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Over the weekend, NPR was the latest news organization to see the iPad as the latest hook for the ongoing story about self-publishing (“iPad Could Help Self-Publishers Kick Open Doors,” by Laura Sydell). But, after speculating that the iPad’s fabulous full-color screen will make e-books sexy again, it’s pretty much the same story as usual: self-publishing [...]

It’s one thing when a first-time author self-publishes a book — it can be a great way to get noticed, as we learned from David Carnoy. It’s another thing entirely when a well known and widely respected author turns from traditional publishing to self-publishing. But that’s exactly what John Edgar Wideman (Fanon, 2008) is doing. [...]

Way back in December 2008, I wrote about an article by David Carnoy, called “Self-Publishing a Book: 25 Things You Need to Know.” An editor at CNET, he was sharing useful lessons he’d learned while self-publishing his novel, Knife Music. I checked in with him the following month, asking about his experience purchasing a book review from Kirkus Discoveries, [...]

You’ve got to hand it to Quirk Classics. The publishers of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters may be riding their one-trick pony into the ground, but they’re doing it with style. Bloggers, this one included, seem constitutionally incapable of not linking to every new development, from the announcement of the newest [...]

So, the iPad is here (yes yes, total namefail) and all the geeks are mad because it does what everyone’s been conjecturing it’ll do for months if not years, but fails to do anything that no one thought of. Do people think that Apple has people coming up with ideas from different dimensions? Is it supposed [...]

And to think it all started with a plucky little mash-up called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. In her review, Mary Ellen Quinn asked, with tongue firmly in cheek, “What’s next? Wuthering Heights and Werewolves?” Not a bad guess, but the next offering was actually Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Since the public’s appetite for good [...]

And then there were three. Prepublication book-review journals, that is. After 82 or so years of opinionated, often caustic, looks at books, Kirkus Reviews is shutting up shop. (“Editor & Publisher and Kirkus Reviews Close,” by Richard Perez-Pena, New York Times–keep reading, the Kirkus bit is at the bottom.) I didn’t always like what they [...]

Due to the Thanksgiving holiday, this is a week-and-a-half’s worth of weeklings. On Monday, I weighed in on e-readers: And, yes, my preference is paper. Why? Because I spend one-third of my waking life staring at screens. I have screen fatigue. I have gadget fatigue, too, and key, button, mouse, and scroll-wheel fatigue. When I [...]

Nook, vook, blook, p-book, wovel, poegel . . . am I forgetting anything? Some in the publishing industry say that, thanks to e-readers such as the Kindle, people are reading more books (“E-Book Fans Keep Format in Spotlight,” by Brad Stone, New York Times). Who, exactly, says this? Well, the manufacturers of the Kindle, but [...]

I know something happened this week–everybody was talking about it. Writing about it, even. Something, something . . . some guy published a book? Oh, yeah! Dan Brown thrilled the world by finally–finally–giving us The Lost Symbol. The New York Times, which really is getting the hang of this breaking-the-embargo thing, wrote, puzzlingly, that Brown [...]