Archive: January 2010 (1-10 of 31)

Jan 30 2010 05:22 PM ET

Amazon is no longer selling Macmillan books; Macmillan CEO John Sargent issues statement

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Amazon has pulled books from publishing giant Macmillan, according to the New York Times. Authors — and book buyers — began to notice last night that Amazon was no longer selling any of Macmillan’s titles (although they can still be purchased on the site from third-party sellers). The skirmish is most likely the latest chapter in the bitter war that Amazon and publishers are waging over the cost of e-books. Along with other companies, Macmillan has been pressing Amazon to raise the price of e-books, while Amazon is keen to keep prices low to promote its reader, the Kindle. (The $9.99 e-book prices advertised during the holiday season were a special point of contention.) So it is any coincidence that Macmillan is emboldened to make such demands  just days after the unveiling of the iPad from Apple? Probably not. Apple, after all, made it clear it will allow publishers more freedom to set their own prices for e-books. And when Steve Jobs was asked at the iPad press conference why customers would buy an e-book for $15 from Apple if they could get it for $9.99 on Amazon, he replied, “That won’t happen…Publishers are actually going to pull their books from Amazon because they’re not happy.”

Macmillan is, of course, one of the biggest book companies in the world and its imprints include Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Henry Holt and St. Martin’s Press, which publishes Janet Evanovich and Augusten Burroughs, amongst many others.

UPDATE (6:00 p.m.): Amazon did not respond to a request for comment. Macmillan CEO John Sargent issued this statement moments ago, addressed to Macmillan authors, illustrators, and the literary agent community:  “This past Thursday I met with Amazon in Seattle. I gave them our proposal for new terms of sale for e-books under the agency model which will become effective in early March. In addition, I told them they could stay with their old terms of sale, but that this would involve extensive and deep windowing of titles. By the time I arrived back in New York late yesterday afternoon they informed me that they were taking all our books off the Kindle site, and off Amazon. The books will continue to be available on Amazon.com through third parties. I regret that we have reached this impasse. Amazon has been a valuable customer for a long time, and it is my great hope that they will continue to be in the very near future. They have been a great innovator in our industry, and I suspect they will continue to be for decades to come. It is those decades that concern me now, as I am sure they concern you. In the ink-on-paper world we sell books to retailers far and wide on a business model that provides a level playing field, and allows all retailers the possibility of selling books profitably. Looking to the future and to a growing digital business, we need to establish the same sort of business model, one that encourages new devices and new stores. One that encourages healthy competition. One that is stable and rational. It also needs to insure that intellectual property can be widely available digitally at a price that is both fair to the consumer and allows those who create it and publish it to be fairly compensated. Under the agency model, we will sell the digital editions of our books to consumers through our retailers. Our retailers will act as our agents and will take a 30% commission (the standard split today for many digital media businesses). The price will be set for each book individually. Our plan is to price the digital edition of most adult trade books in a price range from $14.99 to $5.99. At first release, concurrent with a hardcover, most titles will be priced between $14.99 and $12.99. E-books will almost always appear day on date with the physical edition. Pricing will be dynamic over time. The agency model would allow Amazon to make more money selling our books, not less. We would make less money in our dealings with Amazon under the new model. Our disagreement is not about short-term profitability but rather about the long-term viability and stability of the digital book market. Amazon and Macmillan both want a healthy and vibrant future for books. We clearly do not agree on how to get there. Meanwhile, the action they chose to take last night clearly defines the importance they attribute to their view. We hold our view equally strongly. I hope you agree with us. You are a vast and wonderful crew. It is impossible to reach you all in the very limited timeframe we are working under, so I have sent this message in unorthodox form. I hope it reaches you all, and quickly. Monday morning I will fully brief all of our editors, and they will be able to answer your questions. I hope to speak to many of you over the coming days. Thanks for all the support you have shown in the last few hours; it is much appreciated. All best, John.”

More on e-books:
Apple’s iPad is officially here
Amazon says e-books outsold physical books on Christmas Day
Kindle’s popularity fires up

Jan 29 2010 07:50 PM ET

Author Jay McInerney on J.D. Salinger

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The death of J.D. Salinger yesterday has had reverberations across the landscape of modern American literature. Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City and Story of My Life, gives EW his take on the author’s legacy.

