That Perfect Little Magazine Little literary magazines have small readerships - sometimes just a few thousand. But there's freedom as a writer working for a small publication that cares only for an aesthetic... New York Sun 05/31/05

The New Texas Poet Laureate Alan Birkelbach has been appointed Texas' new poet laureate. He's "a Plano computer analyst whose co-workers didn't even know he wrote poetry." Dallas morning News 05/29/05

Missed In Translation Why is so little literature translated into English these days? “Readers looking for books in translation are now likely to find, at best, a few really big names (Eco, Allende, etc.) and then a lot of obscure stuff, which reinforces the idea of translated-works-as-exotic: sort of like subtitled art-house films, a boutique industry attracting a small, steady audience, but one that finds it hard to attract the average consumer." New York Sun 05/29/05

All About Niches It's all about niche publishing these days. "Even the niches have niches. Chick lit breaks down into Latina chick lit, African-American chick lit, older woman chick lit, dick lit—which may be written by men, but is still geared towards women—and now fat-girl chick lit. If you have weight issues, get ready for books to regurgitate your dieting struggles, because the weight loss memoir, all of them written by young women, is very hot right now. It’s also a good time to be a knitter, with books on how to knit, how to form knitting groups, chick lit about friends who knit, even a spiritual guide with knitting metaphors. Any day now, the book about knitting for women who are overweight will hit the market. I’m sure of it." The Book Standard 05/26/05

Digital Anxiety - Publishers Worry About Google Project Publishers are uneasy over Google's plan to digitize books. In a May 20 letter, the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) blasts Google's so-called Print for Libraries program for posing a risk of "systematic infringement of copyright on a massive scale." BusinessWeek 05/23/05

Are Cheap Supermarket Books Killing Literary Quality? "Cheap books are apparently the spiritual equivalent of universal suffrage, and by offering works by Dan Brown, Patricia Cornwell and Tony Parsons for a pound or two below the prices levied by traditional outlets, Tesco and its friends are "democratising" the book trade. Moving on to the wider implications of our supposedly democratised culture, as a general rule whenever a participant is offered more "choices", whether in the number of book outlets, TV channels or radio stations, the end result will be to depress the overall quality of the available material." The Guardian (UK) 05/24/05

Record Number Of Books In 2004 "A study announced Tuesday estimates that a record 195,000 new works came out in 2004, a 14 percent jump over the previous year and 72 percent higher than in 1995." But a previous study says that while more titles are being published, fewer books are actually being sold... Yahoo! (AP) 05/24/05

Penguin Birthday Marred By Race Charges Penguin is celebrating 70 years in publishing. "To celebrate the birthday, Penguin is issuing 70 new short titles, or Pocket Penguins, drawn from its back catalogue or new work. Now, unexpectedly, the titles have provoked outrage and surprise because they include work by only two authors who are not white." The Guardian (UK) 05/23/05

Brit Library Borrowing Declines (Again) Library use is in decline for British public libraries. "Book borrowing fell by a further 5% last year, maintaining a disturbing 20-year trend, official figures showed yesterday. But for the first time in their long decline there was hard evidence that libraries are winning back popularity with the public. An extra 4% of people walked through their doors in 2003-04, giving them a total of 337 million visits." The Guardian (UK) 05/22/05

Tabloids Beat Libraries For Brits Where do Britons get their information? Not generally from libraries. It's tabloids. Why? A new study says that "this is because the sources the public trusts most, notably public libraries, are closed when it most needs them. The study follows official figures showing that only a tiny number of libraries and other archives are open as long as shops." The Guardian (UK) 05/22/05

Unpublished Jack Karouac Discovered "Beat Generation, written in the autumn of 1957, the same year as the publication of Kerouac's breakthrough work On the Road, was unearthed in a New Jersey warehouse six months ago. An excerpt will appear in the July issue of Best Life magazine. The play recounts a day in the life of the hard-drinking, drug-fuelled life of Jack Duluoz, Kerouac's alter-ego." The Guardian (UK) 04/22/05

