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Writers' magazine |
News 2006 |
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News Stories from the book worldYou can check latest stories.
Publishers regret high risk celebrity memoirsThis autumn celebrity books have been hot news in the British publishing world. Five stars had advances of over £1million – TV personality Terry Wogan, Big Brother winner Pete Bennett, singer Gary Barlow, actor Rupert Everett and comedian Peter Kay. Out of all of these the only one who is topping the charts is Peter Kay, whose The Sound of Laughter is reckoned by Random House to have sold a million copies to date. As Ben Macintyre noted recently in The Times: 'In one sense, the market for celebrity autobiography reflects the changing economics of book publishing. With the end of the net book agreement in 1995, books could be sold in volume in supermarkets at the lowest prices. People who might not often go into a bookshop began buying books as part of the groceries. Tesco and Asda are now the biggest booksellers in Britain… in fact the entire book market may be expanding, thanks to the intensely fertile collision of television celebrity and literature.' The problem is that the competition amongst publishers for these big celebrity memoirs is ferocious, meaning that they carry a high price tag. Public taste is hard to fathom, though, because many of the Christmas book-buyers only buy books once a year. The publisher Bloomsbury’s recent alarming profits warning, bringing the anticipated figure down from £20m ($39m) to around £5m ($9.76m), is partly being blamed on the big price tags attached to books by Glen Barlow and David Blunkett. These were part of a recent buying spree intended to reduce the house’s reliance on Harry Potter. Out of the 60 celebrity memoirs slogging it out in the shops this year, just how do you tell which books are going to emerge as the winners? You might have thought that the ‘national treasure’ appeal of Wogan would be irresistible for an older generation, and Gary Barlow spot-on for younger buyers, but you would have been wrong. And come the New Year, publishers will be counting the cost of playing celebrity publishing roulette. Ghost-writers profit and the stars themselves are happy to add to their millions. The rest of us just wish that the money was being invested in books with a more enduring appeal, written by authors with ongoing writing careers.
Chinese writer's story collection triumphsLast week the Guardian First Book Award gave a major boost to short stories by awarding this year’s prize to the Chinese writer Yiyun Li’s collection A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. The Award, which was established in 1999, rewards the finest new literary talent with a £10,000 ($19,550) prize and, uniquely, is open to writing across all genres. It is judged by both a celebrity panel and members of the public who participate through reading groups run by Waterstone's stores. Yiyun Li has already won the inaugural Frank O’Connor International Award for 50,000 euros (£33,750 and $66,000). Claire Armitstead, the Guardian's literary editor and chair of the judges, said: ‘Yiyun Li is an exceptionally talented writer with a huge and important story to tell - one that stretches from China to the US, from 20th-century communism to 21st-century capitalist society. It's all the more remarkable that she tells it so well through such small and particular vignettes. Her stories burst open in the mind and continue growing long after you put the book down.’ Yiyun Li is an immunologist by training who now lives in the US with her husband and two children, but she grew up in China. She is a product of the famous Iowa Writers’ School and, interestingly, says that she can only write in English: ‘I can't write in Chinese at all. I think it's more like self-censoring, than other people censoring me. I don't know - I just feel so much more comfortable writing in English. I think I need a distance with language just to write.’ Yiyun is also determined that her writing should not be seen as ‘Chinese’ or representing in some way Chinese issues: ‘If I write a story, I write a story. I have to make sure it's a good story, and that I don't take any short cuts because it's about China.’ There is a resurgence of interest in short stories, encouraged by Story, the website devoted to campaigning for the short story, which has news about short story opportunities and a number of excellent short stories, including ones by Jackie Kay and Ian Rankin, which can be read online. Commercial prospects for stories are still not all that good, but they do, like poetry, have one major advantage – a brevity which fits in with our pressurised world. As Simon Prosser, Publishing Publishing Director of Hamish Hamilton, says: ‘The short story form is better suited to the demands of modern life than the novel.’ Interview with Yiyun Li Story website News Review on the Frank O'Connor award
Children's writers flourishChildren’s publishing continues to thrive and new names are emerging every day. The Harry Potter effect has seen publishing firms bringing a new commercial focus to children’s publishing and big money is now involved, with all the competitive strains that brings. In what seems like an extraordinary dream-come-true for any writer, Nancy Yi Fan, an eleven-year-old Chinese girl, recently hit the headlines by having her manuscript taken on for publication worldwide by HarperCollins. She had simply emailed it to Jane Friedman, the CEO of HarperCollins, in her New York office. Now her fantasy novel about tribes of warring birds will be published in English around the world. Nancy’s approach is not usually the most effective way for aspiring writers to get publishers’ attention, but Gerald Howe, a Jersey-based businessman has shown that, if you have plenty of drive and marketing nous, self-publishing could be the way for you. His Alfie’s Adventures series, which follow the time-travelling adventures of seven-year-old Alfie and his dog, has already sold 320,000 copies, largely due to a deal with Virgin Airlines. Howe has also promoted the series online: ‘I’ve got a website up now and there is a really nice interactive element to that. I’ve already had quite a few emails asking when the new books are going to be out and what my plans are for number five in the series.’ An innovative mother and child partnership has secured success for Diane Purkiss and her son Michael Dowling, under the name of Tobias Druitt. Purkiss relates how she followed her son’s teacher’s advice: ‘Kids can write stories, but can’t physically write as fast as they can think or type. If you type while he talks it will free his imagination.’ This has been the way that the first three books in the Corydon series have been written, with the two of them writing collaboratively. ‘Michael says: ‘The only thing I dislike at school is creative writing because I have to keep the stories so short. I’m used to writing rambling epics now.’ Jacqueline Wilson’s forthcoming autobiography, Jacky Daydream, which is written for children, tells of her own genesis as a writer: ‘I know what’s appropriate and what isn’t for children. Without patronising them, you filter what you say. There were a lot of ferocious rows between my parents and I haven’t put those in to the book.’ The bestselling and much-loved Children’s Laureate has used her time in the office to campaign to get parents to read aloud to their children, the basis for developing children’s own reading in later years. These days children benefit from an absolute feast of good children’s books, widely available, beautifully illustrated and well presented. And for writers, writing for children is still an attractive and potentially lucrative field. Inside Publishing on children's publishing
'Covered in blood' - O J Simpson's 'confession'The extraordinary saga of O J Simpson’s confessional book If I Did It, Here's How It Happened has reverberated around the media world, showing that, even in these ruthlessly commercial times, there are things that people will not stomach. At the heart of the story is famous football player O J Simpson, who was famously tried and acquitted of the bloody murders of his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman on 19 June 1994 but was subsequently forced to pay compensation in a private suit. The book tells how he would have committed the murders if he had done so and, under US law, Simpson can even provide a full confession without being tried again for the murders. He is reported to have said: 'I don't think two people could be murdered without everyone being covered in blood.’ There’s no doubt about the immense commercial value of a Simpson TV ‘confession’ to Fox, coupled with a sensational tell-all memoir to the publisher HarperCollins. Money was at the heart of this story and both these parts of the Murdoch empire stood to benefit hugely. However there’s also the extraordinary comments of the publisher, Judith Regan, who said she hoped to squeeze a confession out of Simpson and to win a small victory for herself and other women who have been physically abused by men: ‘I didn't know what to expect when I got the call that the killer wanted to
confess… I made the decision to publish this book, and to sit face to face
with the killer, because I wanted him, and the men who broke my heart and your
hearts, to tell the truth, to confess their sins, to do penance and to amend
their lives.’ Many in the American book trade and media felt that that explanation sounded more than a bit delusional, coming from someone whose company, HarperCollins Publishers, stood to earn millions. Booksellers reacted angrily to the fact that they had been sold the book as ‘untitled by anonymous’ and then found that it was ‘too late to cancel’ orders. Many nonetheless refused to stock it or said that profits would go to charity. Even Fox News host Bill O'Reilly said: ‘The Fox broadcasting unit has reached a new low point in American culture.’ There was widespread revulsion at the thought of Simpson’s ‘confession’ being blazoned across the airwaves and sold in bookshops. The outcome was that Rupert Murdoch was forced to cancel the TV shows and the book, emerging from the whole debacle with the reputation of his company severely tarnished. It is good to know that there are some depths to which the media cannot sink without incurring widespread opprobrium.
