During its ongoing contract talks with the publisher, Amazon has been displaying that Hachette’s books ship in “up to 3-5 weeks.” James Patterson, one of their biggest authors, has declared on Facebook that “there is a war going on between Amazon and book publishers.” The Washington Post has more on the backstory of Amazon’s strategy, while the New York Times blog details how Patterson and other authors are fighting back.
Dispatch from the Online Retail War
Remembering Ronan
Almost a year ago, Emily Rapp’s son Ronan passed away from Tay-Sachs disease. At The Rumpus, Rapp discusses her loss and how it affects her current pregnancy. “A boy was born in the world, already doomed by genetics, in March 2010. A girl, if all goes well, will be born in the world in March 2014, and born to do what?”
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ReBorne
“Getting too quickly to where you want to go, getting there too smoothly, is antithetical to thinking through complex issues. You want roadblocks, confusion, chaos, and doubt. Unexpected, wonderful things come out of this approach.” Jeff VanderMeer provides a master class for Publisher’s Weekly on novel revision, explaining in five steps how his new book Borne arrived at its final incarnation. And for more shop talk, see VanderMeer’s interview with The Kills author Richard House from our own pages a couple of years back.
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Dublinalia
It’s common for descriptions of James Joyce’s Dubliners to label its stories portraits of Irish life. If you’d like to look at actual portraits of Irish life in 1904, however, you could do a lot worse than this series of old photos of Dublin, available online courtesy of the Google Cultural Institute.
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Americanah Interview
Last week we mentioned that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie‘s novel Americanah will, all going well, become a movie starring Lupita Nyong’o. We also mentioned that she wrote about her Year in Reading for us last year. But wait, here’s more! The Rumpus has interviewed Adichie about Americanah, and it’s well worth the read.
Most Anticipated Addenda
Conversational Reading has put together its own “most anticipated” books list that has some overlap with our own. It’s also worth noting that the trend of posthumous publication noted in our Most Anticipated introduction, was plumbed with considerably more depth at The Quarterly Conversation last year.
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