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NOVEMBER 2000
Thursday
November 30
- UNCERTAIN
TIMES IN CANADA: Canada's two book superstore-chains are locked
in battle as Indigo makes a hostile bid to buy Chapters. Both
the chains are losing money. And with the threat of US booksellers
trying to get in the Canadian market, the book industry in Canada
is entering the all-important holiday season with much intrepidation.
Globe & Mail (Toronto) 11/30/00
- BOOK
SALES UP: Total revenues for America's four largest bookstore
chains rose 6.3%, to $1.59 billion, for the third quarter ended
October 28, 2000. Publishers Weekly
11/27/00
Wednesday
November 29
Tuesday
November 28
- KING
PULLS THE PLUG: Stephen King says he'll discontinue publishing
his serialized on-line novel "The Plant." King said
when he began the book that he would add additional chapters only
if 50 percent of those downloading it paid $1 per chapter. By
chapter four, only 46 percent were paying.Wrote one bothered fan:
"It bothers me that readers might well think twice about buying
installments from any other authors who might go this route because
of what King has done. To do this to loyal fans is inexcusable."
Wired 11/28/00
- YOUR
STANDARD E-BOOK: A proposal by the Association of American
Publishers to standardize e-books was released this week. The
plan is intended to avoid the mess in the digital music industry.
"Today, ebooks are considered to represent less than 1% of
business. If the standards are accepted, the group predicts the
ebook market will grow to $2.3 billion by 2005.
Variety 11/28/00
Monday
November 27
- THE
PROBLEM WITH PUBLISHING: "The real problem is not books
but publishing, or publishing as we have known it. Free trade,
globalization and the Internet are having their disruptive way
with what once was a profession that operated like a gentleman's
intellectual club. Ironically, the country that appears to be
suffering the most from consolidation of the publishing industry
is the United States. Even more ironic, the country best equipped
to withstand the global behemoths may be Canada."
The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 11/27/00
- GIVING
AWAY THE BEST: Canada's venerable publisher McClelland &
Stewart boasts such stars as Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Michael
Ondaatje, Rohinton Mistry and Mordecai Richler. But when it came
time for the company's head to retire, he found no obvious buyers.
To keep the company intact he was forced to give away the business.
The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 11/27/00
- CART BEFORE THE HORSE? It’s somewhat surprising the publishing
industry is still betting millions on the future market for e-books,
given the dismal performance of the CD-ROM and the fact that reliable
e-book technology is still in development. Nevertheless, authors,
publishers, online distributors, and e-book middlemen are feverishly
trying to stake their claims in the new digital landscape. "Everyone
at the table has an eye on someone else's plate, even before the
food has arrived." New York Times 11/27/00 (one-time
registration required for access)
- TRASHING
SUSAN SONTAG: Was the selection of Susan Sontag's "In
America" as the winner of this year's National Book Award
a mistake? Daniel Halpern thinks so. " 'In America' is such
a bad book that it seems possible that even its nomination - to
say nothing of its victory - is the result of some sort of conspiracy,
or at least of a mistake resulting from the particularly baffling
handwriting of someone at the National Book Foundation."
The New Republic 11/21/00
- WIN
THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND SELL...233 COPIES? Susan Sontag's
"In America" sold only 233 copies for the week ending
Nov. 19, "which would reflect only a few days of award
buzz. 'In America' - which has received mixed reviews - has
sold only 3,972 copies since being published in January. Chances
are, the award will raise that number, but to judge by the
halfhearted reception Sontag got at the ceremony, the book
inspires mixed feelings." Inside.com
11/27/00
Friday
November 24
- A
QUIET PLACE TO WRITE: "The New York Society Library,
a subscription library established in 1754 is a place that is
little known outside New York City, but one that has played a
role in the creation of literature coming out of that city for
nearly 250 years." National Post
(Canada) 11/23/00
- THE
FUTURE OF LIBRARIES: With all these commercial online reference
services, will librarians become obsolete? 'We know that libraries
can provide authoritative information, both online and offline.'
