In the Observer, John Naughton unloads both barrels on the “academic publishing racket” in which giant multinational publishers get free, state-subsidized research to publish, use free, state-subsidized labor for peer-review, require assignments of the scholars’ copyrights as a condition of publication, then charge astounding sums to the scientists and academics they are “serving” for the right to read the work they’re all engaged in producing.
For the first time since 1977, no fiction piece was awarded a prize. Nominated by the jurors as finalists were Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams, Karen Russell‘s Swamplandia! and David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King. But the board, which consists of 18 voting members and reads all the final entries, couldn’t agree on a winner—a majority vote is needed.
Yes, much of the literary world is in full-throated revolt against Amazon’s dominance — bookstores fear Amazon will pushthemoutofbusiness, authors worry about deepdiscounting, and the Department of Justice is considering the major publishers’ challenge over the price of e-books. But amid the public and private rancor, the massive e-retailer is very quietly trying to make friends in the book world. Its strategy is simple and employs a weapon Amazon has in overwhelming supply: Money.
The Brooklyn Book Festival is just one of many recent beneficiaries of Amazon’s largess. According to a list on Amazon’s site, prestigious groups such as the PEN American Center, journals like the Los Angeles Review of Books,One Story, Poets & Writers and Kenyon Review, mentorship programs such as 826 Seattle and Girls Write Now, and associations including the Lambda Literary Foundation, Voice of Witness and Words Without Borders have all received grants.
21% of Americans have read an e-book. The increasing availability of e-content is prompting some to read more than in the past and to prefer buying books to borrowing them.
At a talk at Columbia Law School on April 2, Harvard University librarian Robert Darnton promised that the Digital Public Library of America, a nonprofit effort to offer free access to millions of digitized books, would become a reality by this time next year.
