Leaders from the book industry and the American Library Association gather next week in New York City. The Association of American Publishers has invited them to share perspectives on a growing controversy over e-book pricing. For the moment, as the diplomats might say, the dialogue is business-like. That could change, though, observes Andrew Albanese of Publishers Weekly.
“As this dialogue began between ALA and publishers, the library community was committed to talking. Less than a year later, those talks have not yielded any progress,” Albanese tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally. “As ALA midwinter approaches in a few months, I think you will see a very serious shift in strategy.”
From the weekly review of PW reviews, Rose Fox, who blogs at Genreville, tells of a new non-fiction work from Nobel Prize–winning Nigerian writer and activist Wole Soyinka. In Of Africa, Soyinka sees unique potential for Africa to act as a conduit for peace at a time of global crisis. “Soyinka uses the 2001 Millennium Commission report on Africa spearheaded by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan as a springboard to both assess critical problems and challenges—from high-level corruption to interethnic fighting, famine, disease, religious and racial violence, and postcolonial economic dependency,” says Fox.
Listen here.
