The demise of Oprah’s Book Club might have left publishing bereft, but there was plenty to celebrate in 2011: Amazon Publishing blithely ignored the sniping of the Big Six and installed itself as a player in New York, a billboard of Jeffrey Eugenides in a vest competed with the toothsome blondes gracing Times Square and Read More
Ever wonder how all those celebrity memoirs get published? Writing at The Daily Beast, former Simon & Schuster editor in chief Michael Korda describes how book publishers get seduced by Hollywood glitter: “Stranded in Beverly Hills, where movie stars and studio heads and successful directors outranked them, where you can’t walk to anywhere, and where people who matter arrive at the porte cochère of the hotel or the restaurant in a glittering car or limousine, sometimes to be greeted by a storm of photoflashes, they were fair game, thirsting for tea or drinks with even the most passé of movie stars and prepared to find them glamorous and fascinating.” Suckers! Read More
HarperCollins has filed a lawsuit against digital publisher Open Road over the e-book version of Jean Craighead George’s Newbery Award-winning children’s classic Julie of the Wolves. Originally published in 1972 by HarperCollins, Open Road arranged to publish an electronic version directly with the book’s author. In a statement, HarperCollins spokesperson Erin Crum told Publishers Weekly that “HarperCollins Publishers believes in protecting its exclusive rights. Our contract with Jean Craighead George, the author of Julie of the Wolves, grants us the exclusive digital rights to the book, and Open Road’s e-book edition violates our rights. We intend to take all appropriate steps to protect our exclusive rights under copyright against infringement, in this case and in any instances that might occur in the future.” The e-book still appears to be for sale online. Read More
Matilda, resident cat at the Algonquin Hotel, has been unleashed from her satin tether, but now hotel staff have limited her hunting grounds with an electric fence around areas that serve food. No more fluffy friend to provide hope and solace alongside your martini. Read More
Last week we wrote about the art of turning faddish blogs into book deals that pay money. Over at The Awl, Jon Methven offers an illustrated explanation of the process, including visual diagrams of “Publishing Needs Based On Urban Outfitters Sales Racks” and “Identifying a Culturally Relevant Book Idea: Roadkill Yoga‘s Path to Read More
Earlier this week, an instructor from New York University sued the university for wrongful termination, saying that he had been fired for giving a “D” to James Franco. Now a professor from Mr. Franco’s Ph.D. program at Yale has written to defend the actor’s academic reputation on Slate. Read More
Last week, speaking at an event at the Center for Fiction, the writer David Lipsky recalled his first impressions of a visit to David Foster Wallace’s home. Mr. Lipsky expected the usual decorative trappings of the self-conscious intellectual: a shelf full of impressive books, yes, but also some signature of the Read More
Do you have too much stuff already? Do you want a holiday that’s a delicious culinary experience rather than a hazardous mountain of consumer electronics? Do you want to go home to the Midwest and prove to your family that you’ve developed an addiction to brine so severe you can never go home again? Here is a guide to the best comestible gifts in New York City: instead of a bunch of crap to put in a drawer, give mom a whitefish. Read More
Once upon a time, children were put to bed with a bowl of mush and an old woman saying “hush.” Not anymore! Instead of the classic children’s book Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, The New York Times writes that an updated version, called Goodnight iPad, by David Milgrim (who writes Read More
José Angel Santana, a theater professor at New York University, tells The New York Post that he got fired for giving James Franco a ‘D’ in a class called “Directing the Actor II.” Mr. Santana is now suing the university, saying that Mr. Franco missed 12 of the 14 classes. Read More
