In 1991, one year after James Daunt opened his first eponymous bookstore in London, Waterstones unveiled its first U.S. bookstore in Boston. The U.K. chain grew its stateside presence to a modest size, maintaining a foothold in the country until the turn of the millennium. Like today, the 1990s saw many retailers forced to close, but for a different reason: they were ceding ground to chains, big box stores, and superstores. Among the chains expanding rapidly at the time was the bookseller Barnes & Noble, which had acquired several other bookstore chains and was subsequently blamed, together with the rise of Amazon, for the demise of thousands of independent bookstores.
Links of the week June 3 2019 (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 2019
Fast forward to the present, when Amazon is the unchallenged superpower in online retailing, indie bookselling is having a resurgence, and the much-beleaguered B&N has just been sold to Elliott Advisors for $683 million. And Daunt is now the man charged with running B&N and reviving its fortunes.
The Publishers Association released the results of a survey, commissioned by Kantar, into the reading habits of 2,001 UK adults.
It found the main barrier to reading is a lack of time, with audiobooks cited as a popular solution to the problem.
According to the results, 72% of those surveyed said they had bought a book in any format over the last year, with 21% of book buyers using an audiobook.
It found 54% of audiobook buyers listen to them for their convenience, while 41% said they choose the format because it allows them to consume books when reading print isn't possible. In all, 27% of audiobook consumers listen to them at least once a week while 22% said they were able to retain information better.
Stephen Lotinga, c.e.o. of the Publishers Association, said: "The audiobook sector continues to go from strength to strength as consumers look for new and exciting ways to incorporate books and stories into their everyday lives.
"Audiobooks are an essential companion for the everyday reader who is busy and on-the-go, like many of us so often are. They are a vital part of the publishing eco-system and allow consumers to tailor reading to suit their busy lives."
Every day more than 1.8 million books are sold in the US and another half a million books are sold in the UK. Despite all the other easy distractions available to us today, there's no doubt that many people still love reading. Books can teach us plenty about the world, of course, as well as improving our vocabularies and writing skills. But can fiction also make us better people?
The claims for fiction are great. It's been credited with everything from an increase in volunteering and charitable giving to the tendency to vote - and even with the gradual decrease in violence over the centuries.
Characters hook us into stories. Aristotle said that when we watch a tragedy two emotions predominate: pity (for the character) and fear (for yourself). Without necessarily even noticing, we imagine what it's like to be them and compare their reactions to situations with how we responded in the past, or imagine we might in the future.
Guardian research shows that the top 100 illustrated children's books last year showed growing marginalisation of female and minority ethnic characters
The most popular picture books published in 2018 collectively present a white and male-dominated world to children, feature very few BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) characters and have become more biased against girls in the past year, Guardian research reveals.
In-depth analysis of the top 100 bestselling illustrated children's books of 2018, using data from Nielsen BookScan, has been carried out by the Guardian and Observer for the second year in a row.
"If you're an author seeking a marketing advantage for your books, then a writing conference is one of the best long-term investments you can make," says Jane Friedman, publishing veteran and author of Publishing 101. "There's no replacement for beginning to build a relationship in person; once you make that connection, your later follow-ups, via email or social media, are much more likely to be successful."
There is little question that writing conferences and events enable indie authors to meet key players in the self-publishing industry, network, get the word out about their books, and attend informative panel discussions. However, not all writing conferences are created equal. Some focus on how to become a better writer while others - such as SFWC - concentrate on publishing and marketing skills. So be sure to do some homework before signing up for any conference or event.
In a focus session on "Digital Transformation and Disruption in African Publishing" at the International Publishers Association‘s (IPA) "Africa Rising" seminar in Nairobi, hosted by the Kenya Publishers Association, two panelists will have the same last name-and almost the same face.
Chidi and Chika Nwaogu of Nigeria are the co-founders of a publishing platform with a unique character: Publiseer is for authors and for musical artists.
What's at issue in the conversation is the question of where and how emerging markets are being surfaced in African publishing today. A part of the premise of the program is that "digital transformation is allowing these developing publishing markets to leapfrog into the future," something that a combination book-and-music platform's creators surely know something about.
