When Shakespeare wrote, "What's past is prologue" in The Tempest, he could never have imagined that the phrase would be used for a consumer promotion in China. But millions of Chinese understand perfectly why e-commerce giant Alibaba adopted it as a marketing slogan for its hugely successful Singles' Day. They are optimistic about their future, despite the unprecedented global pandemic, and have retained an undiminished enthusiasm for shopping.
Links of the week November 9 2020 (46)
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:
16 November 2020
Singles' Day - held annually on 11/11- was created by Alibaba in 2009, to celebrate "being single" by shopping to treat yourself. It has since been rebranded as "Double 11", and has grown to be the world's biggest online shopping festival.
This year it has achieved another sales record of £56bn (RMB 372.3bn), 20 times bigger than sales on Amazon's Prime Day last month. Chinese publishers, who had already benefited from strong online sales in the summer, put their faith in Singles' Day to maximise their post-Covid recovery.
Two African women are in the running for the 2020 Booker Prize, in a historic first for the UK's most prestigious literary prize - and a major boost for storytellers on the continent.
News that Ethiopian-American Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King, and Zimbabwean Tsitsi Dangarembga, with her novel This Mournable Body, were on the shortlist for the £50,000 ($66,000) award was received with celebration on the African literary scene.
"The fact that there are two Africans, there are three black people on this list, feels like this is a clarion call to the industry that it is possible to judge something fairly, not fall into tokenism, to judge a work for what it is. It feels like it sets a new path for the competitions," Maaza said after the announcement that she was on the shortlist of six.
That HC and PRH are the two leading companies for HC is no surprise. HC has long eyed further expansion into book publishing and, as PW previously reported, HC CEO Brian Murray noted at a company Town Hall meeting this summer that the publisher was looking at acquiring S&S. PRH, seen by some as possibly too big to acquire S&S, was thrust into the mix in September when Thomas Rabe, CEO or PRH parent company Bertelsmann, told the Financial Times that the company was indeed very interested in buying S&S and said he had no antitrust concerns. "We looked at [antitrust concerns] and we don't think it is an issue," Rabe told the FT.
That HC and PRH are the two leading companies for HC is no surprise. HC has long eyed further expansion into book publishing and, as PW previously reported, HC CEO Brian Murray noted at a company Town Hall meeting this summer that the publisher was looking at acquiring S&S. PRH, seen by some as possibly too big to acquire S&S, was thrust into the mix in September when Thomas Rabe, CEO or PRH parent company Bertelsmann, told the Financial Times that the company was indeed very interested in buying S&S and said he had no antitrust concerns. "We looked at [antitrust concerns] and we don't think it is an issue," Rabe told the FT.
Author-illustrator Diane Alber self-published her first children's book, I'm Just a Scribble, in the fall of 2017 after a successful Kickstarter campaign. Fifty titles and nearly one million print unit sales later, she has partnered with Surge Licensing to expand her brand and characters globally.
The plan is to sign a traditional publisher to help expand distribution, formats, and geographic regions, and then move into other product categories such as toys, arts and crafts, school supplies, bedding, apparel, and more. The sweet spot for both publishing and products is kids ages 5-7.
"Diane has these incredible sales numbers, and it's solely from Amazon," said Elan Freedman, executive v-p of Surge Licensing, the agency Alber retained to find a publisher and handle consumer products licensing. "The success she has achieved and the audience she has captured through Amazon alone is indicative of a larger audience. She has this base of teachers and parents who love what she does, and she deals with social-emotional issues that kids need answers to right now and that parents need help in giving them those answers. We see an endless runway to grow this brand."
The Nigerian-American author won the Orange Prize in 2007 and her ‘Half of a Yellow Sun' has been voted the best of the Women's Prize's 25 years of winners.
As has become the custom for so many awards programs reaching significant anniversaries, the 25th year of the United Kingdom's Women's Prize for Fiction has used a public vote to select a "best of the best" honor.
Today (November 12), the organization in London has announced that the Nigerian-American author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been named the program's "Winner of Winners" for her 2006 Half of a Yellow Sun (Penguin Random House). At the time of her 2007 win 13 years ago, the award program was called the "Orange Prize" for its lead sponsor.
In a statement, Adichie is quoted today saying, "I'm especially moved to be voted ‘Winner of Winners' because this is the prize that first brought a wide readership to my work-and has also introduced me to the work of many talented writers."
