“Lacks discipline,” “the greatest mind ever to stay in prep school,” and “not a good novelist” are just a few of the barbs Norman Mailer directed at his contemporaries.
Graphic novel imprint Fantagraphics has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $150,000 by Dec. 5 or face the possibility of having to roll back its 2014 publishing lineup. The company’s finances were put in jeopardy last summer, following the death of publisher Kim Thompson. Thirteen books planned for the spring and summer of this year did not come out as a result, and the publisher is now struggling to recoup losses.
Unless a buyer emerges before November 25, literary start-up Small Demons will be forced to close, sources tell the Los Angeles Times. Launched about three years ago, the site “catalogs the places, music, food and drink, people, books, artworks, and other objects that appear in a single book—then links them to the other books in which they appear.” The idea was that these products would then be hooked into e-commerce marketplaces, so readers would easily be able to buy, say, a novel or film or a song mentioned in a particular book, such as David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest or Patty Smith's Just Kids.
On Monday, Toronto mayor Rob Ford admitted to having smoked crack, and in the process brought some additional publicity to Robyn Doolittle's forthcoming book about Ford, Crazy Town. The book is now scheduled to be released in February—a month ahead of schedule.
We’re not sure why any indie bookstore would ever take Amazon up on this offer, but under a new initiative, shops that carry Kindles will get 10 percent of revenue off e-book purchases for two years after a customer buys a Kindle in their store. Business Insider’s Jay Yarow remarks, “We suppose 10 percent of revenue is better than nothing, but this seems like a suicide mission for any bookstore that signs up.”
Here are the first nine pages of illustrator Julian Peters’s graphic rendition of T.S. Eliot’s "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
