The copyright wars are set to continue, with the government releasing a Productivity Commission report arguing for a relaxation of intellectual property laws.
E-books are likely to reach 20% of library holdings by 2020, but writers aren’t receiving renumeration from these sources. Is this changing any time soon?
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When you borrow a paper book from a library, authors get a small royalty, which is their second most important source of income. Yet if you borrowed an e-book tomorrow, the author would get nothing.
Shirley Hazzard enchanted readers with her meticulously crafted prose.
Photograph of Shirley Hazzard by Roberto Pane
Shirley Hazzard, who passed away this week, was one of the great prose stylists of the last 50 years. A deeply intellectual autodidact, she championed the public duty of writers and the pleasure of reading.
Scorn has a long and humorous history. But a new book on the subject, featuring quotes from Kanye West, Christopher Hitchens and of course, Donald Trump, rather lacks contemporary wit.
If the government decides to remove regional trade protections on the book industry, it should compensate Australian authors. But given how unlikely new funding would be, the best option – for everyone – is to leave well enough alone.
Montaigne: his free-ranging essays were almost scandalous in their day.
Étienne Dumonstier/Wikimedia Commons
Montaigne anticipated much of modern thought, and was profoundly shaped by the classics. His Essays, so personal yet so urbane, continue to challenge and charm readers.
New forms of entertainment and consumption abound. And yet the book endures.
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E-book sales are falling, even though many said they would “kill” print books. Computers and television were also supposed to spell the book’s demise. At one point, people even feared the phonograph.
Behind every place name is a story. A new book catalogues the adventures, mistakes and history behind Australia’s weirdest, from Bungle Bungle to Spanker Knob.
Writers, over the last decade, have been waxing lyrical about the rise of the present tense in English fiction. But this morning I read something entirely new – for me, at least. I read a manuscript written…
The young adult novel “Eleanor & Park” is a frequent target for book challengers. But swears and sex aside, there’s something deeply subversive – and important – about this controversial book.
As soon as we defined physical boundaries in buildings, we created the burglar who breaches them.
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