“You just have to walk down Fifth Avenue to see what New York has become — it’s become an outlet mall for rich people.”

“Store window of Gotham Book Mart in New York which was decorated by
Marcel Duchamp in 1945 to promote Andre Breton’s book ‘Arcane 17′.”
From: vedenina

“When Sarah McNally, the owner of McNally Jackson bookstore in Lower Manhattan, set out to open a second location, she went to a neighborhood with a sterling literary reputation, the home turf of writers from Edgar Allan Poe to Nora Ephron: the Upper West Side.

     She was stopped by the skyscraper-high rents.
     'They were unsustainable,' Ms. McNally said. 'Small spaces for $40,000 or more each month. It was so disheartening.'
     Rising rents in Manhattan have forced out many retailers, from pizza joints to flower shops. But the rapidly escalating cost of doing business there is also driving out bookstores, threatening the city’s sense of self as the center of the literary universe, the home of the publishing industry and a place that lures and nurtures authors and avid readers.
     'Sometimes I feel as if I’m working in a field that’s disappearing right under my feet,' said the biographer and historian Robert Caro, who is a lifelong New Yorker.”
— Julia Bosman, The New York Times
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PO'd Publishers Poo-poo Pulitzer Prize Pronouncement

Joseph Pulitzer, 1847 - 1911
(From: Wikipedia)

"One day after the Pulitzer Prize board said it would not award a Pulitzer in fiction for the first time in 35 years, the publishing industry was still seething, with some going as far as offering surrogate winners.
     Publishers Weekly posted a list of books from 2011 that could have been chosen, including Chad Harbach’s Art of Fielding and The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka.
     On Tuesday, Sarah McNally, the owner of McNally Jackson Books in SoHo, said she would present her own awards to The Great Night by Chris Adrian, We the Animals by Justin Torres and Pym by Mat Johnson.
     Publishers Weekly posted a list of books from 2011 that could have been chosen, including Chad Harbach’s Art of Fielding and The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka.
     On Twitter, Doubleday suggested the Twitterverse choose its own Pulitzer winner (using the hashtag #TwitterPulitzer), immediately prompting nominations like The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta and The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides.
     Striking a rare note of optimism, publishers of the three fiction finalists said they hoped the books would nevertheless get a boost in a rare year without a winner in the spotlight. 'In years past it’s the Pulitzer winner that captures all the attention and all the sales,' said Paul Bogaards, a spokesman for Alfred A. Knopf. 'But since this year there was not a winner and there’s much conversation about the finalists, this may be an opportunity and a catalyst for sales.'”
— Julie Bosman, The New York Times
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