Reading.com

The New York Review of Magazines reports that the US Postal Service lowers the rates for large publishers while significantly raising the rate for small publishers sometimes by a factor of 5. What role did Time Warner play in this?

“Ben Scott had better things to do than listen to a bunch of little magazines rant about their unreasonable postage bills. As the policy director of Free Press, a group that specialized in fighting media concentration, he and 10 co-workers in Washington were wrapped up in defending internet accessibility. But in late February 2007, Scott’s phone started buzzing with accusations from panicked publishers of small-circulation magazines. The United States Postal Service, they said, was hammering the last nail in the coffin of independent publishing.

Periodicals with circulations of fewer than 250,000 (some with much fewer—even in the hundreds) had just discovered that the rates they paid the USPS for postage were about to skyrocket, and they had only eight business days to dispute the proposed increase.”

Honya budo is the martial arts skill of visiting a bookstore without buying a book. It is an arcane art, practiced by secret masters in obscure parts of the world for several centuries. During the 20th century, when literacy went up in the western world, and people from every social strata started frequenting shops selling books, this venerable art has begun to rise in popularity.

The Salem News reports: “School Committee member Beverley Dunne wants to take a novel approach to choosing summertime selections. If a book can’t be read out loud at their committee’s meetings, it doesn’t belong on the list, she proposed Tuesday night.”

Let’s let the teachers teach, please.

The 5th Annual Ann Arbor Book Festival will be held from Thursday, May 15 to Sunday, May 18, 2008.

The 2008 Language & Literacy Symposium will be held on Thursday, May 15, 2008.

The 2008 Writer’s Conference will be held on Friday, May 16, 2008.

The 2008 Street Fair will be held on Saturday, May 17, 2008. Come have a look at the event schedule and plan your day!

Bookstore Crawl
Be sure to visit our area participating bookstores and libraries in the annual Bookstore Crawl. If you visit at least half (14), you are eligible for a small prize. If you visit 25, you will be put into a drawing at the Festival on Saturday, May 17. NEW THIS YEAR: a number of the Festival events are listed on the passport. Come to these events and get your passport signed. Check out the list - it’s a good one!

Advance notice for BAFABW. It comes four times a year, in the first weeks of January, April, July, and October.

Joan Shorenstein Center
on the Press, Politics and Public Policy
Discussion Paper Series

Hamlet’s Blackberry:
Why Paper Is Eternal
By William Powers

“More broadly, there is a sense in the culture, inchoate but unmistakable, that all print media, including magazines and books, are careering toward obsolescence. This is hardly a new idea. Since the advent of the computer in the mid-twentieth century, futurists have been foretelling the death of paper-based communication. So far the obituaries have all been wrong, or at least premature. Time and again, advances in computer technology that were supposed to make hard-copy media obsolete failed to do so. Paper lived on.”

The International Herald Tribune reports on Literary stops in London for Book Lovers. Make a weekend of it with stops at the Hotel where Oscar Wilde got arrested, the Sherlock Homes Pun, British Museum reading room, and much more.