“When I heard about Salinger’s death yesterday I realized I hadn’t thought about him in quite a while. He left the stage a long time ago and his influence is so pervasive that it’s easy to forget how different the cultural landscape would probably be if he’d never come along. Like Mark Twain, whom he mimicked in the opening line of Catcher in the Rye, he injected a new slangy colloquial tone into our literature. It’s impossible to imagine the work of Philip Roth or John Updike without his influence. Several generations later, writers like David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers still seemed to be channeling Holden.

“Twenty-six years ago, when I published my first novel, more than a few reviewers remarked on my indebtedness to Salinger. Some commentators went so far as to suggest that my publisher had deliberately mimicked the cover art of the paperback edition of Catcher. I wasn’t necessarily displeased but I was baffled; back in 1984, it had been years since I’d read Salinger or really thought about him. In graduate school, we weren’t reading or discussing Franny and Zooey and I wasn’t remotely conscious of any influence when I was writing Bright Lights, Big City. I’d read Salinger in high school. I said as much in interviews. I’d point to what I thought of as more obvious influences like Hunter S. Thompson and Raymond Carver without stopping to consider the extent to which they were influenced by Salinger. I guess I was writing under the influence of Salinger, whether or not I was conscious of it. He’s the most influential American writer since Hemingway.

“As for the purported trove of fiction, I’m skeptical. Not of its existence, but of its quality. Anyone who’s read “Seymour: An Introduction” or most especially his last published work, “Hapworth 16, 1924” will wonder just how readable his later fiction is. “Hapworth” is a rambling, self referential, improbable letter home written by an alleged seven year old at camp. By the time he wrote it, Salinger seems to have decided to dispense with most of the niceties of storytelling, and to be talking to himself more rather than to the readers of Catcher in the Rye. I suspect we are going to be disappointed, but I would love to be proven wrong.”

Jan 29 2010 12:04 PM ET

Is a 'Catcher in the Rye' movie possible?

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Hollywood has for years yearned to get their hands on that holy grail of screen rights: The Catcher in the Rye. Now that author J.D. Salinger has passed away, the question looms even larger.  Much is being made of a 1957 letter to an enquirer in which he lays out his antipathy towards selling his work to filmmakers, but leaves open the door to a posthumous adaptation. In it he states: “Firstly, it is possible that one day the rights will be sold. Since there’s an ever-looming possibility that I won’t die rich, I toy very seriously with the idea of leaving the unsold rights to my wife and daughter as a kind of insurance policy. It pleasures me no end, though, I might quickly add, to know that I won’t have to see the results of the transaction.”

For years, Salinger refused outright any requests to adapt his iconic 1951 novel. Much of his ire was rooted in a 1949 failure from Samuel Goldwyn called My Foolish Heart, which turned his short story “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut” into a mushy, saccharine mess. From that point on, Salinger turned down a long list of notables, including Goldwyn (who had the nerve to ask for more), Billy Wilder, Elia Kazan (for the stage rights), and Steven Spielberg.

Whether or not Salinger retained the attitude expressed in that letter over 50 years later — after having separated from his wife and after the named daughter, Margaret, wrote a scathing memoir of him — remains to be seen. But it is interesting to ponder whether or not we could be seeing a Catcher movie any time soon. Salinger believed it was a “very novelistic novel” and thus did not necessarily lend itself well to adaptation in other media, but clearly the bulk of Hollywood has disagreed for decades.

What do you think?  Do you want to see Holden on screen?

Jan 29 2010 09:00 AM ET

Lauren Conrad on the books she loves, hates, and the one that changed her life

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These days Lauren Conrad, 23, is anticipating the Feb. 2 release of her new novel, Sweet Little Lies, and enjoying her sweet little life as an author. “I love it,” she says. “I can stay in my pjs and write.” What better way to celebrate her new lifestyle than to talk about books?

Favorite book as a child

It was Goodnight Moon. It’s the book that I most remember reading as a child. I used to read it over and over. I think it was during the time when I was just learning to read.

Book you’ve gone back to and read over and over again

I think it’s probably The Great Gatsby. I’ve read it several times. I’m actually overdue to read it again. It’s a fun story. I’m obsessed with the 1920s, everything from the style to the lifestyle. It was a really cool era. It was one of the very few pieces of required reading that I actually enjoyed.

Required reading that you hated

So many. It’s awful. I read a lot of Spark Notes in high school.

