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If you're curious about this kind of thing -- what goes on inside the submission process of publishing -- there follow, a few paragraphs down, eight edited examples of the rejection notes I got, through my agent, for 25,000 words of a memoir. The book is about my childhood, work at the New Yorker, and twelve years in the book business and is tentatively titled My Mistake. (The title seemed apter and apter as these "nos" piled up-if aptness admits of degree.) Those who know the business may enjoy a guessing game here. Those who don't may enjoy a glimpse of book-business manners and lack of them. I post them here because in a way they are all part of a coded conversation. You can read between the lines, assaying the praise for sincerity -- I believe half of it, maybe, but am pathetically grateful for all of it, and was of course inclined to accept all of it prima facie, especially "sublime." And finally, these notes give a taste of how disappointing and frustrating the writing game can be, especially these days. In case you think it's vanity at work here, remember this: a rejection is a rejection.

That said, there exist in my mind at least two perfect examples of ego-sparing ways in which a book can be turned down. One is in Ian MacEwan's Atonement -- a fictional rejection sent to the novel's protagonist from a real and very famous editor, Cyril Connolly, which includes such specific and helpful questions as "If this girl has so fully misunderstood or been so wholly baffled by the strange little scene that has unfolded before her, how might it affect the lives of the two adults? Might she come between them in some disastrous fashion?" The other letter was perhaps an urban legend I once heard about a titanically self-effacing Japanese publisher who said, more or less, "Your book is so wonderful that if we were to publish it, we would have to go out of business completely, since we would never again be able to match its excellence."

I've edited out only identifying information. And a deal has now been made, I'm glad to say-with a great publisher and editor. If they had all declined, it would have been on to Mushroom Spore Press, in Weehawken, New Jersey, and Raccoon Scat Books, P.O. Box 43,227, Winnipeg, Manitoba. Or, seriously, self-publishing -- an option that in fact gave me great comfort throughout this process, as the tide inexorably turns against the traditional models of offering books to the public.

REJECTION 1

Dear _____:

I regret I'm going to have to pass on Dan's memoir. I'm sure you and Dan will understand why this book would be tricky for us to do. I remember Dan once telling me that he loved my "sense of mischief," so I appreciate the spirit in which this came my way. I'm sorry not to get the chance to work with him on this....

I particularly enjoyed the reminiscences of Pauline Kael and of the school days in Nyack, and Dan's wry and bemused portrait of all the infighting and incestuousness at William Shawn's New Yorker.

REJECTION 2

Dear _____,

Thank you very much indeed for sending me Dan Menaker's My Mistake. I truly love the narrative energy of these pages, the sharpness of the humor -- which spares no one, including Dan himself...

That being said, I must add something far harder to say, and that is that I'm afraid that there is some concern here about the size of the audience for this book...Therefore, I feel I must decline, though I do so with regret, and wishing you and he every success with the book: I am certain that you will soon find another editor who feels differently, and the right house for Dan and My Mistake.

REJECTION 3

Dear _____,

After much thought, I've decided not to offer on Dan Menaker's memoir. I loved the parts on the New Yorker -- as did everyone who read it here. But the family history sect

For six months, the new imprint at Penguin Group USA headed by David Rosenthal has remained stubbornly nameless.

Read more: Delia Ephron, Portfolio, Penguin New Imprint, Book Publishing, Bill Maher, Goodnight Ipad, David Rosenthal, The New New Rules, Valerie Plame Wilson, Blue Rider Press, Penguin Press, R.A. Dickey, Penguin, Penguin Publishing, Riverhead Books, Books News

According to book publishers, US Talk show host and actress Ricki Lake has signed with Atria Books for a book about herself which is due to be released in the spring of 2012. The 42-year-old Lake is expected to appear on the small screen again in the fall of 2012 with a new talk show – that has now been confirmed by memoir and poetry book publishers.

The plans of writing her book publishing memoir are however at the very beginning. Atria’s representatives stated that the book doesn’t even have a title yet, but the story will be like an emotional rollercoaster ride “through the glum and the glamour”. It will include the actress’s career life in detail as well as aspects of her personal life.

Born in September 1968, Ricki Pamela Lake comes from a Jewish family. Her mother was a common housewife and her father was a pharmacist. She grew up in New York and attended Ithaca College.

Her professional acting career debuted with the role in the original Hairspray movie in 1988, where she got the role of Tracy Turnblad, the lead character. She then starred in numerous movies, such as Working Girl in 1988, Cookie, Baby Cakes and Last Exit To Brooklyn in 1989, Cry-Baby in 1990, Inside Monkey Zetterland in 1992, Skinner in 1993, Serial Mom in 1994, Mrs. Winterbourne in 1996, Park in 2006. She got a role in the 2007 version of Hairspray ( w. John Travolta), where she was the talent agent. She was executive producer of the movie “The Business of Being Mom” in 2008.
She won an Independent Spirit Award for Best female Lead in Hairspray in 1989 and a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show Host in her talk show, Ricki Lake, in 1994.

Despite her success as a career woman, Ricki Lake opened up about her abusive childhood. “I was a victim of childhood sexual abuse” she said back in 2007 while talking about her weight problems. She said she had been in therapy and had worked on her personal problems for years. “I didn’t talk about it for, like, 15 or 20 years.” She continued, explaining that she wanted to pretend it didn’t really happen to her. After the abuse she started gaining weight and was once 260 pounds. Lake said she never confronted her abuser but when she told her parents about what had happened, the abuser disappeared rapidly from her life.

