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03 September 2010
Dan Brown 'most unwanted author', says Oxfam
"Charity givers donated more Dan Brown books to Oxfam than any other author but he was only number 10 on the list for most books sold, the charity's annual survey revealed today."
31 August 2010
The Value of Negative Reviews
"The value of negative reviews is endlessly debated in reviewing circles. Some reviewers really enjoy putting the boot in, while others find it distasteful. Some, like Rees Brennan, both enjoy it and find it distasteful."
26 August 2010
Who Needs Publishers? We All Do!
"Recently, Newsweek ran an article about the brave new world of self-publishing. Its title asked the question "Who Needs a Publisher?" Well, the short answer is, I do. The bigger answer is: we all do."
12 August 2010
Five Things Jeff Bezos Doesn't Want You to Know about Kindle
"1) You read slower on a Kindle. A recent study by digital design guru Jakob Nielsen showed that people reading a short story read more than 10% slower on the Kindle, compared to reading on paper. And that was just for a short story. How much slower might it be reading a whole book?"
12 August 2010
The World's Most Perfect Product
"I was there, in other words, because not only did I recently shun traditional publishing and put out a printed book on my own, but I also started my own little publishing corporation (called Rapture Machine) to do it. And my story was perhaps helpful, because for this particular event, these ad teams were tasked with one of most challenging questions facing modern media today, one that's near and dear to my heart, my medium and my livelihood: How to save/reinvent book publishing. And they had about 72 hours to do it."
05 August 2010
The Printed Book Will Still Dominate for a Long Time to Come
"Yes. I grew up with printed paper, but I have to admit that I'm surprised at how quickly the digital business is growing, especially in the United States. Nevertheless, the printed book will still dominate for a long time to come."
02 August 2010
Sex disappears from the British novel as authors run scared of ridicule
"Andrew Motion, the former poet laureate, had the unenviable task of reading through 138 novels to help determine the longlist for this year's Booker prize, announced last week. Among his conclusions about the state of the British (and Commonwealth) novel was that no one was writing much about sex any more."
29 July 2010
Will the Book Survive?
"Amidst all the doom and gloom of the book publishing industry, the CEO of Ingram Book Company, Skip Prichard, says books of all sorts are here to stay and we should embrace the change—and keep on reading."
27 July 2010
Are ‘second-hand e-books’ possible?
"Nick Harkaway has posted on the Bookseller’s “FuturEBooks” blog wondering about the possibility of selling “second-hand e-books”. He points out (as I did in this TeleRead post on the idea) that, since there is no physical artifact to depreciate, an e-book couldn’t really be considered “used”, so either people would pass on the e-book for exactly the same price as they paid for it or else they’d drive down the value of the book by selling it at a discount. Harkaway then proposes the ideas of “returning” an e-book to the seller in return for store credit to apply against future e-book purchases, or of letting e-book buyers keep but also “resell” e-books to others. Neither of these ideas would really fly, however, given how easy it would be to game the system."
19 June 2010
A Day in the Life of a Literary Agent
"I get asked at conferences all the time what a day in the life of a literary agent is like. Well, there's no such thing as a typical day, and to prove it, here's my approximate schedule from about mid-day yesterday through just-now today, which should give you a pretty good sense of some of the usual."
Authorial, agently and personal ramblings
14 June 2010
What makes a good bookshop?
"From my perspective though I don’t generally go to bookshops to buy the latest popular novel. I go to find something I don’t already know or to pick up a particular novel by a writer I rate. Depth isn’t that useful to me, breadth is. I don’t care if you have fifteen copies of Jordan’s new novel. I do care if you have a single copy of Hangover Square."
04 June 2010
Bookshelf Aesthetics
My wife once removed all the dust jackets from my books because they spoilt the appearance of the bookshelves. At least she didn't go this far:
01 June 2010
Secret Agent Clash
Competition is far from gentlemanly at the top end of town:
"One of the most powerful agents in the literary world, Esther Newberg, blasted rival super agent Andrew "The Jackal" Wylie for what she claims is his long-running practice of poaching writers from other agents. Newberg claimed Wylie recently tried to poach an unnamed writer from one of her younger associates at International Creative Management -- and she is out for revenge. "I am just lying in wait for the moment when I can get back at him," Newberg vowed."
