A century or so after The Iliad was written, the authors of the Book of Samuel also turned to the lexicon of family to depict the legendary bond between David and Jonathan. Their affinity is measured not just through comparisons with blood allegiances, but against them: David's survival hangs on Jonathan's willingness to betray his father, King Saul, to save his friend. Their story is a contest between the obligations of family and the free choice of friendship.
Links of the week March 23 2015 (13)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
30 March 2015
That friendships between adults are harder to rationalise than other close relationships may be one reason they are underrepresented in modern fiction, considering their importance in most people’s lives. Film loves friendships, as does television, as the cops and cowboys in buddy movies and series from Butch Cassidy to Cagney and Lacey and Thelma and Louise attest. So do children’s stories, perhaps because, along with the separation from parents with which they coincide, the making and breaking of friendships are among childhood’s first dramas. Think of the beautiful triangle of Winnie the Pooh, Christopher Robin and Piglet. Nineteenth-century authors, especially the Americans, followed friendships across oceans and frontiers; Jane Austen chronicled their tensions and microcrises.
The cherished French children’s book author and editor of hundreds of books Grégoire Solotareff offers his tips for creating books for very young readers.
PARIS: Within a program of events celebrating French publisher l’école des loisirs’ 50th birthday, the cherished children’s book author, Grégoire Solotareff, gave a talk on Monday about how to transform an idea for a book into reality. In the tradition of Maurice Sendak or Leo Lionni (both of whom are published in translation by l’école des loisirs), Solotareff’s 200+ books for children, which he has been writing and illustrating for 30 years, continue to dwell in a magical and quirky universe. For the past 20 years he has also been the editor of an imprint called Loulou & Cie for children ages 0-4 where he has overseen the production of 400 books. It was in his capacity as both author and editor that he gave the following talk, loosely translated and edited here.
Rights departments at publishing companies face a tough question every day: how can we accomplish more in less time? What can we automate in a business so dependent on face-to-face meetings and personal relationships? Last Friday, Publishers WeeklyInternational news website of book publishing and bookselling including business news, reviews, bestseller lists, commentaries http://www.publishersweekly.com/ organized an event for rights professionals to address these very questions. What became clear is that, currently, there is are definitive solutions. But there is hope…
For the rights departments at publishing companies large and small, time is a precious resource. These teams handle hundreds and even thousands of rights deals each year. But a handshake at the Frankfurt Book FairWorld's largest trade fair for books; held annually mid-October at Frankfurt Trade Fair, Germany; First three days exclusively for trade visitors; general public can attend last two. is only the beginning. For each of these thousands of deals, the rights department must execute the contract, ensure that the advance is paid, the publication date is met, and then track the sales, check royalty statements - on it goes.
Sarah Ardizzone is one of the most respected translators working in English and French, who easily transitions between children's and adult literature.
"I believe this is the first time, in my admittedly varied career as a translator, that I've been expected to render a Shakespeare quoting, pun-spouting, trans-gender goldfish with suicidal tendencies," Sarah Ardizzone wrote in the Guardian in an article explaining the process of translating French children's book author Marjolaine Leray's Avril le poisson rouge (April the Red Goldfish).
Although Ardizzone says she could't make a living translating only children's books, she has been increasingly doing so, even if she recently took on the very serious project of translating a new edition of Alexandre Dumas "The Nutcracker" for Vintage Classics. "There's "There's a lot about working on children's books that I love," said Ardizzone. "If you've been working on hard and lengthy adult stuff, you need a breath of air and need to flex different muscles. Another aspect that I enjoy is that there is an immediate sense of your readership and a greater accountability - there tends to be a more palpable wrestling with what we are going to do to make this stand up with Anglophone children. This isn't always applied in more literary publishing scenarios. I enjoy that, the audience matters to me. And children' book publishers put so much into events."
The Edinburgh-based writer took to social media yesterday (mon) to describe some of the rude snubs she received from the industry as she began her career, and then turned her attentions, initially anonymously as Galbraith, to crime novels.
Writing on Twitter, Rowling revealed one publisher who turned down Harry Potter also send "the rudest rejection" of her book.
In 1996 the first Harry Potter book was turned down by 12 publishers before being picked up by Bloomsbury. The series went on to sell more than 450 million copies.
The Cuckoo's Calling, which Rowling published under the name Robert Galbraith, sold less than 500 copies in 2013 before she was accidentally unmasked as its author. Prior to this she also published her first adult fiction novel, The Casual Vacancy, as JK Rowling. It was recently turned into a BBC serial.
In reply to fan Megan who asked: "How many no's did you get before you finally got published?" Rowling said: "Loads! First publisher to turn down Harry also sent Robert Galbraith his rudest rejection. They don't even want me in a beard."
The median advance for traditionally published authors is "well under £6,600", according to early findings of a survey into authors' attitudes towards their publisher. The survey also found that bigger publishers pay more.
The "Do You Love Your Publisher?" survey was launched earlier this month and is co-produced by Jane Friedman in the States and Harry Bingham in the UK. It will be available to traditionally published authors to complete until 31st March. The hashtag #authorsay is being used on Twitter in relation to the survey. The results of the latest survey will published in The Bookseller on 10th April.