And we feel that the only thing stopping us is the fact that patrons
aren't coming to the library much anymore.' A new project is attempting
to make the library an even more vital research source than ever
before." Wired 11/24/00
- A
MATTER OF CREDIT: A Montreal novelist has come forward to
charge that she co-wrote the book that won this year's Governor
General award for non-fiction and was promised recognition she
didn't receive. Nega Mezlekia, author of Notes From the Hyena's
Belly, denies the claim. "I hired her because I was worried about
the formal aspects of my work. She would try and change things,
but I don't think she was doing it out of spite, but because she
didn't understand the book. She didn't have a sense of humour.
She was always telling me that the book will never see the light
of day." National Post (Canada)
11/24/00
Thursday
November 23
- THE BEAT GOES ON: Online publisher LiveREADS has
purchased "Orpheus Emerged," a novella written by Jack
Kerouac at age 23, which it will release to the public for the
first time this week - over the internet. The Kerouac estate has
been gradually selling off his last unpublished works over the
last decade. The Guardian (London) 11/23/00
- ‘TIS THE SEASON TO SLANDER: It seems everyone has a hero to
debunk these days, as biographies of famous figures pour out of
publishing houses this fall. "Most of the personages currently
exposed have little in common except the compulsion or determination
of their biographers to manhandle or mishandle them." New York Times 11/23/00 (one-time registration required
for access)
Tuesday
November 21
- THE
UNPREPOSSESSING NOBEL WRITER: Just who is Gao Xingjian, the
Chinese writer who won the 2000 Nobel for literature? "Mr.
Gao has 18 plays, 4 works of literary criticism and 5 books of
fiction to his name, but his entire oeuvre has been banned on
the Chinese mainland since 1985, while his best-known novel, 'Soul
Mountain,' a lyrical account of a long journey through the Chinese
backlands, has so far been published only in Taiwan, Sweden, France
and Australia." New York Times
11/20/00 (one-time registration required
for access)
- ART
OF EDITING: "Robert Gottlieb's near-legendary status
in the publishing world owes much to sheer anomaly. Running Simon
& Schuster, and then Knopf, he had just two interests: the books
he edited and the books he balanced (''What people forget about
Bob,' says Charles McGrath, editor of The New York Times Book
Review and Gottlieb's deputy at the New Yorker, 'he was a terrific
businessman'). Boston Globe 11/21/00
- SEE
YOU IN THE FUNNY PAGES...ER, GRAPHIC NOVELS: Comic books (or
"graphic novels" as they're now being called) are hot.
"More than a few of these works not only tap into a burgeoning
post-20th-century self-referential nostalgia, they also manage
brilliantly to bridge the ever-widening chasm between visual and
print generations. Thus, the ascendancy of the graphic novel becomes
less about economics and more about the intertwined abstractions
of demographics and esthetics. A fusion of styles and fascinations
has facilitated the maturation of the comic book into a smart,
funny, haunting work of literature with effects." The
Globe & Mail (Toronto) 11/21/00
Monday
November 20
- WORDS
AND MEANING: "Though the enterprise of literary criticism
is a vast and infinitely complicated one, it all begins in a very
familiar and basic experience. I read a text, perhaps Shakespeare's
Sonnet 94 ("They that have power to hurt and will do none"), find
a deep pleasure in doing so, and want to explain my experience
to others, sometimes enabling one of them to find the same kind
of experience. I believe that I understand Shakespeare's poem,
and I want to test my understanding against other people's views,
perhaps even to enrich it as I deepen my insights in response
to theirs." Philosophy and Literature
10/00
Friday
November 17
- BURSTING
THE DOTCOM BUBBLE: The struggling Chapters, Canada's largest
bookseller, announces it will lay off 18 percent of its online
workforce and that it hopes to become profitable by Christmas
of 2001. National Post (Canada) 11/17/00
- BOOK
TURF WAR: Sales of books over the internet in Korea have taken
off. But "threatened by the booming e-sales performance and
its increased recognition as a reliable retail source, some of
the largest book stores are accusing their new rivals of destroying
the existing status quo built around the mandatory fixed retail
price system. Late last month, the Association of Comprehensive
Bookstores (ACB), an industry group of 11 largest bookstores in
Seoul, announced that they will not carry books published by companies
that also have deals with online book retailers."
Korea Herald 11/17/00
- THE
BIG DEAL ABOUT LIT PRIZES: "A shiny medallion-shaped
sticker, stamped with the word 'winner,' affixed to the otherwise
enigmatic cover of a new novel, has a formidable power to sell
books - sometimes thousands of them. But what do these prizes
really mean? How are they chosen, and which of them, if any, is
the most reliable?" A look at the prizes and their processes.