20 May 2010
Judge a cover by its book
"When browsing, we rely on a jacket's visual clues to tell us what kind of book we're looking at, and whether we are likely to enjoy it. The importance of this was debated at the Vintage Classics Day at Foyles bookshop last month, and the discussion, though lively and informative, described a depressingly familiar tale of sales over substance. Jonathan Ruppin, a bookseller at Foyles, put the problem in stark relief: on average, book buyers spend just 0.8 seconds looking at a jacket – a phenomenally short sales pitch. Getting it right is vital. The question is, who knows best?"
13 May 2010
The Lovereading Book of the Decade
"In February 2010 Lovereading began the search for 'the readers Book of the Decade'.
To begin with Sarah Broadhurst, Lovereading's Editorial guru, chose her 50 favourites from the last 10 years and then it was over to the readers.
The first stage, which attracted nearly 20,000 votes, took the top 50 to a shortlist of ten. Then, in April, the voting reopened to allow readers to choose the overall winner..."
05 May 2010
Buyers of E-Books Still Like Print Too, Survey Shows
"Owners of Apple’s iPad and Amazon’s Kindle are still buying more print-format books than e-books, according to a survey by the Codex Group, a book-market consultancy. Kindle owners bought only 37% of their books in the Kindle format and 50% of their books in print, while iPad owners bought 46% of their books in either Apple’s iBookstore or in the Kindle store, which also allows books to be read on the iPad."
28 April 2010
Cory Doctorow Boycotts the iPad
"The iPad’s DRM restrictions mean that Apple has absolute dominion over who can run code on the device—and while that thin shellac of DRM will prove useless at things that matter to publishers, like preventing piracy, it is deadly effective in what matters to Apple: preventing competition."
26 April 2010
Why Men Don't Read Books
"Like many boys, I grew up watching pro wrestling. I knew that Jericho was not only a huge star, but a genuinely smart, charismatic guy who had some incredible stories to tell. In an attempt to convince the editorial board, I brought in Chris's videos, action figures, CDs, anything I could think of to prove to a skeptical room that this guy was a big deal and his book would work. Nobody was buying my pitch. Nobody had heard of Jericho. So here's what happened--and I swear this is true."
19 April 2010
Andrew Wylie, Feared King of the Publishing Jungle
"Once a more than slightly feral predator, however, Wylie has now become something far more menacing in the literary undergrowth. In a business environment where many of the principal publishers, booksellers and rival literary agents are reeling from the remorseless depredations of recession and digitisation (the IT revolution), he can make a good claim to be the most powerfully composed and uniquely global writers' representative on either side of the Atlantic, a king of the book publishing jungle."
14 April 2010
Bonanza for Book-buyers
"Whatever the outcome of this era of transformation, for now these are bonanza days for book buyers."
14 April 2010
The Future for Book Editors
"There has been a flurry of thoughtful and true articles lately lamenting the devaluation of the editor. But enough lamentation! We all know the publishing industry of yore is long gone. What about the future? In the Internet free-for-all book editors may become more, rather than less important. The editor is the author’s interface with the world at large; the other roles in publishing houses, as they are now configured, may become obsolete in the digital future. Publishers may devalue editors, but writers and agents don’t."
25 March 2010
Confessions of a compulsive reader
"Going to the loo without a book! It is a profound shock. Instead of reading, I stare at the walls and notice that there are still two empty nails on which I meant - a year ago - to hang pictures. Also, I notice the dust on the floor and the cobwebs on the ceiling. I sense that I will be doing a lot more housework than usual this week."
19 March 2010
Short is sweet when it comes to fiction
"It's taken me a long time to realise how much I love short novels — those unintimidating, pencil-thick volumes which say: "Pick me up. I won't take up too much of your time. You could read me over (a longish) breakfast." The Outsider, A Clockwork Orange, The Great Gatsby, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Clarice Lispector's The Hour of the Star, The Old Man and the Sea and Of Mice and Men all barely break the 100-page barrier. The last three don't even do that."
19 March 2010
Glue Offers Authors an Alternative to Amazon
"Adaptive Blue’s Firefox browser add-on, Glue, has been downloaded an impressive 2.4 million times and counting, and it is integrated with a variety of book-related ecommerce, social networking and review websites, including Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, IndieBound.com, Goodreads.com, Oprah.com and many, many others. Their widgets are actively being used on a wide variety of book-related sites, from major publishers like Random House and Simon and Schuster, as well as marketing savvy authors like JA Konrath, enabling them to offer readers a variety of purchase options beyond Amazon."
