That old scoundrel Sam Brannan would have felt completely at home in today’s publishing business.  Sam, you may recall, was the original promoter of California’s 1848 Gold Rush. After first cornering the market in picks, shovels and pans (paying a mere 20 cents each wholesale), Sam proceeded to run though the streets of San...

This is a difficult letter to write. You know more than I do how much we've tried to make it work over the past 13 years. I've taken you into my bed almost every evening. I often reach out for you in the dark of the night and stroke your pale radiance.

Honestly, I think my wife is beginning to suspect something. But that'...

Publishing has an acutely uneasy relationship with the internet. We all recognize its importance and inevitability, yet most of us aren't actually very good at using it profitably.

Publishers' websites are a case in point. Like drunken orgies organised by committees of virgin teetotallers, these sites mostly seem clueless,...

Half the adults in the wasteland that used to be the great American city of Detroit now cannot read. We're not talking about their failure to perceive the finer nuances of Jonathan Franzen's latest flight of fancy. No. They can't read a bus sign, a pill bottle, or a McDonald's menu.

If that doesn't scare you,...