The Soldier-Writer Under an NEA program, US soldiers are learnign to write. "Is there any evidence that seeing a war first-hand will forge a better writer? Is there a correlation between what a marine experiences and what he or she writes, between seeing and doing, M-16 and pencil? Most of the writers I spoke to admitted that war had provided them with swathes of material, since, to paraphrase Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski, it is life lived at maximum tension. But this reality doesn’t necessarily translate into literature." Financial Times 05/20/05

Somewhere Between STory And Novel Is it a novel? Is it a collection of short stories? "Genres don't come into existence every day, but in the past few years a good number of writers have started exploring the previously blank territory that lies between the collection of short stories and the novel proper. It starts to look like a new form altogether." The Telegraph (UK) 05/17/05

Holmes - The Case Of The Enduring Detective Sherlock Holmes has had one of the most enduring afterlifes in all of literature. "Holmes has become a one-man entertainment complex. He has been the subject of at least 100 movies and nearly as many plays and radio dramas, and he has inspired an entire library's worth of books. There have been countless sequels and knockoffs..." So why does Holmes continue to fascinate us? The New York Times 05/20/05

A Matter Of Reputations (How Does It Work?) "No problem in literature, perhaps, is less instantly soluble than the question of reputations: the bewildering process by which, in the years after their deaths, one writer's stock soars while another's sinks into bankruptcy. The only real judge of a book, Martin Amis once remarked, is posterity." The Guardian (UK) 05/19/05

What's Wrong With The Modern Book Review "Book reviews should inspire reading. They should excite, stimulate, agitate and empower readers to discover new books and avoid bad ones. They should turn you on to undiscovered authors, prompt you into finally reading the writer you have never quite got round to, and make you wonder at the world of delights that remain unread. But let's be honest. They don't, do they?" The Bookseller 05/13/05

What We Really Want In Books - Get Happy! Our hunger for happiness books is virtually unslakable. "It seems to be an American phenomenon. We buy can-do books that teach us to fix our problems. It's like having your own personal life coach, and it's less expensive than seeing a shrink." Philadelphia Inquirer 05/19/05

Penguin At 70 Penguin Paberbacks are 70 years old this year. "Nowadays, there are some 5,000 different titles in print at any time, translated into up to 62 languages. But what makes Penguin one of the world's most enduring publishers?" BBC 05/19/05

Ex-Paris Review Editor Has New Publication Brigid Hughes, George Plimpton's successor at The Paris Review, who was forced out of the publication earlier this year, has a new project - editor of "A Public Space". The new publication's "focus will be on two art forms no longer in fashion — fiction and poetry. Magazines such as Collier's and The Atlantic Monthly once served as starting points and sustainers for poets and fiction writers, from Wallace Stevens to F. Scott Fitzgerald, but few major publications highlight such work anymore. Hughes' contract was not renewed at The Paris Review earlier this year, amid reports that the board of directors wanted more nonfiction and a more commercial approach." Yahoo! (AP) 05/18/05

Why Academic Historians Need To learn How To Write Better A new David McCullough history of the American revolution is due out, and academic historians are stewing. "Instead of grumbling over the public's middlebrow book buying tastes, the best thing academic historians can do is to try to offer them something better. A number of our own practices lead us away from engaging the public as we should. I've seen students entering graduate school aspiring to write like Arthur Schlesinger, only to be shunted into producing pinched, monographic studies. I've seen conferences full of brilliant minds unable to find an interesting presentation to attend that isn't literally read off the page in a soporific drone. We write too much for each other—and, as we do, a public hungry for good history walks into Barnes & Noble and gets handed vapid mythmaking that uninformed critics ratify as "magisterial" or "definitive." Slate 05/17/05

Massive New History Of 20th Century Lit A "Waste Of Wood Pulp" The new Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century English Literature weighs in at nearly 900 pages (and costs $160). This self-described “authoritative narrative” consists of forty-four long essays by academics renowned (Ronald Bush, e.g.) and obscure (most of the rest). How many trees do you suppose perished in order to bring this (according to the flap copy) “major event for anyone concerned with twentieth century literature” into being? It must be said that the index is only the beginning of what is wrong with this waste of wood pulp." New Criterion 05/05

