Books as commodity

"The Great Gatsby" sells 500,000 copies a year. Good art and good business. In the future, will there still be room for books that might not make money in the short term? The new ecosystem is a boon to many, but we shouldn't pretend that it doesn't come with costs." (source infra)

Books as commodity
Chicago Tribune
....These trends increase the commoditization of books, and one book becomes as useful as the next in generating a fee-gathering download. The "best" books are the ones that sell the most. We know that high sales and quality do not necessarily intersect. While I accept that the exchange of money for product makes books a kind of commodity, I also believe they are something more meaningful. Books are a repository of our culture. They hold meaning and importance greater than their utility to extract money from consumers. For more than a century, the market inefficiencies of traditional publishing protected "literature" from commerce. Publishers were literally family-owned businesses that viewed publishing good books as a responsibility, which led them to subsidize and produce books that otherwise might never have existed. Newspapers used to run under this model as well. .." (read more at link above)

Witty book reveals pitfalls of contemporary dating
StandardNet
Adelle Waldman first got serious about writing after she dropped out of Brown University for a year and became a waitress at an Arizona sports bar. To pass the ..

StandardNet

Book review | 'Farmacology: What Innovative Family Farming Can ...
The Courier-Journal
Book review | 'Farmacology: What Innovative Family Farming Can Teach Us About Health and Healing'... 
The Atlantic Wire
Lance Armstrong's latest legal headache centers around two autobiographical books he published in the early 2000s, It's Not About the Bike and Every Second ...See all stories on this topic »

The Atlantic Wire

more book news below



Amazon Books with Borders

Students: Caveat Emptor! --
Books With Borders
Inside Higher Ed
Students who rent textbooks through Amazon.com’s Warehouse Deals, Inc. may be unknowingly agreeing to an unusual condition: They are not permitted to cross state borders with their books. According to the Textbook Rental Terms and Conditions page on Amazon.com, when renting through Warehouse Deals, which is an Amazon subsidiary, “You may not move the textbook out of the state to which it was originally shipped. If you wish to move the textbook out of that state, you must first purchase the textbook.”
Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/16/amazon-restricts-students-bringing-certain-textbook-rentals-across-state-lines#ixzz2cN9az3La

Book News: Handwriting Offers Clues In Shakespeare Debate
Capital Public Radio News
The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly. Scholars have speculated for centuries that parts of Thomas Kyd's play The ...
Book Review: Bethenny Frankel helps women be their best in ...
Greenfield Daily Reporter
Book Review: Bethenny Frankel helps women be their best in 'Skinnygirl ... This book cover image released by Touchstone shows "Skinnygirl Solutions: Your ...

Book News: English Translation Of New Murakami Novel Expected ...
Vermont Public Radio
The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly. The English translation of Japanese writer Haruki Murakami's newest book ...

Book News: Slam Poet's 'OCD' Love Poem Makes Waves
NPR (blog)
Book News: Slam Poet's 'OCD' Love Poem Makes Waves. by Annalisa ... The daily lowdown onbooks, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

more book news below



Bezos, Books, Now Newspapers

Bezos's E-Book Overhaul Offers Blueprint for Newspaper Foray
Businessweek
Jeff Bezos has already transformed one traditional print business -- books -- into ... “He's managed to get e-book pricing pretty close to print pricing,” said Kurnos.

Book offers rare glimpse of male body dysmorphia
Philly.com
This book cover image released by NetMinds shows "Shattered Image: My Triumph Over Body Dysmorphic Disorder," by Brian Cuban. Cuban, brother of Dallas ...

Philly.com

'The Measures Between Us' by Ethan Hauser
Boston Globe
The Old School masters of suburban fiction, including John Cheever, John Updike, and John Irving, fixed many of their bleak tales along the Northeast corridor, ...

Michelle Markel Shares Biography Picture Book Writing Advice ...
Jason Boog
GalleyCat prowled the halls of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators ... During a special workshop, award winning kid's author Michelle Markel ...
GalleyCat 
Morning Joe staff
The Washington Post's Dan Balz joins Morning Joe to discuss his new book "Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America.
MSNBC

New Books by Members | The Authors Guild
Nancy Tafuri: The Big Storm: A Very Soggy Counting Book ... Gary Alan Wassner: Gemquest Series Books 1-4: The Twins, The Awakening, The Shards, The ...
The Authors Guild

more book news below



'George Orwell' by Peter Davison

'George Orwell' by Peter Davison
Boston Globe
George Orwell is best known as the author of “Animal Farm'' and “1984.'' That is ... in this book is directed to friends, family members, colleagues, and strangers....

