Are Books On Their Way To Being Mere Decoration?
Here is another article about the ebook reader book versus book debate that seems to go on - and on - and on. I think I have come to the determination that book publishing as we know it today will be forever changed (and soon - very soon)... but that private presses will step up to fill the gap and continue to produce beautiful collectible (though more expensive) books.
Source: The Sacramento Bee
By Gina Kim
For sale: Several coverless books bundled together with jute twine. They can't be opened or read, but with pages faded and foxed – as aficionados call the discoloration that comes with age – the books add an antiquarian touch to any home for $29.
"Like it or not, books really do harken back to an older time," said Donata Maggipinto, spokeswoman for the Corte Madera-based Restoration Hardware, which has sold out of its first run of antique coverless book bundles introduced this spring. A second run will be available in June.
"These add texture to a room; they add a sense of age to the room."
Is this it, the epilogue? As the Kindle, iPad and other e-readers become increasingly popular in the digital age, dog-eared books are no longer simply a tool for transporting literary works. They've become decoration.
"I guess you could say books are disposable now that we have e-books," said Henry Petroski, a Duke University professor who teaches history and civil engineering. "I understand there are interior decorators who will choose books for you – you don't have to read them, look at them or even put them on the shelf."
Although just 1.3 percent of the $23.9 billion book market, e-books soared in sales in 2009, increasing by 177 percent to $313 million that year, according to the Association of American Publishers. The next-highest categorical growth was in higher-education books, which rose by 13 percent.
E-book content is expected to reach more than $500 million in sales this year, according to Forrester Research.
Still, electronic chapters and verses can't be displayed on bookshelves. So people are turning toward companies like Juniper Books and Half Price Books, which sell literature by the yard with the promise that multiple copies of the same book will not be in their shipments.
"What's interesting to me is in spite of what everyone says about the death of books, people still care to show off that they own books," said Edward Tenner, a research affiliate at Princeton University's Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies.
Stylish-looking books aren't a new leaf in the manual of interior design.
In the early 19th century, the elite would have favorite books uniformly bound in red or green leather to look nice in receiving rooms, said Richard Ring, special collections librarian at Providence Public Library in Rhode Island.
Later that century, publishers started mass-producing those sets for the working class, Ring said.
"You're Joe Blow in the late 19th century America and you want a library like Lord So-and-So has but you don't have the wherewithal to collect books and put them in their own bindings," he said. "So you buy the works of Washington Irving in sets. Did you read these books? One hopes, but generally speaking, they're window dressing."
Christopher Harris, a librarian and blogger from New York, tossed 12 boxes of books to make room for his daughter, who was born in January. Harris reads to her from both physical books and his iPad.
"It was very easy to get rid of (the books) because we have them digitally," he said. "The ones we kept were the beautiful books – beyond the story-on-paper format. They were the signed copies from authors. They were those we received as gifts with handwritten inscriptions."
Harris notes that pulp novels are making the fastest switch to digital because they're not valued as physical treasures – they are easily left behind at the beach resort.
"A book is storage technology, sort of like a 3 1/2-by-5 floppy drive," he said. "We didn't have an attachment to floppy disks, that was just a way to move things around. For me, the book is the same way – it's storage technology."
But beautiful books still have a place on the bookshelf, said Coralie Bickford-Smith, a designer for Penguin Books.
Bickford-Smith designs intricate, clothbound covers for titles such as "Great Expectations" and "Oliver Twist," with several of her books being sold at trendy shops like Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie.
"I think that as the volume of physical books declines, the average quality of the design will increase because books will have to work harder to justify their physical presence," she said.
Read more:
L.A. Book Collector Wins Right to be a Collector, Not a Dealer
Richard Hopp wins his appeal against the City of Los Angeles.
By Michael Stillman
Ameracana Exchange
A great resource for buying books and for book information... This article reports on a case I have been watching with quite some interest and is thorough and detailed.
You can fight city hall. Richard Hopp recently won a long and very strange legal dispute with the City of Los Angeles to be classified as a book collector, not a book dealer. He will not need to obtain a police permit, nor keep the detailed records required of booksellers in Los Angeles. What makes this case so odd is that Los Angeles ever attempted to make this case, and that the city came so close to winning it.