Uncovering East Germany's Vanished Literature "Just the name 'subversive literature' has a provocative, candle-under-the-bedcovers feel. In communist East Germany -- perhaps the most spied-on nation in history -- however, almost everything fell under that dicey rubric. Poetry about freedom? Anti-utopian sci-fi? Political satire? All blacklisted. Now, 16 years after the Soviet puppet state crumbled, two former citizens have unearthed the vanished nation's hidden literature and -- adamant that it no longer be submerged in anonymity -- are pushing to get it published." Der Spiegel (Germany) 05/16/05

Where Goes The Novel Post-modernism is over. But where does the novel as a form go from here? "A novelist has to find artistic means to slow down time (Proust), to get inside a single consciousness (David Foster Wallace), and to express thought without language breaking down completely (Joyce). So the novelist still has a wide open field here. But there are so many obstacles to creating this work of art that it's (oh, hell) mind–boggling (sorry). The novelist must make an astonishing number of judgments before a single word is written, and any of these judgments can threaten to undermine the project." MobyLives 05/16/05

Report: More Books, Fewer Buyers Too many books are being published, even as sales are declining. "The number of books sold dropped by nearly 44 million between 2003 and 2004, even as the annual number of books published approaches 175,000. The Book Industry Study Group, a nonprofit research organization, reported estimated sales of 2.295 billion books in 2004, compared to an estimated 2.339 billion the previous year. Higher prices enabled net revenues to increase 2.8 percent, to $28.6 billion, but also drove many readers, especially students, to buy used books." Yahoo! (AP) 05/16/05

The Website That's Shaking Up The Poetry World "Alan Cordle created Foetry in April 2004 after years of watching his wife, Kathleen Halme, enter poetry contests and becoming increasingly convinced that they weren't fair. At first, it was just Mr. Cordle and his computer. But the site gained momentum and soon it was attracting hundreds of visitors each day, many of whom also believed that something was rotten about these contests. They gossiped and gathered evidence." Chronicle of Higher Education 05/20/05

The Cranky Font "Typography, it turns out, is not always such dumb fun. Graphic designers, who often have fonts to sell, can be cranky about where their p's and q's come from, and they seem to be getting crankier by the minute. Maybe it's because there is less and less demand for original typefaces; free fonts are easy to come by on the Web." The New York Times 05/16/05

Looking In On Captive Writers Three writers are spending a month locked up together while they write. "Architects and designers created three studio "pods" for the writers to live and work in - an indoor "treehouse" with grass on the roof, a high-tech Japanese-style angular box with rice-paper walls, and an open-plan space made of boxes and movable walls that can be hoisted with ropes and pulleys. The writers are allowed to use a roof terrace and other areas within the gallery for 90 minutes a day - they must clock out on time cards. There are no locks on the doors, but they are encouraged not to leave the building." Philadelphia Inquirer (Reuters) 05/15/05

Libraries Without Books The University of Texas is moving out all of its books, replacing them with an "electronic learning center". "Such digital learning laboratories, staffed with Internet-expert librarians, teachers and technicians, have been advancing on traditional college libraries since appearing at the University of Southern California in 1994. As more texts become accessible online, libraries have been moving lesser-used materials to storage. But experts said it was symbolic for a top educational institution like Texas to empty a library of books." The New York Times 05/14/05

Clearing The Bases Baseball writing is far more than a literary niche - more like a self-contained genre populated by both specialists and one-time visitors, all determined to capture the simple beauty of America's game on paper. Of course, it's not as easy as that, as scores of mediocre baseball tomes have proven over the decades. Not everyone can be Ring Lardner, or even W.P. Kinsella, but that's never stopped anyone (no, seriously, anyone) with a ball cap and a pen from trying. Denver Post 05/15/05

Plimpton's Paris Moves Downtown The Paris Review, George Plimpton's little-read but much-admired literary journal, hasn't actually been based in Paris for decades. In fact, the small but devoted staff of the Review did their work in a small Manhattan office just one floor beneath Plimpton's East Side apartment. But following Plimpton's death last year, the editors found it inconceivable to continue putting out the magazine from a now-Plimptonless office, and chose to move again. No, they're not headed back to Paris - lower Manhattan's TriBeCa neighborhood will have to do. The New York Times 05/14/05

