James Patterson takes the crownStephen King takes second place in round-up of world’s richest authors, with EL James expected to feature next year
Forbes, which calculates its annual compilation by using official figures and talking to book industry experts, found that Patterson earned $94m last year – a period which saw him publish 14 new titles and make more than double the amount of the second-placed King. Nine of the top 15 slots on the list were taken by male authors, including King (who earned $39m thanks to the release of his doorstopper novel about the assassination of JFK, 11/22/63), legal thriller writer John Grisham ($26m), Wimpy Kid author Jeff Kinney ($25m) and newcomer George RR Martin, who made $15m following the adaptation for television of his Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series.
August 2012
Nebraska building its own e-book system for schools, researchers
There’s a lot less dust and grime in today’s Wild West, but enough unknowns to compete in any new frontier.
Case in point: A new electronic book project started by the Nebraska Department of Education with the goal of offering free instructional content to teachers across the state.
The NeBook Project is a partnership of schools and state and nonprofit agencies to create electronic books and share them through the Education Department.
The project might be new, but the idea isn’t.
What eureka moment gave us book recycling?
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt hasn’t said what it plans to do with all the copies of Imagine, Jonah Lehrer’s sullied best seller on the science of creativity, that it has yanked from shelves. But most book people agree that the copies will eventually be pulped, or dissolved into a milky liquid and reconstituted as clean paper. In this regard, at least, Imagine has plenty of company. Every year, millions of books are sent to the “cruel machines,” as one young editor calls them, simply because their sales didn’t meet projections. The process is tidily symmetrical: from the vat to the store and back to the vat.
Sorting and searching at the library
This post is about searching and sorting, two fundamental aspects of data processing, and what the library has to teach us about them.
If there’s a theme here, it is that the library is doing things that are recongizable as algorithms from computer science. But not the obvious textbook algorithms! I guess when an algorithm is going to take up a human being’s time, it tends to get optimized. These algorithms seem to be tuned very well indeed. But perhaps if you looked inside any organization you’d find something similar.
Book Examines Varied ‘Tapestry’ of Michelle Obama’s Ancestry
When Rachel Swarns began research on First Lady Michelle Obama’s American lineage, she discovered remarkable family sagas, including the story of Mrs. Obama’s white great-great-great-grandfather. Gwen Ifill talks to New York Times’ Rachel Swarns about her new book on the genealogy of Michelle Obama, “American Tapestry.”
Conneaut Public Library Purchases Inflatable Movie Screen
Mark Todd writing in The Star Beacon notes that the Conneaut Public Library in extreme northeastern Ohio has purchased an inflatable movie screen for showing films. Test runs have taken place away from the library’s location.
Wanted, Dead or Alive: Used Books
Article about Larry McMurtry’s book auction in Archer City, Texas. This article reports what happened at the auction. A few weeks ago we had a post telling about the auction coming up.
Cleveland, New York Gain Portable Reading Rooms
The Cleveland Public Library has installed a portable reading room in a trendy downtown district in the hopes that locals who flock to the area to dine and shop will also check out the library’s new open-air book kiosk.
Dubbed the BookBox, the custom-designed galvanized metal and reclaimed wood structure, which opened July 21, houses about 200 books, offers free wireless, and makes laptops available for Internet browsing. The compact mobile unit resides in a newly renovated park in Cleveland’s lively Market Square District, which is also home to a growing population of artists, local food producers, trendy restaurants, and shops.
The idea is to entice city dwellers and suburbanites, who frequent the area’s boutiques and dining spots, to also stop by the CPL’s warm weather book kiosk. “It’s a great opportunity to tout our services,” CPL public services director John Skrtic told LJ.
At Root of Italy Library’s Plunder, a Tale of Entrenched Practices
How hundreds of volumes were taken and sold — and the library director charged with the crime — sheds light on some of the practices that continue to bedevil Italy.
Among Readers in Polyglot New York, 50 Shades of Best Sellers
In the Babel that is New York City, where nearly 200 languages are spoken and read within the public school system and nearly 40 percent of the population was born abroad, literary tastes among immigrant cultures turn out to be as different as their cuisines.
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