News and opinion on the changing world of book publishing
November 2006
30-Somethings, Tigers, and the Algerian Liberation Front As if being CEO of a multinational company and founder of the successful business book summary site getAbstract.com weren’t enough, Rolf Dobelli added the title of novelist to his resumé in 2001 when, on his 35th birthday, he began writing fiction. Two years later, the Swiss-born PhD published [...]
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November 2005
Corpse Bride (and Groom), Travels With Democracy From Boxing to Bassoons While many eyes in Hall 8 at the Frankfurt Book Fair were ogling Google, international publishers were juggling a flurry of deals on the heels of a rather upbeat year for most. Here is a sampling of some of the most prominent and promising [...]
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October 2005
Audiobooks Go Global, Competition Rises In Germany, Yoshi Mixes Tunes in Japan As PT continues its foray into the audio delivery of the word, we leave behind the car-loving Americans who drive twice the distance at a third of the cost, for the land of the TGV, the U-Bahn and the AVE. A land where [...]
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November 2004
Russian Expose on Female Bombers, Germany’s 99-Euro Bestseller, and A Real Gouda Story from Holland There certainly was no shortage of politically charged books at the Frankfurt Book Fair this year, and one of the most startling of all was penned by a 23-year-old Russian journalist Yulia Yuzik, who surveys the growing number of female [...]
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July 2004
Plagiarist Wallops Germany, Big Brother Is Watching in Italy, Dutch Golden Noose Nominee Smothers the Competition Hold on to your Warranties and Indemnities clause and prepare for a ride through the fraudulent world of a young waiter who feigns authorship to impress one of his regular customers, in Swiss author Martin Suter’s latest book, Lila, [...]
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September 2003
The Deal Down Under ‘Books Alive’ in Australia, Fresh French in Holland, And a Greco-Dickensian Fable Some call it preaching to the choir, but preliminary results are in on Australia’s inaugural two-week, federally-funded, book-buying bonanza called Books Alive, which is aimed at luring “occasional, lapsed, and young readers” back into the literary fold with a [...]
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August 2003
He Who Laughs Last Fontanarrosa Grabs Guffaws, Shades of Scorsese in Italy, And Germany’s Answer to Oprah Pull up a barstool and lend an ear to the simply Seinfeldian comic strip artist and author Roberto Fontanarrosa, whose latest book, You’ll Never Believe Me, is stirring up all manner of giggles and guffaws in Argentina this [...]
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September 2002
The Flying Dutchmen De Winter Does Hollywood, Holland’s Huck Finn, And Bar Chickens Cluck in Spain Hailed as the Dutch-European postwar generation’s answer to John Irving, the popular Netherlands writer Leon de Winter has scored that mega-coup all scribblers secretly dream about: his own film starring Burt Reynolds. Cued up for its theatrical première in [...]
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March 2001
Bruit on the Baltic Johansson in Sweden, Delerm Dines On in France, and Noll Gets Warped in Germany A “determinedly girls-eye view of events” has captivated Sweden this month, as the third and final volume in 70-year-old Swedish writer Elsie Johansson’s trilogy hits the stands with what’s been praised as “an unusual kind of bildungsroman.” [...]
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February 2001
Time Regained Eco Back in Italy, Dahl Redux in Spain, and Harry Potter Everywhere Else Umberto Eco is at it again. Romance, that is. His fourth such novel to date — featuring the picaresque adventures of the title character, Baudolino — has hit the stands in Italy, and we’re told its pages are bursting with [...]
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