Sci-fi anthology stalled since 1974 will be produced by executor, screenwriter J Michael Straczynski, adding stories by today's big-name SF writers
It is the great white whale of science fiction: an anthology of stories by some of the genre's greatest names, collected in the early 1970s by Harlan Ellison yet mysteriously never published. But almost 50 years after it was first announced, The Last Dangerous Visions is finally set to see the light of day.
The late Ellison changed the face of sci-fi with the publication of anthologies Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions, in 1968 and 1972, which featured writing by the likes of Philip K Dick, JG Ballard, Kurt Vonnegut and Ursula K Le Guin. Ellison, who was known for his combative nature - JG Ballard called him "an aggressive and restless extrovert who conducts life at a shout and his fiction at a scream" - announced a third volume, The Last Dangerous Visions, would be published in 1974. Contributors were said to include major names such as Frank Herbert, Anne McCaffrey, Octavia Butler and Daniel Keyes.
William Boyd was 16 in 1968, the year his new novel, Trio, is set. It was a moment of change and social revolution, but Boyd's impetus to write the novel-which centers on a shoot in Brighton, England, for a fictional film titled Ladder to the Moon-was driven by his teenage recollections of an era that was much less political.
During a phone call from his London home, Boyd says he was living in the U.K. in 1968 and then in 1969, he left for Paris. There, at 17, he met numerous people "who had been on the barricades" the previous May, and he soon realized that "the world was going to go to hell on a handcart." But this wasn't the feeling in the U.K.
"In Britain we were in a swinging '60s bubble," Boyd explains. The mood of fun and frivolity was expressed in a string of zany and largely subpar films like A Hard Day's Night and the lesser-known Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? The latter, he notes, was a flop, but it served as an inspiration for the novel. He wanted to "have a swinging '60s movie being made in Brighton, and around it the real world creeps in."
The author of the cult classic novel The Dice Man, in which a bored psychiatrist travels to some very dark places when he lets "the dice decide" his options, has died at the age of 87.
George Powers Cockcroft, who published The Dice Man in 1971 under the pseudonym Luke Rhinehart, died on 6 November, his publishers confirmed to the Guardian.
Although reports of his demise appeared in the French media earlier this week, and his nephew posted on Facebook that "Luke Rhinehart is dead ... This is real. I'm pretty sure", the Guardian waited for official confirmation from his publisher Titan. Rhinehart previously announced his own death in 2012, emailing friends to tell them: "It is our pleasure to inform you that Luke Rhinehart is dead." He was not, describing the letter as "a jeu d'esprit".
"I was getting a little tired of Luke," he told author Emmanuel Carrère in 2014. "I'm getting older, you know. I still love life: seeing what the weather's like when I look out the window in the morning, doing the gardening, making love, going kayaking, but I am less interested in my career, and my career was basically Luke. I wrote that letter for [his wife] Ann to send it to my correspondents when I died. I kept it in a file for two years, and one day I decided to send it."
I'm a writer and a techie. I like tinkering. Over the years I've observed that many writers are stuck using old technology which potentially hampers their creative output. If you'd like to improve your writing setup but don't know where to start, this guide is for you.
Software
When it comes to the practical act of writing, use whatever works for you. As long as you're doing the writing, you're a writer. Whether that means using pen and paper, dictation into a microphone, Microsoft Word or Google Docs is up to you.
The key is to find a process which gets out of the way. I can't write by hand simply due to my appalling handwriting, while I've always found Word to be inefficient for long form projects.
Some days we think of poetry as a dead antelope and poets as the wolves, hyenas, and coyotes who come to fight over the innards, teeth bared, growling. Some days we think of poetry as the center panel of Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights with poets as the naked libertines in small groups that notice only each other, some immersed in a pool balancing apples on their heads, some floating together in a bubble, others riding on the backs of birds. We notice these myriad socialities because we are poets, and because sociality defines who we read and who we listen to and what we think about. But the personal histories and arguments about politics and aesthetics that take up so much of our brain are all irrelevant to the average lay reader.
How does that person, interested in poetry but not involved in the fights and the alliances, decide what to read? While novels and memoirs receive regular review attention in the mainstream media, poetry is largely invisible in American culture. It's not a regular topic of dinner party conversation (unless of course everyone at the table is a poet). In the absence of a poet friend with invariably strong opinions or chance encounters with idiosyncratic staff picks at a local bookstore, it is difficult to sort through the many volumes of poetry published by coyotes and libertines each year, often by small presses with no publicity budget. Enter the literary prize.
