Tuesday Morning LitLinks
John Pipkin takes the Center for Fiction’s fourth annual First Novel Prize for Woodsburner. (GalleyCat)
Scorched or not, copies of William Carlos Williams’ debut collection, Poems (most of which were “inadvertently burnt”) fetch a handsome price. (Bookride)
Matthew Flamm reports that Amazon flew a dozen top New York agents to Seattle to “play down its Darth Vader image”. (Crain’s New York Business)
Stuart Jeffries looks at how Waterstone’s killed bookselling. (The Guardian)
Speaking of Amazon, it’s ‘Top 100′ mania over there. (Amazon)
Wendy Werris offers a Southern California view of National Bookstore Day. (Publishers Weekly)
Let’s just say John Irving wouldn’t relish starting his career over. (Lit Drift)
How well do you know your celebrity poets? Find out now. (Details)
R.I.P. Sultan Pepper, comedy writer. (The Hollywood Reporter)
R.I.P. Donald Harington, novelist. (KFSM)
On this day in 1995, Nigerian author and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed by the government. (Today in Literature)
November 10th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
The comment trail for the Guardian piece on Waterstone’s was quite interesting. Thanks.
November 11th, 2009 at 9:38 am
I’m still confused about this “loss-leader” model. If Amazon, or WalMart, or Waterstone’s decides to sell a book at a loss to their bottom line in hopes that the customer will buy other things, don’t they still have to pay the publisher (through the distributor) the regular price of the book?
I’ve heard enough about the problem to believe that it is, indeed, a problem, but just like the phases of the moon, I still don’t quite understand how it works.
November 11th, 2009 at 11:11 am
Here’s a link explaining phases of the moon.. Can’t help you with how loss leaders work, though.
November 11th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Screwed up the html stuff. You guys really need a preview function. Here’s the ugly form
http://www.moonconnection.com/moon_phases.phtml