A number of authors, including JK Rowling, Philip Pullman and Vikram Seth, are leading a coalition against the removal of retail prices from books. Philip Pullman notes that “books are not eggs,” midlist authors would suffer, and royalties would be more creatively calculated.

There’s actually a simpler way to look at the issue: Does anybody really want to go into a bookstore and be surrounded by books with terrible price tags besmirching their exterior? The affixing paste may ruin the cover. Or the pricetag might become so prominent as to destroy a carefully designed cover. Worse still, the name of a book or an author might be blotted out due to some rushed, underpaid bookstore clerk threatened with a flogging.

Fiction coverage isn’t the only thing getting shafted by the Gray Lady. Ted Rall’s editorial cartoons have been pulled because the Times wants to ensure that its content “does not offend the reasonable sensibillities of our audience.”

Man, between this and the NYTBR flap, I am this close to cancelling my Sunday subscription in protest.

(via Romenesko)

There’s a new neighbor on the lit blog block: Rake’s Progress.

Publisher’s Lunch reported this morning that Houghton Mifflin issued a press release that sales were down from last year, with the sentence, “The decrease was due mainly to lower Tolkien book sales and lower sales of children’s titles.” However, in confirming the info, I noticed that the press release had been removed. Is it possible that Houghton Mifflin is deliberately withholding some pertinent info and that Tolkien has lust its potency? As Uncle Matt Grambo might say, DEVELOPING.

[UPDATE: Never mind. Here’s the release.]