November 3, 2005

‘Da Vinci Code’ Losing Best-Seller Status - New York Times:

After more than two years spent dominating the New York Times best-seller list, “The Da Vinci Code,” by Dan Brown, is dropping off the list, at least temporarily. In the week ended Oct. 29, “The Da Vinci Code” ranked 16th in The Times’s statistically weighted survey of almost 4,000 bookstores and wholesalers serving 50,000 other retailers. Therefore, it will be missing from the list of the top 15 best-selling books, to be published in the Nov. 13 edition of The Times Book Review. On the list to be published this Sunday, which is currently available online at www.nytimes.com, “The Da Vinci Code” ranks No. 12, in its 136th consecutive week on the list. The decline, while somewhat related to an inevitable lag in sales for a book that has been out so long, can also be traced to the publication in recent weeks of a raft of new highly anticipated books from authors like Patricia Cornwell, Danielle Steel and Nicholas Sparks. All of the books ahead of “Da Vinci” on the list have been on sale for five weeks or less. Doubleday, the book’s publisher, is weighing when to release the book in paperback, a decision likely to be influenced by the release of the “Da Vinci Code” film, currently scheduled for May.

And onward to … THE SOLOMON KEY!

Meta-discussion

GRRM fan guru Ran wrote:

Unauthorized A Feast for Crows Analysis - www.ezboard.com:

He is posting chapters up at alt.fan.grrm. By the looks of it, it seems to me that you’ll find much more value (and at no cost) here, so save your money. Perhaps for fans who are unconnected to the Internet and the fan community on it, such an unauthorized work has some value, and I’m supposing they’re the target audience for the book.

I replied:

That is absolutely correct. The number of people who are fans, for pretty much any media topic, is much greater than the number of people who participate in online discussion groups related to that topic. The point of these books (we also did ones on Harry Potter and Dan Brown) is to provide fangroup-like value to general readers who are not already deeply immersed in discussion groups.

That being said, there is an intangible but real added value to having “stuff” about one of your favorite authors embodied in a nice-looking, compact book. People who purchase the books generally seem to come away happy.

Feel free to tune in at alt.fan.grrm. I may post some chapters here at some point too.

Fred

Here’s an intriguing set of lists.

The BookFinder.com Report:

The BookFinder.com Report is a
different kind of bestseller list.

It’s a measure of the most sought after
out of print titles in America as tracked by BookFinder.com.

Excellent post as Grumpy Old Bookman looks through “a book first published in 1935 and entitled The Book World — a New Survey.” A teaser:

Grumpy Old Bookman: The book world of 1935:

Another concern was over-production. Would you believe it, there were as many as 13,000 or 15,000 books a year being published! Far too many for anyone to keep up with. Where would it all end?

Reining in Google - Commentary - The Washington Times, America’s Newspaper:

You’re probably reading the byline above and wondering, “What could these two, from opposite sides of the aisle in Congress, possibly have in common with each other?”
The answer is when it comes to Google’s Print Library Project we have much in common: We’re both authors and both believe intellectual property should actually mean something.
And so we find ourselves joining together to fight a $90 billion company bent on unilaterally changing copyright law to their benefit and in turn denying publishers and authors the rights granted to them by the U.S. Constitution.

If Bob Barr is against it, I’m for it.

Another positive review. USA Today:

Anne Rice goes way out on several limbs with her new, first-person narrative by the 7-year-old Jesus.

For starters, the best-selling author, famous for her darkly sensual tales of the undead known collectively as The Vampire Chronicles, tries to lead her huge fan base out of the darkness and into the light of her own spiritual awakening. (Rice returned to the Catholic Church in 1998 after a long absence, acknowledging that she now embraces conservative doctrines.)

Second, it may be difficult for readers to approach any novel about Jesus with an open mind because of their own religious beliefs, or the lack of them. (Related excerpt: Read a preview of Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt)

And finally, in the book and promotional materials, Rice sets daunting goals: to make Jesus real for people who have stopped seeing him as anything other than an icon, and, for non-believers, to bring to life the times that would later spawn a religious revolution.

Despite those challenges, Rice does what she set out to do.

Behind the judges and their courts - Yahoo! News:

The announced retirement of Supreme Court Justice
Sandra Day O’Connor, the death of Justice
William Rehnquist, the naming of John Roberts as new chief justice and the controversy surrounding
President Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers, then Samuel Alito, to replace O’Connor may inspire some readers to delve more deeply into the history of the court.

Or not.

Publishers Marketplace: Recent Deals:

Screenwriter and SAVE THE CAT!: The Last Book On Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need author Blake Snyder’s next book in the series, SAVE THE CAT GOES TO THE MOVIES, in which Snyder will analyze 50 recent Hollywood and Independent films using his STC criteria, to Ken Lee and Michael Wiese at Michael Wiese Productions, by Susan Crawford at the Crawford Literary Agency, on behalf of Snyder’s film literary manager, Andy Cohen of Grade A Entertainment.

Without ever having read the book, let me hazard a guess that
saving the cat is exactly what’s wrong with Hollywood movies today.

I love it.

Independent Online Edition > Careers Advice:

They’ll be dancing in the streets of Alpha Centauri and the Crab Nebula. Signs of intelligent life have been spotted on Earth: the Queen has presented Brian Aldiss with his OBE. Light-years away, alien shapes will be raising their champagne glasses in their tentacles to toast the doyen of British science-fiction writers. Copies of Helliconia Spring, The Hand-reared Boy and Trillion Year Spree will be flying off the shelves wherever life-forms can tell an imaginative yarn from a crater on an dull asteroid.

Another excellent article from The Guardian. This is rapidly becoming one of my favorite news sources for books.

Guardian Unlimited Books | News | Off the shelf and on to the web:

Imagine a library where you can find all the books in the first place you look. Imagine you can search, Google-style, over their text, and then feel the pages between your fingers, or see the tea splotches of the first readers, long dead. And imagine doing all of this in your own home.

The plan is a book lover’s dream; and the particular book lover intent on creating this Open Library is Brewster Kahle, known as the digital librarian of the internet.