18 March 2010
The Economics of e-Book Publishing
"Customers have a habit of demanding lower prices, especially when they believe a product’s price represents a huge profit for the company. The case in point here is e-books, just one of many digital products facing the e-pricing dilemma.
In recent weeks, thanks to the soon-to-be-released Apple iPad, five of the six major publishers banded together to demand a change in price. Up until now, Amazon, the leading e-book seller, has set most bestsellers at a $9.99 price point, but by making a deal with Apple to price books from $12.99 to $14.99 and threatening to remove their products from Amazon’s online store and it’s e-reader Kindle, the publishers were able to push up the price.
To illustrate why publishers keep pushing for the higher price, the recent New York Times article ‘Math of Publishing Meets the E-Book’ by Motoko Rich broke down standard hardcover book pricing and compared it to the new iPad digital pricing, also suggesting, according to Rich, that 'customers have exaggerated the savings and have developed unrealistic expectations of how low the prices of e-books can go.'"
16 March 2010
How to Choose a Font for Your Book
"As more writers explore self-publishing options and digital editions re-create print books, the time has never been better to brush up on book fonts. If you have to pick a font for your book, why not consult with the experts?"
05 March 2010
An Author's View of How Publishers Should Deal With e-Books
"Lately the publishing industry has been trying to commit suicide over electronic rights. It’s funny because every time in history a revolutionary new way to do business comes along, the first instinct of all established players is to strangle themselves with it. Movie studios fought the VCR. Microsoft fought the Internet. The music industry fought MP3s. TV networks are fighting PVRs. Eventually, these turn into important markets, fully embraced by the companies that tried to kill them. But until then everyone spends a lot of time throwing lawyers at anything that doesn’t look like a traditional business model."
03 March 2010
Authors choose their favourite books of the decade
"Zadie Smith and Cormac McCarthy have both scored well in a poll to find out which authors writers themselves enjoy reading."
26 February 2010
Do You Really Need an Editor at a Publishing House?
"I recently had a conversation with someone I think should know better; a respected published writer. We are all in a heated conversation about digital and electronic books and the subject of the writer going electronic directly with his or her book came up, bypassing the editorial process in a traditional publishing setting. The writer said: "Why not? There is no editing anymore." Not only is that not true, but it certainly didn't understand the complex role of the editor in a publishing house."
26 February 2010
The Publicity Paradox
"After four book releases at two different publishers (a status I would call not-quite-new-to-this-business yet far from a seasoned veteran), one of the issues that still vexes me the most is book publicity. What works? How much should I do myself, or pay to have done? How much should I rely on outside help and, if so, what kind?"
11 February 2010
As I start to write my latest book, I fear for the future of publishing
Henry Porter: "To begin to write a book these days seems more than the average folly. Publishing appears to have been hit by a storm similar to the one that tore through the music industry a few years ago and is now causing unprecedented pain in newspapers We are told that fewer people are reading, that book sales are down, that the supermarkets which sell one in five copies of all books care more about their cucumber sales, that the book is shortly to be replaced by the ebook and electronic readers sold by, among others, Amazon, which seems bent on reducing publishers to an archipelago of editorial sweatshops and the writer to the little guy stitching trainers in an airless room."
11 February 2010
iPad iWash
"Having been selling books to bookshops for more than 30 years, I was worried that I would soon be out of a job. And so I conducted a survey of my customers and can confidently report that most of the shops I call on today are selling no more ebooks than they sold ten years ago. I have to admit that I work in the north of England, parts of which are still awaiting for electricity to arrive."
27 January 2010
Confessions of a Book Pirate
"A recent study by Attributor, a firm that specializes in monitoring content online, came to some spectacular conclusions, including the headline claim that book piracy costs the industry nearly $3 billion, or over 10% of total revenue. Of all the conclusions in the Attributor study, this one seemed the most outlandish, and the study itself might be met with some skepticism since Attributor is in the business of charging companies to protect their content from the threat of piracy."
21 January 2010
What are Enhanced Ebooks?
Interesting article (and comments) on what publishers should be thinking about as they grapple with electronic distribution.