Salon 11/16/00
- IS
PRINT REALLY DEAD? Last week's E-book publishing conference
in New York had everyone pondering the future of printed books.
"Microsoft's vice president in charge of electronic books
and 'tablet' computing devices, reiterated the company's prediction
that the last print edition of The New York Times would appear
in 2018, and you could feel the thought-wave slither through the
room like an eel. 2018? Hey, I was planning to be around in 2018
- and with some time to look at the paper finally, too."
The Atlantic 11/00
Thursday
November 16
- SUSAN SONTAG WINS NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
for her novel "In America." The nonfiction award went
to Nathaniel Philbrick for "In the Heart of the Sea: The
Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex;" the poetry prize went to
Lucille Clifton. New York Times 11/16/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
- LOOKING
BACK, AT A MINIMUM: In the mid-80s minimalism was a force
one had to contend with - fer or a'gin. "By now, of course,
1988 seems like old times; and while these sorts of aesthetic
wars are never actually won, so to speak, it's safe to say that
the bells have indeed tolled for minimalism's reign over American
fiction." Salon 11/16/00
- RABBIT, HIDE: He’s already won two Pulitzer Prizes,
but John Updike may soon have another, altogether stranger, honor
to his name: the 2000 award for the worst sex in fiction. "To
make the shortlist, an author must be deemed to have written the
worst or the most embarrassing sex scene in a book published this
year." CBC 11/15/00
- CANADIAN
PUBLISHING'S NEW STAR: She is 34, the youngest ever to be
appointed to such a senior position in the Canadian publishing
industry. Maya Mavjee is the lead editor behind the Giller Prize-winning
"Mercy Among the Children" by David Adams Richards and
the newly appointed publisher of Doubleday Canada, which makes
her a star just beginning her ascent. Globe
& Mail (Toronto) 11/16/00
Wednesday
November 15
- ROWLING ROUTED: The shortlist for the Whitbread
Book of the Year Award (which, unlike the more revered Booker,
proudly honors what’s popular, not just literary) was announced
yesterday, and J K Rowling was noticeably absent. "The judges
have thought the almost unthinkable by overlooking J K Rowling,
author of the Harry Potter children's books, while including the
former drug addict and ‘gonzo’ journalist Will Self, who has declared:
‘My books are crap.’" The Telegraph (London) 11/15/00
- GET
TO KNOW OUR AUTHORS: In an attempt to increase traffic to
its site, Barnesandnoble.com introduces a new series of video
author interviews available by streaming media. Publishers benefit
with lots of free promotion. Inside.com
11/15/00
- E-BOOKS: MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS:
Is the electronic book really going to democratize publishing,
as its proponents hope? Or simply flood the market with content,
without a filter for quality or a universal format for downloading
and reading? "Last week's e-Book World Conference showed
an industry riven by as much schizophrenia as the presidential
elections. For now, anyway, the e-book industry is more rumpus
than reality." Village Voice 11/21/00
- OPPRESSION OF EXPRESSION: A group of Chinese poets was arrested
and charged with "illegal assembly" at a literary symposium
on the future of Chinese poetry - the first such event in the
country since exiled writer Gao Xingjian (whose work is banned
in China) won the Nobel Prize for literature last month. China Times (Taiwan) 11/15/00
Tuesday
November 14
- JOYCE
FOR SALE: "The manuscript of a key chapter of James Joyce's
novel Ulysses, expected to fetch up to £1 million ($2.7 million)
at auction next month, reveals how the author agonised over the
epic work." Sydney Morning Herald
(Telegraph) 11/14/00
- HONORING
OURSELVES: What's the point of literary awards? They're such
an exercise in self-pleasuring. "Good evening. We are here to
honour writers who have already been honoured yet must be honoured
and will need honouring again, shortly. We do so because they
are our ghastly, yet glorious, companions from the legion of Toronto
Lit-Elite." Globe and Mail (Toronto)
11/14/00
Monday
November 13
- THE
ERRANT E-MAIL: Canada's Governor General prize for literature
was set to be announced this week. But late last week an e-mail
with the names of the winners mistakenly went out to media outlets,
and reporters being who reporters are... Anyway, here are the
winners. CBC 11/12/00
Sunday
November 12
- UPDIKE
AT 68: John Updike is 68 and contemplating his life's profession.