Blackwell and Readers Digest soldMergers and further conglomeratisation are shaking the foundations of the international publishing world, as the book trade continues to become more like other businesses, and is similarly affected by globalisation. The last week has seen the sale of old-established British educational and academic publisher Blackwell, which dates back to 1897, to the American firm John Wiley. This follows years of family squabbling, as members of the Blackwell family fought for control of the company and its future. Blackwell, in the inter-war years the publisher of Tolkien, Graham Greene, W H Auden and Enid Blyton, is now the publisher of approximately 825 journals, in the STM (science, technical and medical) and social sciences and humanities fields, as well as about 600 new books a year. It was valued at £572 million ($1,084 billion) in a deal which excludes the loss-making bookshop chain. Takeovers such as this make sense in the educational and academic world, where investment in electronic publishing and other costly new development can be difficult to finance within the framework of a private company. Thomson Learning in the UK is also in the process of being sold and the huge American firm Houghton Mifflin is currently in talks with Riverdeep. It has also just been announced that Readers Digest, the troubled giant of the direct marketing world, is to be sold to the same Riverdeep Holdings in a deal which values it at $2.4 billion (£1.27 billion), one year’s turnover. It remains to be seen whether the new ownership can arrest the decline which has affected the company over the last few years. Readers Digest is still a very big operator, producing products and content for magazines, books, recorded music collections, home videos and online websites. Its flagship Reader's Digest magazine is still published in 50 editions and 21 languages with a monthly circulation of approximately 18 million and a global readership of 80 million. The company also reaches millions of consumers through more than 20 other magazines and online portals, focusing on food, home and garden, health, and that rapidly growing area, English as a second language. These giant takeovers may seem unrelated to the individual writer’s quest to get published, but it’s worth remembering that these huge companies and others like them have largely controlled the marketplace for books and how writers can reach readers through their powerful sales and distribution networks. Fortunately, since these companies are becoming increasingly just another part of big business, self-publishing and the development of the web are now offering other opportunities for writers to control their own destiny.
The audio revolutionThe recent Bookseller seminar on audiobooks highlighted rapid changes and huge potential in what has often been seen as a backwater of the publishing world. The seminar’s chairman Damian Horner called audio ‘the runt end’ of publishing. In the States the market is considerably more developed than in the UK and the rest of the world. A recent survey funded by the US Audio Publishers Association showed that nearly 25% of the US population listens to audiobooks and audio book clubs will have contributed to this. The research showed that in many cases book readers and audiobook listeners are the same. The American market is dominated by the unabridged format, which suggests keen readers, and the long car journeys many Americans make to work may also have helped grow the demand for audiobooks. Horner argued that the digital era would prove the tipping point for spoken word content and urged: ‘Don’t treat audio like it’s just a recorded version of a book. This is about product reinvention – a huge opportunity to go for non-book readers.’ Audio has long been a Cinderella in bookshops, which speaker Scott Pack of the Friday Project put down to lack of radical thinking and effective marketing. The Read Smarter campaign promotes the idea of listening to an audiobook whilst undertaking other activities, hooking up with audiences such as that for BBC Radio 4. Many readers – and non-readers - who might enjoy them have simply never got into the habit of buying audiobooks. The Bookseller concluded that: ‘The central message was that audio had huge potential to grow its profile, reach new markets and cross-fertilise print and digital publishing. The key is to treat audio as it own medium rather than a lesser version of a book.’ And the future? Ana Maria Allessi, publisher of HarperMedia, speaking about the US, warned that ‘there are two to three years of opportunity left for the CD’. Taking the usual time-lag between the US and the rest of the world into account, that might mean a possible five years of CD sales elsewhere. Or does the ever-increasing speed with which technological change impacts on the market mean we’ll move to audio downloads much sooner? Whatever happens, it looks as if the spoken word may at last be coming into its own as a publishing medium, and consumers will be listening to books in greater numbers in the future. Our new audio section - prepare your own audio material
Hill & Hill scamThe recent online kerfuffle surrounding agency Hill & Hill in Edinburgh has pointed up yet again the need for writers to be extremely cautious about approaching agents. Hill & Hill, now defunct, had apparently perfected their scam over a number of years. The fraud started with charging clients an upfront fee of £80 for a 6-month contract (and £120 for a year). But it also involved a series of elaborate deceptions to convince the writers that their work had been sent out to reputable publishers and was being seriously considered. It’s hard to be sure but it looks as if the submissions were entirely fictitious, as were, necessarily, the publishers’ responses. The writers who had joined the agency clung on, hoping against hope, but suspicious about what was going on, until the final realisation that it was all a cruel fantasy. Geoff Nelder, one of the authors, writes in his blog that: ‘We trusted Christopher Hill with out oeuvres to submit them to publishers, which he says he did. But he went further and heaped encouraging feedback – all fictitious, from prestigious publishers. Our aspirations went through anticipation, excitement, frustration, exasperation and now fascination’. Curiously, the amounts of money were relatively small in relation to the demands created by the fraud, so it’s hard to see what the agency got out of it financially speaking. Fraud of this kind has also been common in the US. See our story of 16 October about the ‘shady’ Sobol Agency. Agents’ associations warn about the need to be careful about literary agents. Clare Alexander of the UK Association of Authors’ Agents said: ‘In a way, this was an accident waiting to happen. There are so many would-be authors… every agent is aware of how many thousands of people by now are trying to get published. Would-be writers need to be very careful: there is a trade association for agents and there are rules. The key thing is that this man has never been a member of the AAA.’ One pointer to watch for it that reputable agents will never ask for an upfront fee. The AAA’s rules includes the following: ‘No member shall charge a reading fee or any other fee to a client beyond his/her regular commission as notified to the Association without the client's or prospective client's prior consent in writing.’ The Society of Authors’ also currently has a tight-lipped warning to members on its website: ‘If you are approached by the John Hancock Literary Agency, the Hill & Hill Agency or any agency requesting a reading fee, you are advised to contact the Society before taking up the offer.’ Authors are advised to stick to Agents’ Association members and the agents listed in reputable listings such as the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook on this site. Back to TopCreative Commons provides a tasty snackA Creative Commons license has worked well for the Friday Project on Tom Reynolds’ Blood, Sweat and Tea. The publishers put most the book on their website as a free download, leading to 20,000 downloads but sales of nearly 30,000 copies. Paul Carr, co-founder and Director of Digital Media at the Friday Project said: ‘When we first announced that we were releasing Blood, Sweat and Tea under Creative Commons a lot of people in the industry thought we’d lost our minds. After all, if you give away a book there’s no reason for anyone to buy it. But, of course, we were confident that allowing people to try before they buy, and also to giving bloggers the tools they need to share the work with their readers, would actually result in an increase in word-of-mouth buzz and actual sales. And thank God – we were right.’ Arguing that this proves the ability of free downloads to stimulate interest and book sales, The Friday Project has now decided to make most of its titles available in the same way. A new section will be created on the publisher’s website at the end of October and most titles will be offered in full, whilst others which include third-party material will be made partly available. This may sound like an idea whose time has come - and it is - but the Friday Project is following in the footsteps of the American author M J Rose, who self-published her novel Lip Service as long ago as 1998 after several traditional publishers turned it down. Rose set up a website where readers could download her book for $9.95 and set out to market her novel on the Internet. After selling over 2,500 copies (in both electronic and trade paper format) Lip Service became the first e-book and the first self-published novel chosen by the LiteraryGuild/Doubleday Book Club as well as being the first e-book to go on to be published by a mainstream New York publishing house. Rose has gone on to a highly successful career publishing online and helping authors to sell and market their own books. Her latest title is Buzz Your Book, which helps authors, whether published by publishing houses or self-published, to promote their own work. Back to Top