21 January 2010
When an Adman Becomes a Best Selling Author
"Patterson and his publisher, Little, Brown & Co., a division of the Hachette Book Group, have an unconventional relationship. In addition to his two editors, Patterson has three full-time Hachette employees (plus assistants) devoted exclusively to him: a so-called brand manager who shepherds Patterson’s adult books through the production process, a marketing director for his young-adult titles and a sales manager for all his books. Despite this support staff and his prodigious output, Patterson is intimately involved in the publication of his books. A former ad executive — Patterson ran J. Walter Thompson’s North American branch before becoming a full-time writer in 1996 — he handles all of his own advertising and closely monitors just about every other step of the publication process, from the design of his jackets to the timing of his books’ release to their placement in stores. “Jim is at the very least co-publisher of his own books,” Michael Pietsch, Patterson’s editor and the publisher of Little, Brown, told me."
When you sell more books than Dan Brown, John Grisham, and Stephen King combined, you'd expect nothing less from your publisher.
19 January 2010
In the Words of Someone Else
Robert McCrum writes, "When the French novelist Camille Laurens lost her son in childbirth in 1995, she responded with a moving account of her trauma, Philippe, which touched a nerve with her public. A few years later the infinitely more successful Marie Darrieussecq published a novel, Tom Est Mort, the story of a woman whose baby dies after a terrible birth agony. Laurens, in a fury, accused Darrieussecq of "psychological plagiarism". Ever since, these two writers have been at each other's throats, trading elevated Gallic insults, to the scandalised fascination of Paris.
In the latest twist, Darrieussecq has published not just another novel but a scholarly treatise about literary theft in general and Laurens in particular. Darrieussecq, who is also a psychoanalyst, claims that her rival was trying symbolically to "assassinate" her with accusations of plagiarism and that, unconsciously, she was exhibiting "a crazed desire to be plagiarised", a savage dig at the senior woman's faltering career.
All very thrillingly French, you might think, but you would be wrong. In the bitter history of plagiarism, there is an equally vicious exchange from the records of Elizabethan literary London that leaves Laurens and Darrieussecq very much in the slow lane.
13 January 2010
Why Women are Drawn to Tales of Rape, Murder, and Serial Killers
"Women are more drawn to true crime books than are men, according to research in the inaugural issue of Social Psychological and Personality Science (published by SAGE).
The true crime genre of nonfiction books is based on gruesome topics such as rape and murder. Many people might assume that men, being the more aggressive sex, would be most likely to find such gory topics interesting."
07 January 2010
Is Apple's Tablet the New Book?
"Although anticipation has already reached a fever pitch (just take a look at Twitter’s most popular topics on most days) book publishers have an especially vested interest in the gadget. While there have been numerous electronic book readers coming out in the last year (including the most recent, The Skiff), few have managed to capture the public’s imagination beyond the Amazon Kindle – which hasn’t exactly done much for publishers’ bottom line. Many people in the beleaguered industry are hoping that [the] device will do for reading what the iPod and iTunes did for music. A survey among booksellers claimed that an Apple e-reader would [be] one of the main factors that will help push digital publishing forward."
01 January 2010
Weird Book Room
There are some very strange book titles listed here, but my favourite has to be this one:
The title is Dead Pet: Send Your Best Little Buddy Off in Style
25 December 2009
The Writer-in-Chief
The story behind the publication of Dreams from My Father makes fascinating reading.
22 December 2009
Books to Look for in 2010
"Yann Martel, Ian McEwan, and Carlos Ruiz Zafón are some of the many best-selling authors with titles coming out in 2010."
19 December 2009
The Decade's Best Unread Books
"While people are busy ranking the hit books of the last 10 years, many a publishing insider is quietly mourning a volume that unnaccountably never made the 'best of' or bestseller lists, but should have. Here publishers, agents and translators speak up for the ones that really shouldn't have got away."
17 November 2009
The Back of the Book
What happens the instant after you flip a book over might make the difference between bestseller and remainder.
Why?
10 November 2009
Should Books be Shorter?
"So many books could do with severe editing to remove extraneous material, repetitions and all the rest – “kill your darlings” as any creative writing tutor will tell you - but if the final manuscript then comes in at 30,000 words, or less than a hundred pages, it will not look like good value for money, and the publishers will have another marketing hurdle to overcome."
07 November 2009
The Internet is Killing Storytelling
So says Ben McIntyre.
"Click, tweet, e-mail, twitter, skim, browse, scan, blog, text: the jargon of the digital age describes how we now read, reflecting the way that the very act of reading, and the nature of literacy itself, is changing.
