How one very young man changed the course of publishing and intellectual life in America. Read more
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Tag: Publishing
Looking Back on 50 Years of Making Beautiful Books
“Godine at Fifty,” showcasing some 300 of David Godine’s favorite books from his career, is an autobiography of sorts and an elegy for a kind of publishing. Read more
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Black authors on New York Times top 10 book list draw backlash
While The New York Times Books Review‘s annual Ten Best Books list has long [been] considered the gold standard of literary criticism, not nearly enough attention has been given to black authors on the list. This year’s list corrects that issue, but still drew a critical response from people who believe the list was “too woke” for their tastes. Read more
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Millions of Followers? For Book Sales, ‘It’s Unreliable.’
Social-media fandom can help authors score book deals and bigger advances, but does it translate to how a new title will sell? Publishers are increasingly skeptical. Read more
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Justice Dept. Sues Penguin Random House Over Simon & Schuster Deal
The Biden administration on Tuesday sued to stop Penguin Random House, the largest publisher in the United States, from acquiring its rival Simon & Schuster, as part of a new drive in Washington against corporate consolidation. Read more
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Knopf Names Jordan Pavlin Its Editor in Chief
Ms. Pavlin, a longtime editor at the publishing house who has worked with Ayana Mathis, Tommy Orange and Yaa Gyasi, succeeds Sonny Mehta, who died in 2019. Read more
The Vixen by Francine Prose
Prose ingeniously takes on publishing, the fallout of WWII, and McCarthyism in a gloriously astute, skewering, and hilarious bildungsroman. One of this bravura performance’s many piquant delights is Prose’s clever use of Simon’s fluency in ancient sagas as he struggles to comprehend just how malignant the scheme he’s bogged down in truly is. Mordant, incisive, and tenderhearted, Prose presents an intricately realized tale of a treacherous, democracy-threatening time of lies, demagoguery, and prejudice that is as wildly exhilarating as the Cyclone, Simon’s beloved Coney Island roller coaster. Read more
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New works from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s archives will finally be published, starting next year
The publishing giant HarperCollins has reached an agreement with the estate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to acquire world publishing rights to the late Civil Rights leader’s entire archives—a collection which contains some of the “most historically important and vital literature in American history.” Read more
What Snoop Dogg’s Success Says About the Book Industry
Will the shifts brought on by the pandemic, favoring online retailers over bookstores and established authors over new ones, change publishing forever? Read more
Top French publishing house asks would-be authors to stop sending manuscripts
Successive Covid-19 lockdowns in France have given budding writers the time to finally work on that idea for a novel or to polish up an old manuscript languishing in a drawer. As a result, publishers are overwhelmed. Before the pandemic, Gallimard received around 30 manuscripts a day; now they receive around 50. Read more
