Publishing Week in Review

It was banned books week this week (Sponsored by ALA). Here is a list of the most challenged books from 2005. No word yet on 2006 but I expect to see perennial favorite Catcher in the Rye on the list again. Pretty much any children's or young adult book that deals with sex education, dangly bits, and snogging is guaranteed at least an honorable mention. Throw in Why do I have two daddies? and you will have cracked it.

Litlove had a recent post about two new mystery writers she has started reading. Both Reginald Hill and Susan Hill produce great stories but as she points out in the case of Reg that the characters have been hijacked by TV script writers. I am not sure I like this trend which also happened with Morse and is now happening with Inspector Linley. The 'ghost' written stories don't seem to have the same substance of those that come from the authors books.

Many years ago I attended a conference given by Stanford University and Guy Kawasaki was the dinner speaker - it was a small affair. He was at Apple in the early days and is now a VC among a number of other things. His blog is very interesting and he had this recent post on 'distribution' which does sound boring but he has an interesting view point. Additionally, he also published a post at the end of last year which if you are a frequent user (and abuser) of Powerpoint you will want to read. Lastly, from a traffic and design stand point you can see how he has taken a particular approach to the way he creates the content for his blog that results in maximum attention. If you are interested in this - and who wouldn't be - here is an article.

Here is a little more on the Google decision made by the Belgium court that I commented on earlier this week. Google clearly did not like the requirement to post the judgment and replied very strongly to the court on this issue. There is another hearing in November where they are likely to rely on industry practice that enables any web site to effectively close itself off to spidering. In this case had this technology been invoked by the plaintiff would have avoided the law suit. But then, where's the fun in that?

Eoin Purcell had a post on comics and beat me to a reference from the New York Times article on same. There have been a few other articles that I have noted over the past several weeks in addition to this one. Firstly, the 9/11 Report is being published in a comic book version. Interesting...I am not sure the point, but perhaps comprehension and reading ability has something to do with it or maybe it is a "...let's see if we could do this.." kind of thing. As the article points out it is a little hard to generate the gravitas of two aircraft slamming into the WTC with a simple ...KABOOM!! Here also is an article from the Houston Chronicle about Comic book Bibles. (I just report the stuff I don't believe it). Comics are of course huge business and a number of large US publishing houses have undertaken publishing programs or distribution deals for comics or Manga.

Finally, I haven't had a link to The Daily Show for a while but Hugo Chavez was such great comedy that it has to be referenced. Oh and Norm Chomsky - assuming he earned out his advance - running all the way to the bank.