Close Cover Before Striking by Sara Nelson - 11/12/2007
It has oft been said—and oft despairingly—that the book business has become more and more like the TV and movie biz, what with the corporate ownership, the philistine sensibilities, the blockbuster mentality and the focus on the bottom line. Books these days are supposed to “open” like Brad Pitt films and run like Law & Order. More
Change I Believe In by Sara Nelson - 01/26/2009
Call me gullible or impressionable, but I'm actually feeling kind of hopeful this week. It's not just the new year or the inauguration (which I loved most for its goofs and gaffes) or even that—please, please—publishing business firings are coming to an end, at least for a while. Then again, maybe I am buoyed by the start of the Obama presidency: While I know change is going to be s...
More
Yes, He Can by Sara Nelson - 01/19/2009
It seems more than a coincidence that the NEA released its most positive-sounding study in years last week, just as controversial chairman Dana Gioia is stepping down. “Reading on the Rise” declares that reading is no longer at risk (as the NEA suggested in 2004) but is, in fact, alive and well and even growing.
More
A Friend Remembered by Sara Nelson - 01/12/2009
My friend Bob Nylen died over the holidays. He'd been pretty sick for about four years, and then very sick for a couple of months. He was 64. You might not know his name—yet. The cofounder of New England Monthly and Beliefnet.com, Bob was more a magazine and media guy than a full-fledged denizen of BookLand, though in the Ashfield, Mass.
More
Not Again! by Sara Nelson - 01/05/2009
It is a truism about holidays that they can be hell on families: those crazy relatives whose peccadilloes you can defend from a distance all year long are suddenly in your face, and harder to take. So it was for me last week when I heard the news—first reported by Gabriel Sherman in the New Republic,
though rumors of the story have been circulating on the Internet for some time—tha...
More
Making the List by Sara Nelson - 12/22/2008
In years past, I have to admit, I gave few books as holiday presents. Since friends and family know I'm in “the business,” they assumed—often, but not always correctly—that I was simply passing on to them books I'd gotten for free—re-gifting swag, if you will. Not that there's anything wrong with that—spreading the word is a form of spreading the wealth, eve...
More
The Biz Is Alright by Sara Nelson - 12/15/2008
Okay, I admit it. It's hard, even with a glass of holiday cheer in hand, to summon a lot of enthusiasm and hope for the publishing business—or pretty much any other business—these days. The bad news just keeps on coming: the layoffs, the cutbacks, the raise and bonus and pension freezes. It's grim out there, all right—and that grimness is just about all anybody in Bookland is ...
More
December Blues by Sara Nelson - 12/08/2008
A couple of months ago, I stopped opening my investment statements. Then, a few weeks ago, I stopped reading the papers thoroughly because the general economic and business news was relentlessly bad. We all knew that publishing would not be spared; that feeling was palpable as early as last summer and certainly by Frankfurt—when, if one more person compared going to the lavish Bertelsmann...
More