Is the Sobol Award shady?The story of the Sobol Award provides a warning for unpublished writers of the dangers of being too gullible. The award, which closes on 31 December 2006, is open to all unpublished novelists who do not have a literary agent. The winner will get the considerable sum of $100,000, making it in theory the largest prize anywhere in the world for an unpublished novel, plus representation for their work. Writers are invited to enter a novel, written in English, of at least 50,000 but no more than 300,000 words, but this in itself is a bit of a giveaway, as it is extremely unlikely that an agent would be able to find a publisher for a novel of 300,000 words, however good it was. But it is the $85 entry fee which is the real giveaway. The maths are simple and you can see that it doesn’t take a vast number of entrants to make this a nice little earner for the organisers, providing that they can get enough entries. There are many unpublished writers struggling to get attention, but if Sobol manages to get the 50,000 entries that they reckon will constitute the cut-off, the competition will earn $4,250,000, a very good return for setting up a small website, doing a bit of judging and awarding a $100,000 prize. Less than 1200 entries are needed to cover the prize money. The Sobol Agency does not as yet exist, although it is worryingly similar to well-known New York agent Nat Sobel’s agency, currently called the Sobel Weber Agency. This makes it hard to gauge whether the offer of representation is worth anything, but it is a truism of agency work that having a bad agent, who might tie you and your work up without selling it, is worse than not having one. Good agents are like gold dust and it’s worth struggling to find a reputable one. In the meantime it’s safer to go for established agencies and the security they give you. At least you can be sure that they already represent a lot of writers, and have managed to sell their work. Back to Top
Frankfurt powers onLast week saw the Frankfurt Book Fair, the giant publishers’ convention which is the world’s largest book fair. Around 280,000 people (including many members of the German public), and 7,200 exhibitors from 100 countries went to Frankfurt, using the Fair to showcase more than 380,000 books. The Frankfurt Book Fair ran from 4th to 8th October, drawing in publishers from all over the world flocking to it to do business with their international counterparts. Essentially this is a rights fair and the 20th International Right Meeting which preceded it had as its theme ‘Everything is Negotiable: Focus on the English-Speaking World and the Complexities of the English Language Market’. The inaugural award of the Frankfurt Book Fair Rights Professional of the Year went to the much liked and highly respected Susan Howe, Rights Director of Orion in London. The Fair had a new focus on major global issues, such as ‘Education for the Future’ and the new Frankfurt Book Fair Literacy Campaign, with discussion also of the issues relating to digitisation, Internet piracy and copyright. The international flavour was extended by the choice of India as Guest of Honour, the first time a country has been accorded the honour twice. But what a difference from 20 years ago, as India comes of age with its billion citizens, 80,000 new books published each year, 24 official languages and vibrant growth. The need still to focus on education and literacy in India, as in many other countries, shows how urgent these campaigns still are for the global book world. The Frankfurt Book Fair has also spread its wings internationally this year. Its intervention in London is widely seen as having secured publishers the central London location they wanted for Reed’s London Book Fair, and publishers will be grateful to be spared the journey to Dockland’s Excel in the spring. In June Frankfurt’s inaugural Cape Town Book Fair had 2,000 visitors and instantly became the biggest book fair on the continent (see News Review 3 July Celebrating Africa). But what of Frankfurt itself and the big deals which are what the Fair is traditionally all about? There were less of these actually negotiated at the Fair, as publishers kept their editors under strict control, but some choice deals were announced. From Stephen Hawking there’s The Grand Design and a children’s series for the 9+ age group to be written with Hawking’s daughter Lucy. A book on Natascha Kampusch’s extraordinary story will be of great interest, and Baghdad hostage Norman Kember has chosen small religious publisher Darton Longman & Todd to publish his memoir. But for most publishers it was solid business across a range of titles, with a full timetable of intense short meetings across the five days of the Fair. Many will have gone home with full order-books and much business to be concluded by email, following up on the Fair which still dominates the international rights calendar. Inside Publishing: The Frankfurt Book Fair Back to Top
Orlando's dreamAs a teenager growing up in Brazil in the late seventies, Orlando Paes Filho was nothing if not ambitious about his writing. He dreamt up the idea of Angus, now coming to fruition as a seven-volume epic tale spanning twelve centuries of human history. Whilst developing a career in advertising, the author continued to work on his series idea for the next 25 years. In 1994 he set up an artwork and branding agency called NW Studio but by then Angus was beginning to take over his life. Because Filho was highly focused on historical accuracy, he brought together a research team to guide his writing and work on the historical framework for the series. Patricia Arima, Angus Word’s PR and Marketing Manager says: ‘Comprised of academics, historians and Benedictine monks, this team advised Orlando on every aspect of Angus’s world – the culture, the customs, the weapons and the events.’ The first book, Angus: the First Warrior, was published in Brazil in 2003 and became a bestseller. Keeping the NW Studio team of artists together, Filho changed the company’s name to Angus Productions and started working full-time on the series. Book 2: The Crusades and Book Three: The Warrior of God are written, and the author is currently working on the fourth title in the series. All of them will be grounded in historical accuracy and will have illustrations and historical maps produced by Angus Word’s artists. Although the series has been acquired for launch in 30 countries around the world, including Russia and China, it is only now that Angus Productions is planning a move on the big English language markets of the US and the UK, and top New York agent Al Zuckerman will be handling these rights. There seems little doubt that Angus is about to blaze across the bookselling firmament and we’ll soon be hearing much more about this ambitious project. As if the current scale of the work being done on the books was not enough to launch them to a huge international market, the series has also been given the very latest marketing accolade. It’s recently been signed for the development of an X-Box 360 game based on the books. It’s safe to predict that there’s about be a big fight over the English language rights to the series. That Brazilian teenager’s dream is fast becoming a reality and it looks like we can expect to hear a lot more about Angus over the years to come. Back to Top
Promoting Oxfam's bookshop bonanza on the webA new phenomenon which is closely linked to the rise of the second-hand book trade is the way that charities have now developed the concept of specialist bookshops and are using them as a major way of generating funds. In the UK Oxfam runs 112 bookstores and sells more than one million books each month. Its most recent new shop is a smart new place in the heart of Bloomsbury, near the British Museum, serving Londoners, students and visitors. The new bookshop has a manager shared with its successful bookshop in Marylebone High Road and a deputy manager, but is otherwise staffed by volunteers, so, apart from rent, costs are low. Most books are sold at half price and Oxfam says that it raised more than £15.6m ($29.65m) from books sales last year. The charity operates a central depot, but most books are donated locally and the shops receive a wide range. For many people, donating unwanted books to an international charity which will use them to raise money is a good way of dealing with the stacks of books they are never going to read again. Supporting Oxfam makes them feel good too. A recent Oxfam study showed that British households have £18 billion ($34.21 billion) worth of unwanted goods, 55% of them books, which could be donated to charity. The UK is typical of the West in that our houses are stuffed with goods we do not need but which can be recycled for good causes. Oxfam sells books to the very people who donate them and also runs events, such as the poetry readings and cookery writers’ evenings in the Marylebone High Street store, to attract book-buyers. In June Oxfam brought out the CD Life Lines, which can be bought online or from Oxfam shops. Featuring 69 British poets reading one poem each, this is not only fantastic value at £4.99 ($9.50), but also provides a great overview of the work of contemporary poets. All this and supporting Oxfam’s work too! As News Review has commented before, the second-hand book market has expanded exponentially with the web giving global access and huge sales through Amazon and Abebooks. Readers have always bought second-hand books. The success of the charity bookshops makes it easy for all of us to recycle the books we have stacked at home. Back to Top
The Long TailChris Anderson's book The Long Tail has shown that the Internet has changed the way books can be sold forever. What's more, it has given new life to vast numbers of books which have only a small individual sale. Anderson started this all with an article in Wired magazine last October, in which he showed how you could forget the bestseller focus which manifests itself in industries such as books, and pursue the millions of niche markets which are available online: ‘What's really amazing about the Long Tail is the sheer size of it. Combine enough nonhits on the Long Tail and you've got a market bigger than the hits. Take books: The average Barnes & Noble carries 130,000 titles. Yet more than half of Amazon's book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. Consider the implication: If the Amazon statistics are any guide, the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is larger than the market for those that are… In other words, the potential book market may be twice as big as it appears to be, if only we can get over the economics of scarcity. Venture capitalist and former music industry consultant Kevin Laws puts it this way: "The biggest money is in the smallest sales."’ Anatomy of the Long Tail in Wired magazine Back to Top
