The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded Thursday morning to Chinese writer Mo Yan, with the citation praising him for his “hallucinatory realism” that “merges folk tales, history and the contemporary.” Mo, a pseudonym for Guan Moye, is one of China’s best-selling (and most pirated) authors in the country, and his work, according to the Swedish Academy, “created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition.” Mo was said to be “overjoyed and terrified” […]
Archives for October 2012
eNews: Consortium Launches Thema Global Codes Standard
In an attempt to streamline book category and classification codes into a unified standard, a group of book industry representatives from 15 companies are joining forces on Thema, which continues the work already begun by the iBIC project jointly owned by Nielsen and the Book Industry Communication. Both entities donated the iBIC intellectual property to Thema’s board of directors for the creation of the global standard. For now, Thema will function alongside such national book-categorization standards as BIC, BISAC, and CLIL, but the plan is to move all involved markets, including the US, UK, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Spain, and […]
Hathi Trust Library Scans Are Judged Fair Use; Court Won’t Address Orphan Works Project Until It Is Resumed
With the recent settlement between Google and US publishers apparently not touching libraries at all (to the extent the parties have revealed anything), the companion suit by the Authors Guild and a number of other organzations against the Hathi Trust takes on extra interest. (Hathi is a digital repository for Google’s scans from many of the US academic libraries, with a strict set of limits, processes and procedures.) US District Court Judge Harold Baer in New York ruled on Wednesday, supporting the basic claim of the libraries that the Hathi Trust’s use of almost 10 million digital volumes qualifies as […]
Harper Formalizes Wave Imprint Under Rinaldi
HarperCollins, which hired Karen Rinaldi in March to start a new health and wellness line, has now named that imprint Harper Wave. Called a general health, wellness and lifestyle line, the company says they have been targeting “the best thinking from top personalities, experts, doctors and journalists.” Executive editor Julie Will is also working on the list. The imprint will launch in the marketplace in April 2013 with television personality and dating expert Matthew Hussey’s GET THE GUY, and the fall list will include their Cameron Diaz book. Harper adds that “Rinaldi and team are working closely with authors to develop their […]
NBA Nominates Well-Known Authors and Books
The National Book Award reversed their recent trend and nominated a solid and mainstream set of books in the fiction and nonfiction categories. Among publishers, Random House garnered the most nominations in those two areas (though all in nonfiction), with a poignant posthumous nomination for Anthony Shadid. Winners will be named November 14. Fiction Junot Diaz, This Is How You Lose Her (Riverhead) Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King (McSweeney’s) Louise Erdrich, The Round House (Harper) Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Ecco) Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds (Little, Brown) Nonfiction Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain (Doubleday) Katherine Boo, […]
Once Again, A Sale Is Likely for Springer
The plaything of private equity, academic publisher Springer is headed for a sale yet again, with a speculated price that doesn’t seem to reflect much change in value. In late 2009 Sweden’s EQT Partners and the Singapore government took it off of Candover and Cinven’s hands for a small amount of cash and assumption of 2.2 billion euros in debt. (Candover and Cinven had bought what was Bertelsmann Springer in 2003 and merged it with Kluwers Academic Publishers. As de rigeur now, the report says the owners are looking at a possible IPO on the German stock market in addition […]