Book News Roundup: The nightmare scenario for libraries

  • Village Books cofounder Chuck Robinson, who served as president of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association and the American Booksellers Association, now owns a consulting business for businesses and nonprofits. Chuck Robinson Associates will offer the leadership and advice that Robinson put to good use as the head of Village Books for decades. Village Books has repeatedly been recognized nationwide as an example of independent bookselling done right; that's largely due to Robinson's leadership.

  • Fantagraphics cartoonist Matt Furie successfully sued the creator of an alt-right kids' book for using his character Pepe the Frog. According to Matthew Gault at Motherboard, the legal settlement "prevents further sale of the book and [hilariously] forces [the kids' book creator] to donate all profits to a Muslim-American advocacy group." Alt-right jackoffs beware: if you try to make a profit off of Furie's creation, he will sue you into next week, and he will force you to give money to a good cause.

  • Speaking of Fantagraphics, they're publishing a beautiful Italian comic strip sequel to Disney's Snow White film created by cartoonist Romano Scarpa. It's the first time these strips will ever be translated into English.

  • A hard drive containing Terry Pratchett's unpublished novels have been crushed by a steamroller, reports Michael Schaub at the LA Times. This is exactly what Pratchett wanted to happen to his unpublished writing after his death, and I'm a fan of this decision. Sure, people might argue that Kafka wanted his writing destroyed after his death, too, and the world is better for his books being published against his dying wishes. But there's a real difference here: unlike the unpublished Kafka, Pratchett was widely published — more than 41 books in the Discworld series alone — and he presumably didn't publish the books on that hard drive for a reason. His body of work as it stands is more than impressive enough.

  • I missed this news from last week, but it's an absolute fucking nightmare:

Despite the protests of hundreds of angry residents, the Escondido City Council voted 3-2 Wednesday night to begin the process of outsourcing the city’s library service to a private company.