The information we consume online comes ever faster, punchier and more fleetingly. Our attention rests only briefly on the internet page before moving incontinently on to the next electronic canapé."
24 October 2009
When the Author Pays a Price
"When the tiny (now defunct) Breakneck Books picked up the rights for a limited run, Seth conspired with his fans to buy the book from Amazon at the same time on the same day so it would rocket up Amazon’s rankings. This drew the attention of a New York agent who sold the rights to an editor at Three Rivers, an imprint of Random House."
11 October 2009
Amazon Kindle 2: Centuries of Evolved Beauty Rinsed Away
"It came, via UPS, in a big cardboard box. Inside the box were some puffy clear bladders of plastic and another cardboard box. This one said, in spare, lowercase type, "kindle". On the side of the box was a plastic strip inlaid into the cardboard, which you were meant to pull to tear the package cleanly open. On it were the words "Once upon a time".
Inside was another box, fancier than the first. Black cardboard was printed with a swarm of glossy black letters, and in the middle was, again, the word "kindle". There was another pull strip on the side, which again said, "Once upon a time". I'd entered some nesting Italo Calvino folktale world of packaging. I pulled again and opened. Within, lying face up in a white-lined casket, was the device itself. It was pale, about the size of a hardcover novel, but much thinner, and it had a smallish screen and a qwerty keyboard at the bottom made of tiny round keys that resisted pressing. I gazed at the keys for a moment and thought of a restaurant accordion."
25 September 2009
Church Converted into Book Store
A stunning sight:
25 September 2009
I'm Not Convinced
"Gabriel García Márquez's seminal novel One Hundred Years of Solitude is the piece of writing that has most shaped world literature over the past 25 years, according to a survey of international writers."
25 September 2009
The World's Most Beautiful Libraries
I've loved libraries since I was a small child, and I find this collection breathtaking to behold.
Librophiliac Love Letter: A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries
15 September 2009
The Dan Brown Sequel Generator
"Plug in a city and a sect, and our computer will do the rest."
07 September 2009
Lies from a Publisher's Argot
An amusing article by Robert McCrum:
"First up, there's "Dan Brown Day". The trade anticipates the publication of The Lost Symbol, the long-awaited follow-up to The Da Vinci Code, as the ultimate bonanza, a cross between the dotcom boom and the Second Coming. Random House has printed an unprecedented 5.7m copies. But for civilians, it's just 15 September."
05 September 2009
The Ballad of the LongPen (TM)
"It was a dour, drizzly Scottish Sunday when Graeme Gibson and I set out from Cove Park on Loch Long en route to Dunfermline. The goal of our journey was a connectivity company called Exactive, from whence I was scheduled to sign books at Word on the Street, an outdoor book fair in Toronto. I'd be using the new, smaller, faster remote-book-signing LongPen™ device, invented by me; or such was the plan.
But plans gang aft agley, I reflected Burnsishly; for the LongPen™ - in an earlier, more spidery incarnation of itself - had given me a quease-making couple of hours at the London Book Fair the previous March. It was supposed to have signed from London to New York, and it did sign, scribbling merrily away in the wee hours of the morning. But then, when people came into the New York bookstore, it obstinately stopped."
Margaret Atwood's Guardian article
01 September 2009
Is This the Future of Fiction?
"There was a time when difficult literature was exciting. T.S. Eliot once famously read to a whole football stadium full of fans. And it's still exciting—when Eliot does it. But in contemporary writers it has just become a drag. Which is probably why millions of adults are cheating on the literary novel with the young-adult novel, where the unblushing embrace of storytelling is allowed, even encouraged. Sales of hardcover young-adult books are up 30.7% so far this year, through June, according to the Association of American Publishers, while adult hardcovers are down 17.8%."
Good Books Don't Have to Be Hard
01 September 2009
Old New Novelists?
"Whenever I hear about a “new” novelist, they turn out to be in their 30s. Why is that? It seems like you hear about new musicians and actors and other creative people in when they are in their 20s."
Why New Novelists Are Kinda Old
24 August 2009
Samantha Ettus interviews Jane Friedman and Larry Kirshbaum
Excellent interview on the state of publishing (runs for 50 minutes) with Jane Friedman, who was the President and CEO of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide from 1997-2008, and Larry Kirshbaum, who spent 10 years as CEO and Chairman of the Time-Warner Book Group and is now a successful agent.
