As hard as it may be to believe, not too long ago, it was actually quite difficult to sell a book about Donald Trump. When investigative journalist David Cay Johnston sought a publisher for a biography shortly after Trump descended his golden escalator and announced his plans to seek the Republican nomination, he couldn't get anyone to bite. "I tried to do a book when Donald announced in June of 2015, and Alice Martell, my literary agent, called around," Johnston told Publishers WeeklyInternational news website of book publishing and bookselling including business news, reviews, bestseller lists, commentaries http://www.publishersweekly.com/ in 2016. "But nobody believed he would get the nomination, so nobody wanted the book." After Trump prevailed in the Republican presidential primary, two biographies were published-Johnston's The Making of Donald Trump and The Washington Post's Trump Revealed, both bestsellers.
Links of the week August 3 2020 (32)
Authors condemn Saudi Arabia's bid to host World Science Fiction Convention | Books | The Guardian
A group of more than 80 science fiction and fantasy authors are protesting at the possibility of one of the genres' biggest conventions being held in Saudi Arabia in 2022, saying that "the Saudi regime is antithetical to everything SFF stands for".
Led by fantasy author Anna Smith Spark,writers including Charles Stross, Juliet McKenna, Stan Nicholls and Catriona Ward have signed an open letter objecting to Jeddah's bid to host the World Science Fiction Convention in two years' time.
Grown up history for the fiction writer
The British Civil Wars of the mid-17th century are my passion. This extraordinary period has everything: epic battles, espionage and adventure, the only trial and execution of a monarch, and radical constitutional experiments, all documented by newspapers and pamphlets in the "first age of journalism". This is a paradise for lovers of the written word: oceans of ink spilled in a war fought not over who should rule, but how they should rule. It is grown-up history: the messiest, most complicated corner of Britain's past; the blot on the timeline; the gap in our neat story of kings and queens.
Irenosen Okojie wins the Caine prize for 'stunning' short story Grace Jones | Books | The Guardian
Critically acclaimed author Irenosen Okojie has won the AKO Caine prize for African writing, crediting her win with giving her "extra confidence" as a black, female experimental writer who has felt she was "operating on the fringes".
The Nigerian-British writer won the £10,000 award on Monday afternoon for her short story Grace Jones, following an impersonator of the singer as she mourns the death of her family in a house fire. Judges for the prize called it "a radical story that plays with logic, time and place", and praised it as "risky, dazzling, imaginative and bold".
True Crime Has Been Having a Moment for Three Centuries. But the New Era Is Different. | CrimeReads
True crime is having a moment. But then, one could say true crime has been having a moment for more than three centuries, since the New England-based minister Cotton Mather published his execution sermons for eager Puritan audiences, then, with an altogether different pamphlet, laid the groundwork for the Salem Witch Trials in 1692.