Fictional character you most identify with I know it’s cheesy, but Jane from my own books, because she is me. READ FULL STORY »

Jan 28 2010 06:39 PM ET

Stephen King on J.D. Salinger: 'The last of the great post-WWII American writers'

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I wasn’t a huge Salinger fan, but I’m sorry to hear of his passing — the way you’d feel if you heard an eccentric, short-tempered, but often fascinating uncle had passed away. Not as great a loss as Beverly Jensen (her marvelous The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay will be published this summer), who wrote only one book before dying of cancer at the age of 49, or of Raymond Carver, who was barely into his 50s; Salinger was, after all, in his 90s.

But it is a milestone of sorts, because Salinger was the last of the great post-WWII American writers, and in Holden Caulfield — maybe the greatest American-boy narrator since Huck Finn — he created an authentic Voice of the Age: funny, anxious, at odds with himself, and badly lost.

Salinger’s death may answer one question that has intrigued readers, writers, and critics for nearly half a century — what literary trove of unpublished work may he have left behind? Much? Some? Or none? Salinger is gone, but if we’re lucky, he may have more to say, even so.

Jan 28 2010 11:47 AM ET

John Edwards tell-all book details leak: 'Fat rednecks' and a sex tape

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Only weeks after the bestselling campaign book Game Change laid out for all to see the indiscretions and subsequent political implosion of John Edwards, the former aide/human shield who originally claimed paternity for Edwards’ illegitimate child has announced his own tell-all account of the affair. Andrew Young’s book, The Politician: An Insider’s Account of John Edwards’s Pursuit of the Presidency and the Scandal That Brought Him Down, was not originally intended to be released until next Friday, but a number of salacious, if unconfirmed, details have already been leaked, and the book will now go on sale on Saturday.

The book deals with Young’s facilitation of the liaison as well as his role in its aftermath and the ensuing cover-up, which Young contends was orchestrated by Edwards himself. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Young alleges Edwards had him handle making hotel reservations in order to accommodate the affair with Rielle Hunter, the mistress and, as Edwards finally admitted last week, mother of his child. “When I knew where the senator was staying,” writes Young, “I made reservations in my own name, faxed copies of my credit card and state identification card, and told the hotel staff that my ‘wife’ would be checking in on my account.” Young also goes for some particularly vengeful quotemongering by citing the once down-home candidate as railing against appearing at state fairs and having “fat rednecks try to shove food down my face. I know I’m the people’s senator, but do I have to hang out with them?” In an interview with Bob Woodruff for ABC News, the former aide talked of a sex tape involving Edwards and a woman who may be Hunter.

Jan 27 2010 03:28 PM ET

Apple's iPad: What book lovers need to know

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Apple has revealed the first steps in its iPlan for stepping into the world of digital publishing. At a press event in San Francisco today, Steve Jobs introduced us to the iPad, his company’s hotly anticipated entry into the tablet market that is set to release worldwide in 60 days. Moments later, they announced their iBook app, which will let iPad owners create their own library of titles purchased and downloaded from a central iBooks store.

Using the nearly 10-inch color touchscreen, voracious e-readers can place their iBooks neatly onto a virtual bookcase that requires no trip to Ikea or quintilingual instruction manual. The reading process will be expectedly haptic, using the already culturally ingrained motions of flicking, tapping and swiping to turn pages, switch titles and adjust font size. The real question is whether or not there is any sort of software involved to make reading for hours on end easier on the eyes. E-readers like the Nook and Kindle have e-ink technology, which helps to reduce the eye strain that comes with continuous screen-staring, and whether the iPad can offer something similar is an important distinction. If I had to read something like Under the Dome entirely on a computer screen, my eyes would probably melt into a milky goo.

The good news is that Apple’s iBook application uses ePub, which is already the most popular open book format in the world, and not exclusive to the company. Also, they have the early support of Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and the Hachette Book Group, who all teamed up with Apple to create the iBook store. The store features a top chart list and New York Times bestseller list, while offering readers access to in-book photos (both color and black-and-white) and even videos. And it runs a lot like iTunes, so the millions of current music customers who already shop there will find iBooks easy to peruse and, most important, to purchase. For some techie experts, this familiarity is a huge iPad advantage—the fact that Apple customers are loyal and that its new product could usher even more e-readers into the marketplace.

