Remember Philip M. Parker, the much-reviled "author" whose system churns out ultra-long-tail books on ultra-niche topics? Well, here's video of his software, in action. (Via)
posted on Apr 14, 2008 - View this thread

Shepard Fairey's cover art for Penguin releases of 1984 & Animal Farm.
posted on Apr 13, 2008 - View this thread

Amazon.com dropped a bombshell on the publishing industry with the announcement on Friday that they will no longer allow print on demand books printed by vendors other than Amazon, to be sold directly by Amazon. In other words, use our print services or lose your listing on our site. This decision effects over half a million books listed on their site and could be a defining moment for both publishing and the future of online retailing.
posted on Apr 3, 2008 - View this thread

If you're a girl and you grew up in the 80's, chances are you read Sweet Valley High books. Guess what? They're being re-released. Don't worry, they're being updated to reflect the times- Jessica and Liz will be a size 4 now, and Liz's gossip column will be a gossip blog instead. Those wishing to relive the glory days can read reviews of the old series at The Dairi Burger, a blog devoted to all things Sweet Valley.
posted on Mar 27, 2008 - View this thread

The Pelican Project - six decades of Pelican book covers.
posted on Jan 31, 2008 - View this thread

15 Publishing Industry Trends to Watch in 2008
posted on Jan 9, 2008 - View this thread

The late-fifteenth/early-sixteenth century French publisher Simon Vostre was renowned for his Books of Hours.
posted on Jan 3, 2008 - View this thread

This one's for all the editors out there! Remember when index cards were actually used to create... indexes?
posted on Dec 20, 2007 - View this thread

You'd think news of a Creem Magazine retrospective book would be greeted with cries of glee. You'd be wrong. Occasional staff shutterbug Bob Matheu licensed rights to use the name of the beloved, iconoclastic Detroit rock zine years after it ceased to be relevant, but despite occasional "Creem is back" announcements, only produced a website.
posted on Dec 2, 2007 - View this thread

Future Reading. Anthony Grafton explores what we can learn about the future of the text from the history of libraries, publishers, and the sorting of books.
posted on Nov 1, 2007 - View this thread

National Novel Writing Month (seen before) starts Nov. 1. The goal: complete a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, Nov. 30. If you'd like to start, or are otherwise working on a novel, Sean Lindsay and others would like you to please stop.
posted on Oct 31, 2007 - View this thread

New Yorker Festival Interveiw with Seymour M. Hersh
posted on Oct 10, 2007 - View this thread

Books: The Opaque Market. Eric Flint (the author who set up the Baen Free Library) argues against using DRM in publishing and in favor of pirating yourself. (via Jay Lake)
posted on Jul 29, 2007 - View this thread

"It seems like a really original and interesting read." It is a truth universally acknowledged that the first line of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" is one of literature's most famous, wittily kicking off one of the most beloved of all classics. And yet, 17 British publishers failed to recognize it and rejected the manuscript when Jane's name and the title were changed. What happens when the gatekeepers of literature are illiterate?
posted on Jul 19, 2007 - View this thread

NoMediaKings.org will tell you how to hand-bind books in a variety of ways. Then you can make the movie of the book. As a bonus: Time Management for Anarchists.
posted on Jul 8, 2007 - View this thread

According to a new study in Biology Letters (Royal Society journal), plants respond competitively when forced to share their pot with strangers of the same species, but when placed in a pot with their siblings are more accomodating. PDF, HTML.
posted on Jun 17, 2007 - View this thread

McSweeney's is holding a big sale and auction to make up for $130,000 lost in a distributor bankruptcy. Soon we'll be adding one-of-a-kind pieces from Michael Chabon, Sarah Vowell, and Marcel Dzama—and every single thing we've got is on sale, cheap.
posted on Jun 14, 2007 - View this thread

The Internet Library of Early Journals :: A digital library of 18th and 19th Century journals
posted on May 31, 2007 - View this thread

