Publishing panels can be a bit stuffy, but that was far from the case at the latest PubTechConnect event, "Book Lovers on the Internet: Connecting with Readers in Digital Ways," held at New York University on June 12. The event, produced by the Center for Publishing at NYU's School of Professional Studies in conjunction with Publishers WeeklyInternational news website of book publishing and bookselling including business news, reviews, bestseller lists, commentaries http://www.publishersweekly.com/, was packed, and brought some of the internet's leading books personalities under one roof to discuss the internet's effects on literary culture.
Links of the week June 10 2019 (24)
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:
17 June 2019
If there was one major takeaway from the evening, it was that all of the panelists believed that the internet has served to expand literary culture and its reach. Straub described literary activity on the web as "a good cocktail party, where it's always busy and you're not the only one there," and Lee noted that readers who might have had a hard time finding others with similar tastes before the age of social media no longer have that problem. "You can really find your tribe online," she said, adding that this makes the internet an ideal tool for "having a one to one conversation with the people who love to talk about books" in a way that allows authors, publishers, and others to really "zero in on readers."
Sixty-seven percent of professional writers earned £10,000 or less in 2018, a Royal Society of LiteratureThis British site may seem rather formal (stated aim ‘to sustain and encourage all that is perceived as best whether traditional or experimental in English letters, and to strive for a Catholic appreciation of literature’), but has a lively series of lectures and discussions involving distinguished authors. Also administers literary prizes. http://www.rslit.org/index1.html poll of more than 2,000 authors has found, with a room of one's own still viewed as the most important requirement for a writing career 90 years on from Virginia Woolf's seminal essay.
‘A Room of My Own: What writers need to work today' launches today (Wednesday 19th June), and examines the state of author earnings and the need for connection across the industry. It is the first time the society has undertaken such research and shows that a writer is almost three times as likely to earn £30,000 or more from work outside of their writing (14% compared to 5%), a statistic labelled "astonishing" by RSL chair Dr Lisa Appignanesi. However non-financial forms of support were seen as more important to sustaining a writing career.
Across a survey of 2,166 respondents, writers said the most significant kinds of support to them were a room of one's own (80%), followed by peer support (65%) and emotional support (60%). Financial support came in last at 58% in the survey, which was conducted to mark nine decades since the publication of Woolf's essay, 'A Room of One's Own'.
Four years ago, Kerry Hudson had just won a prestigious French literary prize when one late payment left her unable to make the rent on her sublet flat in Whitechapel. Could she continue as a writer? Or would she have to return to her old job in the charity sector?
Louise Candlish had 11 novels under her belt when, a couple of years ago, she found herself considering quitting. "Some of them had really flopped," she says. "I had got myself into that catch-22, where your sales figures aren't as healthy as they once were or as good as retailers would like. So then your book comes out and it's not stocked in as many places, so it doesn't sell as well. Then you're writing your next one and it won't earn as much money, as they're looking at what happened to the one before. You're almost doomed to continue the pattern."
"It's just so hard for a midlist, mid-career author to break the cycle. So much of the pot is given to the hyped debuts and the established household names. So I made a concerted effort," says Candlish, who has seen her advance double to six figures, because of the success of Our House. "You really are as good as your last sales figures. I've often been in situations where I've literally been scrabbling around for coins at the back of the sofa the week before getting some good news. It's gone quite close to the wire sometimes but I've managed to keep going."
I love me a good Sherlock Holmes adaptation. But something that always bugs me about film and television Sherlockiana (especially the more modern, more big-budget adaptations) is how quickly they go from zero to Moriarty. And of course the Napoleon of Crime is an iconic part of the canon, especially the later canon which increasingly referenced the professor, and developed a habit of pitting the great detective against ever vaster and more elaborate conspiracies
The formula of the traditional mystery is straightforward. A crime (usually a murder) occurs, and then the detective assembles an array of clues, all of which are laid out in front of the reader, who is then given ample time to have a crack at solving the problem themselves before the detective lays out the solution in the final chapter, rather like the answer to a crossword puzzle. Not so Holmes, who frequently presents his conclusions before he ever shares his observations with the reader. Doyle, we must remember, was writing before the detective genre was established, and would (in his early writing at least) have been quite unaware that there were readers who wanted to play along at home.
