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Comment from the book world in July 2005

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July 2005

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End of a publishing blog

25 July 2005

'It's hard work, this, even when the feedback has both been so energizing and made it so clear how great a hunger there is for some sort of industry perspective, for some sense that people on the inside aren't wholly disconnected from those on the outside....

If I had a particular goal when I started, it was to better understand how the machinery works, and to learn some new tricks of the trade--and I'm not sure how much we accomplished on that front, to be honest. The business is so f***ing hard now, and there's so much pressure on those working inside it, that either they don't have the time for (shall we say) pro bono discourse about (say) how to do some of the little things better; or they feel that giving away what few secrets they possess will put them at the sort of competitive disadvantage that might, soon, cost them their jobs.'

Mad Max Perkins of BookAngst 101, who is now hanging up his hat

http://bookangst.blogspot.com/

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Man Booker International forced to disqualify out-of-print writers

18 July 2005

'When we checked through our original list of 120 contestants, we found that we had to disqualify writer after writer, simply because they were not available in English translation. Often they had been translated back in the 80's or 90's, but the publisher had allowed the translations to go out of print. So we were unable to consider, for example, Peter Handke, Michel Tournier, Christoph Ransmayr, Antonio Lobo Antunes, Rachid Boudjedra or Fernando Vallejo.

To an outsider the British publishing industry can seem like a conspiracy intent on depriving English-speaking readers of the majority of the good books written in languages other than their own. The same laxity 50 or 60 years ago would have meant, for English readers, no Kafka, no Camus and no Borges. The judges hope that the advent of the Man Booker International Prize will encourage British publishers to reverse this trend. No other single outcome could matter more.'

John Carey, Chair of the judges of the Man Booker International Prize, at the award ceremony (reprinted in the Bookseller)

'Books reviews should inspire reading'

11 July 2005

'Book reviews should inspire reading. They should excite, stimulate, agitate and empower readers to discover new books and avoid bad ones. They should turn you on to undiscovered authors, prompt you into finally reading the writer you have never quite got round to, and make you wonder at the world of delights that remain unread. But let's be honest. They don't, do they?...

Don't get me wrong. Reviews can sell books, and should do. When you get several positive reviews of a book around publication it can help to stimulate interest and hopefully sales. The problem is that this so rarely happens, and it won't happen while authors, agents, publishers and retailers sit back and do nothing. If the music pages can manage to feature a diverse selection of CDs, all released that week, then surely we can encourage one literary editor to do the same?'

Scott Pack of Waterstone's in the Bookseller

'The life I hadn't led'

4 July 2005

'Somebody once said that one's real life is often the life that one does not lead. That's true for me, and I think it's probably the essential ingredient of a "crossover novel" (that is, one which appeals to both adults and children). The Wind in the Willows, the Discworld novels, Harry Potter. All have that in common: the creation of a world that's deeply felt - and that's inhabited by the author - and therefore completely real...

'...the story of the boy and the wolf sat in my filing cabinet, and came to life only when I realised that this was the world I had lost. This was the life I hadn't led.

I think that's what readers respond to: when a story helps them to live the life they haven't led. You can't engineer that, and you can't fake it. It doesn't work every time and you can't predict when it will. But you know when it does, because of the response from readers.'

Michelle Paver, author of Wolf Brother, in The Times