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Comment from the book world in May 2006

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Reading and Quick Reads

29 May 2006

'It is easy to understand the mindset of those who feel uncomfortable with reading. All of us know the mystery of seeing others enjoy a pastime which exasperates us: music if we are unmusical, physical exercise if sedentary, sleeping late if early risers. But reading is generally looked on as a pleasure even by those who avoid it - a pleasure to some but not for them. Getting into it is too hard, it is too much like work. "My early and invincible love of reading," as Gibbon put it, "which I would not exchange for all the treasures of India," is incomprehensible to those who need a dictionary every few words. No one will need a dictionary for Quick Reads. While I was writing mine I couldn't help hoping that those who bought a copy would go on to my other books, in the process develop an invincible love of reading and perhaps become my fans.'

Ruth Rendell, writing about her Quick Read The Thief in the Sunday Telegraph

Quick Reads

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'That same fabulous world'

22 May 2006

‘C. S. Lewis’s World-Between-The-Worlds - that magical, mystical place, hushed and unhurried, where visitors could enter a thousand different worlds by jumping into different pools - always seemed to me to be the perfect metaphor for a library. Trips to the library with my mother are, in my memory, even more thrilling than trips to the sweet shop, and when I got my eldest daughter a library card I felt as though I had bought her citizenship of that same fabulous world.’

J K Rowling, in support of the innovative Love Libraries scheme

The art of the ghostwriter

15 May 2006

'It's not our job to be objective and even-handed. We're there to be passionately subjective, fighting as hard to put across our clients' stories as any barrister in any courtroom. We ask endless impertinent questions in order to climb inside their skins and put their views convincingly. Every page of an autobiography must sound as authentic as a monologue in a play

Ghosting is a varied, rewarding life for any writer able to suppress their own opinions and ego. Hanging out with characters as colourful as Sharon Osbourne is never going to be anything less than entertaining, and to have the inside track on the truth behind the doors of 'Beckingham Place' must make anyone an in-demand dinner guest.'

Andrew Croft, ghostwriter-extraordinaire, in the Sunday Telegraph

'A monopoly right'

8 May 2006

'The law is therefore as everyone thought it was. Unless you copy the means of expression of facts and ideas, you do not breach copyright. Nor do you do so, if you simply consult somebody's material and then do your own research. Had the judge decided differently, adaptations of others' works would have become distinctly perilous. The concept of unlawfully taking someone's central theme or ideas would be dangerously vague, leading to costly legal vetting for writers of historical fiction. Copyright is after all a monopoly right. The law has to strike a fair balance between protesting the rights of the author and allowing literary development.'

David Hooper, copyright specialist and partner at Reynolds Porter Chamberlain, in Publishing News , commenting on the outcome of the Da Vinci Code case

'A publisher's job is to add value'

1 May 2006

'What I begin to wonder is whether we've crossed some barely visible Rubicon, beyond which commercial judgement altogether overpowers the judgement of value.

I don't subscribe to the notion that history is a dead duck, or that the appetite of readers can be satisfied by a diet of reality television

A publisher's job is to add value to the work they are about to bring into the world. An existing brand or franchise requires a great deal less risk and effort than an unknown author or a difficult subject. In the latter case the payback is less certain, the time frame longer, and the quantum smaller. But if we can't or won't tackle both ends of the equation, is there any point in being a publisher? If we leave it all to Amanda Ross (of Cactus, the originator of the Richard and Judy Book Club), already raised to the purple in the Observer's list of movers and shakers, will there be a publishing industry left to belong to?'

Anthony Cheetham, former CEO of Random Century and of Orion, now a consultant to Random House, in the Bookseller.