Prepare the Phonies

New Salinger Book And Film Coming Within Next Year.

Mantel Wins Again

Hilary Mantel has kept her winning streak alive by winning the Costa Book Award for Novel of the Year, a 25,000 pound prize.

The author of the blood soaked Tudor Saga was awarded at a ceremony in London Tuesday. During her speech Mantel was unapologetic to winning another award, and stated “I’m happy and I shall make it my business to try to write more books that will be worth more prizes,” she said.

Mantel was voted unanimously by the judging panel,Dame Jenni Murray says Mantel’s book stood “more than head and shoulders_ on stilts_ above the rest.”

2012 Costa Book Award Winner Hilary Mantel

Congrats Hilary your book is climbing my to-read list!

It is a truth universally acknowledged that….everyone remembers your birthday!

Jane Austen’s classic tale of the Bennet sisters and their potential suitors celebrated it’s 200th anniversary of it’s publication. The internet was abound with Pride & Prej quotes and lessons, which The Huffington Post declared an Austenganza!

A Pride And Prejudice Playlist

12 Things you didn’t know about Pride And Prejudice 

7 Ways People Celebrated the Pride and Prejudice Bicentennial

The Real Life Movie Mansions You Can Visit 

Etsy went crazy!

Darcy Hearts Elizabeth

Pride And Prejudice’s Influence on Modern Pop Culture 

Happy Birthday P&P You are one of my treasured favorites

Celebrating Sylvia

Jan 14th became the 50th anniversary of Sylvia Plath’s cult favorite, The Bell Jar. Flavorwire played homage to this classic by showing; Sylvia Plath’s ‘A Bell Jar’: A Visual History

Here are the great covers they found.

Heinemann First Proof, 1962

Heinemann First Edition, 1963

Contemporary Fiction, 1964

Faber and Faber, 1966

Faber and Faber Paperback, 1966

Faber and Faber, 1966

First American Edition, Harper 1971

Bantam Books, 1972

Quality Paperback Book Club, 1993

25th Anniversary Edition,Harper, 1996

Knopf Everyman Library, 1998

Faber and Faber, 1999

Harper, 1999

Faber and Faber, 2005

Harper, 2005

Harper, 2006

Faber and Faber, 2009

Harper Olive Editions, 2009 (My Edition)

50th Anniversary Edition,Faber and Faber, 2013

There are also many international covers available, hit the link above to few all of the selections.

The World is Really Ending….

This link is coming off the heels of yesterday’s post about how printed books will never die. This is an ongoing battle in my house, I am still a whole hearted book nerd and my boyfriend is a complete technology nerd. And although I do support ipads in classrooms and blah blah blah.. but how can you go into a library and not smell the bindings? What would be the point?

BiblioTech Is Bexar County’s Bookless Library.

London Man Brings Frankenstein Back from the Dead

Awesome find of the day, I should go with my mother on her antiquing trips more often.

Rare Presentation Copy Comes to Light – Fine Books and Collections.

Why Printed Books Will Never Die

Awesome.

Why Printed Books Will Never Die.

Preach.

The Authors Guild on Penguin & Random House Merger

The Authors Guild released a letter on their website, giving a delayed response (offices were down due to Hurricane Sandy last week,) to the Penguin and Random House “super-merger.” This is the letter posted by Scott Turow, Nov. 5, 2012.

Scott Turow on Penguin Random House

Posted November 5, 2012

We’re back in business: power kicked in for our office Saturday morning; our email server came online late that night.

Here’s our storm-delayed member alert on last Monday’s unsettling announcement that Random House and Penguin, the two largest trade book publishers in the U.S., are merging.

Although Random House has said that the combination would control 25% of the book market, that appears to significantly understate things. The companies’ share of the U.S. trade book market for fiction and narrative non-fiction likely exceeds 35%. Their share in certain submarkets is no doubt even higher. The merger merits close scrutiny from antitrust officials at the Justice Department or the FTC.

While the companies discuss the cost savings from this merger through consolidating warehousing and other operations, those potential efficiencies for such large publishers are probably minor.  Economies of scale only go so far. The business logic of creating Penguin Random House would appear to have much more to do with the ongoing restructuring of the book industry. Barnes & Noble is now the sole brick-and-mortar giant; Amazon’s hold on online bookselling is more solid than ever.

“Survival of the largest appears to be the message here,” said Scott Turow, Authors Guild president. “Penguin Random House, our first mega-publisher, would have additional negotiating leverage with the bookselling giants, but that leverage would come at a high cost for the literary market and therefore for readers. There are already far too few publishers willing to invest in nonfiction authors, who may require years to research and write histories, biographies, and other works, and in novelists, who may need the help of a substantial publisher to effectively market their books to readers.”

We’ll keep you updated on developments in this matter.

Please bear with us as we sort through last week’s email.

To view The Authors Guild website click here.

 

OH SANDY!

Publisher’s Weekly is giving status updates on their website for different publishing houses through out the day.

Random House has email but limited access to it’s offices.

Barnes & Noble, Penguin and Bloomsbury are all closed.

For a complete list and updates hit the link

Hurricane Sandy: NYC Publishers’ Status After the Storm.

It’s Official!

Penguin Books and Random House have merged, creating a powerhouse of a Publisher for consumer books, with around a quarter of the market are they creating a Publishing Monopoly?

Pearson, Bertelsmann Confirm Publishing Tie-up.