More and more authors are turning to podcasting to find their audiences after being rejected by traditional book publishers, it seems. Interested in hearing some of their stories for free (or if you're feeling generous, a suggested donation of $9.99)? Check out PodioBooks, where there's a tonne of free literature just waiting to be downloaded to your iPod.
posted on Mar 8, 2007 - View this thread

Ken Steacy runs a print on demand publishing company, (he recently brought the book "As I See" back in print) and is a fantastic comic book illustrator. Last week he put 600 of his best drawings on flickr. (as seen on drawn.ca)
posted on Mar 8, 2007 - View this thread

The Independent Press Association is officially dead. It's demise was a long time coming. The future of small magazines looks pretty bleak.
posted on Mar 6, 2007 - View this thread

Dave Sim gets a book proposal from a furry.
posted on Feb 23, 2007 - View this thread

POEMS-FOR-ALL "Small poems in small booklets half the size of a business card. A project of the 24th street irregular press, which cranks them out to be taken by the handful and scattered like seeds by those who want to see poetry grow in a barren cultural landscape." (via Ward 6)
posted on Feb 5, 2007 - View this thread

While the standard King James Bible remains huge business for publishers, in recent years a number of alternative formats have sprung up, hoping to capture the niche Christian dollar, or more charitably, to spread the good word to an audience that wouldn't find the tradtional bible all that relevant. Daniel Radosh's piece in the New Yorker examines the alterna-Bible publishing phenomenon, along with a great slideshow of several in-market concepts.
posted on Dec 13, 2006 - View this thread

Kevin Kelly on the latest in personal book publishing advice.
posted on Dec 8, 2006 - View this thread

We Are Smarter Than Me
The MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, Pearson Educational Publishing, and Pennsylvania University's SEI Center for Advanced Studies In Management at The Wharton School are collaborating on a project to write a business management book, wiki-style. Wanna help?
posted on Nov 28, 2006 - View this thread

As he read, Mr Sterling became convinced he had to publish the book. Jed Rubenfeld's "The Interpretation of Murder" had an intriguing cast of characters, an engaging plot and a dash of kinky sex. It was a historical thriller, one of publishing's hottest recent categories. It had the potential, he thought, to be the next "Da Vinci Code."

The Wall Street Journal details the fascinating mechanics of modern-day book marketing as Henry Holt & Co labors to birth this year's must-buy publishing phenomenon.
posted on Oct 16, 2006 - View this thread

Helix is a new Science Fiction magazine on the Internet. Run by managing editor Lawrence Watt-Evans and senior editor William Sanders, Helix is free, with no advertisements or registration. They do accept donations. This follows Watt-Evans's success last year with his Spriggan Experiment, in which he substituted reader donations for the traditional advance from a publisher. The result of that experiment, The Spriggan Mirror will be available from Wild-side Press in September 2006.
posted on Jun 15, 2006 - View this thread

Assistive Media is a non-profit organization dedicated to offering audio access to literary works for the blind. They have placed an extensive archive of downloadable magazine articles in mp3 format online, including selections from The New Yorker, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic and American Heritage.
posted on Jun 11, 2006 - View this thread

The Illustrated London News :: an archive
posted on Apr 27, 2006 - View this thread

Kaavya Viswanathan is a 19-year-old Harvard student whose first novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, just cracked the New York Times bestseller list. The problem? The Harvard Crimson and SF Gate assert that the author plagiarized much of it from two books by Megan McCafferty. Of course, it's not like this kind of thing hasn't happened before with young writers.
posted on Apr 24, 2006 - View this thread

The 1st Blooker Prize, awarded to books based on blogs, goes to the Julie/Julia Project.
posted on Apr 3, 2006 - View this thread

Bloggers make terrible novelists. Ana Marie Cox's "Dog Days" meets a reader.
posted on Jan 3, 2006 - View this thread

Quark gets a new face. Problem is, it looks just like the face of the Scottish Arts Council. Via MacCentral.
posted on Sep 10, 2005 - View this thread

