and his prodigious output, Patterson is intimately involved in the publication of his books. A former ad executive — Patterson ran J. Walter Thompson’s North American branch before becoming a full-time writer in 1996 — he handles all of his own advertising and closely monitors just about every other step of the publication process, from the design of his jackets to the timing of his books’ release to their placement in stores. “Jim is at the very least co-publisher of his own books,” Michael Pietsch, Patterson’s editor and the publisher of Little, Brown, told me."

When you sell more books than Dan Brown, John Grisham, and Stephen King combined, you'd expect nothing less from your publisher.

New York Times

21 January 2010

What are Enhanced Ebooks?

Interesting article (and comments) on what publishers should be thinking about as they grapple with electronic distribution.

Booksquare

19 January 2010

In the Words of Someone Else

Robert McCrum writes, "When the French novelist Camille Laurens lost her son in childbirth in 1995, she responded with a moving account of her trauma, Philippe, which touched a nerve with her public. A few years later the infinitely more successful Marie Darrieussecq published a novel, Tom Est Mort, the story of a woman whose baby dies after a terrible birth agony. Laurens, in a fury, accused Darrieussecq of "psychological plagiarism". Ever since, these two writers have been at each other's throats, trading elevated Gallic insults, to the scandalised fascination of Paris.

In the latest twist, Darrieussecq has published not just another novel but a scholarly treatise about literary theft in general and Laurens in particular. Darrieussecq, who is also a psychoanalyst, claims that her rival was trying symbolically to "assassinate" her with accusations of plagiarism and that, unconsciously, she was exhibiting "a crazed desire to be plagiarised", a savage dig at the senior woman's faltering career.

All very thrillingly French, you might think, but you would be wrong. In the bitter history of plagiarism, there is an equally vicious exchange from the records of Elizabethan literary London that leaves Laurens and Darrieussecq very much in the slow lane.

The Guardian

13 January 2010

Why Women are Drawn to Tales of Rape, Murder, and Serial Killers

"Women are more drawn to true crime books than are men, according to research in the inaugural issue of Social Psychological and Personality Science (published by SAGE).

The true crime genre of nonfiction books is based on gruesome topics such as rape and murder. Many people might assume that men, being the more aggressive sex, would be most likely to find such gory topics interesting."

Science Daily

07 January 2010

Is Apple's Tablet the New Book?

"Although anticipation has already reached a fever pitch (just take a look at Twitter’s most popular topics on most days) book publishers have an especially vested interest in the gadget. While there have been numerous electronic book readers coming out in the last year (including the most recent, The Skiff), few have managed to capture the public’s imagination beyond the Amazon Kindle – which hasn’t exactly done much for publishers’ bottom line. Many people in the beleaguered industry are hoping that [the] device will do for reading what the iPod and iTunes did for music. A survey among booksellers claimed that an Apple e-reader would [be] one of the main factors that will help push digital publishing forward."

Salon

01 January 2010

Weird Book Room

There are some very strange book titles listed here, but my favourite has to be this one:

The title is Dead Pet: Send Your Best Little Buddy Off in Style

AbeBooks (UK)