One has to assume that Los Angeles believed Mr. Hopp, a bail bondsman by trade, must be doing more than just collecting books. However, they had no evidence to back up any such beliefs. Odder still, they went to court against him without attempting to secure evidence he was selling books, or even making such a claim. It was as if a police officer, seeing you driving a shiny new sports car, assumed you must be speeding at times, and thereby ticketed you for going 30 miles per hour in a 30 mph zone. In court, they in effect argued that the law made it illegal to go within the speed limit as well as over it. Amazingly, the city won the first round in court. On appeal, Mr. Hopp, and common sense, prevailed.
Richard Hopp's troubles arose as a result of his unusual method of obtaining books. Most collectors purchase their books invisibly, visiting dealers, shows, garage sales and the like, or buying online. Mr. Hopp's style was far more open. He would advertise for books online and in print publications, and he would attend shows and set up a "buying booth." Most likely, the L.A. police looked at this activity and assumed no one could be buying in such a conspicuous manner without selling at least some of what he bought. They told him he needed a dealer's permit.
Mr. Hopp responded by taking the city to court. Rather than wait to get fined for not having a permit, he sought a "declaratory judgment," a court judgment which stated he did not need a permit. When the two sides appeared in court, the city still had no evidence that Mr. Hopp had ever sold a book. He explained that he purchased books and ephemera for his own collection, and items included in groups he bought that he did not want he gave to charity or discarded. Los Angeles then countered with its odd, legalistic argument - that it did not matter whether Mr. Hopp ever sold a book, he was still a dealer in the eyes of the law.
Many a legal case turns on something as small as a preposition, and in round one, the City of Los Angeles turned an "or" into a surprising legal victory. The Los Angeles ordinance that regulates "secondhand book dealers" defines such dealers as persons "engaging in, conducting, managing or carrying on the business of buying, selling, exchanging or otherwise dealing in secondhand books..." The magic word here is "or." Taken literally, the statute does not require that a dealer be buying and selling, buying or selling is sufficient argued the City. Mr. Hopp undeniably was buying. To make some sense out of why it was attempting to apply this wording so literally in Mr. Hopp's case, the City argued that purchasing books at events like flea markets provided an opportunity for petty thieves to fence stolen library and other books. Forcing public buyers such as Mr. Hopp to carefully account for their purchases would make it more difficult for thieves to fence their stolen merchandise.
The Court accepted the legalistic definition and ruled for Los Angeles, but Mr. Hopp was not ready to give in. He appealed. The Appeals Court took a broader look at the statute. Rather than focusing on the word "or" in the phrase "business of buying, selling, exchanging or otherwise dealing," it focused on the word "business."
The Appeals Court looked to other L.A. statutes which define a "business" as an occupation "which provides services, products or entertainment." It concluded that providing such things implies providing them to others. Mr. Hopp was providing nothing to anyone. Buying books and entertaining oneself by reading them hardly constitutes a "business," the Court concluded. It then went on to note that in other legal decisions courts have considered a "business" to be a commercial venture, one intended to produce a profit. There was no evidence or argument that Mr. Hopp was attempting to earn a profit through his activities. All that was shown was that he bought books and collected or donated/recycled them. That, the Court ruled, does not constitute a "business."
As for the City's argument that it needed to regulate public buyers such as Mr. Hopp to prevent fencing of stolen books, the Court stated that this suffered from the same logical shortcoming as the case in general. Part of fencing a book is selling it for a profit. There was no attempt at a profit in Mr. Hopp's activity. You can hardly prevent fencing by targeting people who do not resell the merchandise they buy.
We do not denigrate the seriousness of the challenge the police forces in L.A. and elsewhere face dealing with crime. Cutting off the market for stolen goods is a critical element to preventing goods from being stolen in the first place. Nevertheless, the rules must bear a reasonable relationship to the goals they seek to achieve. Ones that burden thousands of innocent people in the hope of finding an occasional crook are unreasonable impositions on people's ability to lead their lives free of constant intrusion. The City's interpretation of its statute could have subjected every book collector to burdensome and possibly costly requirements. Your child could be required to secure a police permit to collect comic books. This is not reasonable. Technically, this was a victory for Mr. Hopp, but in reality, it was a victory for all book collectors in Los Angeles, and even more importantly, a victory for common sense.
Ameracana Exchange
[Top]The Top Five Most Valuable Books In The World
From Shakespeare to Da Vinci, here's a definitive list of the world's most expensive manuscripts
As any devoted book collector knows, you can't really put a price on the immense pleasure that comes with owning a rare book or historic manuscript.
