November 05, 2013 » MobyLives! Archives

You’d think that by now the damage to the publishing industry inflicted by the rise of the internet might be bottoming out. Not so. Ninety-eight publishers declared insolvency over the… Read more »

Publishing

"Millennium hand and shrimp!" Discworld audiobooks get star-studded re-record — Tom Clayton
More Bond-related books set for 2022, with first female author at the helm — Tom Clayton
Sue you! US justice department files suit to stop Penguin Random House/Simon & Schuster mega-merger — Nikki Griffiths
Former MasterChef contestant's book withdrawn after plagiarism allegations — Nikki Griffiths

Biography of Jeff Bezos is biased, claims entirely unbiased wife of Jeff Bezos

Dustin Kurtz

I will say this about MacKenzie Bezos: she used her name. If you haven’t been following the furor around Brad Stone’s new biography of everyone’s least-favorite braying billionaire, well, perhaps… Read more »

How Margaret Atwood declines blurb requests

Kirsten Reach

Margaret Atwood retired from the business of writing blurbs — one of the ugly things we must do as editors is conjure up some supportive words for the back jacket… Read more »

To be and not to have been: kill lists and poetry

Wah-Ming Chang

When a writer or a translator strips a well-known work down to its essence, as Alice Oswald had done with The Iliad in Memorial, the narrative takes on almost new meaning. In… Read more »

Posthumous publication deal for a French spy novelist

Nick Davies

Last week, French novelist Gérard de Villiers—a writer frequently compared to Ian Fleming—passed away at the age of 83. De Villiers began writing his S.A.S. series of spy novels in… Read more »

Melville House Books

November 5, 2013

98 UK publishers have gone bust over the last 12 months

Amy Conchie