The book industry needs to get its act together. Pitched battles between publishers and librarians are not going to help anyone survive the digital revolution. A case in point is the “Boycott HarperCollins” petition posted on the social activism website Change.org.
The email I got yesterday introduces librarian Andy Woodworth, who is using Change.org to help “lead the charge in a fight against NewsCorp":
“See, more and more libraries are beginning to buy e-books… But publishing giant HarperCollins (owned by NewsCorp) is trying to force libraries to only buy e-books that literally self-destruct after the 26th reader in an attempt to maximize profits."
Change.org is hoping for 100,000 signatures. By 9 a.m. this morning, over 50,000 had signed.
Linda Leith
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Though Carlyle was a literary giant of quasi-mythic proportions and a hero to Victorians, his theories and writing are largely forgotten or ignored outside of university departments of English. That is the fate enjoyed by many a writer, and one need not be dead.
Would Carolyn Marie Souaid's marriage survive the 1995 Quebec referendum? A lot was on the line 25 years ago.
Amazed to discover there are people, or at least computers, in 40 countries checking out this salon, and can even correlate these visitors with what I posted on any given day. Peak time to read salon posts is lunchtime, between 12 and 2 p.m. And the number of visitors spiked on June 13th when I announced the publishing company.
Photo: Phyllis Papoulias
My father died twenty years ago and I cannot listen to Leonard Cohen without mourning him. As I write, I’m listening to his copy of Cohen’s album Songs from a Room. “What is a saint?” Cohen asks in Beautiful Losers, and he answers himself, “I think it has something to do with the energy of love.”