29 July 2009
The 2009 Man Booker Long List
The Children's Book by AS Byatt
Summertime by JM Coetzee
The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds
How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall
The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey
Me Cheeta by James Lever
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
Not Untrue & Not Unkind by Ed O'Loughlin
Heliopolis by James Scudamore
Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
Love and Summer by William Trevor
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
23 July 2009
Why Authors are Furious, Part Two
More examples of reviewers revealing the ending. (Maybe they think we should read their reviews instead of the books).
22 July 2009
Sociopaths in Suits: the Productivity Commission goes for broke
"This is how a civilisation commits suicide these days: it invites sociopaths in suits to dismantle its culture.
With its recommendation that territorial copyright for books be abandoned, the Productivity Commission’s final report is the apotheosis of neo-liberalism in Australia. Everything is to be sacrificed to the workings of the free market — especially writers, independent booksellers, independent publishers, and the nation’s cultural integrity. The community as a whole will benefit, the commission says, and that is all that matters."
15 July 2009
Two Furious Authors Tell Reviewers Where To Get Off
"Well, if I were Alice Hoffman, I’d go bonkers myself over the way modern critics not only give away too much plot in the novels they review (and the movies, plays, etc.) but seem determined to spoil the ending."
14 July 2009
Sex sells to women too
"The suspension of Black Lace, the UK erotica imprint "by women, for women", brings to an end 16 years of female-penned smut due to "declining sales". Sex sells – but apparently not to women.
As authors, we're dismayed. In erotic fiction, you'll probably find truer expressions of female desire than in the popular memoirs from strippers and sex workers, whose job it is to please men. But we're also unsurprised. Women's erotic fiction authors are often regarded as randy Barbara Cartlands writing purple porn for the sex-starved, their prose replete with throbbing manhoods, dungeon dynamics and swoon-inducing bastards: "Mills and Bonk".
05 June 2009
Stripping Down to Sell Books
Stephen King has used model Bar Refaeli's naked body to promote his new novel Morality - probably better than using his own, but could more attractive authors be tempted to reveal their plots this way...?
29 May 2009
The Chamblin Bookmine: A Booklover's Dream Come True
Jeff Vandermeer writes:
"Ann and I have traveled the world and visited many a great bookstore, but none, not even the Strand, can compare to Chamblin’s, in Jacksonville, Florida. “Bookmine” is an apt title because it’s the only bookstore I’ve ever gotten lost in–it’s that big. You could literally fit anywhere from four to eight other used bookstores inside of it."
29 May 2009
Life's Too Short for Thousand-page Novels
A 1000-page novel requires an above-average commitment from readers, though sci-fi and fantasy fans seem to prefer weighty tomes. For other genres, though, how many pages would you be willing to read before deciding whether it's worth the effort?
27 May 2009
Alice Monro Wins Man Booker International 2009
And well deserved, too.
06 May 2009
The Lady has the Last Word
Yesterday, I reported a Telegraph article that said Ruth Rendell had pensioned off Detective Chief Inspector Wexford. Not according to the baroness, who denies having said anything of the sort.
05 May 2009
The Age of the Gifted Amateur has Returned
Ian Jack writes: "Advances against royalties are tumbling, staff have been cut, publishers take far fewer risks. The recession offers only a small part of the explanation. The fact is that generations are now growing up with the idea that words should be read electronically for free - a new human right - which has grave consequences for the people paid to compose and edit them."
05 May 2009
Ruth Rendell Closes the Book on Wexford
Speaking at a party in Piccadilly, Baroness Rendell tells [the writer]: "I don't want to do any more Wexfords. This is the last one. I have other interests now. I want to keep writing for as long as I can but just on my other Rendells. I suppose I shall do that until I am told not to."
16 April 2009
Readers "Owning" an Author's Work
"For George RR Martin fans, however, enough was enough. After announcing yet another push-back on the completion of A Dance of Dragons, the latest volume in his fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, the author admitted on his blog to finding himself facing a "rising tide of venom", as frustrated readers deluged his inbox with complaints. They took him to task for watching football, going on holidays, and "wasting time" on other writing projects, as well as toying with his own mortality by being "60 years old and fat"."
How Much Do Authors Owe Their Readers?
16 April 2009
Concerning the Release of Book Two
Closely related to the item below is this blog entry.