These days a heavy weight has lifted from her body and hopefully, it will be lifted from her chest, too, when he will get to put on paper all the things that she has been through.

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"Dear Marcus" is a self-published first book by someone with no connection to New York publishing. At the age of twelve its author, Jerry McGill, was shot in the back in Manhattan's East Village on New Year's Day by someone he never saw. He has spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. (As with O'Rourke the anniversary of his tragedy is a holiday and unlike O'Rourke he gives himself a treat every year--a fancy meal at a restaurant, a trip to London.) His book is subtitled "Speaking to the Man Who Shot Me," and since this man was never found McGill gives him a made-up name and then cries out to him about his life.

Read more: Nyr, Dear Marcus, Jerry Mcgill, Iuniverse, Reviews, New York Review, Self-Publishing, Book Publishing, Books News

A fellow writer's book just came out and when I heard, it sparked memories of those fabulous days past when a book of mine had just been published. Seeing the hard copy for the first time -- even after having seen countless drafts and the advance review copy -- is always a rush. I emailed my friend to congratulate her. I then had to ask: "Found any typos yet?"

Let's face it: assemble 100,000 words on any topic and there are bound to be a few typographical errors by the time the product is printed. In my book Death's Door: The Truth Behind Michigan's Largest Mass Murder, there were a few we found right away. A dropped period here, a missing comma there, but nothing major. Luckily, the book sold enough copies to where we had the opportunity to correct the typos in another press run. After the second printing, an astute reader wrote to me and pointed out how I had reversed the north-south orientation of two towns in the story. No one else had caught it. When I had first written the text, I had placed the towns correctly, but while editing, I had moved a couple partial sentences around to make it more readable. I missed how the two sentences were dependent on each other. Again, a subsequent printing was corrected. If nothing else, I can now identify which printing of "Death's Door" you are reading by looking for the typos.

Most writers I've spoken with relate similar stories of reading a freshly printed book with trepidation. It is almost a relief to find a small typo here and there. At least you can tell yourself, "That's all there is!"

Chrysler's Turbine Car: The Rise and Fall of Detroit's Coolest Creation, came out in October and was my first book to be published in hardcover. Of course, the robustness of the cover has little to do with how I juggle the words before my editors see them. Did I manage to get any typos into print in that book? Of course I did.

My publisher's team of editors did their best to clean up my writing but I still snuck a couple by them. In one passage I wrote about a couple of cars and accidentally described a "1973" Aspen automobile. There is no such thing, but there was a 1976 Aspen and elsewhere in the text I had been speaking of a 1973 Satellite. Rest assured that mistakes like that will be pointed out to you by astute readers. I heard about that one within a week of the book coming out. I also accidentally referred to a DC-7 as a "jet." What can I tell you? Maybe I was thinking of the DC-8. Again, errors like these are easy to fix in later printings.

Despite spell-checking programs, typographical errors will always be with us. I will continue trying to write error-free, but I've made peace with the notion that typos are a part of writing life. I like to view them as little scars on my work. The book will survive. And so will I.

Read more: Book Publishing, Turbine Car, Writing, Typo, Errors, Publishing, Corrections, Books News

A lot of people claim that traditional publishing is broken and will eventually die. I disagree. Much like the changes that have occurred in the past in publishing, the big six will survive and so will agents. I do not have any insider knowledge or hidden agenda, nor do I profess to know everything about publishing. Not by a long shot. But I do know how to read the signs of this evolution or revolution, depending on which side of the fence you are on. I believe there have been many signs. Here is how I foresee they will do it.

Self-publishing: In the very near future, all of the houses will spend some of their equity on self-publishing. In order to survive, they are going to have to reinvent the way they do business. This means digging into the self-publishing arena. It's rumored that two major houses are already doing this, and there are likely more to come. Hay House, for example, has already lent their name to Balboa Press which is their self-publishing arm. I have no experience with Balboa so I can't speak to their process, but I do know that part of their sales pitch to authors is that a successful book published with Balboa will be considered by Hay House for republication. Does this actually happen? I don't know, Balboa hasn't been around long enough to show a track record. If publishers get into self-publishing, does that mean they won't be publishing traditionally? Not at all. The traditional model won't go away, but with publishers becoming more and more risk-averse, the model has to change if they're going to survive. And, let's face it, while the number of bookstores is declining, opportunities to sell books and flood the market with books continue to increase.

Direct to consumer: While some publishers are dabbling in this, I'm not clear how successful they will be. Consumer engagement on e-commerce sites such as Amazon, etc. will significantly change the way we buy. What does this mean? I think you're going to see a lot more social buying in the future. Social engagement, consumer recommendations, etc. We're already seeing a lot of this, but I believe we'll see much more of it. Can publishers offer this? Yes, they certainly can, but first they have to overcome the hurdle of consumer awareness. Consumers don't know publishers, they know authors and they know the big e-commerce sites like Amazon, et al. Direct to consumer is great, but when you've been a behind-the-scenes entity for so long, the awareness process can take a while.