Wasserman's LA Times Legacy The controversial Steve Wassserman is leaving as editor of the LA Times Book Review. "Steve hit his stride about 1998, and for a few years there, he put out some truly great sections. More provocative than speculating about whether he ultimately jumped or was pushed might now be to start a conversation about the precarious ledge he leaves behind." San Franciaco Chronicle 05/13/05

Young Named California Poet Laureate California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has named screenwriter/novelist Al Young as the state's new poet laureate. "Young, 65, is a two-time recipient of Pushcart Prize for poetry - a national small press award - and a winner of the PEN/Library of Congress Award for short fiction. He has also taught creative writing at Stanford, the University of California at Santa Cruz and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He has also written film scripts for Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor." San Jose Mercury-News 05/12/05

Study: Writers Hit Their Peak At 50 A study has pinpointed the average writer's peak. "The average age of writers who topped the hardback fiction section of the New York Times Bestseller List from 1955-2004 was 50.5 years. Of the 350 authors who saw their novels reach the number one spot over the past 50 years, Francoise Sagan was the youngest with Bonjour Tristesse, published at the age of 19 in 1955. By comparison, Agatha Christie was the oldest author to top the list, with her novel Sleeping Murder, published shortly after her death at the age of 85." BBC 05/12/05

The Googlization Of Books - Europe's Not Happy Why are the French so ticked off that Google plans to digitize libraries? "To some, the outcry smacked of just another case of misplaced Gallic pride; after all, Google plans to include French and other non-English books in its literary database. But a rapid response from bureaucrats in The Hague has sent a signal that the whole continent now sees Google as a threat. Last week, four months after Google's announcement, the European Commission, which represents 25 countries, pledged 96 million euros to digitize all of the books from more than 20 of Europe's most pre-eminent libraries before America gets there first." Wired 05/11/05

Oklahoma Legislature Votes To Move "Gay" Books To Adult Library Section Oklahoma's House of Representatives has passed a "nonbinding resolution calling for gay-themed children's books and other age-inappropriate material to be moved to the adult section of public libraries." The measure was introduced "after complaints from the parents of a 6-year-old who had checked out "King and King," a book about two young princes who fall in love, from a library in the Oklahoma City suburb of Bethany." Reuters 05/11/05

The Lexicographer's Columbus "This year marks the two hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of Samuel Johnson's magnificent Dictionary of the English Language, the most ambitious and idiosyncratic single-person etymological effort ever attempted. Accolades have accumulated over its reigning period of influence. Unabashedly entertaining it is, indeed. The current generation of professional lexicographers is taught to dissect words in a vacuum, to trace their etymological history with Protestant precision. Doctor Johnson is their Columbus. He is also an anti-model." The New Republic 05/10/05

Encyclopedias - "Second-Class Literature' "Encyclopedia entries are among the lowest form of secondary literature. It might be okay to “look something up” in an encyclopedia or some other reference volume. But read them? For pleasure? The implication that you spend much time doing so would be close to an insult — a kind of academic lese majesty." InsideHigherEd 05/10/05

This Year's PEN Winners This year's PEN award winners have been announced. Winners include Sam Harris' "The End of Faith," for best nonfiction debut, and "Forms of Gone," by Yerra Sugarman, for best poetry. Yahoo! (AP) 05/09/05

Some Poetic Advice From Walt Whitman An interview with the poet has been found in which Whitman gives aspiring poets some advice: "First, don't write poetry; second ditto; third ditto. You may be surprised to hear me say so, but there is no particular need of poetic expression. We are utilitarian, and the current cannot be stopped." CBC 05/09/05

From A Room Descends A Novel? In A Month? This week, three novelists will seal themselves in a small room and write for a month. "The goal is for each to complete a novel by June 4. The purpose is to consider the private and public aspects of writing. No cameras will record this voyeuristic experiment, though visitors can peep occasionally (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.; and Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m). The potential for public humiliation comes not from the perils of constant surveillance, but from the more familiar writers' problem of failing to meet a deadline. Make that deadlines. They will give weekly readings of their works in progress." The New York Times 05/09/05

