A culturally and politically monotone graduate class, on board with just about every woke nostrum going, not only dominates publishing houses’ workforce – it is now trying to dominate publishers’ output, too. - spiked
Through the centuries, the complexity of classical Chinese characters functioned as a powerful class barrier, since mastering reading and writing took so much work. Attempts to simplify it go back to the Ming Dynasty, but those efforts got serious, and contentious, throughout the 20th century. - The New Yorker
Why did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sign a pirate edition of “The Sign of the Four,” the second of the four Sherlock Holmes novels? Conan Doyle hated pirate editions. He was as famous for denouncing pirate publishers. - The New York Times
Raven Leilani, author of Luster: "I knew I was going to write about Edie’s experience in the middle of this open relationship, but the book kept changing as I was writing." - The Guardian (UK)
Can this last? "For the first time in almost a decade, more than 1,000 indies are open for business: it is a sector thriving against the odds." - The Guardian (UK)
"Bookcore is an amalgamation of the last five years of trends: normcore, gorpcore, dadcore, vintage, 1990s sportswear, American trad, Westernwear, Native American jewelry, pleats, dad caps, wide-legged trousers, oversized eyewear, Balmacaans, leather blazers, Patagonia, chunky sneakers, intentionally ugly shoes, etc." - LitHub
Some colorful facts surrounding one of history's most consequential translations: Luther wrote it while a fugitive; some first editions included woodcuts by Lucas Cranach; in the room where it was written there's a stain on the wall because Luther allegedly threw his inkwell at the Devil. - Deutsche Welle
Travel sections in bookshops have been reduced to “three feet of guidebooks and celebrity jaunts”. Meanwhile, travel books struggle to make the literary review sections of papers. - The Critic
"If the only reason we disapprove of something people are saying 'these days' is that we just find it off-putting, then we should consider a test: Could we defend our disapproval 100 years from now, to people who never knew an English without it?" - The New York Times
“They didn’t feel they were the right house to do this book right now. I don’t think they have any interest in trying to cancel Norman Mailer. You can’t cancel Norman Mailer.” - The Guardian
For five years, someone has been impersonating various publishing industry figures (dozens of them) in order to obtain not-yet-published manuscripts — which were never posted online or held for ransom, baffling people in the field. The suspect is Filippo Bernardini, a young employee of Simon & Schuster. - Vulture
A book nowadays is likely to have left its author’s computer to become a bunch of digital assets in Adobe InDesign. These digital assets are then published to e-book formats and onto paper in a globe-spanning process that might involve a specialized logistics firm, designer, and distributor. - PublicBooks
"The Objective editor Gabe Schneider talked to Whetstone founder Stephen Satterfield about U.S. food media, what values and frameworks define Satterfield and Whetstone's writing, and what it meant to be the only Black-owned food media company in print." - Nieman Lab
Mailer's longtime publisher, Random House denies that it has dropped his work entirely (it continues to maintain his backlist), but passed the planned Mailer centennial collection to Skyhorse Publishing, which has picked up titles by Woody Allen, Blake Bailey, and Garrison Keillor abandoned by major houses. - AP
He had a difficult personality, an unseemly personal life, and a late-life plunge in the quality of his work, writes editor Robert Gottlieb, but at his best — the 1920s novels that earned him a Nobel Prize — he captured what made the U.S. tick. - The New York Times