2020 was a strange year, for obvious reasons.
Many of us spent a lot of 2020 in lockdown, either trying to keep up with work or looking for a new job.
Some turned to streaming services such as Netflix (for example, I subscribed to Disney Plus so I could finally watch The Mandalorian, only to discover the writing was terrible). Others spent their time learning new skills, while many took this an opportunity to dive into new books and read more.
How did COVID-19 change our reading habits? Which countries read the most this year? And what books were we reading?
Here are a few of the highlights from the infographic.
India reads more than any other country, followed by Thailand and China.
Printed books continue to drive more revenue than eBooks or audiobooks.
However, physical books sales did dip because of COVID-19 (not surprisingly).
Romance is our genre of choice, with one-third of all mass market fiction books being romance novels.
35% of the world read more due to COVID-19.
9 November 2020
If you want to publish a nonfiction book that lands you a literary agent or a contract from a sizable publisher (with a decent advance in the four or five figures), then market conditions-and your position in that market-will affect your ability to secure a deal.
Writers new to the publishing industry sometimes find it shocking how little they are evaluated on the writing or the merits of their book idea, and how much they're judged on market appeal-which includes their own personal potential in the market. (Surprise! Most of book publishing operates like a business.)
The good news: More nonfiction books are published and sold around the world than fiction. Personally, I find nonfiction an easier market to understand and excel in compared to fiction.
The bad news: nonfiction is so wide ranging that it's hard to talk about it as a single, uniform category-even though that's what I'm attempting to do in this post. You'll also find varied attitudes toward the market among publishers, depending on their size and mission. Some are, in fact, most concerned with the writing or the ideas within the books they acquire. But if they are to stay in business, publishers have to also consider market conditions, and that's why I'm writing this post. Here are the most common reasons that publishers reject nonfiction books.
One weekend five years ago my wife and I were invited to dinner by some friends in north London. Let's call them Sam and Nadia. Nadia is originally from Bulgaria.
On our way home afterwards, I happened to look at my smartphone. There, blazoned across the screen, was a weather forecast for Sofia. Why, for heaven's sake? I could only conclude that Google hadn't merely tracked my whereabouts, but in some sense "knew" the people I was visiting had Bulgarian connections.
This trivial incident was really the spark for Coyote Fork. I was already alarmed by the ever-growing impact of the internet on our lives. But the Sofia weather forecast brought home to me the reality of digital surveillance in an entirely personal way. I knew, then, that I wanted to write a book about the effects of Big Tech. The question was, what sort of book? All my previous novels had been historical, using voices that were appropriate to the periods in which they were set.
This, by contrast, had by definition to be a contemporary story - and not just contemporary, but located at the very edge of the present, at the point where it collides with the future. What form would be best suited to it?
I guess there are countless different ways to start writing a crime novel. The author might come up with a certain crime or a relatable protagonist who is ready to solve it. Sure, these two examples are important parts of a writing puzzle, but either one is something I usually start with. Namely I'm a huge fan of the location, or perhaps rather the setting. A delicious and exciting setting includes the place, weather, time of the day, nature, trees, animals... you name it. It's a combination of different aspects that can make you feel cozy or really frightened.
Modern horror stories often cross the boundaries in a nasty way-the murderers and monsters are entering your bed while you sleep, which can be very scary. I'm a fan of a more traditional setting, though; I actually like the somewhat clichéd things: stormy weather, isolated places and the darkness that hides the evil from sight. Here's a list of some of the greatest settings according to my opinion.
2020 hasn't been the greatest year but, if you're a fan of crime fiction, it does come with an important anniversary. In October 1920, the world had the first opportunity to read a murder mystery by a new writer called Agatha Christie. From that work, a literary icon was born - Christie is the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels beaten only by the Bible and the works of Shakespeare, and she crafted some of the greatest crime novels ever written. To mark this anniversary, here's a reflection on the writings of Dame Agatha Christie.
Christie was a fan of the detective genre, enjoying the works of Wilkie Collins and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. While she was working as a nurse, then a dispenser, during the First World War, she wrote her first detective novel. Although she completed The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1916, she wasn't able to sell it until 1920. She took inspiration from Belgian refugees and the soldiers she'd treated during the war to create Hercule Poirot and his associate Captain Arthur Hastings, one of the most iconic partnerships in crime fiction. The first Tommy and Tuppence novel, The Secret Adversary, followed in 1922, and Christie's reputation began to grow after the next Poirot release in 1923.
