Melville House Books

Paul Oliver

Paul Oliver is the marketing manager of Melville House. Previously he was co-owner of Wolfgang Books in Philadelphia.

• Amazon purchases romance & crime fiction publisher Avalon

  The small but venerable publishing house Avalon has been swept off in the river. The perimeters of the deal have yet to be announced, but Amazon’s increasingly large publishing arm has… Read more »

• Oprah to launch Book Club 2.0

  Oprah Winfrey was once a name in the book business that rivaled those of the industry’s bestselling authors. From 1996 to 2011, Oprah’s book club was a staple of the… Read more »

• UK library, opened by Mark Twain, stripped bare by city council in middle of the night

  In a move that has been roundly denounced as cowardly by protestors, the Brent city council ordered the removal of all materials from the Kensal Rise Library — a decision… Read more »

• The river widens: Amazon to sell pre-paid SIM Cards in Japan

  This is not a book industry story, but it is yet another reminder about the nature of the company that now essentially controls the industry’s marketplace. Predictably, Amazon.com has entered… Read more »

• Books are just too darned long, says critic

  In a sprawling, two-page article Daily Beast critic Mark Wortman laments the recent glut in extremely long books. In this epically long blog post titled “Are books becoming too long… 7 / Read more »

• VIDEO: Jean-Christophe Valtat discusses Jules Verne at the Watch City Steampunk Festival

  Aurorarama author Jean-Christophe Valtat was a guest of honor at not one but two steampunk festivals over the last nine days. Jules Verne would be so jealous. Over the next… Read more »

• TONIGHT: Jean-Christophe Valtat in conversation with Laura Miller at BookCourt

  What is steampunk? Is it important? Does genre have an important role in literary culture? Or is genre troublesome, as Soren Kierkegaard may have unintentionally implied when he wrote that… Read more »

• Hail & Farewell: Carlos Fuentes

  Carlos Fuentes, perhaps Mexico’s most celebrated writer, died on Tuesday in Mexico City. He was 82. Fuentes influence on Mexican literature was enormous, and along with Gabriel García Márquez, Mario… Read more »

• What (really) happens to your eReader when you die?

  In a somewhat comedic article in the New York Times, Kyle Jarrard writes about the fate of eBooks after their owners pass away. It is a grim topic but one… Read more »

• Steam punk fests on the rise, and our J.C. Valtat with them

  Tomorrow afternoon the author of Aurorarama (and its forthcoming sequel: Luminous Chaos), the learned Jean-Christophe Valtat, will make his way by ”transaerian psychomotive” airship to Boston for a three-day steampunk festival.… Read more »