"In concrete terms, there's not much you can do to speed book two along. Ultimately, nobody can write it but me.
That said, it would be nice if everyone was conscious of the fact that I am a person, not a whirling machine that does nothing but churn out EFP*.
It would also be nice if folks avoided bitching to me about the delay. It's really counterproductive."
*Extruded Fantasy Product. (No, I hadn't heard of it either.)
08 April 2009
We Want a Happy Ending
"In a recession, what people want is a happy ending.
At a time when booksellers are struggling to lure readers, sales of romance novels are outstripping most other categories of books and giving some buoyancy to an otherwise sluggish market.
Harlequin Enterprises, the queen of the romance world, reported that fourth-quarter earnings were up 32 percent over the same period a year earlier, and Donna Hayes, Harlequin’s chief executive, said that sales in the first quarter of this year remained very strong. While sales of adult fiction overall were basically flat last year, according to Nielsen Bookscan, which tracks about 70 percent of retail sales, the romance category was up 7 percent after holding fairly steady for the previous four years."
06 April 2009
Obama Wins British Biography Prize
Barack Obama has won the biography prize at the 2009 Galaxy British Book Awards for Dreams From My Father. While I've not read the other contenders for the prize, I'm not surprised it won. I found it engrossing.
The memoir was written before he entered politics, when he'd made history as the first African American to be elected president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. If you've not read the book, I recommend that you do, because it's not only well written and revealing but also an insight into what drove Obama to become the President of the United States.
30 March 2009
Reading 'Can Help Reduce Stress'
"Reading is the best way to relax and even six minutes can be enough to reduce the stress levels by more than two-thirds, according to new research."
24 March 2009
Are Women Better Readers Than Men?
"Women know how to read properly, while men have a desultory and, at best, casual approach to books: this is the finding of a survey into the nation's literary habits."
The nation in question is the UK, but could it hold true for other nations, too?
17 March 2009
So You're Published - Now What?
Marketing. As this video amusingly illustrates, the hard work has only just begun.
13 March 2009
Star Rating
Thoughtful article on the effect of democratic reviews:
...we have all started to have the feeling that the star-ratings – the first thing you see, really, when you look up a book that you are thinking of buying – are actually far more influential than the reviews written by professionals in newspapers. Everyone in the publishing industry now agrees that newspaper reviews are less influential than they have ever been.
09 March 2009
Shakespeare and Company
One wonders how long bookshops like this can stay in business:
An interesting account by Jeanette Winterson in the Guardian of this bookshop and its history.
08 March 2009
Watch People Shop
The UK online bookseller, The Book Depository, has come up with a fascinating world map showing where its books are being bought in real-time. It shows the book cover and title and the country of each purchase.
07 March 2009
In Praise of the Sales Force
Interesting rumination on recent changes in publishing:
Hardly a day goes by that I don't get an e-mail from someone who's ready to reinvent publishing using the Internet, and the ideas are often good ones, but they lack a key element: a sales force. That is, a small army of motivated, personable, committed salespeople who are on a first-name basis with every single bookstore owner/buyer in the country, people who lay down a lot of shoe-leather as they slog from one shop to the next, clutching a case filled with advance reader copies, cover-flats, and catalogs.
26 February 2009
Jeff Bezos on The Daily Show
Jon Stewart interviews Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. The intention was to promote the Kindle 2 reader, but Bezos may not have achieved his objective...
21 February 2009
The Past and Future of Publishing
Jason Epstein gave the keynote address to the 2009 O'Reilly Tools Of Change for Publishing Conference.
According to his bio, Epstein 50-year distinguished career in publishing, includes among other accomplishments, serving as Editorial Director of Random House, co-founder of the New York Review of Books, creator of Anchor Books, which launched the paperback revolution, founder of the Library of America and of the Readers Catalog, the precursor to online bookselling.
Full Text of Jason Epstein's TOC 2009 Keynote
11 February 2009
When I Say 'Next Day Delivery'...
Author flew 600 miles on Christmas Day to hand-deliver a copy of his book after promising an Amazon buyer next-day delivery.
04 February 2009
Stephen King on Stephanie Meyers
Given Stephanie Meyers's dominance of the best-sellers lists recently, it's interesting to read what another best-selling author thinks of her writing and that of JKR.
30 January 2009
Proof that We Get Lost in a Good Book
Scientists are using brain-imaging to show what it means to be lost in a good book.