The battle for ChristmasAs those of us in the northern hemisphere settle down to the prospect of autumn, the kids go back to school and the new academic year looms, it’s a good time to look at what’s in store in the book world. In the UK a year of drama dominated by the battle for Ottakar’s has been succeeded by what looks like a remarkably rapid and sensible integration of the chain by Waterstone’s, which hopefully will manage to blend the best of both booksellers. Waterstone’s is about to launch its new website, recognising the importance of online sales for all sections of the book trade. If only, the new CEO Gerry Johnstone must feel, the company had not given up on its previous initiative, Waterstone’s Online, in 2001 in the face of overwhelming Amazon competition, and thus lost years of growth. Booksellers may not be able to dominate online bookselling as Amazon does, but they still need to offer web sales to their customers to avoid the risk of losing them entirely to their online competitors. In the US the book chains have been reporting weak results, which are likely to be exacerbated by the downturn in the housing market, and the slowdown in consumer spending which will probably ensue. Publishers in both the US and the UK are increasingly in competition for the big books which look like bankers. So now there’s Christmas to look forward to, the key selling period for bookstores all over the western world. It’s hard to over-estimate the importance of this, especially since books are increasingly seen as attractive and discerning gifts. Into the fevered Christmas season we now have Richard and Judy announcing a new seasonal version of their Book Club in the UK. Books with their stickers are sure to dominate the Christmas lists, which this year are full of goodies anyway, with a veritable feast of new books set to entice gift-shoppers. As the Bookseller says: ‘It is publishers who have the most to fear this Christmas. With so many high six-figure and seven-figure sums already gambled, expectations are perilously over-inflated. A handful of books will race ahead, earning out their advance before the carols are sung; many others will sit untouched until the Boxing Day sales. There’ll be sore heads in January, and sales directors will require more than just an aspirin.’ Back to Top
China's booming book marketThe Beijing International Book Fair, running from 30 August to 2 September, has provided a fascinating window on a booming book market. China is the largest publisher of books, magazines and newspapers in the world. Its book trade is at last opening up to foreign publishers, presenting significant opportunities which mirror those available in other industries. This vast market is of particular interest to international publishers because of the thirst to learn and read in English, and to adopt Western culture and patterns of consumption. Last year China exported 8 million books worth £20 million but imported 14 million books at a cost of $150 million. But this is only the beginning as far as the potential of this huge market is concerned. The Fair has attracted 639 international publishers. This year there were more than 1200 overseas exhibitors compared with 1,000 in 2005. Visitor figures to this increasingly internationally-focused rights fair were 150,000. Publishing in China is still quite difficult and foreign publishers are looking for creative alternatives to low earning reprint licences as a means of selling into the country. Foreign publishers are not allowed to operate directly in this market. Book prices are set by the government on the basis of the number of pages, with no consideration for format, market or number of copies likely to be sold. This means that a highly illustrated 500-page large format title would be expected to retail at the same price as a popular novel of the same page extent, and ignores the very different production costs involved. Publishers are required to pay market rates for materials and expected to make a profit, but obviously this is difficult when they have no control of pricing. International publishers are extremely keen to get into the market and to get a share of the fruits of China’s booming economy. Reversing this round, HarperCollins has just launched an initiative to take Chinese authors to an international audience and in October the publisher will launch a free online English/Chinese dictionary at www.cidian.cn. Penguin has joined forces with Chongqing Publishing Group to launch Penguin Classics in Mandarin. The first ten classics of Western literature will be launched in November. John Makinson, Penguin Group CEO, said that: ‘In the same way that Allen Lane did 60 years ago (in England), we are bringing great literature to the Chinese market at an affordable price.’ Authors everywhere can rejoice that the vast Chinese market is at last opening up to foreign writers. The booming demand for English, coupled with rapidly increasing consumer purchasing power, will bolster the sales of English-language books in this huge market. Back to Top
'Direct, personal communication with potential readers'It is getting harder and harder for new authors to find a publisher. The explosion in the number of writers, as shown by the rapid growth in creative writing courses of all kinds, the large number of writing books being published, and the success of sites such as WritersServices, have all demonstrated that there is a huge thirst for publication. Internet book sales, as Amazon and Abebooks demonstrate, have shown huge growth. Email has become the standard means of communication and 50 billion emails are now despatched daily worldwide, up from under 12 billion in 2002. That’s before the massive explosion in email use which will come when countries such as China and India, with their vast populations, come fully online. In short, it is clear that the web offers writers a wonderful new way to reach readers. So, if you are trying to achieve publication, how do you promote your work online? Whether you want to attract the attention of an agent or publisher, or go for self-publishing, the web, with its infinite possibilities, provides the solution. What’s more, improvements in print on demand technology have now made self-publishing a cost-effective option for many authors. The catch of course is still how you can reach readers and sell your books. Anthony Thornton’s book The Libertines: Bound Together shot into the bestseller lists as a result of his own web promotion. It’s an inspiring story. 'In December 2005 I finished a book, The Libertines: Bound Together. Yet, because I was a first-time author, there was no advertising campaign and no guarantee that the book I had spent three years writing would get media coverage.’ So Thornton decided: ‘Bound together would have its own site… This website was based on the design of the book and looked pretty slick. But the slickest website in the world can do nothing if nobody knows anything about it.’ Thornton set up www.thelibertines-boundtogether.co.uk and then responded to every email he received. ‘I sent a message to each one thanking them; it was a simple courtesy. Suddenly, it mushroomed: first there were five people a day, then 10, then 15, then 25 people wanting to be 'friends' with the book. Some asked questions: each received a reply. All my spare hours were spent talking to people who seemed almost as excited about the publication as I was… Two weeks before publication, the book hit Amazon's Top Ten bestselling pre-orders… ‘It had leapfrogged many books with huge amounts of money spent on advertising and marketing. It had become a bestseller thanks to direct, personal communication with potential readers that has been made possible by the Internet. ‘It's a future where authors are there for their readers. Bound Together continues to sell, and I still reply to emails and answer questions. It's a pleasure, being able to receive instant feedback. For non-fiction writers in particular, the internet will become a forum to talk about their book. Readers' reactions may change the very nature of books themselves. Readers' suggestions could be incorporated into later editions, and ideas, chapters and even whole manuscripts could be road-tested online, making readers part of the writing process.' The future looks bright for writers, and this time around there will be no dotcom boom and bust, but rapid growth fuelled by what the web can actually deliver.
If you are interested in setting up your own website, WritersServices will shortly be launching a new service which will empower you to do so. See also WritersPrintShop, our top-rated self-publishing service.
Truss tackles the commaLynne Truss, author of the surprise bestseller on punctuation, Eats, Shoots and Leaves, has now turned her attention to writing for children with her forthcoming Why Commas Really Do Make a Difference. Readers of the original book (three million copies sold) will remember that the author’s breezy style really does make punctuation fun, as well as putting us right on a lot of common errors. The new book will do the same thing for children. As Truss points out, you might want to eat a huge hot dog, but a huge, hot dog would run away pretty quickly if you tried to take a bite out of him. "Children Drive Slowly" on a road-sign doesn't quite sum up what kids do in their spare time and the comma is necessary to make sense of the sign. Her new book shot straight to the top of the children’s bestseller list in the States, which is still a bit bemusing for an author who, after years of penning rather unsuccessful novels, can’t quite believe that she’s hit the big-time. But she says: 'I knew a junior version would be really helpful, because I met hundreds of English teachers who said they’d been using the adult book with their kids, trying to get them interested.’ Many of us will share her concern about children’s ability to write literate English and there seems to be a whole generation of kids whose punctuation and basic use of English is poor. In England, child-centred education gets the blame for this, but all over the world the growth of texting is meaning that kids lose a sense of how punctuation works and what it’s for. Many employers bemoan the lack of simple literacy amongst young job candidates and Truss says: ‘The language does belong to everybody, but the way things are going, there will be just a small elite that’s been trained how to use it effectively. That can’t be right. We’ll be back in the Middle Ages.’