"There is a dumbing down of fiction, don't you think? In so many
other areas there is dumbing down. People are impatient with any
attempt of the novel to pry apart their expectations or surprise
them, challenge them. Make them look up a word, think over a prejudice.
I think, yes, by and large people read less and maybe they read
less intelligently, because they read less and there are more
alternatives." Baltimore Sun 11/12/00
Friday
November 10
- A
CRY ABOUT BELLOW: James Atlas' new biography of Saul Bellow
has been winning critical praise everywhere. Well, almost everywhere:
"Errors and confusions abound, as do misreadings of passages
from Bellow's correspondence, even while passages from his novels
never receive the benefit of close interpretation or stylistic
commentary. Atlas's characterisations of Bellow are peculiarly
static. From beginning to end he is framed in an unchanging posture,
and defined by a very limited and limiting repertory of psychological
labels and clichés." London Review
of Books 11/00
- WRITING
ABOUT WRITING AIN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE: The modern literary
biography is wrapped in a paradox. "Only famous writers attract
biographies, writers who are famous because their writings are.
But the more space a literary biographer devotes to discussing
an author's writing, the less commercial the biography will seem
to be, to those who decide which books to publish and push. It
looks as though the word is out that readers will happily read
about famous writers as long as they don't have to be troubled
much about what they wrote." London
Review of Books 11/00
- BUT
E-PUBLISHING WAS SUPPOSED TO CHANGE ALL THIS: E-publisher
MightyWords sent notices to the 5000 authors whose work it carries.
Half of them are to be kicked off the site and the other half
will have their royalties reduced. "MightyWords' decision
fits neatly in the trend of downsizing dot-coms. In other words,
e-business stinks as usual. But it's significant in the world
of bookselling, where self-published authors are getting a wake-up
call. If they didn't realize it already, they're largely out there
on their own." Wired 11/10/00
- PUBLISHER'S
CLEARING HOUSE: Publisher Random House says it will now share
all revenue from e-books 50-50 with authors. Some predict this
may become the industry standard. Other e-publishers are not so
sure: ''They've laid tracks that are very unwise. I think it's
a huge mistake on their part.'' Inside.com
11/10/00
Thursday
November 9
- MARGARET
ATWOOD ON HER BOOKER WIN: "You know when you get to a certain
age and stage, you do feel you go through a period where you're
unawardable, just as politicians go through a period when they're
unelectable," Atwood said in an interview yesterday, the day after
being awarded the Booker Prize for her 10th novel, The Blind Assassin.
"I think they're relieved they did this before I toppled into
the grave." Globe and Mail (Toronto)
11/09/00
Wednesday
November 8
- MARGARET ATWOOD WINS BOOKER PRIZE for her tenth novel, "The Blind
Assassin." Toronto’s Atwood had been shortlisted for the
award three times previously. BBC 11/07/00
- CHOOSING
THE WINNER: The decision was not unanimous, but was a
'consensus' among the judges. New York Times 11/08/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
- ATWOOD
ON THE BETTING THAT SURROUNDS THE BOOKER: This is a betting
country and this prize really took off when some genius put
together the three words: Booker, book and bookie. I think
there's something deeply whimsical and appealing about the
fact that the bookies get together and read all of the books;
I mean, I love to think of them reading away, and then I love
to think of them making the odds." National
Post (Canada) 11/08/00
- NY TIMES REVIEW OF "BLIND ASSASSIN"
Tuesday
November 7
- BOOKER
FAILS TO EXCITE: Tonight the Booker Prize for literature is
announced. "Baffled by such a mixed bag, Britain has shown
less Booker spirit than usual this year. The shortlisted novels
have failed to take over the nation's bookshops, and sales are
modest. "The list is slightly odd, and people aren't quite sure
what to make of it." National Post
(Canada) 11/07/00
- SETTING
STANDARDS: Everyone agrees that e-books are the road to the
future. But "the industry is nowhere near establishing a
common e-book format that will permit consumers to read any e-book
on whatever device they happen to own." Until that happens,
it's likely to be rocky time for e-publishing. Publishers
Weekly 11/07/00
- A
NEW MEDIA FIGURE OF STAGGERING PROPORTIONS: Dave Eggers has
become a hero of the New Media, he and his friends publishing
books and the literary magazine McSweeney's pretty much on their
own terms. Is this how the New Media world was supposed to happen
or is Eggers a passing flash? New
York Magazine 11/07/00
Monday
November 6
- PARSE
THIS: A Ph.D student from the UK goes to Yale for courses
in literary criticism and reports from the front lines: "I
am struck by the thought that literary criticism - at least as
it is practised here - is a hoax. And the universities that offer
it, and the professors who in America earn large salaries teaching
it, are fraudulent, wittingly or not." New
Statesman 11/06/00
- A
TURNING TIED: Last week's Giller Prize in Canada ended up
in a tie between "Mercy Among the Children" by David
Adams Richards and "Anil's Ghost" by Michael Ondaatje.
