Three New Books Find Drama in the Scandals and Controversies of the Publishing World
These stories about concerns over the publishing industry aren’t going away any time soon—nor should they: “the business of books has increasingly become a hothouse, generating controversies, Twitter feuds and scrambles to save face as existing power structures are challenged.”
Here Time magazine takes a look at three new novels that “navigate the thorny interior of the industry”:
- The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
- Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews
- The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
Meet the romantic fiction novelists who switched to chilling thrillers
Since I love inventive fiction that bends or blends genres, this article about writers who started with romantic fiction and have branched into also writing mysteries, psychological thrillers, or domestic noir. Authors mentioned include Lisa Jewell, Tony Parsons, Paula Hawkins, Adele Parks, and Joanne Harris.
How a COVID-era Federal Writers Project went from wild idea to a proposed bill
The Los Angeles Times reports on “a revamped program for the COVID-19 era” for putting writers to work modeled after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration. The new program would “employ struggling writers and academics and create a national archive of work from our time.”
Bookstagrammers Demand Publishers Pay Up
“Bookstagrammers Demand Publishers Pay Up”
“Bookstagrammers” are people with book-focused Instagram accounts. After the New York Times published a story about the impact TikTok’s book community is having on the publishing industry, Bookstagrammers spoke up:
The literary community on Instagram, particularly readers of color, objected to the Times’ erasure of their hard work and the willingness for publishing representatives to say, on the record, that they pay TikTokers for their publicity.
Why we remember more by reading – especially print – than from audio or video
Prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic’s switch to digital texts for students, Naomi S. Baron, Professor of Linguistics Emerita at American University, has studied “how electronic communication compares to traditional print when it comes to learning.” Specifically: “Is comprehension the same whether a person reads a text onscreen or on paper? And are listening and viewing content as effective as reading the written word when covering the same material?”
The answers to both questions are often “no,” as I discuss in my book “How We Read Now,” released in March 2021. The reasons relate to a variety of factors, including diminished concentration, an entertainment mindset and a tendency to multitask while consuming digital content.
What Does Book Publishing Stand For?
Alex Shephard writes in The New Republic that publishers have for decades talked about themselves as “one of the most important protectors of speech in the country.” But now, he says, “Publishers have lost their grand narrative, and it’s not clear what will replace it.”
Shephard digs into the recent controversies involving publishers Simon & Schuster and W.W. Norton.
© 2021 by Mary Daniels Brown