However, due to limited supply and growing demand from collectors and enthusiasts, the prices of the world's rarest books are incredibly steep.
This week, we look at the Top Five most expensive books in the world - and what people who were willing to spend whatever it took invested in them...
#5 William Shakespeare, First Folio: Comedies, Histories and Tragedies - $5.5m
It's no surprise that one of the world's greatest playwrights should feature in this list. The First Folio was, in fact, published in 1623, several years after the writer's death.
Within the manuscript is more than a dozen of Shakespeare's legendary plays, including some undiscovered works among the well-known classics. Only 750 copies of the First Folio were ever made, and this is one of the few in private hands.
Originally the book would have sold for about 20 shillings. Fast forward to 2010, and the book is estimated to be worth about $5.5m (it sold for a World Record $5.2m at Sotheby's in 2006).
#4 James Audubon, Birds of America - $8.8m
Featuring more than 400 engraved plates of rare birds, Audubon's four-part Birds of America was vital in introducing hithero unknown species to readers all over the world.
Audubon originally sold his hand-painted plates as sets between 1827-1838. These were eventually brought together and bound in a folio, and sold at a New York auction in 2000. Birds of America's final price soared all the way up to $8.8m (which would be about $11m today).
#3 The Magna Carta - $21.3m
First issued in 1215, the Magna Carta (or "Great Charter") had arguably the most significant influence on the extensive historical process which led to constitutional law in today's English speaking world.
A manuscript from the Magna Carta's first year of issue, set forth during the reign of King John, was sold at auction by Sotheby's in New York.
The only copy in private hands today, it auctioned to winning bidder David Rubinstein of the Carlyle Group for $21.3m. Rubinstein planned to return it to the National Archives.
#2 Gospels of Henry the Lion - $25.5m
Henry XII, Duke of Bavaria until 1180, apparently requested that his gospels be written by the Monks of the Benedictine monastery in Helmarshausen, Germany.
Two-hundred-and-sixty-six pages long, including four gospels and 50 miniature paintings, the manuscript - dated by experts to 1188 - chronicles Henry's quest to become ruler of Brunswick, and charted his career.
The work was last sold in 1983 through Sotheby's in London for $12m. That would be almost $25.5m today.
#1 Leonard Da Vinci, Codex Leicester - $44m
Codex Leicester is the most valuable manuscript in the world, containing Da Vinci's notes, drawings and sketches linking science and the arts.
Written in Italian, the manuscript itself comprises 18 paper sheets folded in half and double-sided, creating a 72-page document.
Fittingly, the world's most expensive book was purchased by the one-time world's richest man: Microsoft found Bill Gates, who bought Codex Leicester for $30.8m in 1994. With inflation, that value would be closer to $44m today.
Each year since, Gates has shared his acquisition with the rest of the world, exhibiting it in different locations; while also having some of Da Vinci's sketches scanned to be enjoyed digitally by audiences all over the world. Beat that, Steve Jobs...
Collectible books, letters and ephemera HERE
[Top]Collecting First Editions Is A Kind Of Madness
Buy beautiful old books, not first editions, Christopher Howse says.
Source: Telegraph.co.uk
By Christopher Howse
Published: 5:01PM BST 02 Jun 2010
A collection of first editions by J.R.R. Tolkein Photo: Ian Jones On April 1 1668 Samuel Pepys did a funny thing to modern ears, but not as an April Fool's joke. He bought a copy of the second edition of the scientist Robert Boyle's Origin of Formes, and charitably sent his old copy of the first edition to his brother, as if it were a pair of left-off shoes.
To us, "first edition" sounds like "diamond ring", something inherently valuable. That is why Sotheby's is getting excited at the prospect of auctioning 3,000 books from a secret collector in the autumn. They are expected to fetch £15 million because many are first editions. This is yet more proof that book-collecting is a variety of madness.
Pepys's copy of Boyle's book still stands on the shelf that he paid a carpenter to make, with 3,000 other books he left to Magdalene College, Cambridge. Among them is a fourth folio edition of Shakespeare (available for £42,000 through AbeBooks online). Pepys had dumped his third folio, worth many times more.
