Notes in the Margin Weblog

The Internet vs. books: Peaceful coexistence - Los Angeles Times:

Books require a different sort of communion with one’s subject than the Internet. They foster a different sort of memory — more tactile, more participatory. . . . For literary works, books are still, and most likely always will be, indispensable.

In the Los Angeles Times Beau Friedlander, editor of AirAmerica.com, weighs in on the debate over whether the Internet is supplanting printed books. Tangentially, he also addresses the question of whether the Internet is making us dumber; his answer seems to be that books and the Internet provide us with different kinds of information that are useful in different situations.

Ultimately, Friedlander quotes Markos Moulitsas Zuñiga, founder of the political website the Daily Kos:

Google makes it possible to learn anything, near instantaneously. Like natural selection, there are species that adapt to the changing environment around them and thrive, and others die off.

Inside Google Book Search: Book Search everywhere with new partnerships and tools:

Google makes it even easier for readers to part with their hard-earned cash:

Today, we’re taking a big step towards bringing more books, across more sites, to more people online.

We’re launching a set of free tools that allow retailers, publishers, and anyone with a web site to embed books from the Google Book Search index. We are also providing new ways for these sites to display full-text search results from Book Search, and even integrate with social features such as ratings, reviews, and readers’ book collections. By providing tools that help sites connect readers with books in new and interesting ways, we hope publishers and authors will find even wider audiences for their works.

Books | A list of 40 upcoming fiction and nonfiction books | Seattle Times Newspaper:

Just in time to distract you from all the election mud-slinging comes this list, from the Seattle Times, of books being published this fall.

Book Review - ‘The Time of Their Lives - The Golden Age of Great American Book Publishers, Their Editors and Authors,’ by Al Silverman - Review - NYTimes.com:

Writer Bruce Jay Friedman reviews a new book about the golden age of publishing, which book author Silverman defines as covering the years between 1946 and the early 1980s. This was an era that ended when “the great ‘bookmen’ stepped aside and the bottom-liners of business took over.”

Friedman’s review certainly makes one want to read this book for the sake of its anecdotes about both the publishers and the writers of the time. Where else could one find such an interesting tidbit of trivia as this:

Doubleday, a proudly ‘middlebrow’ company, was founded by Frank N. Double­day, who suffered from flatulence. As a result, none of the characters in the books he published were allowed to pass wind.

Nation & World | Publisher Robert Giroux: the gold standard of literary taste | Seattle Times Newspaper:

Robert Giroux, an editor who introduced and nurtured some of the major authors of the 20th century and who rose to join one of the nation’s most distinguished publishing houses as a partner, making it Farrar, Straus & Giroux, died Friday in Tinton Falls, N.J. He was 94. . . .

He was also T.S. Eliot’s U.S. editor and published the U.S. edition of George Orwell’s ‘1984.’

Mr. Giroux introduced a long roster of writers who would achieve fame, publishing first books by, among others, Jean Stafford, Robert Lowell, Bernard Malamud, Flannery O’Connor, Randall Jarrell, Peter Taylor, William Gaddis, Jack Kerouac and Susan Sontag. He edited Virginia Woolf, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Carl Sandburg, Elizabeth Bishop, Katherine Anne Porter, Walker Percy, Donald Barthelme, Grace Paley, Derek Walcott, Louise Bogan and William Golding. . . .

To his lasting chagrin, Mr. Giroux also saw two major works slip from his grasp, J.D. Salinger’s ‘Catcher in the Rye’ and Kerouac’s ‘On the Road.’

Electronic Device Stirs Unease at BookExpo - NYTimes.com

This article discusses the current status of electronic books, with focus on the two most popular ebook readers, Amazon’s Kindle and the Sony Reader.

The article points out that one advantage of ebooks is that the supplier never runs out of copies.  Scott McClellan’s “What Happened,” the former press secretary’s account of his years in the Bush White House, is sold out in most brick-and-mortar and online bookstores but is available for nearly instant download to the Kindle.

Troubled book world is going for novel ideas - Los Angeles Times

As Book Expo America, the nation’s largest annual book convention, opens today in Los Angeles, innovation — some would say desperation — will be the main order of business. More than 2,000 exhibitors from every facet of the publishing world, nearly 1,000 authors and more than 25,000 people will be gathering at the L.A. Convention Center this weekend to discuss the state of an industry that’s at a critical crossroads.

Amazon’s Kindle is stoking sales of e-books

The debate over e-books and the future of publishing continues, here centered around Amazon’s new e-book device, the Kindle.

One person involved in the publishing industry compares e-books to audiobooks. If that’s an apt comparison, then we can only expect e-books to become increasingly more prevalent relatively quickly.

Amazon Tightens Noose on Print-On-Demand Publishers; Insists They Use Company’s Own Service - washingtonpost.com

Amazon is causing quite an uproar in the print-on-demand publishing world with its apparent attempt to create a monopoly for itself. Be sure to read the Writers Weekly article linked at the bottom of this piece.

The lure of made-up memoirs - Los Angeles Times

And here’s one more. The author of this piece compares the current faked memoir to Famous All Over Town, a first-person account of growing up in the gang culture of East L.A., published in 1983. That book, supposedly by a young Chicano writer named Danny Santiago, won a couple of literary awards. A year later writer John Gregory Dunne revealed that the real author of the book was a 73-year-old former screenwriter named Dan James.