Libraries still under threatIt has become a cliché to say that UK libraries, in common with those in many parts of the developed world, are in crisis, but there have been many signs this year that the crisis is deepening. David Lammy, the new Minister for Culture, indicated at first that he would intervene directly to stop library closures. He now seems to have realised the size of the task and pulled back. Across England local authorities are planning to close libraries. Recent disarray and cuts at the librarians’ body CILLIP suggests that there are problems across the board. Finding more money to spend on books, which is what most members of the public look for in a library, seems to have been lost sight of in a wave of politicking for control of the libraries among the library bodies and fights about who is right about the way forward. As Tim Coates has reported for Libri, the libraries campaigning organisation, the lack of funds to replenish book stock has wreaked terrible damage on libraries. Libri has just published a new report, which says: ‘Regrettably we cannot report on any major improvements to the dire situation we reported on last time: book issues continue to decline; costs continue to escalate; value for money is eroding fast. Even the bright spot of a 4% increase in library visitors has failed to stem the decline in book issues. Use of The People’s Network (of computers) seems to be almost entirely for email and internet… In addition we have identified a significant trend for senior librarians and library policy makers - the DCMS and the MLA, among others – (wrongly) to no longer see providing books as a prime responsibility.’ There are bright spots. The Love Libraries campaign is successfully transforming the three libraries which are being refurbished and provide a model for how a successful library should be run. But, as critics have pointed out, it doesn’t look as if library funders, the local authorities, will be prepared to put the money into this work when elsewhere they are focused on cutting costs by closing branches. As affluence has increased readers’ ability to buy the books they want to read, the libraries’ ageing stock has relegated them to a lower level of use for readers, many of whom will only use a library if they have to. Many individual libraries are bucking this trend, attracting in, for example, young people to use the computers and mothers with small children for special family-friendly activities. The library could become a community centre in many towns, but is this really what’s going to happen? At present the outcome is looking depressingly inevitable. The libraries appear locked in a downward spiral where ancient book stock and shorter opening hours produce fewer visitors – and thus less justification for the funding which is needed to reverse this very trend.
Dog days for the chainsThe bookshop chains continue to report poor sales figures on both sides of the Atlantic. In the US Borders have just forecast a higher than expected loss for their second quarter, blaming it in part on retiring CEO Greg Josefowicz’s pay package. They also announced lower sales in the US and a steep decline in sales at their UK company. The new CEO George Jones said: ‘This is not a broken business. It's a company that has a strong foundation in businesses that I am passionate about.’ The stock market however reacted negatively to the figures and Borders’ share price went down to a level not seen since 2003. In the UK Simon Fox has been appointed as the new CEO of HMV, replacing the immensely experienced bookseller Alan Giles. But HMV has problems in both its areas of operation, music and books. The acquisition of Ottakars is going through, but publishers are concerned that Waterstone’s will spend the next eighteen months absorbing the smaller chain, rather than sorting out its own problems. There’s also still the possibility of HMV itself being taken over, although the current problems must make it a less attractive target. Perhaps Simon Fox’s background offers a clue to HMV’s thinking on the way ahead. He comes from Kes Electricals, parent company of Comet. Although he doesn’t have a retail background, he is experienced at online retailing, so perhaps the HMV board have now identified online bookselling as the company’s biggest opportunity – and Amazon as the major competition. This is certainly a conclusion that many publishers reached long ago. It never looked like a good strategic decision to close down the fledgling Waterstone’s Online. With the benefit of hindsight it seems a big mistake. Waterstone’s was not the only retailer to think that it couldn’t compete with Amazon, which had by then already established its domination of the online bookselling market. But the subsequent boom in online retailing has shown that big bricks and mortar retailers have to have an Internet arm as well, even if it’s mainly a defensive tactic to make sure that they can sell to their own shop customers through the Internet. After the dotcom boom and bust it was easy for the book trade to think it could go back to business as usual. It has taken six years for the huge potential of the Internet to become apparent to everyone – and to smash that thinking to pieces.
Random House bags BBC BooksThis week’s announcement that Random House UK has acquired a majority stake in BBC Books brings to an end several years of negotiation and rumour. Although it has achieved a recent return to profitability, the BBC has never managed to make the kind of profits on its publishing that its roster of household name authors, and domination of the TV tie-in field, should have produced. The deal brings Random House UK’s market share close to that of Hachette Livre, which recently stole its crown as the biggest consumer publishing group in the UK. It now has 15.19% of the market, only 0.7% behind Hachette. And Hachette’s recent purchase of the Time Warner Publishing Group has given it the international muscle that the French-owned publisher previously lacked with the acquisition of Time Warner Publishing in the US. As the big publishing companies get bigger and bigger, you can’t help wondering whether straightforward market share matters all that much. What about profitability? But economies of scale still count for something. Tim Hely-Hutchinson, CEO of Hachette Livre says: ‘When you’re talking to a big customer, monolithic publishers are better, because you’ve got one sales director for whom a Smith’s or Waterstone’s is a huge piece of business in both directions.’ Bookselling chains now have their own problems, but ‘as we are already giving them the highest discounts in the world I don’t see any moral or business reason to help them out.’ Although one might think that all available publishing companies have now been acquired, there are still persistent rumours about Simon and Schuster, the US arm of which would give Hachette Livre a much bigger presence in the key American market. There is an inexorable movement towards a few conglomerates dominating the international consumer publishing market. In the meantime long-term publishing observers will be heartened to find that, although conglomeratisation seems to crush imprints like so much cardboard, the imprint names do sometimes return to fight another day. Time Warner has been forced not only to go back to using the illustrious Little Brown name, but also to resurrect the name of its long-dead paperback imprint, Sphere. And in the same week comes the news that HarperCollins UK is to use the Avon name to launch a new women’s fiction imprint in the UK. Now here’s a move which makes one positively nostalgic for the ‘70s and ‘80s, when it seemed that Avon’s American ‘bodice-rippers’, as they were known, would never work in the UK. But in this new era of international markets, it seems that anything is possible.
Success with number sevenEmma Darwin is about to get published, at last. Her first novel, The Mathematics of Love, will be coming out from Headline Review in the UK in the autumn. But it isn’t actually the first novel she’s written, but the seventh, and there are six other manuscripts which seem likely to stay in her bottom drawer. Darwin reckons she has learnt from the experience: ‘Everybody serves an apprenticeship, and the form that takes varies. With some people it’s going over and over again at the same novel, and for others it’s starting again with a different one. I learnt my trade very thoroughly.’ Darwin has distinguished family antecedents, being the descendant of both Charles Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood. Her novel sounds intriguing, with a fashionable dual plotline involving the story of a 19th century was veteran interwoven with that of a young girl in the 1970s, and including some interesting material about photography. But Darwin has earned her success the hard way, as she herself admits: ‘I’m grateful that this is the novel that’s made it, because it’s the best thing I’ve ever written… I’ve got the confidence that it’s not a flash in the pan. This is something I’m really good at and I know how to do.’ Other newly published writers are benefiting from Macmillan UK’s New Writing programme, which has been extended to include second novels from the first set of new authors. Six of the launch titles have reprinted and the imprint has broken even. Although it was initially controversial, the no-frills and no-advance deal has worked for the authors concerned, enabling them to break through into print. Macmillan has attracted attention by its initiative, finding some new authors to publish in the future. And the authors have had their chance at publication, giving them the break which every writer needs. It looks like a harder route to success than Emma Darwin’s, but her six unpublished novels show just how long the road to publication can be, and how much persistence can pay off in the end.
