A charming French novel about an old-school publisher trying to get to grips with the digital ageAt more than one point in this novel I found myself asking: could this be any more French? Early on we meet a character described thus: “She used to be incredibly good-looking and now at thirtysomething she is creditably handsome.” Sorry? What the narrator, an ageing male publisher, looks like, or how creditably or uncreditably good-looking he is, we don’t find out. Another woman leaves the room “in a wiggle of buttock” – I dropped my annotating pencil when I read that line. “Artichokes require a degree of elegance” – there’s another drop of essence of Gallic for you.But there is more to Dear Reader, and what kept me going was that one of the subjects exercising our narrator is the issue of electronic readers – Kindles or, as our hero Robert Dubois has it, the “dear reader” of the title. This book is an elegy for a dying world: that of the printed book and, that death’s darker corollary, the reader who is still interested in, or has the attention span for, the long-form narrative. (I always thought these things were arranged better in France, with no Net Book Agreement and tax breaks for bookshops, but apparently not.) In the world of Dear Reader, there has been a general collapse of cultural understanding: the interns point out to Dubois the remarkable coincidence that the publishing house they have landed in has the same name as him. Meanwhile, Dubois cannot quite get to... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2014-12-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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YouTube vlogger Zoella is "blown away" after Girl Online becomes the fastest-selling debut novel since records began. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2014-12-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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In January, longtime general manager and co-owner of Skylight Books, Kerry Slattery, will hand off the general manager role of the Los Angeles bookstore to Mary Williams. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-12-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Authors Guild, hoping to upend the 2013 decision favoring Google in its lawsuit over the company's library book scanning project, presented oral arguments in court, on Wednesday. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-12-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Thrillbent, the digital comics portal started by comics writers Mark Waid and John Rogers, has spun-off into a full featured app and a print campaign with two different publishers. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-12-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Nominations for the second annual London Book Fair's International Excellence Awards, which are offered in 13 categories, are now open. The post International Awards for a Global Book Industry appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2014-12-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton has been named as the Waterstones Book of the Year. Burton's debut novel, published by Picador, beat a shortlist that also included Man Booker Prize winner The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Samuel Johnson Prize winner H is for Hawk. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2014-12-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Lynda La Plante's Prime Suspect and Karl Pilkington's The Moaning of Life are among books to be given away on World Book Night next year. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2014-12-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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By Ron Epstein In late 2012, I purchased a small, local publishing company. The marquee property was a magazine called L.A. Parent that distributed approximately 70,000 free copies every month, along with other... Continue reading at Publishing Executive
[ Publishing Executive | 2014-12-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Poetry, Young Adult titles and a Booker Prize winning author feature on the list of books to be given away during World Book Night 2015. Special editions of the 20 titles will all be given away by thousands of volunteers, who can now begin applying to take part in the annual event on 23rd April... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2014-12-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Chronicle Books completed its third annual #GiveBooks campaign over the Thanksgiving weekend. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-12-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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If squabbles over format, pricing and Amazon have led the US publishing industry to neglect an ever more diverse audience, we have forgotten why people read books in the first placeThe true price of publishingAt the recent National Book Awards ceremony in New York City, presenter and bestselling... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-12-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Bay Area Book Festival, set for June 6-7, is launching an Indiegogo campaign to raise $50,000 to support their first festival in Berkeley. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-12-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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John “Rick” MacArthur is the minority partner in the third Book Culture to open in New York City at 450 Columbia Avenue, the former site of Endicott Booksellers. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-12-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Jessie Burton's The Miniaturist, a debut novel inspired by a dollhouse in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, is named Waterstones Book of the Year. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2014-12-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Postal rate hikes, paper shortages, the rise of digital publishing, and one of the deepest economic recessions in recent history are just a few of the factors that have harried magazine publishers in the past decade. Many publishers have had to... Continue reading at Publishing Executive
[ Publishing Executive | 2014-12-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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With an appeal date approaching, attorneys for Apple and the DoJ traded fire over whether Judge Denise Cote improperly weighed the evidence presented to her. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-12-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The former Newsnight presenter’s first subject will be Britain over the last 50 years while the second will be about his TV careerJeremy Paxman will reportedly tell of his decades-long career at the BBC as part of a three-book deal for almost £1m. The former Newsnight presenter will not pull any... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-11-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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President Barack Obama and his daughters picked up 17 books at Washington D.C.'s Politics & Prose bookstore on Small Business Saturday. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-11-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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With unit sales of print books up about 2% in the first 47 weeks of 2014, year over year, at outlets that report to Nielsen BookScan, the industry is poised to post its first increase in print sales since 2008. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-11-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Colin Barrett has won the £10,000 Guardian First Book Award for his short story collection Young Skins (Jonathan Cape). It is the third prize to go to the book, which also took the 2014 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and the 2014 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2014-11-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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