The future of the literary agent: I have heard this directly from a few agents -- that in five years literary agents as we now know them will be gone, or at the very least strongly diminished. Will agents go away? Doubtful. I believe the savvy agents will stick around and, like publishing, completely reinvent themselves. Consider this: for years agents have acted as gatekeepers. Ferreting through manuscripts, often editing work and/or suggesting rewrites to the material. They've done more lunches with publishers than you could ever hope to do in your lifetime, and they've schmoozed at more parties than anyone should ever be forced to attend. What does all this mean? It means they are more dialed into the industry than almost anyone and this puts them in a fantastic position. It's already brewing out there; several savvy agents are taking it upon themselves to become book consultants. Let's face it, while publishing opportunities may diminish vis-à-vis the traditional houses, the number of authors who want to get published will continue to grow. There will never be a lack of material, and agents are perfectly positioned to make sure that the majority of it is quality material. Consider this: you have a manuscript and you're not sure if it's a marketable topic. You don't even know if what you've written is any good. Yes, yo

In the introduction to Reconsidering Jane Jacobs, a new book from the American Planning Association, co-editor Max Page writes that the book "is less about Jane Jacobs as an individual than about 'Jane Jacobs' as the shorthand for a set of ideas and planning practices that have spread around the world over the past half century, some of which the individual named Jane Jacobs might not have recognized as her own."

It is wise for Page to acknowledge that 50 years after publication of The Death and Life of Great American Cities Jane Jacobs is as much an icon -- and one with a mirrored surface -- as she was a flesh-and-blood writer about cities, but acknowledging this fact begs a big question, a question that lies at the heart of this stimulating book.

If Jacobs might not recognize "ideas and planning practices" that her name has come to symbolize, then what are those ideas and practices, and who decides what they are, and for whom?

For example: in an essay in the book about the impact of Jacobs' work in rapidly urbanizing China, city planner Nathan Cherry writes, after describing several large-scale, convulsive redevelopment projects in China that he has worked on, that "if she came to China with me and saw these projects I described, in all their complexity, I am sure Jane Jacobs would understand that the good in large-scale planning is not necessarily outweighed by the bad."

What Jacobs wrote is fixed on the printed page; but what she "stands for" is in flux.

What's being built in China would make Robert Moses proud -- and for "good" reasons more than bad -- but do any planners spend their time wondering (and hoping) whether he would "understand" their work?

That Jacobs became mythic, or even sacred, an icon who absorbs whatever believers project onto her image, was hardly her fault. That anyone laboring in the urban vineyard must have a "personal relationship" with Jacobs is a tribute not only to the parables she constructed on Hudson Street, but also to the quality of her values. People can believe they serve those values, believe they are Jacobsians, independent of how their actions compare to how she wanted people to act.

A lot has been written about Jacobs, but what in particular makes Reconsidering Jane Jacobs exceptional is that the editors, Page and Timothy Mennel, take a broad view of what Jane Jacobs, icon or individual, was about. This is (mostly) not a book about planning so much as it is a book about culture, and I mean "culture" in both senses of the word.

The book contains six major essays. The first three provide biographical background for and literary analysis of Jacobs' work, while the second three express, in various forms and to varying degrees, criticisms of not so much her work but of the impact the work has had.

The first essay, by Peter Laurence, who teaches architecture at Clemson University, is about Jacobs' education and her work before she wrote Death and Life. Laurence's objective is to show that contrary to legend, Jacobs was not an amateur. Nor was she entirely self-educated, having studied geography at Columbia in the '30s (although not completing a degree). (At Columbia Jacobs read the work of historian Henri Pirenne on the role of cities in the medieval rebirth of Europe, and his work influenced the ideas she developed later.)

By the mid-'50s Jacobs was considered one of the more knowledgeable and important writers on urban issues. It was no surprise that she was a participant at the inaugural urban design conference at Harvard in 1956, and her stature enabled her to receive funding from the Rockefeller Foundation to write Death and Life. According to Laurence, when Jacobs started writing about cities in the '50s she was "with the program" when it came to urban renewal, and that one motivation for writing Death and Life was her personal sense of guilt for having believed the logic of planning theory witho

The facts about Barack Obama’s birth never wavered. But the more the fraudulent theories were debated and dispelled in major news media outlets, the more people seemed to believe them.

Read more: Birthers, Book Publishing Industry, Obama Birth Certificate, Book Publishing, The New Yorker, Jerome Corsi, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, David Remnick, Books News

With this installment of Seeing Red, serialization of the novel, which began in February, 2011, is now coming to an end. Thanks to all the on-line readers, and all of you who sent comments! To read earlier installations, go to SeeingRedHuffPost. TO PURCHASE A COPY OF SEEING RED, go to http://www.seeingredthenovel.com.

Ronda completes dialing the first number and a woman answers and mumbles something that Ronda doesn't understand.

"Buenos días, señora," Ronda begins slowly. "Conoce usted Jesús Becerra?" The woman cannot speak a word of English.

"Lo siento, lo siento," the woman says over and over.

"Yo soy Ronda Cari," Ronda says, trying another tack. "Señor Julio Galvarez en Sevilla es...es mi...mi amigo."

"Oh sí, sí," the woman says, recognizing the name Galvarez. "Pero no conozco el otro..."

"Jesús. Jesús Becerra? El toca la guitarra?"

"No, no se. Lo siento mucho." The woman hangs up before Ronda can ask another question.

"Thanks for nothing," Ronda says, setting the phone into its cradle. She studies the phone for a moment.

She dials the second number. It rings ten times with no answer. The third number doesn't even produce a ring, but instead, a recording that Ronda doesn't understand.

Slamming the phone down, she drops onto the bed and covers her eyes with a pillow. "What now?" she says out loud, her throat closing tight over the words.

She is sniffling and beginning to wonder if maybe she didn't in fact make a terrible mistake coming. Just then, there is a knock at the door.

"Oh please God don't let it be Jerez bearing more gifts," Ronda says, sitting up and reaching for her purse. She pulls out a tissue and blows her nose and the knock comes again at the door, harder. "Just a minute, please," she calls, easing herself off the bed.