Celebrating AfricaJust as Bob Geldof is pointing the finger at countries which pledged aid to Africa last year but have failed to deliver on their promises, the success of the inaugural Cape Town Book Fair has provided an encouraging signal for the book world. 10,000 tickets were initially printed but on the first day of the Fair word spread quickly that a reprint had been ordered and final numbers of visitors exceeded 20,0000. The Fair was open to the public with books on sale throughout and there were 700 events as part of the literary festival associated with it. The Cape Town Book Fair has always been intended as a book fair for Africa as a whole. It is a joint venture involving the Frankfurt Book Fair and the South African Publishers’ Association, with sponsorship from the South African Times. It showcased the development of black publishing and writing in post-apartheid South Africa. Traditionally the country has been seen as an important part of the British market, dominated by white South Africans and by local branches of international publishing companies. It is worth about £73 million ($135 million). Now the Fair has shown the growing dynamism of black publishing and also the great interest in books amongst many black readers. The organisers can now plan for a bigger Fair next year, with this new event set to become a regular part of the international book fair circuit. More significantly, it will provide a chance for publishers to showcase their new books and reach the audiences both locally and from across the continent. Educational books will be of particular importance. Another sign of African writers coming into their own is the growing success and critical reputation of the magazine African Review of Books, a pan-African literary journal which is acting as a showcase from some of the brightest new talents from across the continent. Its website provides international access to this new work. Finally, Crossing Borders is a new British Council initiative which uses information technology to link young writers in Africa with experienced mentors in the UK to support their development. In the midst of all the continuing problems in Africa, the book world has something to celebrate. www.crossingborders-africanwriting.org www.africanreviewofbooks.com/index.html
‘Multiplatform’ marketing, digital rights and print on demand‘Multiplatform’ marketing possibilities and digitisation are changing the way books are sold and exploited. At the recent Licensing 2006 international show in New York the talk was all of the ‘multiplatform’ possibilities that a property might possess. In the film world the right property, particularly for the children’s market, may have infinite possibilities. Retailers like to hedge their bets by going for products and merchandising material which already have a solid audience, which is why bestselling children’s novels can be such a hot item. But it is now also becoming increasingly important to licensors to know that they will be able to sell ‘the product’ across a range of media, to television, computer games, for wireless and for online sales. Malcolm Bird, Senior VP of AOL Kids and Teens said: ‘The online platform is becoming as important as the TV platform in developing content and getting those shows out to an audience.’ The money involved can be enormous. Lucas Licensing’s Star Wars consumer products produced worldwide revenues of $3 billion last year. Meanwhile the growing possibilities of digital publishing are meaning that in the UK the Publishers’ Association is negotiating with the Association of Authors’ Agents about who owns the rights. The scope of traditional publishing is expanding and contracts need to be expanded too to cover the new possibilities. What do ‘volume rights’ mean when the item you are licensing may not be a book at all in the traditional sense, but a download? An important issue which has been thrown up by the growth of print on demand is the question of when the rights in a book should revert to the author. With the new printing technology a book need never go out of print and can be printed ‘on demand’ indefinitely. Authors may feel that it is unsatisfactory to have an occasional copy supplied ‘on demand’. But although they might prefer their publisher to be actively selling their books, on the other hand it’s better to have your book available, rather than out of print. As technology develops it opens up new marketing possibilities - and sometimes threats - for the book, but everything depends on the original creative idea. Authors can take comfort from the fact that intellectual property is king – and it is writers who create the original stories on which the whole business is based.
Good news about book promotions which really workThere are some innovative ideas around about how to promote books and reading. The UK World Book Day’s Quick Reads really do seem to have encouraged non-readers to try reading a book. Interestingly, the bestseller was not from one of the bestselling fiction novelists but Richard Branson’s Screw it, Let’s do it: Lessons in Life, which shows the power of celebrity self-help. The promotion was estimated to have got space equivalent to a £3.25 million ($5.98 million) advertising campaign. It’s also very encouraging that 87% of children in the UK in the seven to 16-year-old age group were aware of World Book Day. Book festivals have become big business in the UK, with Hay consistently hitting the headlines, Cheltenham aiming to build on last year’s 70,000 visitors, and Edinburgh, the world‘s largest book festival, attracting a staggering 220,000 visitors last year. Readers glory in the informal atmosphere and the chance to catch their favourite authors. As well as this there’s the fabulous Richard and Judy Show, which has introduced all sorts of books to a wider audience in the UK. In the States the National Endowment for the Arts has supported taking the Big Read, modelled on city reads, to ten Midwestern cities. What’s more, Oprah Winfrey has just weaved her magic again, devoting two shows to Elie Wiesel’ s Holocaust memoir. This has enabled this important book to shoot up to number three in the bestseller lists. And on the Internet the latest success story is www.lovereading.com, which offers opening chapters to help you choose what to read next. So, who says reading is dead? Surely all this is cause for great optimism about the future of the book. In this age of TV celebrity and mass communication through the Internet, authors are still heroes to a great many people. Although literacy rates continue to be a matter for concern, the spread of reading groups has shown the astonishing grass-roots interest in reading. People simply love books, which is something for which writers can be truly grateful.
German publishers take Google to courtThe latest news from Germany is that the Borsenverein (the book trade association) is supporting one large German publishing group in taking Google to court. On 28 June the district court of Hamburg will decide whether to impose an injunction preventing Google digitising content from any of the company’s books. In the meantime the Borsenverein is developing its own digital warehouse to enable publishers to house and control their own digital content, in direct competition to Google. Revenue will go to the publishers, although retailers will be able to use content from the site to set up their own sales operations. In France publishers seem more divided in their response to Google, although intellectual property lawyer Emmanuel Pierrat, who represents 10 French publishers, threatened Google with legal action if they did not withdraw his clients’ texts from its database. Google complied. Gallimard is still pressing Google to remove all 300 titles it has digitised. The publisher’s legal director Brice Amor said: ‘We reject the opt-put policy, which amounts to forgery by default.’ It’s clear however that Google might be winning the war of words. In a
thoughtful contribution to the online debate, Karen Christensen, CEO of
Berkshire Publishing Group, says that Google is successfully appealing to
people’s values. She points out that: ‘The American Association of Publishers
call Google’s plans ‘utopian (instead of, one might suggest, disingenuous and
incomplete) and then, in the first paragraph, refer to the "limitations dictated
by countervailing public interests, such as the right to privacy, security
considerations, and the ability to own property." Christensen argues that in doing so, Google is winning hearts and minds, and making publishers sound as if they are restricting free access, rather than protecting their authors’ intellectual copyright. She says: ‘What matters, for the moment anyway, is that Google thinks it can, without permission, use the work of other people to make money. It justifies this by saying that general good will result, that they are serving the public interest. But the fact is that general good would be the result of throwing open the doors of food warehouses and grocery stores. Then everyone would have enough to eat. But I don’t hear many voices suggesting this solution to global hunger.’ The debate looks set to continue. News Review 30 January Into the digital age News Review 2 November 2005 The next chapter in the Google Wars
'A land grab in continental Europe'A recent heated debate at BookExpo in Washington has highlighted the argument about territorial rights between UK and US publishers. Carolyn Reidy, President and Publisher of Simon and Schuster, accused British publishers of engaging in ‘a land grab in continental Europe based on the thinnest of legal and business pretences’. Tim Hely-Hutchinson , CEO of Hachette Livre in the UK, said British publishers’ stance was ‘about protecting the UK. It would be foolish just to say we want more territories’. The British publishers’ argument is that the Treaty of Rome offers free access of goods from the EU into the UK, so once American books are supplied to the EU countries, they can easily find their way into the UK itself. The Americans argue simply for a free market in all parts of the world which are not English-speaking. The current situation has been affected by the growth of sales of English language books in countries other than the US and the UK, such as Germany. There’s also been rapid growth in Internet sales, which can reach across international borders to the individual buyer, wherever that person may be. The roots of the current situation lie in the postwar agreement between US and UK publishers, which carved up the English-speaking world, producing a standard schedule of territories which was attached to book contracts. (See Inside Publishing on The English Language Market.) The UK got the Commonwealth, i.e. Australia, South Africa and Canada, although Canada has been gradually ceded to the Americans. The US got the Philippines. In a way it’s remarkable how long this division has persisted, and many book-buying inhabitants of these countries would resent this post-imperial approach to the world. Now globalisation is threatening this traditional division of the English-speaking world and the weak dollar has offered American publishers the opportunity to put their books into export markets at a good price. Increasing prosperity makes other places, such as India and Hong Kong, increasingly important markets for English language books. American publishers, hard-pressed at home in a competitive and stagnant market, are eying up possible overseas markets with interest. The Brits are fighting their corner.
