I was wondering how long it was going to take a major publisher to come to their senses and release the hardback and paperback at the same time.Joel Rickett at the Guardian is reporting that beginning in the Spring of 2008 Picador will "release all new novels in paperback editions, alongside a small run of hardbacks, breaking with the trade convention of staggered publication dates."Andrew Kidd, publisher of the prestigious Macmillan imprint says:"When are we going to accept that we live in a [paperback] country; that only a tiny handful of authors command enough reader loyalty to achieve viable hardback...
Fabrication Rebate. It Still Pays to Fib
1,729 readers of James Frey's concoction A Million Little Pieces will receive $15.82 each to soothe the pain they encountered upon finding out that Frey's book included a bit of fabrication.As part of the settlement, Random House has also agreed to include a warning in the book that not all portions of the book may be accurate. Does this mean they can still call it a memoir?In addition to the $27,348 to settle the claims Random House will pay $783,000 to the lawyers in legal fees, $432,000 for publicizing the settlement (basically an additional marketing expense) and $180,000 to be...
Textbook Trauma
It is arguably the biggest sin of the deeply flawed world of publishing. Year in and year out students are charged exorbitant prices for the textbooks that they have to have. With the average shelf life of a textbook being 2 years the publishers have a built in dependency that borders on criminal. The schools and universities are not, like the students, innocent victims. They are complicit in this madness.If the open access movement or the digitization crowd ever needed something to rally around the textbook trade would be the place to start.The advent of buying used books online has...
An Issue Point With The Harry Potter Book: Some Copies Missing Pages
At least 200 people across the country who bought "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" over the weekend received copies that "have printing errors that include missing pages." 30pp. to be exact in one copy.The Seattle PI reports at least three of the QFC supermarkets in the Puget Soundreported trouble with Harry. "Printing and distributing 12 million copies of a book is a Herculean task, and it is not surprising at all that some would have printing errors," Scholastic said in a statement Monday morning.If you have one of these copies do not return it or exchange it just buy...
My Potter Fantasy
Harry will die or he might live but as soon as that butter statue of Harry at the Iowa State Fair melts I say let's put this whole Potter thing behind us and move on.Please.Article in the Des Moines Register, Potter at the fair? You butter believe itThanks to Shelf Awareness for the lead