As she crosses the room, she has this fantasy: that when she opens the door Jesús himself will be standing there, bandaged, but still as handsome as ever. He will take her in his arms and push her hair off her forehead, covering her face with kisses. He will crush her with his strong arms and suffocate her in the kind of embrace they used to share so often on her bed.

He will whisper in his familiar voice, "Oh Ronda, Ronda, I'll never ever leave you again."

When she opens the door, however, she faces the same bellboy who carried her bag up to her room. He holds out a pale blue envelope, on which is written her first and last names. The envelope is marked "Urgent."

She tips him and hurries inside to open the envelope. Inside is a fax: "Fabricas Jerez, de Sevilla, Granada, Cadiz, Madrid." Shuddering, she reads:

"My dearest Ronda, I have just received new information regarding your friend. I can safely say that he is not in Lanjarón. Discard those three phone numbers Galvarez gave you.

Instead, please allow my driver to take you to another location. Remain there until I arrive later this evening. Enrique."

Ronda drops onto the bed, her hands trembling. Fury chokes her. Her head begins pounding again. How dare Jerez make a fool of her like this. How dare he play with her, leading her on a wild goose chase from one location to another. Tempted to tear the fax to shred, she realizes she has no choice does but to cooperate with Jerez.

Hernán is waiting in the lobby, standing with his hands crossed over his abdomen, exactly the way he was earlier in the day. Ronda nods in his direction and he takes her bag. Weaving through the streets of Granada in the sleek black Mercedes, they arrive quickly at the autovia.

Out the window, Ronda can just see the peaks of the Sierra Nevadas, dusted with snow.

*****

Twenty minutes go by be

Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, and other e-readers might dangle the prospect of convenience for millions of bibliophiles around the world, with their light weight and instant access to whole libraries of e-books, but a new analyst report suggests the devices could eventually prove bad news for the publishing industry as a whole.

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We’re thrilled to announce that we will be publishing, in conjunction with Rockstar Games, a series of short stories some of which are based on characters and cases from the world of L.A. Noire, Rockstar’s forthcoming new video game.

Read more: Rockstar Games, Mulholland Books Rockstar Games, Mulholland Books, Book Publishing, Publishing Partnership, La. Noire, Books News

Picture this. Your good friend texts you to say he just got home from a blind date. You call him right away to see how it went.

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Travel guide book publisher Lonely Planet has blamed the high Australian dollar for its decision to axe 60 to 70 staff and move its online division from its Melbourne headquarters to London.

Lonely Planet’s chief executive, Matt Goldberg, told staff yesterday that the redundancies – a shedding of about 15 per cent of staff – were a painful but necessary step for the company to ”return to profitability”.

”Lonely Planet is facing a series of financial challenges from external forces beyond our control – a sluggish global economy, the troubled retail sector, a declining print market and, significantly, the effects of the strong Australian dollar.”

The dollar’s strength has bled the company of $13 million in revenue this financial year, because 70 per cent of its costs are incurred in Australia, while 80 per cent of its revenue is raised overseas.

Lonely Planet is expected to post a loss this year, and it announced plans yesterday to slash its costs by 18 per cent.

A spokeswoman for Lonely Planet, Kim Lovely, said some staff whose jobs had been axed would be given the chance to apply for new positions in London.

Ironically, the latest edition of the publisher’s guide to Britain is scathing in some of its opinions of Old Blighty.

”Public transport, admission fees, restaurants and hotel rooms all tend to be expensive compared with their equivalents in many other European countries,” the guide says.

Visitors should be prepared to ”fork out £30 in a restaurant for a ”modern European” concoction that tastes like it came from a can”.

Lonely Planet was founded at the kitchen table of the Australian couple Tony and Maureen Wheeler in the 1970s, and grew into the world’s largest guide book publisher. It is now a wholly owned subsidiary of BBC Worldwide, the BBC’s commercial arm.

Employees in the online book publishing division greeted the news with dismay, although senior management had foreshadowed changes last month.

One employee made redundant yesterday said: ”The relocation is a surprise, but it was fairly clear there were going to be some fairly savage cuts. I’ve had the feeling that the BBC has been wanting to move the online publishing side of things to London anyway, and maybe they were just waiting for an excuse.”

Mr Goldberg told staff that the book publishing company was committed to remaining in its Melbourne headquarters, which has about 350 staff.

Media firm Bertelsmann, owner of book publisher Random House, has purchased a digital agency specializing in putting books on devices like Apple’s iPad. Bertelsmann acquired Smashing Ideas, a Seattle-based agency focused on developing entertainment content for digital devices.

About a year ago, Smashing Ideas, which also has an office in Newcastle, England, began working with Random House to develop iPad apps and e-books. Thus far, digital versions of two children’s titles have resulted for “Pat The Bunny” and “Wild About Books.”

“As a company, we’re fairly focused on youth and family,” said Stephen Jackson, president and CEO of 15-year-old Smashing Ideas. Now, he said, his firm is working on projects for young adults and adults with the new owners, and expects to work on projects targeting all demographics.

The digital agency has 70 employees and counts Disney, Mattel, Nickelodeon, Hasbro, GE, and Microsoft among its clients. Smashing Ideas will continue serving those clients, and will remain a standalone shop. “The beauty of it for us is [Bertelsmann] leaves all of their acquisition companies fairly independent. We will retain our independence as a standalone company,” he said. Jackson added that no changes to staff, office locations or management are planned as a result of the deal.

