What’s with the spate of tell-alls, autobiographies and memoirs lately? According to a new book, it’s all about the “democratisation” of authorship: everyone has a story to tell, and it’s now easier than ever to tell it.
Publishing
Marieke Hardy reaches for the phone book
With all the talk of Kindles coming to Oz, The Age are releasing a 20 episode fiction story written by Marieke Hardy to be sent daily to your mobile. How will the publishing experiment play out?
The secret life of publishing interns
Publishing may have the reputation of being a sexy, glamour job but what it is like if you’re just starting out? Estelle Tang interviews the lucky recipients of the Australian Publishers Association internships to get the real story.
Teens score Twitter book deal
Two 19-year-olds have signed a deal with Penguin to release their book “Twitterature: The World’s Greatest Books, Now Presented in Twenty Tweets or Less”, which they describe as a “hipster’s Cliff Notes”
Make it free, then make your fortune
Everything Explained books always sell well. Wired editor, Chris Anderson, adds his contribution, Free, which argues that taking the price tag off something is the path to riches.
Gannett feel the credit crunch
With their credit status slashed to junk, the largest newspaper publisher in the US, Gannett Co (owners of USA Today, amongst over 90 other titles) need to raise $400 million over the next two year to survive — but many of their bondholders would rather they default.
Bob Ellis v Margot Saville: from farts to Ingmar Bergman
Author and sometimes Crikey contributor Margot Saville reviewed Bob Ellis’ And So It Went: Night Thoughts in a Time of Change for the Sydney Morning Herald. Bob Ellis begged to differ
Childhood memories published for all to see
How will the increase in confessional ‘bad’ mum and dad memoirs affect their children in future years? What does it say about the parents?
10 cursed second novels
Frazier’s Cold Mountain sold in bucketloads and he received an $8million advance for Thirteen Moons. It flopped.
Meanjin: Productivity Commission committing cultural sabotage
If you don’t care about the survival of independent publishing in Australia, perhaps the Commission’s recommendations won’t bother you. If you do, they should, writes Sophie Cunningham.
Read this: is parallel importation the path to a literary nation?
The Productivity Commission’s inquiry into the Copyright Act has once more opened the debate about the parallel importation of books in Australia, writes Jeff Sparrow.
Maybe this will be the book that gives Costello a spine
The looming Costello memoir doesn’t signal a political end for the Liberal Hamlet, writes Bernard keane.
Harry Potter and the battle for free speech
Gripping scenes in a New York court this week, as famed Harry Potter author JK Rowling and her publisher are suing another publisher, RDR Books, writes Charles Richardson.
Adler: Quality arts require government protection
If the arts sector needed reminding of its lowly status in the free market arcadia the response to my suggestion that the arts need more secure funding should confirm it, writes Louise Adler.
