By Laura L. Griffin 6/13/12 12:50pm

Algonquin Round Table

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What Fresh PR Initiative Is This?: Literary Greats on the Current Attempt to Reengineer the Algonquin Round Table

“This hotel is exactly how I would have imagined the Algonquin transforming itself in the 21st century,” announced Penguin Books CEO David Shanks to an attentive crowd last week.

A single person clapped and, realizing they were all alone, stopped.

Mr. Shanks continued, “It exudes the grandeur of Gotham and the dazzle of the iconic Mad Men design gone modern.” Mr. Shanks cleared his throat. “It’s really amazing.”

Last Monday, a group (of “top hotel and publishing executives as well as media industry influencers,” per a press release) was gathered at a private party to celebrate the grand reopening of the gut-renovated hotel and the launch of its new partnership with Penguin Books. Read More

By Leon Neyfakh 6/02/09 11:13pm

New Granta Editor Offers Sweet Salve to Chapped Industry

Around 1 o’clock last Saturday, Gotham Books president and publisher Bill Shinker was eating a sandwich in a bright, spacious hall marked “Platinum” located above the main exhibition area at the Javits Center.

This time last year, Mr. Shinker said, he’d been looking forward to a week of golf with a group of publishing Read More

By Leon Neyfakh 6/01/09 8:18pm

Paul Auster, Children’s Book Author?

A funny thing happened during Granta’s B.E.A. panel on the state of American writing on Friday, when a woman from the audience asked Paul Auster whether it was his idea to turn Timbuktu, a novella he published in 1999, into a children’s book.

For a moment, Mr. Auster looked at the questioner blankly. Read More

By Leon Neyfakh 6/02/08 8:05pm

Media on Book Expo: Parts Of It Were OK!

Most publishing people are back now from Los Angeles, where they got together over the weekend with thousands of booksellers and got them familiar with the biggest titles in their catalogs. All this was for Book Expo, a convention that happens every spring. This year, the atmosphere at the show was positively geriatric, its obsolescence Read More