From The Chronicle of Higher Education, if we are to find our readers, we need to think about their pleasure, not just our information. How to get people to read the classics: Just pare them down — to, for instance, George Orwell's 1983 and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Four. The War Over War and Peace: Two publishers are putting out versions of Tolstoy's masterpiece — but which is the authentic one? Publishers finding Iran is a hot read: Fear? Curiosity? Shelves are full of Persian themes. Farm teams for publishers? At least one mainstream publisher is so attracted by the recent success of people publishing themselves that the company is partnering with a self-publishing outfit. What does the currently ubiquitous Alan Greenspan have in common with George J. Tenet, Bob Woodward and Harry Potter? A year of selling books: A rash of memoirs by people spending 12 months following rules shows self-deprivation is strangely hip.
