Publisher’s Weekly’s annual report on the global publishing market has the education publisher Pearson in the top spot, with over nine billion dollars in revenue, and Random House as the world’s largest trade publisher, making around three billion dollars in 2013.
The Obama administration is deciding whether to continue pursuing charges that could send author James Risen to jail. In State of War, Risen used an anonymous source to describe a failed CIA operation in Iran. The Bush Administration demanded that Risen reveal his source, but the author has refused. According to the New York Times, “Whatever the Justice Department chooses to do will send a powerful message about how far it is willing to go to protect classified information in the digital age. And journalists and press freedom activists are watching closely for the precedent the decision will most likely set.”
Tonight at 192 Books in New York, Francisco Goldman reads from his new book about Mexico City, The Interior Circuit.
The “future of reading,” according to New York magazine, will be on smartphones and tablets rather than on dedicated e-readers (or print books): “Books are becoming just another app, and the publishing industry’s glorious e-reader future seems to be fading from view.”
An excerpt from Marilynne Robinson’s forthcoming novel, Lila.
Paul Kozlowski, a booklover who had a long career in publishing (including gigs as a bookseller, as the director of marketing at Pantheon and Knopf, and as an associate publisher at Other Press) died last week at the age of sixty. At MobyLives, Dennis Johnson remembers Paul, and expresses his deep sadness that Paul was unable to start the next chapter of his publishing career at Melville House, where he was due to start soon.