Boston Globe

'Longmire' author enjoys success of books, series
Kansas City Star
Craig Johnson plans to keep writing books and short stories focusing on Sheriff ... "I just really like his company," Johnson said during a recent talk and book ...

Book review: Marisha Pessl focuses on a mysterious moviemaker ...
“Night Film” is a book for obsessives about obsessives. ... The authorfollows her much appreciated novel, “You Before Me,” with the stories of two women ...

New York Daily News

Books provide Guantánamo detainees an 'escape from darkness'
MiamiHerald.com
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Packed with 19,000 books ... Also, four novels by Haruki Murakami, who happens to be the donor's favorite author...

more book news below



The end of books?

Seth's Blog: An end of books: "Books, those bound paper documents, are part of an ecosystem, one that was perfect, and one that is dying, quickly. Ideas aren’t going away soon, and neither are words. But, as the ecosystem dies, not only will the prevailing corporate systems around the paper book wither, but many of the treasured elements of its consumption will disappear as well. THE BOOKSTORE as we know it is doomed, because many of these establishments are going to go from making a little bit of money every day to losing a little bit. And it’s hard to sustain daily losses for long, particularly when you’re poorly capitalized, can’t use the store as a loss leader and see no hope down the road. . . ." (read more at link above)

more book news below

Books on Bikes

'Books On Bikes' Helps Seattle Librarians Pedal To The Masses
NPR
Mills is part of Seattle Public Library's "Books on Bikes" program, which aims to keep ... She says Mills' book station is "like [a] carbon-neutral library on wheels ...

NPR

Book review: Rowling's latest book, 'The Cuckoo's Calling,' is a fun ...
Herald Times Reporter
This book cover image released by Mulholland Books shows 'The Cuckoo's Calling,' by Robert Galbraith, a pseudonym for author J.K. Rowling.

Author Marisha Pessl takes novel approach with new thriller
CBS News
(CBS News) A new book by a rising young author is blurring the line ... best seller, "Special Topics" made the New York Times list of the 10 best books of 2006.

Books to Have and to Hold
New York Times
Amazon reminds me that I've already bought the e-book I'm about to order. In bookstores, I find myself discovering, as if for the first time, books I've already read ...

'Benjamin Britten' by Neil Powell
Boston Globe
On April 29 and 30, 1967, at London's Alexandra Palace, a benefit concert was held for the International Times, an underground newspaper that had been the ...

'Amor and Psycho' by Carolyn Cooke
Boston Globe
Carolyn Cooke, author of “Daughters of the Revolution” and “The Bostons” (winner of the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for fiction), writes stories laced with ...

'Archangel' by Andrea Barrett
Boston Globe
We first meet her in “The Ether of Space,” the second tale in the book. In the story Phoebe struggles to do two things: get over the death of her husband, and ...

more book news below



Book review: Cities Are Good For You

Book review: ‘Cities Are Good For You’ - Books - The Boston Globe: "“It is places like the High Line that allow us to think again about the city and how it can make us happy,” writes Hollis, adding that “the metropolis is perhaps our greatest achievement.” Guiding a general audience from Manhattan to Mumbai and Marseilles, among other places, Hollis does not precisely list why urban life benefits us as much as explore various social and creative possibilities it offers; thus he also emphasizes that in planning cities “it is the people that matter, the way that they are allowed to interact, intermingle, and connect.” As such, we should address “sustainability, trust, and inequality” in urban life, he says, whether tackling housing, traffic, or climate change."

Book Covers: Before and After - Slide Show - NYTimes.com: "Four designers discuss their work on recent book covers: first concepts that didn’t make the final cut, and then the cover as published. Peter Mendelsund on the design for Julio Cortázar’s “Hopscotch” (Pantheon): “I always knew that I’d be unsatisfied with whatever cover I might design for Julio Cortázar’s jazzy, melancholic, metafictional masterpiece ‘Hopscotch’ (which turns 50 this year). The texts you care about the most are the hardest to design covers for — and I’ve loved ‘Hopscotch’ since I was a teenager. . . ."

Publishers object to proposed Apple e-book remedies - latimes.com: ""The provisions do not impose any limitation on Apple's pricing behavior at all; rather, under the guise of punishing Apple, they effectively punish the settling defendants by prohibiting agreements with Apple using an agency model," the publishers' motion stated."

The Art of Worldly Wisdom: The Art of Worldly Wisdom: A Pocket Oracle is a book of three hundred aphorisms for making one’s way in the world and achieving distinction.

more book news below

Books as enemy

Culling overcrowded shelves is never easy.