Are Google's Digitization Plans A Threat To World Culture? Google's plans to digitize books from important libraries has many cheering. But in some European countries, there are big concerns. "For Europeans, the fear is that the continent's contribution to the pillars of recorded knowledge will be crushed by the profit-oriented California company — and may end up presenting a U.S.-centric version of the world's literary legacy." The Globe & Mail (AP) 05/08/05

Another Death-Of-Publishing Scenario "Both Amazon and Google are negotiating with American publishers to develop 'search within the book' programmes. Google already has a deal with several top libraries from around the world, including the Bodleian, to digitise out of copyright texts. Inevitably, some publishers and the Society of Authors are getting quite excited about this innovation." But one publisher says " 'it may result in no sales', the publishing equivalent of Armageddon. Collaborate with this 'Napsterisation' process, he told the Publishers Association, and the book industry risked 'undermining the cultural and intellectual tradition of the past 600 years'."
The Observer (UK) 05/08/05

Cuban Librarians Convicted Of "Dangerousness" Sensitive to growing international concern over reports of human rights violations, in late April the government of President Fidel Castro conducted a secret trial of two Cuban librarians, Elio Enrique Chávez and Luis Elio de la Paz, and sentenced them to prison on a charge of "dangerousness." Friends of Cuban Librarians 05/06/05

New OED Debuts The New Oxford American Dictionary publishes a new edition electronically (and on paper too). "Of the new dictionary's more than a quarter million entries, about 2,000 were added since the first edition came out in 2001. Words that gained currency in American English over the last four years, and gained entry in NOAD, include "bridezilla" ("an overzealous bride-to-be who acts irrationally or causes offense") and "speed dating" ("a social activity in which equal complements of potential partners spend a few minutes in short interviews with all other participants in order to determine whether there is interest")." Chicago Tribune 05/05/05

The Booker's New Prize For Translators Organizers of the Booker Prize have announced a new award for translators. "The £15,000 honour has been created to recognise the role translators play in bringing fiction to a world audience. The author of a work translated into English will collect the new award, and decide who should win if several people were involved in the translation." BBC 05/06/05

Linguistically Improbable Marketing Techniques Statistically Improbable Phrases: the term sounds like a highfalutin' way of describing nonsense prose, but in reality, it's an innovative new feature of Amazon.com's search utility. The SIP utility "compares the text of hundreds of thousands of books to reveal an author's signature constructions," and is only one of several new options available for prejudging literature. "Customers can also see how complicated the writing is (yes, post-structuralist Michel Foucault's prose is foggier than Immanuel Kant's), and how much education you need to understand a book. (To understand French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu, you'll need a second Ph.D.)" Wired 05/05/05

Books For "Women Over 45"? How Insulting! "Transita, which plans to publish two paperbacks a month aimed at its target readership, declares itself to be the first publisher devoted to producing fiction for women aged over 45 and over. According to its founder and director, Nikki Read, the idea is to give women of this age-group storylines they can relate to and fictional characters with whom they can empathise. But Read appears to have opened up a veritable Pandora's box, with critics of the imprint claiming that it is patronising to define women readers in this way." The Guardian (UK) 05/03/05

Wasserman Quits LA Times Book Review Steve Wasserman has resigned as editor of the LA Times Book Review. "Wasserman has been instrumental in building the prestige of the Times Book Prizes and Festival of Books, and at last month's festival he was treated by many visiting authors and publishing industry figures as something of a celebrity. At USC, he is co-founder of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, which gathers local intellectuals, literati and journalists twice each month for discussions." LA Observed 05/03/05

Buy My Book At The Safeway Larry Baker couldn't get a publisher interested in his book. Then, when he couldn't get the local book chains in Iowa to give him shelf space, he struck on an inspired idea - sell it in the grocery store, where it sells beyond all expectations... MobyLives 05/03/05

We Know What You Read Last Summer "With the approaching introduction of a new, potentially revolutionary sales-tracking system, Canada's publishers, retailers and the media will know for certain, and faster, which books Canadians are actually reading. BookNet Canada, a not-for-profit organization, hopes to launch its BNC Sales Data service in June, in time for the annual publishing industry fair, Book Expo Canada. The new system will collect sales information from retailers across the country and produce weekly reports -- the ultimate bestseller list." Canada is a bit behind the curve on such tracking devices, being the last major English-language market without a nationwide tracking system. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/02/05