When ClickZ News asked whether Jackson anticipates tie-ins between current clients and Bertelsmann publishers properties, he said, “It makes total sense. It’s something we would love to explore.”

According to a press release, “The acquisition adds significantly to the set of Random House capabilities and further signals the intention of Random House and its parent company to be leaders in digital content creation, and demonstrates their commitment to expanding revenues from mobile and interactive online products and services.”

Markus Dohle, chairman and CEO of Random House, added in the release, “We intend to provide our new Smashing Ideas colleagues with abundant resources to help them grow as a profit center, as well as a creative force.”

Jackson said he intends to help the publisher determine the most appropriate platforms for distributing its titles. “The buzzword of the day is transmedia,” he said. “I think we’re really starting to see that come to fruition.”

However, he continued, “The content has to be appropriate for that device. Should the content be equal and the exact same [on all devices]? My answer is no.”

As for children’s book publishing content, Jackson said the iPad is the clear winner. “Right now the device of choice in terms of enhanced e-books is the iPad…. It has demonstrated it is a really child-friendly device.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books was created in 1996 to promote literacy, celebrate the written word, and bring together book publishers with those who create books with the people who love to read them. Between 130,000 and 140,000 people attend the event annually. The Times has launched its first mobile interactive guide to help attendees explore this weekend’s Festival of Books. Through ebook publishing, the festival is now available for free download for iPhone, iPod Touch and Android users, it includes the following features:

• Customizable schedule of events
• Special section for poetry book publishers and christian book publishers
• Detailed “search” by activity, author, book title or genre and descriptions of all panels, participants, performers and exhibitors
• Maps of the Festival grounds, including information about dining options, parking and public transportation
• Integration with users’ Facebook and Twitter accounts for posting photos, status updates and tweets
• Easy access to up-to-the-minute news from the Festival’s Facebook and Twitter feeds as well as USC traffic updates

All attractions, including the Festival’s eight outdoor stages, hundreds of panels, exhibitors, book sellers and live entertainment, will be comfortably located around the USC campus’ central Trousdale Parkway. Other conveniences added this year include additional information booths, sit-down dining and more concession stands, a shaded rest area, an increased number of parking spaces and valet parking option for panel pass purchasers. Triangular shuttle service between Union Station, Los Angeles Convention Center and USC will also supplement existing public transportation.

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is presented in association with USC, presenting sponsor Target, major sponsors Buick and GMC and official ticketing provider Eventbrite.

The book publishing industry is bracing itself for another scandal as one of the best-selling authors in recent years has been accused of fabricating parts of a popular memoir.

Greg Mortenson has been catapulted to celebrity since the 2006 publication of Three Cups of Tea, (Penguin Book Publishers) which he said was a non-fiction account of his travels in Pakistan. The book describes how in 1992, he got lost while descending from an attempt on K2, the world’s second-highest mountain, and was taken in by a group of villagers.

Mr Mortenson wrote that to repay that hospitality, he founded the Central Asia Institute, a non-profit foundation that builds schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Three Cups of Tea, which has sold more than 4m copies, was published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin. Penguin, like the Financial Times, is owned by Pearson.

On Friday, 60 Minutes, the CBS news programme, aired a segment that called into question the veracity of many of the stories central to the book. On Monday, author Jon Krakauer, who appeared in the 60 Minutes segment, released a digital booklet Three Cups of Deceit, which chronicles what he says are fabricated parts of Mr Mortenson’s books.

Viking said it would review the book and its contents with Mr Mortenson. “Greg Mortenson’s work as a humanitarian in Afghanistan and Pakistan has provided tens of thousands of children with an education. 60 Minutes is a serious news organisation and in the wake of their report, Viking plans to carefully review the materials with the author,” it said.

If the story is proved to be even partly fabricated, it would be another black eye for the book publishers industry: several works of non-fiction have been shown to be at least partly fictionalised in recent years. Other examples include James Frey’s, A Million Little Pieces published by Random House Book Publishers, that became the investigative subject of the smoking gun website exposing the supposedly non-fiction book as largely fictional.

The 60 Minutes report pointed to several passages that it says are exaggerated or fabricated. It suggested Mr Mortenson did not visit Korphe, the village he describes in the book, until a year after his descent from K2.

In statements to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, in his home town of Bozeman, Montana, Mr Mortenson acknowledged he had taken literary licence in parts of the story. “The time about our final days on K2 and ongoing journey to Korphe village and Skardu is a compressed version of events that took place in the fall of 1993.”

The 60 Minutes report also claimed that a group of Pakistani men who Mr Mortenson said were members of the Taliban who had kidnapped him, were in fact lawyers and other professionals, who were assigned to protect him.

An Italian book publisher has yanked copies of a book on Catholic Church teaching after a translation error implied the Vatican approved of contraception, officials said Tuesday.

The book “YouCat,” a Catholic catechism book for young people, is to be presented officially Wednesday at a Vatican press conference.

But on the eve of the presentation, officials confirmed that Nuova Citta, the Italian book publishers of “YouCat,” had pulled the Italian copies to fix the error, which concerned whether married couples could plan the size of their families.

The Vatican opposes artificial contraception, holding that life begins at conception. The church does, however, condone Natural Family Planning, in which married couples chart the changes in a woman’s menstrual cycle to determine when she might, or might not, conceive.

It’s the second time in a year that translation problems have muddied church teaching on contraception. In November, the Vatican’s own publishing house mistranslated the pope’s comments about condoms and AIDS, implying that condom use for prostitutes was justified in some cases.