US title output declines but UK numbers soarJust when those in the book trade had resigned themselves to huge annual growth in the numbers of books published, US figures have plummeted, although UK numbers continue to soar. Recent US figures released for 2005 by Bowker showed a drop by 18% to a mere 172,000 titles, down 18,000 from 2004. Unlike last year, Bowker has not yet counted the title output of the largest print on demand publishers, so its figures may not be comparing like with like. The decline in US numbers has been across the board, except for legal publishers, and shows the largest general trade houses cutting their title output by 4.7%, whilst small publishers showed a 7% decline. With paper costs rising and the market becoming ever tougher, publishers of all sizes will have to make careful decisions about what to publish in 2006. This trend is likely to continue in future years, although the boom in self-publishing will push the numbers up again if these books are counted in. Andrew Grabois, a consultant for Bowker, said: ‘The reappearance of limits was the most interesting thing about publishing in 2005. Even an industry that produces more new products than any other must make choices. The question is, will British publishers face a similar market correction, or have they figured out how fewer publishers can publish more books for even fewer readers?’ British publishers have long held the English language record for the number of titles published per capita, but their figures are now soaring away into the stratosphere and exceed those for the USA. This is truly amazing when one considers not just the much larger population of the US but also book buyers’ greater consumer purchasing power. UK publishers released 206,000 new books in 2005, up 28%, or an astounding 45,000 titles, on the previous year. The irony of this will not escape regular readers of News Review. Just when UK bookshops and supermarkets are becoming more and more stacked with ever-increasing piles of discounted bestsellers, it is becoming ever harder to get them to stock the huge number of other books being published. And, as every unpublished writer knows, or will find out as soon as they try to find an agent or publisher, it has never been harder to get your work into print. To compound the problem, there are more and more writers plying their trade, as increasing numbers of people feel the urge to write. The inevitable conclusion is that it has never been more essential to produce good and original work if your aim is to get it published.
Something borrowed, something blueThe allegation of large-scale plagiarism has raised its ugly head in a too-good-to-be-true story of a young writer who appeared to be writing well rather too well for her age. To a hungry world looking for talented and good-looking young authors, Kaavya Viswanathan looked to like a publisher’s dream. She was just about to come to the UK for a triumphant tour to mark publication of her first novel, enticingly titled How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life, which had sold for $500,000 in the States. But, as the Independent on Sunday put it, her book turned out to be ‘not so much chick-lit as nick-lit’. So far, passages which appear to have been plagiarised from six other books have been discovered, including Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories and Megan McCafferty’s Sloppy Firsts. After moving to Scotland from Madras at the age of three, Viswanathan started to write and her work already showed promise when she was a child. When she was twelve the family moved to the States and by the time she was sixteen she had already written the first 100 pages of a novel. At this point a well-known agent became involved and so did Alloy Entertainment, a book packaging firm which then played an unspecified role in finishing the book and producing the outline for the next, which would be part of the two-book deal eventually made with the publisher. It is not yet clear whether the plagiarism is the young author’s or the book packagers’, but the book has now been withdrawn. You may ask why no-one suspected plagiarism earlier, but editors are a trusting (and perhaps not well-read) lot. Danuta Kean, book trade journalist commented: ‘The pressure on editors to deliver heat-seekers is enormous. To criticise them for being willing to believe anything if a book looks like a bestseller is to misunderstand the culture of an industry that retains a touching belief in old-fashioned trust and integrity.’ The Australian author Peter Carey seems to be having a different kind of problem with the content of his latest novel, Theft: A Love Story. His furious ex-wife Alison Summers claims that the author’s wife, i.e. her, has been portrayed as an ‘alimony whore’. Carey denies it and says; ‘to imagine it’s all about me, that’s a very reductive approach. It’s a pitiful, ignorant, illiterate way to read fiction’.
Now you can download your audiobookThe audiobook market is set to jump into the new world of downloadable sound to meet the demands of the iPod generation. Audiobook sales have been growing gradually over the years and there are now a great many books available in audio form, mostly the standard three-hour abbreviated version. Figures from the Audio Publishers Association of America show that the American market is worth $832m (£439m), dwarfing the UK market of £37m ($70m). Audio material can now be used online to provide sample listening, with the CDs for sale. This is how the new Poetry Archive makes its 80 or so one-hour recordings of contemporary poets reading their work available to listeners. But the next step is already in sight and in the UK Spoken Network launches this week with more than 5,000 titles and the backing of a number of the large audio publishers. Paul Smithson, its founder, said their research showed that: ‘many people who wouldn’t have previously considered buying an audiobook as a CD or tape said they would be interested in downloading one.’ Audible, an American company offering audiobook downloads, which is already big in the States, set up a British website last June, having seen its US sales grow to $63m (£34m) last year. But the company thinks that this is only the beginning. Eileen Hutton of Brilliance Audio, the largest independent publisher of audiobooks in the US (most of the big publishers have their own audio division) said: ‘We think the future of the industry is in downloads to MP3 players, iPods etc. A recent survey of young people in America found that many people were dispensing with traditional media altogether in favour of downloadable audiobooks and music.’ For writers this offers a whole new market, although there are signs that it will still be bestseller focused. But that’s just where the price competition will be - the Internet will make it possible to offer a huge range of material. Lessons have been learnt from the Napster problems in the music industry and the mechanisms have been set up to make sure that people pay for audiobook downloads. WritersServices’ own audio site, launched last week, shows writers how to record their own material so they can be ready to promote their work. With this new means of delivery the market for audio is set to boom.
Book fair warsThe next big international book trade fair for the English-speaking world is BookExpo in Washington 19-21 May. This is primarily for the American book trade and has 2000 exhibitors, 500 authors and 100 conference sessions. Washington is not regarded as an ideal location for the international publishing world, so it’s not clear whether this year’s BookExpo will attract as many visitors as last year’s. A more significant challenge to the increasing prominence of the London Book Fair in the first half of the year has come with the surprise announcement this week that the Frankfurt Book Fair is setting up a direct competitor to the London Book Fair in its new home in ExCel in London’s Docklands. This will be called the Book Fair Earl’s Court and is planned to run from 7-9 April 2007. There’s no doubt this is war, as Reed Exhibitions, which owns the London Book Fair, has forced the move to Docklands and then struggled to overcome the poor location and other irritations associated with the new venue. The Frankfurt Book Fair, which is the largest book fair in the world and is owned by the German Booksellers’ Association, has a new CEO, Juergen Boos, and, it would seem, a new brief - to take the war into the enemy camp. Some of the big publishers have been won over already. Tim Hely-Hutchinson, CEO of Hachette Livre, said: ‘We are delighted that a central London venue has been found for London to continue hosting an attractive international book fair in the Spring each year. Hachette Livre UK will be exhibiting at The Book Fair Earl's Court, London in 2007 and we do not intend to exhibit in the Docklands. The Earl's Court plan will be infinitely more convenient for everyone associated with our business, especially our valued visitors from overseas’ There’s even a hint that the Bologna Children’s Book Fair will be accommodated in such a way that the dates will make it possible to take in both fairs in one trip to Europe, although the children’s publishers who have to do both will no doubt find this a nightmare. Book fairs are big business now, like other trade fairs, and the moral of this story seems to be that you cannot simply force a change of location which publishers do not like, just because it will make more money for you as the fair organisers. Publishers who come to London want to feel they are in the city, not out in the middle of nowhere, and it looks as if they are voting with their feet.
'A big deal in the public imagination'Just as we were feeling that we have heard enough about Waterstone’s bid for Ottakar’s and the referral to the Competition Commission comes the latest extraordinary twist in this saga. HMV, the owners of Waterstone’s, made a bid for Ottakars last year, after the smaller chain tried to arrange a management buyout to take it back into private ownership. At a time when competition in the sector had reached a zenith, with all UK booksellers feeling squeezed between the supermarkets and the Internet, many in the book world felt that to have one big book chain dominating the market would only make things worse. The Competition Commission thought otherwise, but in the meantime HMV itself has received a bid from private equity firm Permira, and, whilst it is reconsidering its own bid for Ottakars, there has been some speculation that W H Smith, the slumbering giant of the British book market, has got far enough in its own turnaround to be interested in competing for Ottakar’s itself. Into these somewhat muddied waters has stepped Tim Waterstone, the original founder of Waterstone’s, whose continuing desire to buy back the bookshop chain which bears his name has not always been taken all that seriously in the City. This time however Waterstone means business, and he’s tabled an offer of £280 million to prove it. Two interesting differences give this bid a chance of success. The first is that it is conditional on Waterstone’s not acquiring Ottakars, on the ground that buying the smaller chain would be a distraction from setting Waterstone’s own house in order. The second is that Tim Waterstone has teamed up with the much respected Anthony Forbes Watson, former CEO of Penguin Group UK, who would take on the role of Waterstone’s CEO. It’s unusual for a publisher to become a bookseller, but Forbes Watson would certainly bring an interesting perspective to the role, as well as a heartening faith in the book market. He said: ‘Our offer reflects our optimism about books. Despite a fraught market, book sales are going up each year by 5%… Books are still a big deal in the public imagination. They are an astonishing product and Waterstone’s has to be able to tap into that… We would make the most of the emotional dimension of books rather than the commodity dimension.’ This seems like a view that writers could endorse wholeheartedly.
