Best
Covers – 2015
I love great book
covers. Like the Supreme Court judging pornography, I can't define
The NY
Times starts it off with their selections.
Pinterest posted
many Penguin Random House
covers and some are fantastic.
Paste
magazine has a great slideshow of their selections.
And Buzzfeed
presents 34 of “the
most beautiful covers of 2015” (whatever that means).
I'm in awe of the
designers who can create art that suggests the concept and content of
a book on the equivalent of just one page.
Other
2015 Bests
Abe Books compiled
quite an array
of literary footnotes for the year, including Best Fiction and
ending with Books Made Into Movies.
Publisher's Weekly
offers
their review with each of their selections.
The extensive
lists from Goodreads begin with Best Books of the 21st
Century and finish with Best Fantasy of The 2010s.
Digital
Magazine Subscriptions Tumble
Like fervent
believers who explain away the drop in ebook sales, proponents of
digital magazine subscriptions find
their only bright spot in library subscriptions. Not sure that's
a big enough market.
Pop-Up
Blockers Irritate Gentlemen
Conde Nast's GQ
magazine will
charge digital edition readers for each article they read if they
insist on using their ad blocking soft-ware article.
Publisher
Drops Amazon, Sales Soar
Education publisher
EDC stopped
selling books through Amazon three years ago. Since then other
sales channels sprang up and revenue increased 60% and income rose
300%.
Digerati
Say Increased Book Sales a Fluke
Citing the
popularity of adult coloring books and the release of Harper Lee's Go
Set A Watchman, ebook devotees claim the
increase in book sales is an anomaly. But the fact is that trade
book sales fell a few
years ago in spite the popularity of Harry Potter and the craze for
Sudoku books.
Audio
Book Sales Surge
Audio books are
catching, if not surpassing, sales of printed books. Many credit
the popularity of working out at local gyms while others point out
that boomers are retiring and touring the country. I doubt we'll see
an audio cookbook though.
Most
Influential Academic Text
After winnowing
suggestions from 200 publishers as to the most influential academic
book of all time down to twenty, then letting the public decide,
Darwin's
Origin
of Species
was selected over Plato's Republic,
Paine's Rights of Man
and Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
Banished
Words
Supporters of 1st
Amendment rights still believe that unnecessary creation of words or
their usage (answering questions by beginning with, “so...”) or
phrase (price point) should be subject to rigorous scrutiny. “So”
topped the list this year that also included “stakeholder”,
“walk it back”, and “man- spreading”. All henceforth
banished!
Used
Bookstores Thrive
Eschewing Half.com
and Amazon's vast offering of used books, readers who like browsing
for their next book are finding that used
bookstores offer a sensory experience not available online.
Final Thought
Fiction reveals
truths that reality obscures. Jessamyn
West