Why not? We don't all own vintage cars, precisely because we drive them. Pepys read his books (though he did love them as objects too). Magdalene misses no investment value from lacking the third folio, because it cannot dispose of any of the books Pepys left, under the terms of his will.
In the present century Oriel College sold its first folio for the sake of the two or three million it fetched. So did the estimable Dr Williams's Library in London. What is the point of keeping one?
Not that a first folio Shakespeare is rare. Perhaps 750 or 1,000 were printed in 1623, and 228 survive. It's just that many people want to buy one, for irrational reasons. I suppose I own some books of which no other copy exists – but no one else wants to buy them.
Most books only ever achieve a first edition. Yet the Shakespeare first folio effect still works with popular authors such as J K Rowling. In 1997, only 500 copies of the first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone were printed. A copy can fetch £30,000 – but only if it is in very good condition, as almost all aren't.
That is another symptom of book madness: valuable copies are the ones nobody has read. It is like taking your shoes off when it rains. Nothing spoils a book like reading it. In the British Library, readers tell a librarian if pages of the book are uncut – joined at the right-hand edge – so they may be parted without damage. Private collectors keep books uncut. It's the ne plus ultra of bibliomania: a book that cannot be read.
[Top]The Vatican Archive: the Pope's Private Library
Source: Telegraph.co.uk By John Preston
From Hitler to Henry VIII - the secret Vatican archives are a secret no more.
Some of the 50 miles of bookshelves in the Vatican secret archive Photo: The Vatican Secret Archives, Vdh Books The Vatican seal Photo: The Vatican Secret Archives, Vdh Books
The man standing outside the Porta Santa Anna Gate of the Vatican wearing a blue Gap shirt and none-too-expertly pressed Muji trousers could easily pass as an academic, or the cultural correspondent of an obscure television channel.
In fact, he is neither of these things. He is a man on a mission, a mission of the utmost delicacy.
Overhead, a flock of starlings, ancient symbols of undying love, wheel in the morning air.
Under escort, he will be taken into the inner sanctum of the Vatican, through an enormous pair of brass doors upon which some of the gorier scenes of the Old Testament are picked out in bas-relief.
Passing through various security cordons, each one staffed by guards more suspicious than the last, he will mount a narrow winding staircase.
Up the staircase he goes, past barred windows and tiny panelled chambers in which black-soutaned figures sit reading by the light of hushed lamps, to the very top of the 73m-tall tower.
This is the Tower of the Winds, built by Ottavinao Mascherino between 1578 and 1580, a place to which mere members of the public are never normally admitted.
Here in the Hall of the Meridian, a room covered in frescoes depicting the four winds, is a tiny hole high up in one of the walls.
At midday, the sun, shining through the hole, falls along a white marble line set into the floor. On either side of this meridian line are various astrological and astronomical symbols, once used to try to calculate the effect of the wind upon the stars.
But this is not the real reason why this man with the shabby trousers, the oddly distinguished-looking grey hair and the abundance of irrelevant detail has come to the Vatican.
No, the real reason for this lies elsewhere in the Tower of Winds, in rooms lined with miles and miles of dark wooden shelves – more than 50 miles of them in fact.
Here, bound in cream vellum, are thousands upon thousands of volumes, some more than a foot thick.
This is the Vatican secret archive, possibly the most mysterious collection of documents in the world.
Here you can find accounts of the trial of the Knights Templar held at Chinon in August 1308; a threatening note from 1246 in which Ghengis Khan’s grandson demands that Pope Innocent IV travel to Asia to ‘pay service and homage; a letter from Lucretia Borgia to Pope Alexander VI; Papal Bulls excommunicating Martin Luther; correspondence between the Court of Henry VIII and Clement VII; and an exchange of letters between Michelangelo and Paul III.
There are also letters from Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, St Bernadette, Voltaire and Abraham Lincoln.
And here too – depending on how much faith you have in the novels of Dan Brown – lies proof that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and continued their own earthly line.
Once, Napoleon had the whole of the secret archive transported to Paris.
It was brought back, albeit with some key documents missing, in 1817 and has remained in the Vatican ever since – a constant source of myth and fascination.
But now the Vatican Secret Archive is secret no more.
This story begins two years ago when a Belgian publisher called Paul Van den Heuvel asked a friend of his who works in the Vatican if there was any hope of his being allowed to do a book about the secret archive.
This friend, says Van den Heuvel, is ‘very close’ to the Pope.