Canada, In Its Own Words Canada is justly proud of its literary heritage, which, perhaps more than any other part of the country's arts scene, has come to define its land and people internationally. A new CBC Radio series is devoted to examining how Canadians from the aboriginal population to Quebec's Francophone majority have told their stories to the world. "The challenge of explaining Canada to itself is a daunting intellectual and logistical enterprise." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/02/05

Acclaiming The Hype The blurb-o-sphere has inflated the hyping of books (is that even a sentence?). "Acclaimed", in this fulsome lingo of book ads and catalogs, now means merely "the author received at least one good review." Widely acclaimed means "two or more, plus a cable TV plug." Critically acclaimed means "it was decently reviewed in a specialized publication but didn't sell." International Herald Tribune 05/01/05

The Discount-Airline Of Publishing The book publisher MacMillan has launched a new discount series. The deal is spartan for writers: "If it decides to accept a novel for the list, terms are unnegotiable; no advance will be paid, though writers will receive 20% of royalties from sales. Macmillan will copy edit books, but if manuscripts need more detailed work, it will suggest that writers employ freelance editors. According to notes sent to authors, such editors "will charge realistic fees and this will not in itself guarantee publication". The Guardian (UK) 04/30/05

Can Picture Books Teach Children To Read? "Graphic novels for young adult readers have been popular for many years, but recently have grown from Spiderman and Superman into a global phenomenon of much more artistic and sophisticated products. Publishers have jumped on the lucrative bandwagon, as sales have mushroomed to meet the demand. It's no surprise that kids who have grown up with a visual connection -- TV, movies, videos and video games -- also love graphic novels. Many young adult readers, in fact, prefer graphic novels to conventional books. Today all varieties of graphic books are available -- original stories, biographies, and even the classics." Chicago Sun-Times 05/01/05

Is Literature The Unappreciated Stepchild Of The Arts? Last week in Edmonton, the Grant MacEwan Author's Award was handed out as part of the grand arts festival known as Alberta Scene. But those in attendance could be forgiven for having missed the awards ceremony, competing as it was with an orchestra, a blues show, a cowboy music performance, and several other distractions. It does seem to be a truism that writing is the branch of the arts least likely to draw a crowd, and "every serious writer knows what it's like to read her words to an organizer, her smiling husband, that lost hobo with a crinkly Safeway bag and the other bestselling author on the bill." Edmonton Journal 05/01/05

Seeking The 'Classic' Holmes According to everything we know of the world's most famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes died at the Reichenbach Falls in a desperate struggle with his nemesis, Professor Moriarty. But just as Arthur Conan Doyle felt compelled to resurrect his creation several years after killing him off, so authors postdating Doyle have found Holmes to be an irresistable character for their own work. Why the Holmes obsession? The simple answer is that we keep buying the new stories, and the latest writer to step into the post-Doyle fray, mystery writer Chris Carr, can actually boast of being officially sanctioned by the estate of Holmes's creator, and says that he is determined to return the detective to the world that Doyle created for him. Toronto Star 04/30/05

Who Wants A Free Comic Book? It may seem unbelievable to those of a certain age, but comic books are not terribly popular with today's youth. Still, comics are a $500 million a year industry, with some savvy marketers behind them, and this coming weekend, "for the fourth year in a row, stores across the United States, England, France and other countries will be giving away 2 million comic books" in an effort to get more of us hooked on the increasingly diverse genre. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 04/30/05

Poetry On Demand, Then & Now Remember Dial-A-Poem? That wonderful little phone number with a New York area code that you could call at any time of day and hear rants, songs, and straight poetry from some of the biggest names of the era didn't last too long (it was active, on and off, from 1969 to 1971,) but it lingers in the collective memory of the '60s generation like so many other icons of the time. Now, Dial-A-Poem has been reborn as a web site, archiving all the old content from the phone service, as well as bonus material that never made it on the line. The New York Times 04/30/05