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Essay : Waiting for It

NYT - Technology is speeding everything up. So why does it still take so long to publish a book?

For writers, few steps in the publishing process are as strange as the state of suspended animation between submitting a manuscript and seeing the book appear in stores. The sudden change in cabin pressure from writing to waiting can be jarring � and can last a very long time. "It comes as a huge shock when it happens the first time," said the Irish writer Colm Toibin, whose first novel, "The South," appeared in 1990, a year and a half after he turned it in. "It was all slow and strange."

Technology may be speeding up the news cycle, but in publishing, things actually seem to be slowing down. Although publishers can turn an electronic file into a printed book in a matter of weeks � as they often do for hot political titles, name-brand authors or embargoed celebrity biographies likely to be leaked to the press � they usually take a year before releasing a book. Why so long? In a word, marketing. ...

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Books of The Times: Voters Are Red, Voters Are Blue

A short poem about Calvin Trillin’s new book, which tells the story of the 2008 presidential election in light verse.

Book Prizes Awarded With Nod to History

Annette Gordon-Reed won the National Book Award for nonfiction for “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family,” while Peter Matthiessen won the fiction award for “Shadow Country.”

Books of The Times: Despite a Ghastly Murder, Remember Your Manners

In P. D. James’s latest exercise in impeccable detection, a muckraking London journalist worms her way into a private clinic on a country estate — and ends up the victim of a ghastly murder.

Newly Released

New books by Wally Lamb, Kate Jacobs, Dean Koontz, Mark Barrowcliffe and Julia Leigh.

Donald Finkel, 79, Poet of Free-Ranging Styles, Is Dead

Mr. Finkel was a noted American poet whose work teemed with curious juxtapositions, which in their unorthodoxy helped illuminate the function of poetry itself.

For Studio, Vampire Movie Is a Cinderella Story

Tiny Summit Entertainment finds itself sitting atop one of the biggest pop-culture phenomena of recent years.

Books of The Times: V. S. Naipaul, a Man Who Has Earned a Knighthood, a Nobel and Enemies Galore

“The World Is What It Is” is one of the sprightliest, most gripping, most intellectually curious and, well, funniest biographies of a living writer to come along in years.

Books of The Times: It’s True: Success Succeeds, and Advantages Can Help

Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book employs the same recipe as his previous two best sellers, but does so in such a clumsy manner that it italicizes the weaknesses of his methodology.

For Books, Is Obama New Oprah?

So just which book “about F.D.R.’s first 100 days” was President-elect Barack Obama talking about when he appeared on “60 Minutes” on Sunday?

Books of the Times: You Know We All Love You, Professor. Now Get Out of Here.

In “Gone Tomorrow,” a sharply observed yet tender novel of academic life and its many sand traps, P. F. Kluge describes the dangers that a writer-teacher faces.

The Vampire of the Mall

Robert Pattinson, the heartthrob star of the coming film adaptation of the vampire romance novel “Twilight,” meets his squealing fans.

Lucky George

A hugely entertaining oral history of the journalist and literary celebrity George Plimpton.