"Bob Woodward's gonna get all the glory for this, but we could make at least enough money to pay some bills." Or not.
posted on Jun 8, 2005 - View this thread

The most modern home built in the world. "From the outside it looks like a spaceship you cannot enter. But if you go inside, it feels very cozy… very Zen and calming. Maybe because you are floating above the city, in the sky". John Lautner's Chemosphere residence is the product of a fortuitous union of architect, client, time and place. Leonard Malin was a young aerospace engineer in late-1950s L.A. whose father-in-law had just given him a plot north of Mulholland Drive, near Laurel Canyon. The only catch: at roughly 45 degrees, the slope was all but unbuildable. Lautner sketched a bold vertical line, a cross, and a curve above it. "Draw it up," he told his assistant. Now publisher Benedikt Taschen owns Chemosphere (NSFW), and after 20 years of neglect the house has been beautifully restored (.pdf) by Frank Escher.
posted on Apr 7, 2005 - View this thread

The Word on the Street :: A collection of over 1800 broadsides published in Scotland between 1650 and 1910, featuring both digital images of the original Broadsides as well as transcriptons of the texts. You can just review the highlights or search or browse the entire collection.
posted on Feb 20, 2005 - View this thread

It is no longer legal to publish current photographs of the Eiffel Tower at night without permission. This copyright crap is getting out of hand. <via Kottke>
posted on Feb 3, 2005 - View this thread

PublishAmerica is having a rough month. After being sued by 150 authors who felt they were deceived by the company, and taking a beating a couple of days ago at the hands of the Washington Post, PublishAmerica has become the object of an elaborate hoax perpetrated by a group of science fiction writers, a novel called Atlanta Nights, by one Travis Tea. [more inside]
posted on Jan 27, 2005 - View this thread

USA Today and others are reporting that Doubleday will be publishing "[t]he original thoughts of Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders" in a book to be sold in the U.S. (and presumably abroad). From the CNN article, Doubleday plans on donating proceeds from the sale to charity, and openly describes plans to flaunt U.S. law by NOT paying royalties for the use of source materials.

What are the ramifications for a publishing company (which relies on royalty payments and preservation of copyright for self-survival) to ignore their own rules (and U.S. law) when it suits them? Should we expect anyone in the U.S. to care about the royalty payments to these two individuals? Furthermore, could Doubleday's stance affect any of the other copyright infringement actions currently being taken by U.S. organizations?
posted on Jan 22, 2005 - View this thread

The mystery of Stefan Mart and the 'Tales of the Nations'. "The Tales of Nations" was not an ordinary book that you could buy in a book store, and it's mysterious narrator/illustrator disappeared into the darkness of Hitler's Germany, seemingly without a trace. Learn the background, read the stories, and view all 150 fabulous colour illustrations — "small in size, but strong in expression, each a microcosm packed with action, each a feast for the eyes like a beautifully set jewel".
posted on Jan 9, 2005 - View this thread

ComicsFilter (but bear with me): Frank Miller & Jim Lee will be the writer and artist, respectively, of All-Star Batman and Robin, a new miniseries intended to make the characters simple, interesting, and easy to follow after decades of backstory. Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely were announced to be doing the same thing on All-Star Superman, and any comics fan will tell you that these four guys are some of the best in the entire field. Between these two projects, DC Comics most likely has the top-selling books in the tiny comics industry sewn up for most of 2005, which is reason enough to publish them.