The survey found that taking advances paid only by the large trade publishers (from Penguin Random House to Bloomsbury) the median advance climbs to about £13,000. The survey asks authors a range of questions, from the level of advance they most recently received to how satisfied they were with their cover design. Of the authors who have so far completed the survey, one-third were published by a "big five" publisher, and a further fifth published by a "large trade publisher". The majority of writers had published six or more titles already, with about half the respondents indicating that they had self-published at least one title, while a further 23% reported that they had "seriously considered" self-publishing.
23 March 2015
I've been invited to join a discussion entitled "Amazon: Friend or Foe" (meaning "for publishers") sponsored by the Digital Media Group of the Worshipful Company of Stationers (only in England!) and taking place in London next month. I think the answer must be "both", and I suspect that my discussion-mates - Fionnuala Duggan, formerly of Random House and CourseSmart; Michael Ross from EncyclopediaFree online encyclopedia offered by eLibrary at www.encyclopedia.com Britannica; and Philip Walters, the moderator for the conversation, will agree. This is a simple question with many complicated answers. I am sure that Fionnuala, Michael, and Philip will introduce some perspectives I'm not addressing here.
The first thoughts the question triggers for me are three ways I think Amazon has profoundly changed the industry.
Although just about every publisher has headaches dealing with Amazon, very few could deny that Amazon is their most profitable account, if they take sales volume, returns, and the cost of servicing into consideration. This fact is almost never acknowledged and therefore qualifies as one of the industr's dirty little secrets. Because they've consolidated the book-buying audience online and deliver to it with extraordinary efficiency, Amazon must feel totally justified in clawing back margin; it wasn't their idea to be every publisher's most profitable account! But since they are effectively replacing so many other robust accounts, the profitability they add comes at a big price in the stability and reliability of a publisher's business, which feels much more comfortable coming from a spread of accounts. Publishers strongly resist Amazon's demands for more margin, partly because they don't know where they'll stop.
"Do you write on the train?" I get that a lot. And it's fair enough, I suppose: for 13 years now I've been a commuter, Oxford/London most working days, and during that time I've published eight novels, so when else might I have written them? It's not like the opportunity's not there. Even when I started, laptops - if cumbersome - were much in evidence; these days, the proliferation of tablets, smartphones, iPads and what-all else means you can not only write your novel on the train, you can research it, publish it and shoot the movie. So it speaks, I think, to enormous strength of character that I've come through all these years without writing anything more complicated than a shopping list while in transit.
Besides, books choose their own pace. They make other decisions too. It's only lately that I've noticed something odd about my novels: that for all my back-and-forth travels, they're apparently taking root. Once set largely in Oxford, with occasional trips to the capital and elsewhere, they've become London-bound - in the static sense - and can no longer be bothered to drag themselves home when they're done. Maybe this is because the big city offers more noirish opportunities. Certainly it felt a more appropriate setting for Nobody Walks, whose protagonist returns there after years abroad to re-encounter old enemies and make some new ones. Bitter, broken, disillusioned types return to Oxford all the time, of course, but they're usually attending their college reunions. If you're going to paint havoc on the backstreets, London's the more obvious bet.
Three announcements made by three publishing businesses over the past week show how companies that have been at the coalface of traditional publishing for sometime are looking at remodelling themselves.
The connection between these three strategies? They are new approaches to doing business in this evolving environment that build on a growing understanding of what a publisher ought to be now. The fascinating thing is that not all publishers will approach this in the same way, which means that in the future publishers may differ in what they look like, and what they do - even if content and authors remain at the heart.
"As a developer, you get involved with everything," says Derrick Schultz, Director of Developer Experience at the digital publisher Atavist. Previously, he served as a developer with Open Air Publishing - which was one of the first publishers to license the Inkling platform - and then at the short-lived Atavist Books. Each experience has given him some insight into how to reach out to readers and market to them online, something that requires new thinking almost each and every day.
So much changes so quickly it is not worth spending six months figuring out a plan, so that when you finally launch, it is gone.Facebook started doing app-install ads, if you were in the first 6 month window, you were golden, but then when the gaming guys jumped in the auction prices skyrocketed.
Hodder & Stoughton is relaunching the website for its science fiction, fantasy and horror community Hodderscape today (9th March), and hold its first open submission period later this year.
The new website, which is fully responsive, will make searching for books easier, with the ability to view titles by publication date or genre. The site has advanced features enabled for enhanced Google Analytics tracking, so that Hodderscape can learn more about what its audience wants. Each book page will contain additional content such as trailers or podcasts, as well as other recommended reads from within the Hodder & Stoughton catalogue.
Hodderscape will host its first open submission period from 3rd August to 16th August this year, looking for new voices in science fiction, fantasy and horror. More details on how to submit work will be released closer to the time.
"It's important to understand we are creating a radically new ebook distribution platform. It's a new way of thinking. Our philosophy is ‘radical simplicity': we deliver all books, to all people, all the time, you can download online and offline, and keep them on the device forever, it's raining books," says Yoav Lorch, CEO of the Tel Aviv-based ebook platform Total BooX. With Total BooX, a reader downloads a book for free and only pays for what they read.
Today, says Lorch, people are used to consuming content in small pieces. "Some people say if you don't complete the books then you are not a serious person. But this is basically fine. This is a natural way of reading content that people are reading anyway. Young people are smart, they know a lot and are curious. By the fact that you are offering them a plethora of sensations and information for you to pick and choose, it is actually a step forward for them."