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Kevin Howell

Before becoming PW's Audiobook Reviews Editor in 2005, Kevin was the editor of PW's bookselling department. He also currently writes the weekly Calendar and works with booksellers to create weekly Galley Talks for the magazine



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Notes From the Bookroom

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Help Save RIF (Reading Is Fundamental)

April 7, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (11)

President Bush’s proposed 2009 budget eliminates all the funding for Reading Is Fundamental’s book distribution program that has, since 1966, provided books to underprivileged children. 

According to RIF CEO/president Carol Rasco, if Bush’s budget is approved, 4.6 million children will not receive 16 million free books in 2009. RIF has been funded by Congress and six Administrations without interruption since 1975. It is the oldest and largest children’s and family nonprofit literacy organization in the U.S.

Want to voice your concerns and opinions to those who can do something about this? RIF’s Web site will find ...Read More



Recent Posts

Missing on Audio

February 18, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

I'm usually not a glass-half-empty person, but after several years working with audiobooks, I am shocked by the number of books that are not available on CD.

Perhaps its the fact that although the audiobook market is growing, many bookstores still only think of audiobooks as frontlist items rather than a category that can offer a rich backlist, which makes up the majority of their inventory. Perhaps its the price tag. Most new audiobooks are released at a price higher than $20, so its hard for a bookstore to think about stocking 20 Agatha Christie backlist titles knowing its more than $400 worth of inventory sitting there.

Happily, audiobook publishers are now making the effort to reduce the price of titles that are now considered backlist.  After a year in hardcover, print publishers reissue most books in paperback as a cheap...Read More



Recent Posts

MY Galley Talk: Pictures at a Revolution

January 18, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Every week I work with booksellers across the country who are singing the praises of a recently read ARC for Publishers Weekly’s “Galley Talk.” This is my turn to shine a spotlight on a favorite galley. Mark Harris's Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of New Hollywood (Penguin Press, $27.95; unabridged Tantor Media audiobook, $39.99; release date: Feb. 14) looks at the five films that competed for the Oscar for Best Picture of 1967, the year the Old Hollywood studio system went...Read More



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The Closet Door Swings Both Ways

October 27, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (2)

Less than a week after J.K. Rowling’s outing of Dumbledore we see that the closet door swings both ways as the film adaptation of David Gerrold’s semi-autobiographical novel, The Martian Child, opens in theatres with the main character changed from gay to straight.

The 2002 novel (based on a novella that won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award and the Locus Readership Poll for best novelette of 1994) was based on Gerrold’s experience as an out gay writer (who wrote the classic “The Trouble with Tribbles” episode of Star Trek when he was just 23 years old) and his attempts to adopt an eight year old with emoti...Read More



Recent Posts

Dumbledore Is Gay

October 21, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (4)

When J.K. Rowling announced "I always thought of Dumbledore as gay" at her Carnege Hall appearance on Friday, Oct. 19, the audience gasped and then burst into applause. I'm of two minds with this disclosure: I think it's great but I wish she'd done more. 

First, I completely agree with Melissa Anelli, webmaster of the UK fan site The Leaky Cauldron, who told the Associated Press, "Jo Rowling calling any Harry Potter character gay would make wonderful strides in tolerance toward homosexuality. By dubbing someone so respected, so talented and so kind, as someone who just happens to be also homosexual, she's reinforcing the idea that a person's gayness is not somet...Read More





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