3 June 2019
Philip Pullman waited 17 years before allowing readers back into the world of Lyra Belacqua, Joseph Heller took 33 to return to Catch-22, and George RR Martin is still keeping fans hanging for his version of the final struggle for the Iron Throne. The eight years readers have been waiting since the second volume of Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell trilogy may not seem much in comparison. But for Mantel, they have been the most demanding years of her career.
Anne Rice is another author who understands the strain of reader expectation. After publishing a series of novels set in the world of Interview With the Vampire between 1976 and 2003, it was 11 years before she returned with the novel Prince Lestat. Rice admits that she had been under great pressure from fans to write about the character again - but she couldn't do it until his story came alive.
Nearly three times as many Americans read a book of history in 2017 as watched the first episode of the final season of "Game of Thrones." The share of young adults who read poetry in that year more than doubled from five years earlier. A typical rage tweet by President Trump, misspelled and grammatically sad, may get him 100,000 "likes." Compare that with the 28 million Americans who read a book of verse in the first year of Trump's presidency, the highest share of the population in 15 years.
So, even with a president who is ahistoric, borderline literate and would fail a sixth-grade reading comprehension test, something wonderful and unexpected is happening in the language arts. When the dominant culture goes low, the saviors of our senses go high. Which brings us to Michelle Obama. You can make a case that we owe a big part of the renaissance of the written word in recent months to her memoir, Becoming. In the first 15 days after publication last year, it sold enough copies to become the best-selling book in the United States for all of 2018. By the end of March of this year, it had sold 10 million copies and was on pace to become the best-selling memoir ever written in this country.
I was late to her book, having my doubts about platitudinous, focus-group-neutered memoirs by political personalities. As it turned out, she's a luminous, observant, self-aware writer, even if she had some help from a team of ghostwriters.
When you're nervous about reading in public, you tend to picture the audience as the enemy, distant and judgmental, just waiting for you to mess up. If you think about this for a moment, you'll realize that it's an illusion born of fear. In fact, your audience wants to love you and your work. Some of these people probably already do.
The audience is on your side. They love writing just as you do; that's why they're there. These wonderful people have taken time out of their lives, probably traveled some distance and spent some money, just to hear you read. They've come to witness your imagination at work. They've come to be moved, entertained, motivated, validated, informed, provoked, stimulated and inspired. In short, they're receptive.
They are your allies.
The strongest impact you can make when reading aloud is emotional, not intellectual. For that reason, you will do best if you choose content you have a strong emotional connection with: passages that make you laugh or cry%u2014if you let yourself.
Lee Child has had the kind of success most authors can only fantasise about. He's written 23 thrillers featuring American hero Jack Reacher - with total sales of at least 100 million copies worldwide. He's just been named author of the year at the British Book Awards. And if he hadn't lost his job in TV none of it would have happened.
Lee Child - born Jim Grant in Coventry in 1954 - says he grew up reading exactly what an average British boy would read in the 1960s. "I'm not one of these guys who claim they read Dostoevsky when they were seven. I started with Enid Blyton and then the Biggles books by Captain W.E. Johns and later it was Ian Fleming. Alistair MacLean probably made the biggest impression on me with stories like Where Eagles Dare. All very normal stuff for a kid of my generation.
"Back then everything was so unstructured compared to the modern world of online book groups and suggestions for further reading. I sort of miss the chaotic days of random discovery."
Last spring, I was flown to Seoul to launch the Korean edition of my debut novel, Dark Chapter. My publisher Hangilsa Press had astutely monitored the growing public response to #MeToo in Korea and had decided to not only bring forward my novel's publication date, but also set up a full promotional "tour" for me with multiple TV interviews, public talks, and a press conference. In some ways, it was every debut author's dream: a round-trip flight halfway across the world, five nights in a luxury hotel, guest of honor treatment throughout. It was also completely exhausting, requiring nonstop eloquence and enthusiasm about a difficult topic (my own rape)-and all this while jet-lagged, surrounded by translators. (I am Taiwanese American, not Korean American, and I don't speak any Asian language fluently, but my Korean publisher, media, and audiences were unfazed by the language gap.)
