Abena, who is 18, recently read Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, and thought it was wonderful. She does feel a bit bad about downloading it illegally, she says, but her mother is a single parent who can't afford to feed her voracious love of books. She has also enjoyed the entire Percy Jackson series without paying its author, Rick Riordan, a penny. She's not a thief, though, she says: "I wouldn't take food or clothes without paying the people who made them, because they're physical things. I believe real life and the internet differ."
Links of the week March 4 2019 (10)
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:
11 March 2019
Abena (not her real name) is one of millions of people who use book-piracy websites to illegally download work by authors they love. The UK government's Intellectual Property Office estimates that 17% of ebooks are consumed illegally. Generally, pirates tend to be from better-off socioeconomic groups, and aged between 30 and 60. Many use social media to ask for tips when their regular piracy website is shut down; when I contacted some, those who responded always justified it by claiming they were too poor to buy books - then tell me they read them on their e-readers, smartphones or computer screens - or that their areas lacked libraries, or they found it hard to locate books in the countries where they lived. Some felt embarrassed. Others blamed greedy authors for trying to stop them.
Audiobooks were a hot topic at last year's London Book Fair, and the interest hasn't cooled. On the opening morning of the 2019 London Book Fair, a panel of publishers, moderated by the Audio Publishers Association's Michele Cobb, charted the audiobook's rapid rise, and told a standing room only crowd that the format's growth shows no signs of slowing down.
The improving technology is also driving growth, especially the rise of smart speakers. In the last two years, the number of those listening to audiobooks through services like Google Home, or Amazon's Alexa has been on the rise-and the survey shows that listeners are increasingly listening to audiobooks at home, to relax. Traditionally, audio has been more popular amonng multi-taskers and commuters. But the APA data showed that the most popular place to listen to an audiobook is at home. And the data shows that more and more listeners are listening to relax.
Rape, infighting, secrets, financial malpractice; the scandal surrounding the Nobel Prize in Literature began in November 2017 when Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter published allegations by eighteen women that they had been sexually assaulted by Jean-Claude Arnault, a 71-year-old Swedish-French photographer. Arnault was married to Katarina Frostenson, a member of the Swedish Academy, and over the following months the man who boasted to be the "19th member of the committee" was accused of 20 years of sexual assaults, including incidents at properties owned by the Academy-not to mention other illegal activities, such as leaking the names of soon-to-be laureates, which are subject to heavy betting.
The Nobel Prize has been awarded in five categories since 1895, and over that time it has gained a serious amount of cultural cachet. You probably respect a Nobel laureate even if you don't know much, if anything, about the actual criteria considered for the prize. Nobel stipulated that the prize for literature should honor the person who produced "the most outstanding work in an ideal direction."
The other day Will Self unburdened himself on the state of fiction with crushing hauteur. ‘What's now regarded as serious literature would, ten or 20 years ago, have been regarded as young adult fiction... in terms of literary history, it does seem a bit of a regression. If you consider that Nabokov's Lolita was on the New York Times bestseller list for nine months, it's a different order of literature...'
Back to my Lolita question. Would any publisher have the balls to publish a book by an old white man about an old white man rogering an underage girl, given that the list of too-hot-to-handle topics (as described by Ms Shriver) include "anything to do with gender, sex, race, immigration, disability, social class, obesity and Islam"?
Digital books were once heralded as being a replacement for print and everyone in the bookselling and publishing industry were scared. It looks like our love affair with ebooks is over, primarily due to stagnant sales and a resurgence of print.
Independent bookstores are the places where you drop in for the latest paperback, listen to a reading from a favorite author or find a unique gift for a unique friend. And they're thriving. According to the American Booksellers Association, its membership grew for the ninth year in a row in 2018, with stores operating in more than 2,400 locations. Not only that, sales at independent bookstores are up 5% over 2017.
There are a few reasons why ebook sales have been declining over the past four years. They doubled in price, when publishers gained control over pricing, instead of Amazon or Kobo charging their own. You cannot loan an ebook to a friend and cannot resell an ebook, once you have finished it. Lots of people have embraced Overdrive, and are borrowing ebooks from the public library. In 2018 65 different library systems each loaned out more than one million ebooks in the space of a year; one system, Harris County Public Library in Texas, loaned out more than two million ebooks.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti turns 100 on March 24. At nearly five score, there is much poetic breath left in the famed poet's literary lungs. The streams of his consciousness pour out in his latest book, a novel titled Little Boy, which Doubleday will publish March 19. It is the story of Ferlinghetti's extraordinary life-"a story," the publisher said, "steeped in the rhythmic energy of the beats, gleaming with Whitman's visionary spirit, channeling the incantatory power of Proust and Joyce."