As he admits, Van den Heuvel is not a particularly ecclesiastical man. He’s not a particularly ecclesiastical publisher either.
An excitable, gap-toothed Belgian, his previous book was a lavishly illustrated coffee table volume on The Most Beautiful Wine Cellars in the World.
To his surprise he received word back that highly placed sources within the Vatican had been impressed with The Most Beautiful Wine Cellars in the World. As a result, he was told, his proposal might be given the go-ahead.
Just what the Vatican’s motivation was is none too clear. Scholars have been allowed in the archive since 2003, so long as they know exactly which document they’d like a look at – browsing is not allowed.
Certainly, they haven’t always looked kindly on book proposals about the secret archive.
Fifteen years ago, when a priest and former Vatican archivist called Filippo Tamburini published a book called Saints and Sinners about the clergy’s indiscretions, the full weight of the Vatican’s disapproval came down upon him.
He had, it was claimed, perpetrated ‘an abuse’ that was ‘strongly deplored’. But largely as a result of the Vatican’s intervention, Tamburini’s book sold far more copies than it would otherwise have done.
According to Monsignor Sergio Pagano, Prefect of the Archivio Segreto Vaticano: ‘A lot of hypotheses and stories about the archive have been going around. We want to show it as it really is.’
For three days Van den Heuvel was given the run of the archive with no restrictions placed on what he could inspect or photograph – or so he claims.
In fact, this turns out not to be quite the case: there was one extremely big restriction in place. He wasn’t allowed to look at any documents that dated from after 1939.
The reason given was that these include Papal annulments of marriages of people who might still be alive.
It’s at this point that the keen conspiracy theorist throws up his or her hands and exclaims ‘Ha!’.
What a coincidence that this should also cover the most sensitive periods in recent Vatican history: the Second World War and the continuing scandal of paedophile priests.
There may be something in this, of course.
Nine years ago, a joint plan by Jewish and Roman Catholic scholars ended amid acrimony with the Vatican refusing to allow the Jewish scholars further access to its archives – and the Jewish scholars protesting that the Vatican was plainly trying to cover something up.
This came after a report that said the documents examined ‘did not put to rest significant questions about the Holocaust’.
However, one should also remember that the Vatican has recently released a number of wartime documents, which, they say, help to prove that Pope Pius XII, far from being a Nazi-sympathising anti-Semite – as his detractors claim – was in fact working behind the scenes trying to help the Jews.
The present Pope, back in the days when he was plain Cardinal Ratzinger, authorised the opening of one section of the archive in 1998.
This dealt with the Spanish Inquisition. To great surprise in some quarters – and less surprise in others – these documents revealed that the Inquisition hadn’t really been such a bloody business after all.
The Catholic Church had executed a mere one per cent of the alleged heretics they put on trial. As for the others, they had been dealt with by ‘non-church tribunals’ – overenthusiastic freelancers.
A similar thing happened when a document about the Knights Templar was released three years ago.
According to the document, Pope Clement V was not the persecutor of the Templars as had previously been claimed. Far from it: he initially absolved the Templar leaders of heresy.
Only after he’d come under pressure from the French king, the far-from-appropriately-named Philip the Fair, did he reverse his decision. But even then, it seems, Clement’s intention was to reform the Templars, not drive them from the face of the Earth.
By the end of his three days, Van den Heuvel had whittled his choice of documents down to 125. The oldest document in the archive dates from the end of the eighth century.
Among the more recent is a letter written by Pope Pius XI to Hitler in December 1934. However, anyone hoping for something bullish in tone will be looking in vain.
The letter – in response to an earlier letter from Hitler asking Pius to try to improve relations between Germany and the Vatican – addresses Hitler as ‘Illustro and honorabili viro Adolpho Hitler’, which must have brought pleasure to the Führer.
However, as the text points out, the Pope markedly omits to offer Hitler his blessing at the end. Not exactly a brush-off, but a diplomatic snub just the same.
Here, too, is a letter written in 1530 by the Archbishop of Canterbury along with five other bishops and 22 mitred abbots to Clement VII complaining about the Pope’s ‘excessive delay’ in annulling Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon (there was also, some time later, an excessive delay in finding the document; it was discovered under a chair, in 1926).
Any refusal by the Pope to issue an annulment, they intimate, would result in them taking extreme measures for the good of the kingdom; request denied, Henry formed the Church of England.