What is it about language that gets people so hot under the collar? That drives them to spend hours arguing with strangers on the internet, to go around correcting misspelt signs in the dead of night, or even to threaten acts of violence? The languages we speak are central to our sense of self, so it is not surprising that their finer points can become a battleground. Passionate feelings about what's right and wrong extend from the use of "disinterested" to what gay people are allowed to call themselves. Here are some of the most memorable rows, spats and controversies.
A so-called "grammar vigilante" has been correcting shop fronts in Bristol, England, for more than a decade. His pet peeve is the confusion of plain old plurals with possessives, which in English are usually marked by an apostrophe followed by an S. Confronted with a sign advertising "Amy's Nail's", he will obliterate the second apostrophe with a sticker. Addressing the potentially illegal nature of his mission in a BBC report, he said: "It's more of a crime that the apostrophe is wrong in the first place". Linguist Rob Drummond disagrees: "Fetishising the apostrophe as if its rules are set in stone," he writes, "and then fostering an environment in which it is acceptable to take pleasure in uncovering other people's linguistic insecurities is not OK."
After years, it finally happened: I was published in a literary magazine alongside Diane, my ultimate writing enemy.
The worst part was that her poem was genuinely good, short and elegant and totally over my head. Her bio on the contributors page was shorter than mine, confident in its brevity, and informed me only that she had published a collection and that she lived in Brooklyn. Both details, however vague, proved to me how much more of a writer Diane was compared to me, a nobody with an office job in Iowa and no published book to speak of. I imagined Diane waking up every morning in her small but chic New York apartment, kissing her chiseled-jaw husband, and dashing out to nibble organic bagels and sip espresso and write at a hip café for a couple hours before dashing to her exhausting yet rewarding job as an editorial assistant for a Big Five publisher. In my daydreams, Diane occupies an existence that I've always wanted and that I know I will probably never have.
After Diane and I appeared side by side in the magazine years later, I Googled her to discover all the new and exciting ways she was surpassing me. Though I hadn't thought about her in years, and she almost certainly didn't remember me, seeing her name with mine in the table of contents reopened my obsession. A spare moment I could have spent jotting down notes for a story was instead wasted on piecing together Diane's indirect slights against my ego. We'd been published in many of the same places, albeit not in the same issues, and she placed poems in journals I've been trying in vain to impress for years. My fury peaked when I found out she'd enrolled in an MFA program that I myself had been accepted into but could not attend because I received no funding offer.
Special issue Africa Rising
Interviews and market information highlight just a few of the opportunities for African and international publishers to work together. This magazine was produced in cooperation with the International Publishers Association and its 'Africa Rising' seminar in Nairobi last week.
As we enter a new phase in the glob-al publishing industry's development-in which future readers are increasingly likely to be found in emerging publishing mar-kets-this is the African publishing indus-try's time to shine. Africa has some of the fastest mobile and internet connectivity growth rates in the world and nearly 60 per-cent of its population is below 24 years old.
It is rare, in this day and age, to see a good tweet on the internet, but I did love this one, from New York Times writer Erin Griffith, which includes a graph she designed to depict the dramatic ups and downs of a writer's self-esteem, which are entirely dependent upon the stage of the writing/editing process they're in. There is the ecstatic high in submitting a draft to one's editor, and the inevitable gloom that follows the first round of edits received. Writing may not be the only profession subject to such wildly variable morale, but to hear writers tell it, there's simply nothing worse. As Dorothy Parker once said (according to the internet, anyway), "I hate writing, but I love having written."
What our chores and our writing have in common, then, is their requirement for boring, everyday discipline. This, I suspect, is what people mean when they say they hate writing: not so much the actual typing of words as the act of sitting down at one's desk (or, more realistically, one's couch), and opening a blank document. Like most chores and obligations - like trying to get oneself to the gym - the low point is just before you begin. And like most chores, the satisfaction derived from writing is all too short-lived. Especially when you're writing for the ephemeral internet, or writing anything that will be discussed on the internet. "There's so much out there that your stuff is competing against," says Young. "People can really like it, and then two hours later they really like something else."
10 June 2019
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.
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.