The mistake made headlines since it indicated the church had softened its firm opposition to artificial contraception.

But the Vatican insisted Pope Benedict XVI was doing no such thing and was merely saying that a prostitute who uses a condom may be taking a first step in a more moral, responsible sexuality because he or she is looking out for the welfare of another.

“YouCat” makes clear that the Catholic Church still opposes condoms, the pill and other forms of artificial contraception.

But in the Italian copy of the book, which is set out as a series of questions and answers with commentary, the initial question is mistranslated. In the original German, the question concerns whether married couples can “regulate conception.”

The answer says yes, then goes onto explain that the church promotes Natural Family Planning.

In the Italian however, the original question wasn’t translated as “regulate conception” but rather whether married couples could “use contraceptive methods.” The answer remained the same, an affirmative yes, implying that the Church was sanctioning contraception.

“It’s an embarrassment,” but not a change in church teaching, said the Rev. Joseph Fessio, head of Ignatius Press, YouCat’s English-language book publisher.

He told The Associated Press that Nuova Citta had printed 45,000 Italian copies, 15,000-16,000 of which were already physically sold.

“The rest they’re going to have to pull them all,” he said.

As a broadcaster, Melvyn Bragg has discussed more topics with more specialists and more energetically than most of us could ever hope to do. The 400th anniversary of the King James Bible provides him with the perfect opportunity to write something with christian book publishers which reflects that breadth of encounter.

The Book of Books has three parts. The first takes us “from Hampton Court to New England”. It’s a broadly chronological account, putting the KJB in historical context and paying proper attention to earlier translations, with Tyndale (published in 1526) justly recognised as pre-eminent. The book explains how the KJB was commissioned, planned and executed. Then the camera angle widens and we are taken on the first of the KJB’s many journeys: across the Atlantic on the Mayflower; to the English civil war, where it provided ammunition for both sides; to the Restoration era in Britain; and to the Great Awakening in America.

In part two, “The Impact on Culture”, the journey extends to science, language, literature and political thought. The writer shows how the KJB was hugely influential among those who formed the Royal Society. Its language forms an important strand in present-day idiom. It can be seen as great literature in its own right, and has hugely influenced British and American writers. Bragg gives us a whistle-stop tour from Shakespeare to Toni Morrison, with way stations including Milton, Bunyan, Defoe, Blake, Melville, Faulkner, Eliot and Golding. “After all the pounding it has taken”, Bragg writes, this Bible “is still a source for such great imaginative writers today”.

The writer shows how the KJB survived attacks by philosophers such as David Hume and Thomas Hobbes during the Enlightenment. This leads him to make a strong case for how it will survive the so-called New Enlightenment of Richard Dawkins and others. Bragg does a grand demolition job of Dawkins’s limited vision – his failure to recognise the positive dimension to belief and to appreciate the critical importance of the historical backdrop. He ends this section of the book with an account of the KJB’s influence on the actions of individuals, presenting Mary Wollstonecraft and William Wilberforce as cases in point.

Part three is “The Impact on Society”. Here the KJB’s journeys take us first into slavery, and then the American civil war and its political consequences. A global perspective emerges. The Book is seen as “the prime educating force in the English-speaking world”, and Protestant missionaries as especially important in this process. The text has played an important role in developing social attitudes to sex and the place of women, and in the rise of socialism. Above all, it helped form our modern notion of democracy. This, Bragg argues, could be the KJB’s “greatest achievement” of all – Bragg’s book publishers agree.

The book’s strengths are its judicious selectivity and its breadth, yet both carry risks.

All readers will want to cite other examples: I would add the Virgin Mary to his discussion of biblical women, and one could easily double the length of the chapter on global spread by showing how the KJB has influenced literature across the Commonwealth. Nor do I doubt that specialists will dispute specific points. The linguist in me worries when I read that there are “literally thousands” of present-day idiomatic expressions in the KJB (my estimate is roughly 250) – but I’m happy to turn a blind eye to the occasional linguistic infelicity in the interests of seeing the wider picture.

Which is what we get. Bragg’s strengths as a novelist yield an account that is personal and imaginative, full of

The book publishers of the new book “The Official Ferrari Opus,” diamond-studded copies of which may sell for $275,000 or more each, are calling it “the most exclusive book in the world.” Book collectors may quibble with that claim; one of 21 known complete copies of the Gutenberg Bible, the first book printed on a movable-type press, sold at auction last year for $5.4 million.

Regardless, ownership of “The Official Ferrari Opus” is expected to be the privilege of a very small group due to the book publishing cost. Published by the Kraken Opus division of the Opus Media Group of London, the book is offered in several layers of exclusivity.

There is an Enzo edition, named after the marque’s founder and limited to 400 copies, each priced at $37,500. Each red leatherbound Enzo edition comes in a carbon-fiber case and is “personally signed by all living Ferrari world champions on an individually numbered, silver-foiled signature sheet,” the company said.

The Cavallino Rampante edition, limited to 500 copies, will be personally signed by “Ferrari greats, past and present.” Interested buyers, however, should expect signatures from a random assortment of Ferrari associates, as opposed to the Enzo’s complete collection of world champions. This edition is priced at $7,000.

The Classic edition, meanwhile, costs $4,100 and limited to 4,100 copies. It is signed by the current Ferrari Formula One drivers Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso.

The 852-page book is said to weigh 82 pounds and measures 19.6 square inches. It is printed on heavy-duty paper, contains 200,000 words of text, 2,000 photos and information on every Ferrari road car and racecar, as well as on every professional driver to race for the company since its 1947 founding.