. . . One Book Out - NYTimes.com: "I’ve decided that books are my enemy, though they used to be my great love. They are taking over. They crowd my dining room, they double up in the bedroom, they make the attic floor sag. We even have a library in the bathroom: shelves and shelves of books where a normal person might have a vanity table or piles of towels. And don’t tell me to use a Kindle. The other day, I finished reading Kafka’s “Castle,” which is more than I can say for Kafka, who didn’t even finish writing it. And unlike other novelists who abandon their books, Kafka not only didn’t complete the thing, he didn’t bother finishing his last sentence. When you’re reading “The Castle” on a Kindle, as I was, and you get to “She spoke with difficulty, it was hard to understand her, but what she said,” and there’s nothing else on your screen, you think there has been an electronic glitch. I need the security of the printed page. . . ."

more book news below

Hemingway, Idaho, wilderness



Hemingway's own private Idaho - video | Travel | theguardian.com: "Adventurer Guy Grieve takes a road trip through Ernest Hemingway's Idaho – where he spent his final years writing, hunting and fishing – and discovers why the American wilderness was so inspirational for the swashbuckling author"...(more at link above)

 more book news below



Artisan food, urban peasants

Artisan food and urban 'peasants': is this more than just a foodie fad? | Life and style | theguardian.com: "In her new book The Modern Peasant: Adventures in City Food, Jojo Tulloh invites readers to look deeper. Her aim is to reveal a city teeming with small-scale food producers bringing ancient rural skills to the urban environment. So, in London, we get artisan bakeries under Hackney railway arches, Rastafarian beekeepers in Wanstead and soya producers trading just off Brick Lane."

more book news below

Adelle Waldman, Love, Actually

Love, Actually: Adelle Waldman's Brilliant Debut : The New Yorker: " . . .The satisfaction of artistic creation, or of any meaningful work that occupies a good share of space in one’s mind, Waldman suggests, is an antidote to romantic travails, a way of mastering them. In writing a character like Nate into being—a character, it should be said, who resembles the protagonists of several novels by Waldman’s male contemporaries—Waldman has done the sad young literary man one better. Hers is the superior novel."

more book news below

Letters of TS Eliot: Volume 4

'The Letters of TS Eliot: Volume 4'
Boston Globe
In this section : Books. Book Review ... Author: Edited by Valerie Eliot and; Publisher: Yale University; Number of pages: 791 pp. Book price: $50 ...

Fewer NZ books on shelves as publisher moves to Oz
TVNZ
Hachette has blamed stiff online competition and the growth of e-books for the move. The company will re-locate to Australia to publish Kiwi classics such as The ...

Book Talk: A parenting journey as father-turned-mother
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Author Jennifer Finney Boylan says there is more to being a mother than giving birth and in her newest book, "Stuck in the Middle ... Boylan, who has written 12 other books, spoke with Reuters about her latest work, ...
NPR
NEW YORK (AP) — The latest book project for "Cloud Atlas" novelist David ... Adam Thirlwell, a British author whose books include "The Delighted States," an ...
WNYC
Book News: Jane Austen To Replace Darwin On The 10-Pound Note ... The daily lowdown onbooks, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly....

more book news below



Lost Girls by Robert Kolker

'Lost Girls' by Robert Kolker
Boston Globe
Lolling in the sun-warmed sand, lulled by lapping waves, we crave danger in our beach books. Peter Benchley unspools a fiction about a great white shark, and ...

'A Marker To Measure Drift' by Alexander Maksik
Boston Globe
We don't know much about her as the book opens. She is ... These questions of reality — and anauthor's relationship to it — are ultimately red herrings.

'Thinking in Numbers' by Daniel Tammet
Boston Globe
These books say to the reader “I know you hated this in school, but hold my hand and you'll be fine; it's really not so bad.” Daniel Tammet's “Thinking in ...

'Falling into the Fire' by Christine Montross
Boston Globe
In his recent book, “Saving Normal,” psychiatrist Allen Frances argues that far too many mental-health resources are going to the group that needs it least, the ...

Banned books to vanish from library shelves
Gadsden Times
If you want to read a banned book from the Gadsden Public Library or the Austin ... The books still will be available for checkout, but patrons will have to request ...

Book review: 'Tiger Baby' Kim Wong Keltner strikes back
Seacoastonline.com
Book review: 'Tiger Baby' Kim Wong Keltner strikes back ... Keltner is also the author of three novels — "The Dim Sum of All Things," "Buddha Baby" and "I Want ...

more book news below



Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

book OR author - Google News

Loading...

NYTimes Books

Loading...

ArtsBeat» Books

Loading...