At the beginning of the week it looked like the London Book Fair would be the story of the week. But by mid-week a tsunami had swept through the book world and there was only one story dominating the headlines. Read more
Some weeks there's just too much news for us to cover in a short column and this is one of those weeks, so for now the latest moves in the ongoing Google Settlement saga (see News Review 27 April 2009 and 16 November 2009) have to take precedence. Read more
Åsne Seierstad, the author of The Bookseller of Kabul, has been ordered to pay more than £26,000 in punitive damages. As Conor Foley in the Guardian put it, this news will be greeted 'as either a blow to artistic freedom of expression or a victory for the world's misrepresented and powerless poor. Read more
The estate of Adrian Jacobs, author of Willy the Wizard, has now widened its claim against Bloomsbury for plagiarism in the Harry Potter books to include J K Rowling herself, previously thought to be protected by a statute of limitations. Read more
You may be thoroughly bored with the Google Settlement (see last week's News Review) but it has a significant impact on authors' rights so it's worth making the effort to understand what it's all about. Read more
The New Google Settlement (see News Review 7 September) looks like a reasonable resolution of a thorny set of problems. Bowing to pressure from foreign governments and the US Department of Justice, the revised Settlement presented to the district Court in New York shortly before midnight on Friday limits the scope of the scheme to works registered with Read more
Stieg Larsson has been continually in the news ever since publication of his first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The third part of the Milennium trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, has recently been published in the UK and the US. Read more
After a slow start, objectors have finally been getting their arguments against Google's plans in before the closing date of last Friday, 4 September. Read more
J D Salinger is suing the pseudonymous author who is planning shortly to publish a sequel Salinger's famous novel Catcher in the Rye presents what looks like a strong case of invasion of copyright. Read more
Google's recent class action settlement in the US will award sweeping rights to manage and sell digitised versions of every work published or made available in the US. The settlement allows Google - which has already digitised more than seven million books - the non-exclusive right to digitise every book published before 5th January this year. Read more
'The creative process is open to all. I don't believe in some magical creative gift, the exclusive possession of a few, nor need it concern big or sophisticated ideas. On the contrary, creativity may depend upon the recognition that our own thoughts and ideas are as valid as anyone else's; something which we knew as children, and which we were taught to unlearn. Read more
Open to unpublished and unagented writers from around the world.
No entry fee
Prize:
Prize of £3,000; publication with Tortoise Media; literary representation by RCW literary agent Laurence Laluyaux and other prizes
Fern Press and How to Academy have partnered on a new essay award worth £3,000, in association with Tortoise Media, for unpublished authors.
Fern Press was launched by Vintage last year, while the annual non-fiction essay prize is "for those working at the frontier of creativity and thought", organisers said. Read more
It's not a pretty word, 'blurb'; it smacks of nonsense, or slightly less than entirely honest marketing. Which is unfortunate, because a blurb is a useful and necessary thing; without it, your book is at risk of being a blank text, what you might call a closed book. Read more
'You want to write the twist so that it doesn't suddenly come out of nowhere. I tried to see a few things so that (the reader) thinks, of course! But it is hard to get that balance I think, of trying to get a twist in that is unguessable but not too "out there"... Writing in lockdown, 'So that was a bit of freedom in a way, I didn't have any expectations almost.
'You want to write the twist so that it doesn't suddenly come out of nowhere. I tried to see a few things so that (the reader) thinks, of course! But it is hard to get that balance I think, of trying to get a twist in that is unguessable but not too "out there". Read more
Waterstones managing director James Daunt said social media is reinforcing the reading of "proper" paper books among young people.
Mr Daunt, who is also chief executive of Barnes & Noble, said social media trends such as 'BookTok' on TikTok had been "hugely positive", as he was made a CBE for his services to publishing by the Princess Royal.
A new generation of romance novel consumers has moved a long-standing three-way conversation between reader, writer and publisher onto social media, industry insiders say, speeding up an already fast-moving segment of the publishing world.
When you are next visiting a bookstore, and find your way to the children's section, you might be forgiven for thinking that there is no longer such a thing as a children's author. Instead, you will be ambushed by piles of books blazoned with the names of actors, singers, comedians, DJs and people who generously exhibit themselves on social media.
A federal judge in California this week dismissed four of six claims made by authors in a now consolidated lawsuit alleging that Open AI infringes their copyrights. But the court gave the authors a month to amend their complaint, and the suit's core claim of direct infringement-which Open AI did not seek to dismiss-remains active.
For budding authors, the submissions process can be daunting. For anyone with little understanding of the publishing industry and how it works, it can be even more so. And for anyone whose writing sits outside of the established ideas of genre, style or content, it can be utterly baffling as to how to present that to an agent or publisher.
Children's creativity
'The creative process is open to all. I don't believe in some magical creative gift, the exclusive possession of a few, nor need it concern big or sophisticated ideas. On the contrary, creativity may depend upon the recognition that our own thoughts and ideas are as valid as anyone else's; something which we knew as children, and which we were taught to unlearn. Read more