A somewhat chilling article in the New York Times describes a firm called Jellybooks and its founder, who hopes to use data to transform book publishing, Moneyball-style. The company is working with publishers to examine in detail how people actually read their ebooks: “On average, fewer than half of the books tested were finished by a majority of readers. Most readers typically give up on a book in the early chapters. Women tend to quit after 50 to 100 pages, men after 30 to 50. Only 5 percent of the books Jellybooks tested were completed by more than 75 percent of readers.” And, it turns out, “business books have surprisingly low completion rates”—though it’s not clear just how surprising that actually is.
The original manuscript of Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon has turned up in a Zurich publisher's archive and, according to Koestler's biographer Michael Scammell, differs in myriad fascinating ways from the world-famous version.
The Rumpus interviews Meghan Daum and Elliott Holt, editor of and contributor to Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids, which is about to come out in paperback: Among other things, they discuss the project’s roots in a rather less measured magazine piece by Hanya Yanagihara, who was originally supposed to coedit the book with Daum but had to withdraw after selling her novel A Little Life.
Nine staffers have been dropped by the Forward newspaper, which, according to its publisher, is currently “restructuring” in an effort to remain “the leading news organization for American Jews.”
Paper Darts, a small Minnesota literary journal, is running a short fiction competition (entries of 1,200 words or less are due April 15) to be judged by the writer Roxane Gay.
Tonight, New Yorkers can hear novelists Dana Spiotta and Joshua Ferris in conversation at McNally Jackson. Or at Dixon Place, there’s “Experiments & Disorders,” a “cross-genre” show starring Alexander Chee and Gerard Anthony Cabrera. Or, topically enough, you may want to attend Thomas Frank’s discussion, at Book Culture, of his essential new critique of the Democratic Party, Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?.
