NAL is issuing ebook versions of Ayn Rand’s famous Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead today, along with electronic editions of eighteen other Rand works. The publisher says they shipped over 300,000 copies of Atlas Shrugged in the first half of this year, a 25 percent increase over total shipments in 2008. Also, two corrections from Friday’s e-news: Google Book Search does already work with Barnes & Noble, having partnered recently to offer public domain ebooks for free on BN’s new platform, and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games is available in ebook form.
Archives for September 2009
Dan Brown Has A New Book Coming; The NYT Keeps Breaking Embargoes
Last night the NYT broke the embargo on Dan Brown’s THE LOST SYMBOL, posting Janet Maslin’s review (which runs in today’s print edition). She likes this “rip-snorting adventure. As Browniacs have long predicted, the chase involves the secrets of Freemasonry and is set in Washington, where some of those secrets are built into the architecture and are thus hidden in plain sight…. Within this book’s hermetically sealed universe, characters’ motivations don’t really have to make sense; they just have to generate the nonstop momentum that makes ‘The Lost Symbol’ impossible to put down.” (Maslin’s most quoted graph is bafflingly nonsensical: […]
Menaker Looks Book at Publishing's "Negative Culture"
Former Random House executive editor-in-chief (he admits to conjuring the odd title in a dream) Daniel Menaker writes in the Barnes & Noble Review a series of observations about modern publishing, concluding, “I have to say I’m glad to have left this all behind, except in the tranquility of recollection.” Menaker starts by describing how “publishing is often an extremely negative culture” and the 12-point list primarily recounts negatives. “The sheer book-length nature of books combined with the seemingly inexorable reductions in editorial staffs and the number of submissions most editors receive, to say nothing of the welter of non-editorial […]
More Google Case Updates
Sites like Justia and The Public Index continue to process the hundreds of additional letters logged by Judge Denny Chin’s office expressing views on the Google Books Settlement. Dozens upon dozens of foreign publishers–mostly from Germany, France, and Sweden–joined with earlier objections to the agreement. Additional associations expressing opposition include the French Publishers Association, the Finnish Book Publishers Association, the Nordic Publishers Association, the New Zealand Society of Authors, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and yes, even the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. In two separate filings, the attorney general of Texas and attorneys general from Pennsylvania, […]
More Mistakes as Frankfurt "Forgets" to Tell Chinese Delegation that Dissidents Would Get the Podium
It’s hard to tell if the Frankfurt Book Fair is practicing extremely subtle diplomacy in a difficult situation or simply bungling the reconciliation of China as guest of honor with the presence of Chinese dissidents. On Friday Fair director Juergen Boos “announced” in his second letter of apology on the Fair’s web site that dissidents Dai Qing and Bei Ling would indeed “come to Frankfurt and will participate in the symposium.” When the two were given the podium at the beginning of the symposium on Saturday, the official Chinese delegation walked out. In a third posted letter of apology, Boos […]
Caution to All Publishers Wanting their Books Endorsed by Obama
Algonquin removed a line from President Obama praising Roy Williams which they intended to run on the jacket of Hard Work: A Life On and Off the Court, after their lawyers concluded “that sitting presidents cannot make commercial endorsements.” The White House confirms to EW, “As a general matter, the White House does not authorize the use of the President’s likeness or words for commercial purposes.” Vintage used an endorsement from Obama on a recent paperback reprint of Joseph O’Neill’s NETHERLAND, though EW says they “did not check with the White House before issuing the stickered edition.”EW