Throughout Ferlinghetti's long life, the revolutionary poet and born maverick has been beholden to none. Part of his nonconformist side was revealed in the courage he displayed in defending freedom of the press at a time when few did so. After publishing Howl and selling it in his bookstore, Ferlinghetti kept it alive despite federal and local attempts to ban it. In the ensuing legal battle in 1957, First Amendment law was forever changed. The Howl case is a remarkable chapter in the history of the free press in America.
Just hours before Prime Minister Theresa May's latest Brexit deal was heavily defeated in the U.K. House of Commons, writers at the London Book Fair criticized the decision to abandon the E.U.
Speaking at the London Book Fair just hours before the U.K. House of Commons voted on Tuesday night on the newest Brexit proposal, writer Ian McEwan described leaving the E.U. as "a national tragedy." "I would like the Prime Minister to revoke Article 50, a one-line email would do, although we know that's not going to happen. There's a possibility of a second referendum, but an extension is only going to be a couple of months. I think the Tories are going to look for a new leader, and the Labour party is in a state. So I'm feeling quite pessimistic, but I'll be marching on the 23rd for a second referendum."
Creating compelling content that attracts and engages clients, potential customers and peers is one of the best ways to illustrate your brand and generate leads that result in the future expansion of your goals. Though creating content is not a new concept, you do need to explore opportunities that our highly digitalized world provides for showcasing your ideas. This is not a general article advocating for the utilization of social media (although that becomes an essential tool in promoting your content). Instead, we are going to explore the modern version of a thousand-year-old practice: writing a book and distributing it to a wide audience.
Writing a book is not what it used to be even 20 years ago. Back then, you would sweat over putting together a manuscript for months or even years. When you finally finished that arduous task, you were at the mercy of a publisher who might or might not deem it worthy of printing and distributing to local and national bookstores. Finding that publisher who would embrace your book and run with it was akin to picking the winning lottery number. It happened, but not to very many authors. So, what has changed? First, the sweating over writing a book has.
4 March 2019
Disputes involving AJ Finn, romance writers and even filmmaker Danny Boyle are in the news - but showing someone stole your idea is close to impossible
"As if there was much of anything in any human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism!" opined Mark Twain more than 100 years ago. "The kernel, the soul - let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances - is plagiarism."
Solomon says the Society is often contacted by authors complaining that another has pilfered an idea. "Some cases are absolutely straightforward, but legal action is very tricky in cases which don't concern actual language copying but rely on copying of themes, plots or structure. They're expensive to take, they depend on line-by-line checking of work and unfortunately many authors don't have the funds to go against large publishing or film companies to take action with no guarantee of success."
"We're now moving into one that's far more serious in terms of the collision of ideas and the need for stories, the need for writers to be published freely, courageously. Cut us and you'll find it-deep down in the publishing communities of the United Kingdom, the United States, the European countries - there's the real belief that we have a responsibility to our society, to the cultures we're part of."
While the new realities of data in the business mean "The pebbles we throw into the pond have the capacity to create ripples that go much further, much faster," he says, "I think it's also a moment for publishers to identify the truth that we've been living in a fairly commercial environment.
"We're now moving into one that's far more serious in terms of the collision of ideas and the need for stories, the need for writers to be published freely, courageously. Cut us and you'll find it-deep down in the publishing communities of the United Kingdom, the United States, the European countries-there's the real belief that we have a responsibility to our society, to the cultures we're part of."
For indie authors, few free marketing efforts match the power of book reviews and blurbs. But many authors don't pursue reviews and blurbs, and that's a shame. Those who try are often disappointed with the results, and inexperience at querying reviewers is usually the cause.
1. IDENTIFY TARGETS
This is the most important part of the process. You only want to approach reviewers who are at the "top of the mountain" in terms of the influence they have over potential book buyers and readers. That's why it's so important to know who potential readers are, and who influences them.