It was simultaneously exhilarating and lonely, yet also the kind of publicity platform any ambitious novelist would love to have. But throughout most of this, a question popped up, the inverse of a more familiar one: Would my Korean publishers have done this if I were white?
Indie authors all agree: hiring an editor to work on your manuscript is one of the best and most necessary investments an author can make. Editing takes both time and money and can encompass anything from a substantiative (i.e. structural or content) edit-where the editor makes suggestions on character and plot development, chapter organization, and big-picture issues-to copyediting and proofreading. We talked to eight successful indie authors who shared their editing experiences and offered some tips and advice as well.
Hugh Howey Hugh Howey is one of self-publishing%u2019s biggest success stories%u2014and one of its greatest champions. The author of the bestselling Wool series is a Kindle Top 100 author and a #1 bestseller in Amazon%u2019s science fiction category. His series was also optioned by Ridley Scott and Steve Zaillian for a feature film. Howey hires an editor, David Gatewood, for all of his books, and sees the process as one that benefits not just his own writing but the creative industry as a whole.
The creator of the classic children's books The Tiger Who Came to Tea and Mog the Forgetful Cat, Judith Kerr, who has died aged 95, was unusual in being equally successful as a writer and an illustrator. She always claimed that she was "a very slow" illustrator and that her work was "more rubbing out than drawing", but in a career that ran from 1968 to this year she created more than 30 books, mostly about Mog, all of which have remained in print and which sell worldwide.
The bestselling The Tiger Who Came to Tea (1968) was her first book. Characterised by its bold, naive-style illustrations and gentle anarchy, it tells the playful and imaginative story of how the everyday routine of a mother and her young daughter, Sophie, is disrupted by the unexpected arrival of a handsome stripy tiger. There is no panic; the tiger settles down to drink all the water and eat all the food, to Sophie's delight rather than terror, before exiting politely. When father comes home he cheers mother and daughter up by taking them out to dinner.
Described as "a dazzling first book", which would make children "scream with delicious pleasure at the dangerous naughtiness of the notion" by Antonia Fraser, one of the earliest reviewers, it was initially received as exactly what it was: a simple picture book that generated delight for children. Later, it was subjected to much analysis, with many assuming that the tiger stood for the Gestapo, who had so vividly interrupted Judith's own childhood. It was a view she dismissed flatly; when chairing her at events across the country I frequently heard her say, in the nicest way possible, "It's just the story of a tiger who came to tea. I made it up to amuse my children because we were bored and because their father was away filming for very long days at a time."
Before a bookstore event in Chicago in November to celebrate the launch of Shell Game, the 19th V.I. Warshawski book, Sara Paretsky sat down to talk about her writing career, her inspirations and false starts, the beginnings of Sisters in Crime, pioneer journals, and much more. Only a few days later, before this conversation could be transcribed and published, Paretsky's beloved husband, Courtenay Wright, died. At the time of this conversation, Wright had just turned 95, Shell Game had just been released, and the interviewer, Lori Rader-Day, had just become the national vice president/president-elect of Sisters in Crime, the organization Paretsky established in 1987.
I write what's on my mind. There's a wonderful Chicago writer, Carol Anshaw, whose books are very under-recognized, but she took up painting in middle age and she calls herself an autodidact, which always sounds to me like an extinct bird. But I am an autodidact as a writer. I sometimes think I would be a better writer if I actually had some training, more discipline, more focus. But I write what's on my mind. And maybe it keeps the series fresh.
For Allen Lau, it turns out that sometimes the biggest decision in a business can be to stick to your original idea and build on it.
That's his story, anyway. It's the story of Wattpad Corp., a Canadian company that started in 2006 as an online reading room and now attracts 70 million users a month to its site and app in more than 50 languages.
"People share their stories, from science fiction to romance to everything in between. Every day we see about half a billion uploads of content," says Mr. Lau, Wattpad's co-founder and CEO.
Not all successful tech companies stick to their guns for as long as Wattpad has. Netflix, for example, used to deliver DVDs by mail; Amazon sold books and has pivoted to, well, everything. But while Wattpad's products and services are expanding, they're still based on its first premise, that people want to read and write.