Big Publishers gripe about who the National Book Award named as the five finalists for the annual prize. I for one am delighted that the heavy hitters in the publishing world are miffed about not having any of their books chosen by the National Book Awards. It's perhaps a warning to them that "bottom line" considerations are not the best way to judge a book.

A couple of interesting quotes:

"We are completely closing ourselves off from the culture at large," said Larry Kirschbaum, the chairman of the Time Warner Book Group, "we are supporting our demise."

and

Esther Newberg, a literary agent at International Creative Management, said, "We are not helping the book business this way, and we're not exactly flourishing already."


Still, many booksellers, and even Barnes & Noble.com and Amazon.com, were caught flat-footed by the National Book Award finalists. Both report waits of four days to two weeks for [two of the books] "Florida" and "Ideas of Heaven."

Click on the following link to read the complete article in the New York Times.

New Novels, Big Awards, No Readers
By EDWARD WYATT