Motoko Rich looks at some of the “handful of American publishers who regularly seek out books to translate during the [Frankfurt Book] fair every year.” They include David Godine, Chad Post from Open Letter (based at the University of Rochester), Jill Schoolman from Archipelago Books, and Fiona McCrae at Graywolf. The publishers that look for translations do so with a clear business strategy in mind. McCrae says, “Philip Roth is not going to suddenly be published by Graywolf. So you see who is the Philip Roth of Italy or who is an interesting writer out of Sweden.” And in many […]
Charkin Winds Down
Filing on Saturday from Frankfurt, Richard Charkin’s last blog post: “Hall 8 is emptying. The bigwigs have all left for home and now the sales and rights directors have the place more or less to themselves. The atmosphere has been less hectic than usual, a natural consequence of the world economy. There seem to be fewer people but there is still business being done, albeit at highly competitive prices and with lower print quantities. For those of us in our dotage this is familiar territory. Batten down the hatches. Publish well. Waste less. Throw complacency out of every window. We have […]
King Deadline Comes with No Apparent Delivery
Penguin had said they would cancel their contract for an autobiography based on taped conversations with the late Coretta Scott King if “promised photos, personal writings and intimate letters” were not delivered by today. Attorney for King Inc. Nicole Wade indicates to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the delivery deadline had already been postponed several times. “These papers were originally supposed to be provided in July. They’ve been rather patient.” The AJC says “last week a judge ordered Bernice King, executor of her mother’s estate, and Martin Luther King III to turn over their mother’s papers to an auditor or ‘special […]
Fairing OK for Now
There’s a quality to this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, in these perilous times, that leaves one speechless. But that makes for a very short column. The final accounting–and it is all about accounting these days–won’t come for a while. So the best handle on the show I found is stolen from a prominent journalist at last night’s still-packed Bertelsmann party (though we were assured the guest list had been trimmed by about 300 people): “So book publishing fiddles while Rome burns?” With no one knowing just how bad the wreckage of the financial crisis will be when all is said […]
Update on Efforts to Unlock Borders UK's Financing
The Independent says “Borders UK is still trying to extricate itself from the fall out from the troubles of Landsbanki, the nationalized Icelandic bank” after “last Friday, a number of companies, particularly retailers, found they could not withdraw money from their Landsbanki accounts.” Chairman of the private equity firm that owns the bookseller Luke Johnson says that “We are never more than £3m to £4m drawn on our [continuing] credit facility” but “declined to comment on the other questions put to him.” Additionally, “Euler Hermes is understood to have scaled back its insurance cover for Borders UK in the summer, […]
Another Nobel Tie-In
Norton will have a “greatly expanded and revised edition” of recent winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics Paul Krugman’s 1999 book THE RETURN OF DEPRESSION ECONOMICS AND THE CRISIS OF 2008 ready to publish in early December 2008. The original book looked at economic crises in Asia and Latin America, but the new edition “will show how depression economics has come to America” and indicate “the steps that must be taken to contain the crisis and turn around a world economy sliding into a deep recession.” A paperback version of his most recent book, The Conscience of a Liberal, […]