Thriller writer chooses Amazon over St. Martin's

Barry Eisler decided not to sign the half-million dollar contract offer from St. Martin's Press for his novel Detachment, but instead to publish it first as an e-book via Amazon. Here's the story from npr.org--it aired on Morning Edition today.

Censored Version of Huck Finn, Courtesy of New South

NewSouth, Inc., a small publishing house in Montgomery, AL, is releasing a new edition of Mark Twain's ubiquitous novel Huckleberry Finn that erases all two-hundred and nineteen instances of the word "nigger" from the original text.

The company waxes, one might say, creative, when explaining this choice:
"If the publication sparks a good debate about how language impacts learning
or about the nature of censorship or the way in which racial slurs exercise their
baneful influence, then our mission in publishing this new edition of Twain's works
will be more emphatically fulfilled."

If putting your shoes in a bowl of jello opens a dialogue about the evils of putting someone's shoes in a bowl of jello....

Here's what This Week In Blackness's editor-in-chief Elon James White has to say about the matter in Salon.com

More Rasslin Books!

Here's a Huffington Post column by writer and publishing-industry veteran Jason Pinter discussing how choices made by a female-dominated publishing industry affect the number of male readers. One of the incidents that alerted him to this problem was his difficulty pitching a memoir by pro wrestler Chris Jericho (pictured).

Laura Miller of Salon.com gives a digest of reactions to the piece.