The thin iPad weighs in at 1.5 pounds, more than either the Kindle or the Nook. Its screen is the same size as the Kindle DX (9.7 inches), with touch capabilities like the Nook, but beyond that, the visual e-reading experience seems completely different–not surprising coming from Apple. This is particularly true for print publications like The New York Times, which took center stage at the iPad debut to show off its own application. The NYT app brought the newspaper format to life, according to live bloggers, with in-article videos and without a lot of ads. Then there’s the host of other applications that iPads offer, apart from reading eBooks—you can open all 140,000 iPhone apps on the new device, in their original size or in double-pixel vision.

iBooks will cost between $7.99 and $14.99, which is both above and below the $9.99 average Kindle edition price. Pricing for the iPad itself occupies an entirely reasonable range of $499 to $829, on Apple’s typical sliding scale of gigabytes. (with reporting by Keith Staskiewicz)

Jan 26 2010 12:19 PM ET

Apple's Tablet: Will it change how you approach print media?

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Apples have long been a symbol of temptation, and it’s difficult not be tempted by early reports of Steve Jobs’ latest technological game-changer. The iPod revolutionized how we approach music (and killed the album, according to those hip cats at the RIAA), and pretty much everyone in the country owns an iPhone except me and my grandmother. Now, Apple is likely to make another stab at transforming media consumption with their long-in-the-works tablet.

Tablet laptop sales have always been rather, well, flat, but the key to Apple’s entry is the fact that it’s less a compressed computer than an entirely different beast. The New York Times reports that magazine and book publishers are already in talks to provide Apple with content for the tablet, whose ten-inch color screen is perfect for perusing print media in its original format. This could effectively end up leapfrogging over e-readers like the Kindle and the Nook. Add to that a continuous wireless connection and all the capabilities of the iPhone, and you’ve got a pretty formidable device, even if it will have to deal with a wave of alternative tablets and what’s likely to be a hefty price tag.

But while this could be what salvages some print media, particularly news sources, from the mess in which they currently find themselves, it’s also interesting to note that there is also some apprehension on their part. iTunes essentially became the sole medium through which consumers purchase music online, and there’s a sense that giving Apple similar power as an intermediary could hurt publishers’ own freedom to set prices and make decisions. In my eyes, should Apple become the de facto distribution powerhouse in the world of books and magazines, as well as music, it’ll be hard to continue thinking of them as the little company that could. Their outsider status, which they’ve remarkably managed to keep going for so long, is a little questionable if we’re consuming the majority of our content through them. To put it bluntly, it’s a question of whether they could end up going from being the hammer-throwing renegade in their iconic “1984” commercial to being the media-monopolizing face on the screen.

Despite these qualms, I’m honestly excited by the prospect of Apple’s tablet. Apple has so far been a pretty responsible company, and they have a knack for synthesizing and transcending what everybody else in the market is trying to do, so count me tempted. What about you? Would you buy such a device? And, more importantly, how much would you be willing to shell out for one?

Jan 26 2010 09:54 AM ET

Fantastically absurd personal ads from the 'London Review of Books' return in a new book

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Male, 24. looking for hilarious collection of absurdist classified ads.

David Rose, head of personal advertising at the esteemed London Review of Books seems to have answered my request with Sexually, I’m More of a Switzerland, his second collection of sad, hilarious, maladroit, and beautifully ludicrous submissions from Britain’s romantically inclined, but incapable.

The ads reach the level of near-poetry. It’s as if Edward Lear, Philip Larkin and Gonzo the Muppet collaborated to try to get a date for Saturday night. Some are direct (“No Beards.”), while some are more cryptic (“Time is the serenest beauty of the camp, but only I have the reflexes of a fox. And a badger’s sense of smell.”); some are rather uncultured (“The song that most puts me in the mood for love is Rick Dees’ ‘Disco Duck’”), and  some are downright learned (“The Schrödinger’s cat of personal ads. Box no. 3611”).

The pieces feel quintessentially British, with that distinct combination of leather-bound erudition, a keen sense of the absurd, ruthless self-deprecation, and Protestant sexual frustration that can only come from that island damp in weather but dry in wit. And it’s coming out just in time for Valentine’s Day, so you can get it for your significant other and show them that they could do much, much worse.

What do you think of this collection? Hilarious, like Monty Python? Or painfully bad?

Jan 26 2010 09:49 AM ET

Talking Books: Week of 1/25

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It’s time for yet another serialized chapter of Talking Books, where we let you know where your favorite authors will be:


1/26

Mika Brzezinski, All Things at Once, on The Colbert Report (Comedy Central, 11:30 p.m. EDT)

1/27

Ethan Watters, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart (Comedy Central, 11 p.m. EDT)

1/28

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart (Comedy Central, 11 p.m. EDT)

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