But there's also a question for non-comics readers here at MeFi: DC are really doing this for you. They want new readers (best-selling comics are lucky to top 150,000 copies these days), and they think publishing accessible comic books linked to the release of large movies (The Christopher Nolan film Batman Begins, based in part on Frank Miller's Batman: Year One, will be released roughly alongside All-Star Batman & Robin) is the way to do it. But is there a snowball's chance in hell you'd read something like this? Would your kids, if you have them, be interested, do you think? (Frank Miller, it bears noting, is also the creator and co-director of Sin City, a film you might've seen a preview for recently -- truly insane cast.)
posted on Jan 5, 2005 - View this thread

How much money do first-time novelists make? Author and upcoming first-time novelist Justine Larbalestier is constantly asked by aspiring writers what first-time novelists should expect in advance payment for their beloved texts. So she asked some of her author friends what they got for their first novels. The responses ranged in time from 1962 to 2004. What didn't change in all that time was the basic amount: Not much. Quoth Larbalestier: "The life of a novelist is, financially speaking, a mug's game. Enter at your own peril."
posted on Dec 24, 2004 - View this thread

The very cool Prickly Paradigm Press is starting to release its back catalog under the Creative Commons license. [via]
posted on Oct 25, 2004 - View this thread

Bush Junta: A Field Guide to Corruption in Government - A substantial visual document (200 pages of comics from Fantagraphics, fact-checked with an extensive bibliography; the link goes to a number of sample pages) on the Bush Dynasty, from its beginnings benefitting off of Hitler and WW2 (that entire piece, which is printed in english, is posted in its original dutch online here), to the Bush's connection to Reagan's assassination, CIA and Iran-Contra, ending with the unsettling origins and profiles of the current administration. A great election primer, featuring comics and art by Steve Brodner, Ralph Steadman, Spain Rodriguez and many others. (Amazon link provided for a better description)
posted on Oct 11, 2004 - View this thread

Book publisher soliciting proposals on a high school marching band memoir. It could have an “American High” structure, in which a reporter follows a number of members of a band for a year, but the tone should be “Freaks & Geeks.” It could be something along the lines of “Drumline.” Or, and this is preferable, it could be a person’s wry memoir of his or her life as a band geek: weirdness on the bus, band sluts, the freshmen who steal your place, rivalries, loathing, the football team, what personality type goes with each instrument, etc. Knowledge of band camp and competitions would be a plus. BONUS: Maud's post includes the email address of a senior editor at Wiley to whom you may send your book proposals.
posted on Oct 8, 2004 - View this thread

The Observer does, the New York Times does, the Boston Globe does, and so does the Washington Post. Why don't more newspapers put their weekend magazines online?
posted on Sep 13, 2004 - View this thread

Forbidden Love: The Romance That Masqueraded as a Bio In early 2003, a Jordanian woman named Norma Khouri published a book entitled Forbidden Love (or Honor Lost in North America). This book was a memoir about how Norma Khouri's best friend, Dalia, was killed by her own father after she fell in love with a Christian military officer, and Norma's subsequent escape from Jordan. Forbidden Love was a bio that read like a sensational romance, and it sold 250,000 copies around the world and made Norma Khouri a celebrity in her adoptive country of Australia. However, it turns out that the book really was just a romance. Dalia never existed. Norma Khouri left Jordan at the age of 3 and grew to adulthood living in Chicago. So, one very disturbed woman has exploited Western prejudices about Arab cultures, fooled the general public, plunged her publisher into an enormous legal and financial embarrassment, and impugned the very real and serious problem of honour killings. And she got away with it for a full year and a half.
posted on Aug 5, 2004 - View this thread

Why does no-one recognise my genius? A guide for aspiring authors on how not to deal with rejection slips.
posted on Jun 17, 2004 - View this thread

"Whadyawant, motherf*ck?" These are the first words Charles Bukowski speaks in John Dullaghan's documentary about the poet and novelist, famous for his writing and infamous for his drinking and brawling and screwing. The audience member might respond, "To hear your story, Hank, that's what I want." The movie opens with friends (Sean Penn, Harry Dean Stanton, Bono) and colleagues and lovers and fans recounting the myth; theirs are stories of blades pulled on the maitre d' of the swanky Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills, of dangling dicks revealed in public, of a drunk who'd just as soon crack his bottle over your head than share its contents. (more inside)
posted on May 28, 2004 - View this thread