Preorders are being accepted, according to the publisher’s Web site.

What of the aforementioned $275,000 Enzo Diamante edition? Any of the 400 allotted Enzo edition copies can be dressed with a Prancing Horse logo adorned with 30 diamonds, and each buyer is entered into a drawing for a replica of the Formula One racecar driven by Michael Schumacher, the former Ferrari pilot and seven-time Formula One champion.

Adding to the Diamante’s allure, the publisher says only one edition will be made available in any one country.

The first Opus copy off the presses is being taken on a world tour of Formula One races and promotional events this year, where it is being signed by various luminaries, including Luca di Montezemolo, the Ferrari president, and Al Mubarak, the Ferrari investor who facilitated the construction of Ferrari World Abu Dhabi. The tour is called the Journey to Maranello, a reference to the Ferrari factory’s location in northern Italy, where an event will be held to auction copy No. 1 to the highest bidder. Proceeds will benefit charities selected by Mr. di Montezemolo and Mr. Mubarak.

For those who prefer to try before they buy, the Apple iTunes store offersiPad and iPhone apps for “The Official Ferrari Opus,” which include excerpts from the book. The apps are free.

Just when do books wear out?

That the big question, especially after Book Publishers announced this month that libraries will only be able to circulate its e-book titles 26 times before they’ll have to buy a new copy.

It set 26 as the cap, arguing with an average two-week borrowing period, it works out to a year — the length of time when printed books wear out and popularity wanes.

Technically, e-books will never fall apart. And librarians argue many printed books circulate far more than 26 times, and are still in good shape after more than 100 checkouts.

The new rule, which went into effect on March 7 for new titles, has upset librarians, sparking some in the United States to call for a boycott of HarperCollins books.

While Canadian librarians aren’t making such threats, the Toronto Public Library is holding off on any new HarperCollins purchases until the new restrictions are clarified.

“This announcement was discouraging,” said city librarian Jane Pyper. “We respect the publishing industry. We want a viable and vibrant Canadian publishing industry, in particular. We want Canadian content.

“We also want something that’s fair to public libraries and viable and sustainable for the library sector.”

While e-books represent less than 1 per cent of the 32 million items that the Toronto library circulates each year, they are growing in popularity. The library currently carries about 11,000 e-book titles, and they are checked out about 17,000 times each month.

On Christmas Day and Boxing Day, after people had ripped off the wrapping paper on new and self publishing reading devices like Kobos and Sony readers, the library had an unbelievable surge in hits on its website for patrons wanting to download e-books, Pyper said.

With each e-title, the Toronto library can only circulate that single copy to one borrower at a time. Patrons can borrow 10 books for up to 21 days. After the due date, the book disappears from the individual reader and the item can circulate again.

The New York Times says nine million devices are in use in the United States, according to Forrester Research. Market research firms here estimate 500,000 Canadians had readers by the end of last year.

“It’s important for the future to understand that the public libraries will be in e-collection market,” said Pyper. “We want to own books, we want to preserve them, and we want the public to have permanent access to them.”

E-books range in price from $20 to $30 and there are no library discounts — unlike print versions, she said. And given the library’s financial woes, pricing or the need to repurchase books has an impact on the budget.

When asked for comment, a spokesman with HarperCollinsCanada said no one was available.

In an open letter to librarians, Josh Marwell, president of sales at HarperCollinsPublishers in the United States, explained that the company’s previous e-book policy was almost 10 years old, developed when there were few such readers.

“We have serious concerns that our previous e-book policy, selling e-books to libraries in perpetuity, if left unchanged, would undermine the emerging e-book ecosystem, hurt the growing e-book channel, place additional pressure on physical bookstores, and in the end lead to a decrease in book sales and royalties paid to authors,” Marwell wrote.

He added the 26 checkout cap can provide a year of availability for titles with the highest demand and much longer for other titles. “If a library decides to repurchase an e-book later in the book’s life, the price will be significantly lower as it will be pegged to a paperback price point.”

The ease with which consumers can borrow e-books makes book publishe

Books such as Harry Potter, The Book Thief or The Hunger Games have crossed the traditional lines between teen and adult fiction, something some book publishing literary types say is a bit of a trend.

Jamie Broadhurst, vice-president of marketing at Raincoast Books, said that 10 years of publishing Harry Potter really showed him the blurring of the lines between young adult and adult fiction.

“Consumer and Book Publisher surveys showed that about 20 per cent of the audience for Harry Potter are adults who don’t have children,” Broadhurst said. “Raincoast and Bloomsbury went so far as to produce both children’s and adult covers, but we found in actual fact that adults were equally comfortable reading book with a ‘kids’ cover.’ Harry Potter showed that the strength of the story mattered a whole lot more than preset genre labels.”

Vancouver’s Melanie Jackson, who writes young-adult novels, says there isn’t that much difference between young-adult fiction and adult fiction.

“I think young-adult fiction is getting to be more popular, but I don’t think that’s a new thing, I think that’s the way things used to be,” Jackson said. “The crowd that’s reading Twilight, I’m guessing it’s mostly schoolgirls, young women. Those same groups of people were just mad about Gone with the Wind, there was a total frenzy. There’s also Robert Louis Stevenson writing really bloodthirsty books – Treasure Island is full of murderous intents and plans.”

Phyllis Simon, founder and co-owner of Kidsbooks, names The Hunger Games series as one that appeals to all ages. The series is about a future dystopia in which people fight each other to the death while others watch.