Among the seals with which the letter is festooned – plus the red ribbons that inspired the phrase ‘red tape’ – is one belonging to Thomas Wolsey, ‘Cardinal and Archbishop of York’.
Fifty-six years later, Mary Queen of Scots wrote to Pope Sixtus V on the eve of her execution. Mary declares that she wishes to die in the grace of God and regrets that she does not have recourse to the sacraments.
As the letter goes on, it becomes steadily more plaintive, more poignant. She begs the Pope to take care of her son, James, and concludes with a postscript in which she warns him that there may be traitors among his cardinals.
Voltaire’s letter to Pope Benedict XIV, written in 1745, strikes a more sycophantic tone:
‘Allow me, Holy Father, to present my best wishes together with all of Christendom and to implore Heaven that Your Holiness might be most tardily received among those saints whose canonisations you have so laboriously and successfully investigated.’
Legend has always had it that an infuriated Napoleon snatched the crown from the hands of Pius VII and stuck it on his own head at his Coronation in December 1804.
In fact, as a document here makes plain, the Pope was eager to keep his own involvement in the whole affair to a minimum.
Napoleon, by contrast, didn’t think anyone else was worthy of crowning him and was more than happy to do the job himself.
One of the archive’s more fragile documents is a letter from a group of Christian Ojibwe American Indians, written on birch bark.
Dated ‘where there is much grass, in the month of the flowers’ (in other words, Grassy Lake, Ontario, in May), the letter is addressed to Pope Leo, or ‘the Great Master of Prayer, he who holds the place of Jesus’.
If there is anything among the tomes about Jesus getting hitched to Mary Magdalene or about St Paul making up the Resurrection you won’t find it here.
That, however, doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t there. The truth is that no one really knows just what exactly is in the archive.
There are only 30 archivists – plus a small team charged with digitising their finds – and they have an awful lot of volumes to examine.
Three years ago, a Michelangelo drawing was found – ‘a partial plan for the radial column of the cupola dome of St Peter’s Basilica’.
Hardly the most exciting Michelangelo ever unearthed, but a Michelangelo none the less.
Perhaps more interesting is the note in which the artist complains that his payment for work on the dome is three months overdue.
For the time being Van den Heuvel’s The Vatican Secret Archives should keep the non-specialists satisfied.
Along with a main edition of 14,000, he is publishing 33 ‘unique collectors’ editions’ priced at just under £4,360 a throw – each ‘fully hand-bound in sheep parchment and hand-stitched with cotton thread’.
One of these unique collectors’ editions is being reserved for the Pope himself.
Soon, it will no doubt occupy an honoured place on his Holiness’s shelves – perhaps next to his copy of Great Wine Cellars of the World.
[Top]
Paris Literary Icon Launches Prize and Magazine
by Claire Kirch
Publisher's Weekly
Shakespeare & Company Bookshop, the Paris literary icon originally founded by Sylvia Beach in 1919, and opened by George Whitman in 1951, is launching a literary magazine and literary prize. Both ventures will be officially announced at the famed Left Bank bookstore’s fourth biannual literary festival held the weekend of June 18-20.
The magazine, Paris Magazine, is what store owner Sylvia Whitman calls a “reincarnation” of a literary magazine with the same name that her father founded in 1967. The elder Whitman published three issues at sporadic intervals before discontinuing it in the ‘80s. “This will be the fourth one, but many, many years later,” the younger Whitman explained. It has not yet been determined how often this incarnation of Paris Magazine will be published.
Paris Magazine, edited by former Granta managing editor Fatema Ahmed, will include fiction, nonfiction, and illustrations. The current issue, with a 5,000-copy print run, contains a new translation of a poem by Apollinaire by Beat Generation writer Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a short story by N’Diaye, and another short story by Jesse Ball.
The bookstore will also award a 10,000 euro ($12, 292) prize every two years to the author of the best novella containing 20,000-30,000 words. Initial submissions are to be received by Dec. 1, 2010, and shortlisted entrants must submit their complete novella by March 1, 2011. The contest is open to unpublished writers only and there is an entry fee. Full details and entry forms will be made available on the bookstore’s website, www.shakespeareandcompany.com on June 20, the last day of this year’s literary festival. The prize is sponsored by the De Groot Foundation.
[Top]