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MediaBistro.com (Free subscription) | yesterday
Wow. Is Random House secretly being run by a middle eastern government? Earlier this month it was announced that the publishing house giant was canceling a novel by American writer Sherry Jones about prophet Muhammad and his "feminist leanings" because of concerns it might "incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment." Now comes word (via Galley Cat ) that the company is asking its young adult...
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Reason Magazine - Hit & Run (Free subscription) | yesterday
Random House has cancelled the August publication of Sherry Jones' book, not because Jones violated the rules of her genre (it's a straight-forward novel), and not because Jones plagiarized (she conducted thorough research and wrote up a complete bibliography). Random House ditched the book because its narrative depicts a history of Islam in which women are treated as more than second-class citizens:...
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Eidelblog (Free subscription) | 20/08/2008
Apparently the truth about Islam's pedophile founder hurts. Random House has canceled the U.S. publication of Sherry Jones' novel about A'isha , the child whom Mohammed (hellfire be upon him) "married" when she was only 9 years old. Random House's statement cited thinly veiled threats: "The decision was based on advice from scholars of Islam, among several creditable sources, that publication of this...
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The Independent (Free subscription) | 4 hours ago
* Would Belgrade rush in where Manhattan feared to tread? When Random House US pulled Sherry Jones's novel about the Prophet Muhammad's wife A'isha, The Jewel of Medina, its decision ignited a global firestorm of controversy. For a while it looked as if the book was going to find an unlikely home in Serbia. The Serbian publisher BeoBook printed 1,000 copies. But BeoBook's Aleksandar Jasic has recalled...
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booktwo.org (Free subscription) | 2 hours ago
Children’s writers, don’t misbehave | guardian.co.uk - Random House asking YA authors not to do anything inappropriate. Tres amusant. Q&A with Developer Who Turns Ebooks into iPhone Applications - Tools of Change for Publishing - “My current download numbers for all books (not counting several free books) is almost 1,000 books a day.” … at a [...]
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Execupundit.com (Free subscription) | yesterday
Andrew Klavan on Random House and The Jewel of Medina . An excerpt: Publishers — whether of books, newspapers, blogs, or anything else — are among the chief protectors and exercisers of our free discourse. When they bow to bullying gangsters — whether those gangsters have some sort of religious motivation or not — they are ceding intellectual ground made sacred by the blood of patriots.
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frankwu (Free subscription) | yesterday
Via boingboing via The Guardian comes a report that Random House is inserting the following into some of its contracts with folks who write kids' books: "If you act or behave in a way which damages your reputation as a person suitable to work with or be associated with children, and consequently the market for or value of the work is seriously diminished, and we may (at our option) take any of the...
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An Insomniac (Free subscription) | yesterday
From the BBC website: Publisher Random House says it received three complaints about a vulgar term used in My Sister Jodie, which is aimed at children aged 10 and over. In future editions, the offending word will be altered by one letter and replaced with "twit". Three complaints. They changed the word purely on the basis of three complaints. Do these books not go through some kind of vetting
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MediaBistro.com (Free subscription) | yesterday
Since Michelle Boorstein is the religion correspondent for the Washington Post , and doesn't usually cover the book beat, it's understandable that today's recap of the Jewel of Medina controversy doesn't reference any of GalleyCat 's extensive commentary from the last two weeks on Random House 's decision to not publish the novel Sherry Jones wrote because they didn't want to risk the possibility...
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Annoyed Librarian (Free subscription) | yesterday
Many of you have possibly already read about The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones, a novel about one of Muhammad's wives that was to be published by Random House and had already been chosen as a Book of the Month Club selection. Alas, we'll probably not be able to read the novel. I wouldn't have read it anyway, because Muhammad's romantic life or Muslim views of women hold no interest for me whatsoever,...
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The Telegraph (Free subscription) | yesterday
Random House Children's Books has agreed to remove a four-letter swearword from a popular book by Dame Jacqueline Wilson after complaints from Anne Dixon, who insists she is standing up for values of common decency.
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MediaBistro.com (Free subscription) | yesterday
A few weeks back, Guardian blogger Sian Pettenden called attention to a morality clause in Random House 's contracts for children's book authors: According to an alert distributed by a UK-based support group for writers and illustrators of literature for young people, the publishing conglomerate is now attempting to tell authors "If you act or behave in a way which damages your reputation as a person...
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A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy (Free subscription) | yesterday
The morality clauses we discussed earlier this month now appear to be part of some US contracts. Read via twitter , convo is at Boing Boing , as always, read the comments. What I find interesting...is the publisher being named is Random House. Which, as most readers/bloggers know, is one of the first publishers who reached out to YA/childrens lit blogs with review copies. And is also the publisher...
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Read Roger (Free subscription) | yesterday
Another one from the Guardian , about a little furor surrounding Jacqueline Wilson's latest, My Sister Jodie : "The word 'twat' was used in context. It was meant to be a nasty word on purpose, because this is a nasty character," said a spokesperson for Random House. "However, Jacqueline doesn't want to offend her readers or her readers' parents, so when the book comes to be reprinted the word will...