It appears that readers create vivid mental simulations of the sounds, sights, tastes and movements described in a textual narrative while simultaneously activating brain regions used to process similar experiences in real life. Mmm, perhaps I should be paying more attention to those aspects of my writing...
30 January 2009
Peter Carey warns of dire threat to Australian publishing
It would be "cultural 'self-suicide'", says Peter Carey. A tragedy which would force many Australian authors to stop writing, adds Kate Grenville, while Thomas Keneally believes it would cause "irreparable harm". The Australian books world, from major authors such as Carey, Grenville and Keneally to publishers, booksellers and agents, is up in arms about a government review of Australia's copyright laws.
Let's hope the Government listens to these voices.
29 January 2009
Self-Publishers Flourish as Writers Pay the Tab
I came across this snippet in this New York Times article on the rise of self-publishing:
Indeed, said Robert Young, chief executive of Lulu Enterprises, based in Raleigh, N.C., a majority of the company’s titles are of little interest to anybody other than the authors and their families. “We have easily published the largest collection of bad poetry in the history of mankind,” Mr. Young said.
This also amused me:
“For every thousand titles that get self-published, maybe there’s two that should have been published,” said Cathy Langer, lead buyer for the Tattered Cover bookstores in Denver, who said she had been inundated by requests from self-published authors to sell their books. “People think that just because they’ve written something, there’s a market for it. It’s not true.”
25 January 2009
How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Mistakes to Avoid at All Costs if You Ever Want to Get Published
Interesting review of a book by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark.
The teaching of creative writing just entered a whole new era with the publication of How Not to Write a Novel. Heavens, what a joy this book is.
Its two smart young American authors, having evidently wasted little time pausing to study the existing literature, have a simple aim: to identify 200 “mistakes” commonly made by unpublished fiction writers and to hammer home their points with hilarious section headings and spot-on illustrative examples. Their get-real, tough-love sarcastic tone ought to be grating, but it isn't. It is extremely funny. “Employing any of the plot mistakes that follow,” they assure readers, “will guarantee that your novel will be only a brief detour in a ream of paper's journey to the landfill.”
20 January 2009
Canadian year-end book sales up 6%
I'm one of those who believe that people seek escapism during bad times, and that books and films help to provide that release.
17 January 2009
Fiction reading increases for US adults
"The Survey of Public Participation in the Arts" conducted by the United States Census Bureau in 2008, reports that the percentage of adults 18 and older who said they had read at least one novel, short story, poem or play in the previous 12 months has risen for the first time since 1982 (to a little over half).
16 January 2009
Comic TV writer has new book
From the home studio of "America's Sweetheart" Jesse Thorne, meet the comedic guru Ben Karlin. In this interview for Jesse's show, The Sound of Young America, Karlin tells us how he went from making peanuts as The Onion's Chief Editor to becoming an eight-time Emmy Award winning television writer/producer. Jesse talks to "the man" about being lead writer on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and his new endeavor as an author of a book called "You Too Will Get Crushed" which, if we judge by past successes is poised to be the next step to Karlin's total takeover of comic media.
Karlin is the author of a collection of essays entitled Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me.
Sound America: Karlin interview video
15 January 2009
A Kindle trick changes the reading experience
I recently read the novel "The Pillars of the Earth" and discovered a new trick - on the Kindle, Amazon's digital book reader. It's something entirely basic and simple in the digital world, but readers have had no easy way to do this, to date, with print-based works. Any e-book reader worth its salt should be able to do it…
14 January 2009
Instruction Manual for Life
Make of this elaborate metaphor what you will…
12 January 2009
Macmillan US looks after its authors
If this publsher's video is to be believed (and who would not believe a publisher), eighteen proofreaders will work on your novel. I'm convinced:
09 January 2009
The best of times, the worst of times
A quarter-century ago, a Britain of dole queues, urban riots and political venom also saw the rise of a great generation of novelists. Boyd Tonkin asks if this slump might also have a literary lining of silver…
08 January 2009
4th Estate's 25th anniversary video
This delightful video ad celebrates 25 years of British imprint, 5th Estate.
31 December 2008
Can a man really write a Mills & Boon?
As Mills & Boon marks the end of its centenary year, the romance publisher is still selling millions of copies. Its 200 staff writers have something in common - they're all women, except for one. So how does a gruff former rugby player Yorkshireman writing under the pseudonym Gill get away with it?