A murder takes place in a misty Himalayan hill resort. As the whodunit unfolds, a couple almost unwittingly begin sleuthing to get to the bottom of the crime. And the story is based on a novel by the world's most celebrated crime writer.
That's all Indian filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj is willing to reveal now about his upcoming film, based on a novel by "queen of crime" Agatha Christie.
It is also the first time that Agatha Christie Limited, which looks after the author's estate, has franchised her stories to an Indian filmmaker. "We have done many adaptations across the world and every country brings its own flavour to the piece. I have no doubt that this will be the same," James Prichard, Christie's great grandson and the CEO of the estate, told me.
Bhardwaj, 55, is one of India's most exciting filmmakers. Over the past two decades, he's directed and produced 15 films, including three modern-day adaptations of Shakespeare's plays - Maqbool based on Macbeth, Omkara on Othello, and Haider on Hamlet - which have a cult following among fans.
Independent shops have been "more agile" and better at surviving Covid-19 than chain stores, data indicates.
Small independent firms on the High Street suffered a net decline of 1,833 stores in the first half of 2020, according to research by the Local Data Company (LDC) and accountancy firm PwC.
That was less than a third of the 6,001 chain stores lost, the LDC said.
However, the two sectors together saw the biggest decline seen in the first half of a year since its records began.
Lucy Stainton, head of retail and strategic partnerships at the LDC, said it had been "an immensely challenging few months for the retail and hospitality sector".
She said the independent market had fared better as those businesses had been "more agile, bringing in new product lines and offering food deliveries".
They also had a smaller cost base to cover during periods of little or no trade and had been able to take advantage of government support schemes.
The push in book publishing for more authors and workers of color hasn't abated, and companies are increasingly making lasting changes to the way they do business.
This summer, as people across the United States gathered to protest police brutality and racial injustice, Krishan Trotman, an executive editor at Hachette Books, approached the head of the company with a proposal.
Ms. Trotman was worried that the conversation about inequality in the literary world would fade away after the marches died down.
"I've worked in publishing for more than 15 years, and I've seen Black voices become a trend, and I've seen the trend die," Ms. Trotman said. "We should not have to wait for a moment in the country like George Floyd to wake everybody up to the fact that there are tons of brown faces missing in the room."
So she pitched a new publishing imprint called Legacy Lit, dedicated to social justice and focused on works by writers of color. Michael Pietsch, Hachette's chief executive, said yes, and Legacy is now planning to release its first books in January 2022.
Black-owned bookshops in the UK are calling for better representation of black authors in the long-term after reporting a surge in interest following the protests over the summer sparked by the killing of George Floyd and by Black History Month.
"We want people to see reading books by black authors as a habit, as opposed to something you pick up in October", said Carolynn Bain, who set up an online shop stocking books of black origin in July after she became frustrated by the lack of black literature available in the UK.
She expected her venture, Afrori Books, to be a side-hustle at most but interest in black writers skyrocketed as a result of the Black Lives Matter protests, and business is booming.
Two years after the stark revelation that only 1% of British children's books featured a main character who was black, Asian or minority ethnic, the proportion has increased to 5%, according to new analysis. But a child from an ethnic minority background is far more likely to encounter an animal protagonist when reading a book than a main character sharing their ethnicity.
Two new reports into representation in children's books are published on Wednesday, with the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) finding that 5% of children's books published in the UK last year had an ethnic minority main character, compared to 4% in 2018 and just 1% in 2017.
We need to make sure that the incremental increase doesn't make us complacent, or doesn't make us feel like we're kind of done. Farrah Serroukh, CLPE
The number of books that featured any black, Asian or minority ethnic characters also increased to 10%, up from 7% in 2018 and 4% in 2017. This is still well below 33.5%, the proportion of primary school aged children who are from a minority ethnic background.
Simon & Schuster's rights team has sold A F Steadman's debut middle-grade series Skandar and the Unicorn Thief in 23 languages, with total advances in excess of £1m.
The global deals were largely snapped up by pre-empts and at auction. The series has sold to publishers in all territories including CITIC Press Corporation China, HarperCollins Germany, Penguin Random House Spain and Portugal, Hachette France and Ushio Japan.
Stephanie Purcell, rights director, said: "The rights team have had a phenomenal worldwide response to Skandar and the Unicorn Thief and it's been fantastic that so many international publishers share our passion and enthusiasm for this outstanding series. This is definitely the biggest series I have experienced in my rights career."