'They're killing literature'A recent article in The Australian highlights the problem facing literary fiction writers in Australia. Brian Castro, prize-winning author of six novels, had difficulty in getting his seventh novel, Shanghai Dancing, into print. Having been turned down by Random House and HarperCollins, which wanted major changes, it was eventually published by new independent Giramondo, won literary prizes and has sold well enough to be reprinted twice. So Castro was lucky, but others have been less so and he says: ‘I think they’re killing literature… everything is about the bottom line’. Academic Mark Davis’s recent research shows that the number of home-grown literary novels produced by Australia’s mainstream publishers has almost halved since the mid-1990s, although some of the slack has been taken up by the smaller independents. But official statistics show that Australians are buying less home-grown fiction. Sales fell from Aus$125million in 2001-2 to Aus$73million in 2003-4. Just as elsewhere, literary fiction has been affected by globalisation in the publishing industry. Nine out of the top 10 Australian publishers are now owned by multinational media giants and, as Davis says: ‘such companies tend not to see themselves as custodians of national literary cultures’. Australian publishers deny this charge, but publishers everywhere are trimming their lists to concentrate on books which will sell. Veteran literary agent Lyn Tranter says it has become very much harder to get serious literary fiction published than it was 20 or 30 years ago. ‘They’re all saying "We are publishing the same number of novels as we were and they’re lying.’ Partly this is because electronic point of sale has revealed, here as elsewhere, the small sales figures of some literary writers. Shelf life has also become shorter, as bookshop chains become more bottom-line oriented. But what if book-buyers simply don’t want to read these literary titles? Shona Martyn, publishing director of HarperCollins (which is owned by News Corporation) says: ‘Our job is to produce books that people want to read. We are a business. We can’t be any more sentimental than a business that is selling ice cream or clothes.’ John Emery, Head of the Australian Literary Board, says: ‘We have to acknowledge that literary fiction is not selling as well around the world… The novel may prove to be a transient literary form.’ But is this true? You could argue that the huge growth of readings groups has actually focused attention on literary fiction. The Richard and Judy Book club in the UK has had an enormous impact in bringing quite literary titles, such as Joseph O’Connor’s The Star of the Sea, to mass audiences. Perhaps it is just that it’s all become more international, and Australian writers, like British and American ones, have to compete on a global scale, but without the homegrown market that will help them find an audience when they’re starting out. And does literary fiction have some special right to be published, or is it all really just a matter of what people want to read?
UK book sales grow by 8%Recent figures from Book Marketing’s annual Books and the Consumer study show encouraging growth in UK book sales of 8% in value in 2005, compared to 3% in 2004. The report, which is based on a rolling questionnaire of 10,000 people aged 17 to 74, estimated that book buyers spent £2.3bn on books in 2005. In adult books the growth of 3% in both volume and value led to sales of 238 million books worth £2bn. Sales of fiction, thrillers, fantasy, biography, history, sport, cookery and sagas all increased during the year. Children’s book sales showed astonishing growth, with a 38% rise in value to £401m and an 18% growth in volume to £73m. Even without the Harry Potter effect children’s books grew 8% by volume and 17% by value. This rapid growth confirms the perception in the industry that children’s books are booming. The imbalance between sales and value reflects the fact that there has also been substantial price inflation in the children’s area, with prices going up 39% since 1997. The other remarkable element of this year’s figures is the boom in online and supermarket sales. Internet sales rose by 38%, with Amazon by far the biggest beneficiary. This trend is reflected internationally and it’s interesting to note that in recent weeks both Waterstone’s and Ottakars have conceded that they need to go back to the web to rethink their strategy there. Amazon have made vast gains and it looks as if the book chains have left this far too late. The supermarkets’ increase was even greater at 41%, showing just how much the traditional book trade is threatened by the ruthless loss-leading approach and bestseller focus of the giant grocery retailers. These figures show starkly the problems faced by the book chains but also highlight the difficulties confronting independent booksellers. They have seen potential sales from bestselling titles, which used to support less profitable books, eroded rapidly over the years by ferocious price-cutting. So the increase in book sales is good news for authors, but continues to present the book trade with a series of major challenges.
Bologna still focused on fictionThis year’s Bologna Children’s Book Fair came uncomfortably soon after the London Book Fair for the publishers who attended both. Bologna was hot but mercifully uncrowded and a very much more pleasant destination for hard-pressed international publishers than London’s ExCel. The focus at the world’s biggest children’s book fair has shifted from co-editions to fiction and film deals, with film scouts much in evidence. Barry Cunningham of Chicken House said: ‘The market is still very good for fiction and still extremely sticky for picture books. Although the right picture book still does OK in the US and Australia, it’s curtains on the co-edition front.’ Perhaps this is because of international publishers focusing more on home-grown material which they hope to sell to the co-edition market, rather than buying in as they have done in the past. Bologna now has very much more of a focus on fiction than it used to have. Alex Maramenides of Simon & Schuster UK said: ‘As elsewhere, fiction is doing very well, especially fantasy, literary and historical fiction, and series.’ There was even a feeling in some quarters that there was too much young adult fiction and a shortage of good material for the younger age groups. Some publishers felt that picture books were beginning to make a bit of a comeback. Publishing News’ Graham Marks concluded: ‘As patchy, not to say weak, as the market appears to remain in the previously dominant areas of non-fiction and picture books, fiction seems to be holding onto its crown in the international rights arena’. So the children’s market remains strong and potentially very much more lucrative for writers than it used to be. It’s still a puzzle why there is still so comparatively little focus on material for the younger age groups, as there are still plenty of children out there and parents to buy books for them. Perhaps these books are simply attracting less attention. Older fiction, which has benefited from the Harry Potter effect and from being marketed in a way which is more like the marketing for adult bestsellers, is stealing the limelight. Picture books are expensive to originate and, unless the publisher can find international co-edition partners, impossible to publish successfully. The market is easily satisfied with the range of wonderful books already available, whereas older children and teenagers are much more likely to want to read the books which are the latest craze. Harry Potter, Philip Pullman, Jacqueline Wilson and the Lemony Snicket books may have nothing else in common but they have all contributed to this trend.
'A world-class fair?'So what ‘s the verdict on the London Book Fair? Was it a great leap forward into the future, to a modern convention centre which offers massive space for expansion? Or was it a mistake to move from friendly, crowded Olympia, much more convenient for most and far more atmospheric? What are books fairs for anyway? This is a question we ask in compiling our list of International Book Fairs each year. The answer presumably has to be that they are for the exhibitors and the important question therefore is whether the new venue is better for the international publishers who flock to London to carry out their global business. But one should also not forget that book fairs are organised by large companies, in this case Reed Exhibitions, which are in the business of making money. It is vital for them to feel that their customers, the publishers, will come back and take more space next year. Crucially, for the LBF itself, it must continue to attract the international contingent who might otherwise feel that BookExpo, to be held in Washington in May, might be a better place to conduct their business. Washington is not a big draw, but other US cities, most notably New York and Chicago, are. With this debate in mind, how did London fare? There was a 5.3% increase in visitors, making 24,145 publishing people, and a 22% increase in the space taken by exhibitors. Alistair Burtenshaw, Director of LBF, said: ‘We firmly believe that the choice we jointly made to move to ExCel so as to deliver a world-class Fair is the very best option for the long-term future of the event.’ On the negative side, there were lots of complaints. The aisles were |