"Nobody likes a tie, except the co-winners; half a prize
has got to be better than no prize at all. For the rest of us
though, a tie is unsettling. Why can't the judges make up their
minds? Are they cowards, in thrall to their friends, or just plain
lazy?" The Globe and Mail 11/06/00
- THE
RACE FOR THE BOOKER: The Booker Prize for literature is to
be announced Tuesday night. "London bookmaker Ladbroke's
gives the shortest odds (11 to 8) on Margaret Atwood's 'The Blind
Assassin' getting the £21,000 prize." Toronto
Star 11/06/00
Sunday
November 5
- HISTORY
YOU CAN HOLD IN YOUR HANDS: As libraries become more and more
electronic, they've been dumping some of their paper archives.
"When the British Library decided to dump a historic archive
of American newspapers, the best-selling novelist Nicholson Baker
was so horrified he decided to buy it for himself. He is now engaged
in a one-man campaign to rescue 'the raw store of history' that
microfilm and the internet promise to destroy." The
Telegraph (London) 11/04/00
Friday
Novermber 3
- THE
RIPPLES OF BIGNESS: Think consolidation of the publishing
industry won't affect what you read? "Science and technical
journals have become a case study in the publishing industry's
growing consolidation. Until the 1960's, scores of smaller companies
and nonprofit organizations published the vast majority of journals.
Since then, a handful of companies led by Reed Elsevier have acquired
the bulk of them and have aggressively raised subscription prices.
The average price of a subscription to a scholarly journal has
more than tripled in the last 14 years. To keep up, libraries
now buy fewer new books than they did a decade ago, diminishing
the market for books of all kinds and frustrating professors desperate
to publish." New York Times 11/03/00
(one-time registration required for entry)
- THE
NEW READING: "Hypertext literature is a wonderful subject
for discourse, theory, and intellectual hobnobbing; but in the
final analysis, there's really not that much to it. Insofar as
hypertext binds the Web together, it's wonderful. Insofar as hypertext
allows multimedia Web art to function, it's great glue. Insofar
as hypertext comprises a new literary genre, it's about as riveting
as those "write your own story" books that came out when I was
a kid. *spark-online 11/00
- GILLER
WINNERS: For the first time, Canada's Giller prize has been
awarded to two writers - "David Adams Richards and Michael
Ondaatje both won the $25,000 Giller Prize. The judges, Margaret
Atwood, Jane Urquhart and Alistair MacLeod, all senior deans of
Canadian literature, huddled for just a few hours before announcing
their decision." Ottawa Citizen
11/03/00
Thursday
November 2
- THE 'OTHER'
ONLINE PUBLISHING: Negotiating book rights is "a time- and
labor-consuming, long winded, costly and inefficient business;
heavy manuscripts have to be expensively shipped often over long
distances, and there is a huge amount of copying, and faxing and
phoning at international rates, with often only a comparatively
small reward. Why not, indeed, work it all out online: post catalogues,
properties, partial manuscripts on the Web, e-mail pitch letters
and offers, conduct auctions? Publishers
Weekly 10/30/00
Wednesday
November 1
- JUST THE RIGHT SIZE: Novellas are this fall’s literary
sensation, with one after another short work of fiction hitting
the bookshelves. An easy way out for stymied writers? A concession
to readers’ dwindling attention spans? "When push comes to
shove, perhaps the word represents a state of mind rather than
a specific number of pages. There is something dangerous about
the narrative choices the writer takes. If Steve Martin's novella
had been a page longer, it would have been mawkish; a page shorter,
dismissible." Village Voice 11/07/00
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