The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.
Profits at Random House shot up 75.6 percent last year because of Fifty Shades of Grey sales, according to Publisher's Weekly. The Fifty Shades trilogy has been so successful that CEO Markus Dohle announced at the 2012 Random House Christmas party that every single employee would receive a $5,000 bonus, even warehouse workers.
The Daily Beast says it has found more problems in Jane Goodall's new book: "A quick check of other passages, randomly selected, suggest that there are many more instances of plagiarism that went undiscovered by the Post." The Washington Post reported last week that parts of Goodall's Seeds of Hopewere lifted from sources such as Wikipedia.
Literary rockstar Junot Diaz debated immigration with Stephen Colbert on the comedian's show Monday. Diaz argued that "every single immigrant we have, undocumented or documented, is a future American. That's just the truth of it."
Today's award for worst books headline goes to The New York Times for an article featuring books about bullying: "Publishers Revel in Youthful Cruelty."
Michael Kimmage writes about Philip Roth for The New Republic:"The national writer, a product of the nineteenth century, is a relic of the past. Yet it was Roth's calling to be exactly this, to join nation and imagination and to serve his citizen-readers as a writer-citizen, the worthy object of as many monuments as the nation is willing to sponsor."
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