Monty Python co-founder Michael Palin, who has written his first novel in 17 years - The Truth - talks to Xan Brooks about how writing literature compares with writing comedy. Palin, who appeared at this year's Edinburgh International Book Festival, also reveals his favourite novelists and what for him are his career highlights.
Monty Python
Eugene G. Schwartz is editor at large for ForeWord Reviews, an industry observer and an occasional columnist for Book Business magazine. In an earlier career, he was in the printing business and held production management positions at Random House, Prentice-Hall/Goodyear and CRM Books/Psychology Today. A former PMA (IBPA) board member, he has headed his own publishing consultancy, Consortium House. He is also Co-Founder of Worthy Shorts Inc., a development stage online private press and publication service for professionals as well as an online back office publication service for publishers and associations. He is on the Publishing Business Conference and Expo Advisory Board.
Michael Weinstein is a member of the Publishing Executive Hall of Fame and has 35 years experience in production, manufacturing, content management and change management.
He is currently Production Director for Teachers College Press. Previously, he was Vice President, Global Content and Media Production for Cengage Learning. Prior to that he was Vice President of Production and Manufacturing for Oxford University Press, Pearson/Prentice Hall, Worth Publishers and HarperCollins.
In those capacities, he has been a leader in managing process and content for delivery in as many ways possible.
He is currently Production Director for Teachers College Press. Previously, he was Vice President, Global Content and Media Production for Cengage Learning. Prior to that he was Vice President of Production and Manufacturing for Oxford University Press, Pearson/Prentice Hall, Worth Publishers and HarperCollins.
In those capacities, he has been a leader in managing process and content for delivery in as many ways possible.
On the readers' highway through the world of books, next to stunning vistas of the imagination, you also pass the burnt-out wrecks of shiny new predictions. For instance: no one but a blockhead publishes sci-fi. Novels are dead; film is the future. Ink is for antiquarians; the paperless society has arrived. Etc. This new century has seen a boom in prototypes for a brave new world.
The decade since the millennium has sponsored a spike in anxieties about a viable literary culture.
From Inside Higher Ed comes this article by Caroline Vanderlip: If textbook affordability is the Holy Grail, then those of us who work in higher education are careening Monty Python-like as we search for it, stirring up unnecessary obstacles for ourselves all along the way. Consider the dual paths we are taking. First, there’s the [...]
An energized Publishing Business Conference and Expo, Book Business and Publishing Executive magazines’ annual event at the Times Square Marriott Marquis, March 19-21, was grounded in optimism and realism, and primed for a promising future in the digital age for book manufacturing and print-based book production.
Addressing the overflow audience at the Marriott's Astor Ballroom, our very own Joan of Arc at the ramparts, Editorial Director Noelle Skodzinski—fully armed with the arguments of comon sense and history to support her—sounded a much-needed balancing and defiant keynote to prevailing “stiff upper lip” scenarios about the decline of the publishing industry. She reminded us, paraphrasing from both Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the Encyclopedia Britannica blog’s notice that it had discontinued its venerable print edition, that publishing is not dead, change is okay, and that the future is alive with new opportunities in our pursuit of continued success and excellence in the publishing business.
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I'm at this year's Publishing Business Conference and Expo as an attendee and as a returning speaker (what the hell were they thinking?!?). It began Monday with an introduction and two keynote speakers who struck similar themes. And they were themes that some of us were very happy to hear—specifically, those of us who believe that these are incredibly exciting (albeit very difficult) times for the entire publishing industry. And that, furthermore, our industry is continuing to evolve, and is NOT dying.
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