And you shouldn't put limits on yourself. Instead, think of the perfect review or testimonial-the one that could really affect book sales-and what it would look like on the cover of your book or in the first paragraph of a press release. Then, go for it, and make sure to include the influencers identified on the list of reviewers and bloggers to contact.
This week, millions of students and teachers are taking part in Read Across America, a national literacy program celebrated annually around the birthday of Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. For over 20 years, teachers and students have donned costumes - often the Cat in the Hat's iconic red and white striped hat - and devoured books like Green Eggs and Ham.
But some of Seuss' classics have been criticized for the way they portray people of color. In And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, for example, a character described as Chinese has two lines for eyes, carries chopsticks and a bowl of rice, and wears traditional Japanese-style shoes. In If I Ran the Zoo, two men said to be from Africa are shown shirtless, shoeless and wearing grass skirts as they carry an exotic animal. Outside of his books, the author's personal legacy has come into question, too %u2014 Seuss wrote an entire minstrel show in college and performed as the main character in full blackface.
Female writers have responded to the #MeToo movement by taking difficult themes such as rape and gaslighting and exploring them in some of this year's most anticipated novels.
From books such as Harriet Tyce's crime debut Blood Orange to witty commercial fiction such as Candice Carty-Williams's Queenie, female writers are increasingly tackling subjects that were once considered taboo.
It is not just new authors who are confronting these dark and often difficult stories. Crime queen Denise Mina's Conviction contains a subplot involving a high-profile rape case; Erin Kelly's Stone Mothers considers how society judges women who fail to conform; Mel McGrath's The Guilty Party examines the fallout after a group of friends witness a possible attack; and Abi Maxwell's haunting second novel The Den examines youth, sex and power in a tight-knit community. All are out later this year.
The Society of AuthorsThe British authors’ organization, with a membership of over 7,000 writers. Membership is open to those who have had a book published, or who have an offer to publish (without subsidy by the author). Offers individual specialist advice and a range of publications to its members. Has also campaigned successfully on behalf of authors in general for improved terms and established a minimum terms agreement with many publishers. Recently campaigned to get the Public Lending Right fund increased from £5 million to £7 million for the year 2002/2003. Regularly uses input from members to produce comparative surveys of publishers’ royalty payment systems. http://www.societyofauthors.org/ (SoA) has renewed its calls for TV companies to pay and credit historians and authors for their research work after a rise in complaints from members.
SoA c.e.o. Nicola Solomon said writers were increasingly complaining of not being paid or credited where books had formed the basis of hit shows or for research they provided to producers. She claimed it was a "perennial problem" made worse by the huge amount of television now being produced and the need for content to fill them.
The SoA recently drew up a series of guidelines on good practice for production companies and authors with Pact, the trade association for media firms. It followed the experience of Hallie Rubenhold who claimed her book The Covent Garden Ladies had inspired ITV drama "Harlots". She was later credited as the series inspiration.
Among its recommendations is that producers should be clear from the start whether they are merely seeking background information or a contribution and whether renumeration is on offer.
UK sales of translated fiction grew by 5.5% last year, largely thanks to sales by top authors like Jo Nesbo, research commissioned by the Man Booker International Prize shows.
According to the figures, compiled by Nielsen, translated fiction had sales worth £20.7m in 2018, with the "general/literary fiction" category growing by 20%. Translations made up 5.63% of fiction published in the UK.
The statistics showed UK translated fiction is overwhelmingly European, with French making up the highest proportion, at 17% of sales. But, for books published in the past five years, Norwegian and Swedish authors were most popular. The rise was mainly down to a good year for the top five authors on the list, who made up just over 25% of the total sales.
Last October here at Publishing Perspectives, I wrote about starting my new publishing house-actually more like a publishing room - Mensch Publishing.
I promised/threatened an update when its first book hit the streets, and February 7 saw the release of Guy Kennaway's affectionate, funny, and important story of his mother's desire to end her own life. Time To Go will be available around the world in English, in print, in ebook, and in audio formats.
What, if anything, have I learned? Perhaps nine lessons to follow up a Christmas theme.
Lesson 1.
Finding the right book is by far the most important thing, but getting the small things right is vital and unbelievably hard work.
Lesson 2.
Being a small (tiny) independent publisher is liberating in its avoidance of group think and corporate bureaucracy but challenging in its complexity. I have more than 1,000 emails in my files all for one book and that%u2019s computed after I%u2019ve assiduously deleted the several thousand I was copied into for no reason.