Talk about a sense of place.Here are the first inhabitants of the new Seattle P-I Writers in Residence project:Sherman AlexieRebecca BrownCharles CrossPete DexterIvan DoigTimothy EganEllen ForneyDavid GutersonCharles JohnsonJonathan RabanTom RobbinsAnn RuleTell me one publisher that wouldn't want that lineup. A healthy dozen. The Northwest 12.Here's the plan:-One writer will be spotlighted in the PI each month.-The material can only be "new work, unpublished past work or work excerpted from upcoming books"Kudos to PI managing editor David McCumber for getting it going. He created the prototype for this when at the San Francisco Examiner but here the writers are strictly regional....
Don’t Believe the Hype: The Book Shop Remains Endangered
You would think the world of independent bookshops was flourishing.The New York Sun recently ran a piece titled ""Booksellers Fight Back As 5 New Stores Open" and the American Booksellers Association (ABA) started the year off with this headline "A Plethora of New Indies Open in 2006" touting the arrival of 97 new bookshops that opened for business in 2006 (and were members of the ABA).Unfortunately, if you look a little closer you can still see some trouble spots.2 of the 5 bookstores that have opened in New York were opened by publishers not booksellers. I am a big fan...
Reading Recycled: Time to Print Green
There is a quiet green storm brewing in the book world. A storm that has been a long time coming, long overdue and when it hits will change the face of publishing forever.The Independent has a brief take on the push by authors and some publishers to print their books on recycled paper.The lowlight:-"pulp and paper mills produce ... some of the most toxic substances on Earth" wrote poet and green activist Mandy Haggith in an article published in Mslexia magazine.Think of the smell of some of the new books you opened recently.A few highlights:-The Canadian editions of all the...
O.J. Comes Clean – I Didn’t Write It
In my previous post regarding the "If I Did It" fiasco I talked about how O.J didn't even write the book and that there are probably some 400,000 copies that were printed before the books cancellation which pretty much guarantees that there will be plenty of copies floating around sooner or later.Well, what do you know, Newsweek has somehow come up with a copy of the book and has a feature article focusing on one of the chapters.The book was "obtained from an anonymous source".In a telephone interview yesterday O.J. says that the chapter of "If I Did It" in...
The Meltdown of Big Media
Tremendous post by Eddie A. Tejeda over at The Institute for the Future of the Book on the end of media industries.The gist:We will soon be in the midst of a culture whose tastes will not be dictated by media corporations. The giants are all shrinking. Their purse strings have been clipped by the new technologies that have put the power of production and distribution in almost every home.From Richard Parsons, the CEO of Time Warner, via Siva Vaidhyanathan's book "The Anarchist in the Library", comes this corporate slur:This is a very profound moment historically. This isn't just about a...