Book Marks: Robert Pirsig, E-book Slump

A little exhausted for the past fortnight, so I haven't been keeping watch on the book and publishing front. But here's what caught my attention anyway:

• "Robert M. Pirsig, whose philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance became a million-selling classic and cultural touchstone after more than 100 publishers turned it down, died Monday at age 88. ... Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was published in 1974 and was based on a motorcycle trip Pirsig took in the late 1960s with his 12-year-old son, Chris."
• "When Simon & Schuster announced in late February that it is canceling Milo Yiannopoulos's book, Dangerous, many in the publishing industry reacted with a sigh of relief. ... though it's still unclear what ultimately motivated the publisher to yank the book, the fervor that the alt-right bad boy's deal caused put some on alert. Could other publishers be pressured into canceling books by controversial conservatives? Does the industry have a double standard for authors on the right? Does it matter?"
• Book piracy is hurting Zimbabwean authors, including Charles Lovemore Mungoshi. "Mungoshi is so famous in Zimbabwe and other countries ... he should be able to make a comfortable living just like some writers in Africa and other parts of the world," writes Lazarus Sauti in The Southern Times. "but the book sector in Zimbabwe is so punishing to the extent that the celebrated writer is not even enjoying the fruits of his fame and hardwork. Recently, his family sourced for $9,000 required for a repeat operation after doctors inserted a shunt to drain water from his brains last year."
• "It's World Book Day, but India's publishers are up against a serious snag: The [Raja Ram Mohan Roy National Agency, which issues ISBNs for books in India,] launched a website where publishers ... would have to register to get their numbers. ... This website, however, is still riddled with bugs. And with no phone number through which the Agency can be reached, some publishers have been left waiting for months for their ISBN numbers, with no clarity on the status of their application."
• '"It was new and exciting,' says Cathryn Summerhayes, a literary agent at Curtis Brown. 'But now [Kindles] look so clunky and unhip, don't they? I guess everyone wants a piece of trendy tech and, unfortunately, there aren't trendy tech reading devices and I don't think people are reading long-form fiction on their phones. I think your average reader would say that one of the great pleasures of reading is the physical turning of the page. It slows you down and makes you think.'"
• "It wasn't so long ago that book publishers and bookstore owners were quailing about the coming of ebooks, like movie theater owners at the dawn of the television age. Now they're taking things more calmly. Recent statistics confirm a trend first noticed by the book trade in late 2015: At least among major publishers, ebook sales have plateaued or even begun to decline. It turns out that not all readers are quite ready to give up the tactile pleasures of holding a hardcover or paperback in their hands in order to partake of the convenience and digital features of e-reading."
• "Dennis Johnson, co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House Books and one of the first book bloggers, is possibly best known for the fight he picked in the spring of 2014.He was at the front of a group of independent publishers who decided to spar with Amazon over the predatory, escalating fees it was charging small publishers, as well as its covert war on the major publisher Hachette, which it carried out by deliberately delaying shipments and hiking prices. Johnson asked The New York Times how Amazon's business practices weren't considered 'extortion,' and compared the monolith to the Mafia." Enjoy The Verge's interview with Johnson and Melville House's director of marketing and publicity, Julia Fleischaker.
• "Kasem bin Abubakar was told nobody would buy his chaste romance novels about devout young Muslims finding love within the strict moral confines of Bangladeshi society. And yet his tales of lovers whispering sweet nothings between calls to prayer sold millions in the 1980s and proved a huge hit among young girls from Bangladesh's rural, conservative heartland." Wrong. "Mullah novels" do sell.
• "[The author] of the book Mila, Maslina Yusoff, will soon have her book animated in collaboration with leading South Korean studio, H Culture. The Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Shah Alam alumni said that her own daughter inspired the story and it has always been her dream to write and illustrate her own children’s books."
• Saudi novelist Mohammed Hasan Alwan has won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, dubbed the Arab Booker, for his novel A Small Death, a fictionalised account of the life of a Sufi scholar and philosopher Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi. ... the US$50,000 prize is supported by the Booker Prize Foundation in London, but it is funded by the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority."