Children learn to read after being captivated by pictures, Sir Quentin Blake has said, as he argues no-one should be compelled to try heavy texts too young.
Links of the week June 3 2013 (23)
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:
10 June 2013
Sir Quentin, the former children's laureate, said he had been put off reading temporarily after attempting to tackle challenging books too young. He added children enthralled by pictures would then naturally move on to Dickens at an "appropriate age".
Bloomsbury Children's has launched an e-book only imprint for YA, teen and New Adult titles, with plans to release the first digital books in September this year.
The imprint, Bloomsbury Spark, is currently seeking content across all genres, with YA editor Meredith Rich heading up the imprint in the US and freelance editors working on the project in the UK. The publisher plans to release between 10 and 30 titles this autumn, and 40 titles per year after that.
Bloomsbury Children's head Emma Hopkin said: "We've seen a great increase in our digital sales in both the US and UK, in particular for YA titles, and we realised there was no YA-dedicated digital list, and Bloomsbury can offer local marketing around the globe for these titles." Hopkin said the publisher had so far been seeking content via writers conferences, but that she expected to deal with both agented and unagented manuscripts.
3 June 2013
The choices offered by digital publishing can only be good news for writers, says Barry Eisler. So why are traditional publishers so angry?
Until November 2007, when Amazon introduced the Kindle, the only viable means of book distribution was paper. Accordingly, a writer who wanted to reach a mass audience needed a paper distribution partner. A writer could hire her own editor and her own cover design artist; she could even hire a printing press to create the actual books. The one service she couldn't hire out was distribution. And publishers didn't offer distribution as an à la carte service. If a writer wanted distribution, she had to pay a publisher 85% of her revenues for the entire publishing package: editorial, copyediting, proofreading, jacket design, printing, and marketing, all bundled with distribution.