“It’s kind of disturbing, it’s got its moments, but it’s very popular, and very compelling,” Simon said, adding that the brevity of young-adult fiction is also attractive. “You get a great read in 200 pages – you don’t have to plow through 500 pages.”

Teen fiction is more focused on storytelling, which makes it appealing, said Andrew Wooldridge, publisher at Orca Books, a Victoria-based company that puts out about 70 books each year, many of which are sold in schools.

“A lot of adult literary fiction is focused on characterization and plot and literary techniques, while teen fiction is mostly straight-ahead storytelling, and it seems to me that people find that appealing,” Wooldridge said.

“The lines are definitely blurring. A lot of the adults I know are reading teen fiction now. I think it’s becoming more sophisticated, but my theory is that it’s more focused on the story than adult fiction can be.”

Jackson said the same plot devices work in young-adult fiction that do in adult fiction, or even in Alfred Hitchcock films.

“You just apply it to someone who’s 14, as opposed to someone who’s 40,” she said.

In her book Fast Slide, protagonist Clay Gibson works at a North Vancouver water park, where’s he’s framed for a theft. His anger-management problem doesn’t help the situation when there is a death by drowning on a high-thrill slide at the park.

“No one believes him and it hasn’t helped that he’s lost his temper earlier on,” Jackson said. “It’s always more exciting when a protagonist witnesses something and no one believes them.”

Fast Slide was named a Best of 2010 book by Resource Links magazine – for book publishing companies.

In her other recent book No Way Out, the main character, 15-year-old Sam Jellicoe, is sent ag

Amazon.com is showing every sign that its ambition no longer just to distribute books but also to publish them is very real and growing.

The company announced in the past two weeks a publishing list for the spring and early summer that includes 16 books in its AmazonEncore imprint and eight books in its AmazonCrossing imprint, which focuses on book publishing and translations.

Mining data to guide acquisitions

Both imprints use Amazon’s extensive sales data and customer reviews to help inform publishing decisions. For example, Amazon culled data from its French site to help guide its first foreign acquisition, which became available in November (Tierno Monenembo’s The King of Kahel, which won France’s Prix Renaudot in 2008).

“Our team of editors uses this data as a starting point to identify strong candidates, then applies their judgment to narrow the list and reach out to the authors,” Jeff Belle, VP, Amazon.com Books, told LJ. “We’re fortunate to have access to both a lot of sales information, as well as an editorial team made up of book lovers….” he said.

Emily Williams, a digital content producer at Book Publishers Marketplace and cochair of the Book Industry Study Group rights committee, told LJ that Amazon’s efforts were a new means of finding writers who were not “part of the traditional publishing food chain” and also filling in “some of New York publishing’s traditional blind spots.”

“Amazon has a lot of information from its millions of users that book publishers have never had access to in making acquisitions decisions. It was inevitable that someone would try to leverage this kind of platform to try to pick undiscovered best sellers,” she said.

“It will be interesting to see how their books do, but…I don’t believe that the track record so far has shown that the data-driven approach offers any more sure bets than the old model of experienced editors making informed decisions,” she said.

Amazon discovers writers through several channels, Belle said, including Kindle Direct Christian Book Publishing (where writers can upload unpublished manuscripts), the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest, and CreateSpace.

“We then work with the authors to introduce or reintroduce their books to readers through marketing and book distribution into multiple channels and formats, such as the Amazon Book Store, Amazon Kindle Store, and national and independent bookstores via third-party wholesalers,” Belle said.

.AmazonEncore began publishing in May 2009, and as of January 31 it was offering 54 titles on its site. AmazonCrossing was announced a year later, and the site now features 12 titles in all. For AmazonCrossing, Amazon acquires the rights and pays for their translation. Belle would not disclose financial details.

“We’re just looking for books our customers love,” he said.

Waiting for a breakout best seller

Michael Norris, a senior analyst at Simba Information, which tracks the book publishing companies and media industries, told LJ that the Amazon move mimics what traditional trade publishers have long been doing by mining data and giving book contracts to self-published authors. Amazon is simply trying to develop its own publishing ecosystem in order to bring more people to shop at its site, he said.

“[It's] a mechanism&hel

Digital World Book, known as the DBW is the key conference in the publication of books for publishers in the e-books. All the “big six” book publishers are present in quantities never before. Random House will have more than 40 participants, while fewer than 20 came from the publisher in 2010. The digital book world conference began quietly on Monday morning with three sessions focused for a long time, the official opening ceremony will begin at 17 hours, but despite the digital output cautiously DBW 2011 is just quiet – There are over 1,250 registered twice that last year 600.

Since book publishers are here at DBW, mainstream booksellers are also here. Who is here and what they are selling will be evident when the floor show begins 13:00

The session iPad / iPhone has provided an overview of applications and the Apple App Store. It was the kind of session that felt like it was presented to other audiences – do not publish specific, as the meeting of the e-book design and production. The meeting is followed very still ongoing as I write, shows an interest of people in book publishing companies. How they got out of it, maybe they acquired the interest in book publishing and literary agents and tell us later.

Sessions on the morning of Monday, three were in the design of e-books and production, online content strategy and the iPhone / IPAD strategies. It was the first, most of the screws and nuts, which was the subject key retailers were focused on. Speaking directly to the creators of books and production managers, the session included discussions on programming languages and workflow – which suggests that book publishers are now specifically and actively serious about integrating e-Books, e-book publishing, amazon kindle publishing etc into their business model.