The Greatest Books of All Time, As Voted by 125 Famous Authors – 125 writers choose, in total, 544 titles, which perhaps suggests an interesting amount of coherence among the writers chosen than the books they chose. In regard to that most difficult of words, “great:” In introducing the lists, David Orr offers ... more >
Google’s victory in book-scanning case is a huge win for fair use – Huzzah! Google’s book scanning has been found to be both fair use and transformative in nature by the Second Circuit. The Author’s Guild’s protracted litigation against Google (nearly ten years now!) had numerous problems along the way, but ... more >
Brands and Fans Flock to Biggest New York Comic Con Yet – With 169,000 tickets sold for the New York City Comic Con, there was a lot going on at this year’s event. Lots of cosplay (as usual), a resurgence of manga (with Mavashi Kishimoto attending), and so-called “branded ‘activations,’” which consisted ... more >
Man Booker Prize 2015: Marlon James wins for A Brief History of Seven Killings – An almost 700-page book that, according to the judging committee’s chair, Michael Wood, is “full of swearing” (!), James’s novel was apparently an easy choice for the judges. James will receive £50,000 for his winning novel. Set ... more >
Book banned after Christian complaint -New Zealand now has its first banned book in more than 20 years, Ted Dawe’s Into the River, which was named Book of the Year in 2013 at the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards. The ban is particularly troubling because the main character in ... more >
Publishers’ Overall U.S. Books Sales Down 5.6% YTD But Downloaded Audio Booms, Up 33% YTD – AAP has collected information from more than 1200 publishers and reports that book sales in most categories are down. It may not be surprising to see ebook sales down in the wake of Agency Pricing’s ... more >