It might be a picture of gloom and doom for most business sectors in 2020 though surprisingly, the publishing sector has come out unscathed from the vagaries of the pandemic. Sales have largely been positive across all segments of the book industry, which includes printed books, eBooks, and audiobooks.
Links of the week January 4 2021 (01)
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:
4 January 2021
Print sales have risen by 8 percent, which may not seem much but is the highest it has been in several years. Similarly, there has been a rise in demand for eBooks and audiobooks as well even though both make up a smaller proportion of the market. According to figures put up by the Association of American PublishersThe national trade association of the American book publishing industry; AAP has more than 300 members, including most of the major commercial publishers in the United States, as well as smaller and non-profit publishers, university presses and scholarly societies, audiobook revenue rose by 17 percent over the same period last year. The sale of eBooks too picked up by registering a 16 percent growth.
George Orwell died at University College Hospital, London, on 21 January 1950 at the early age of 46. This means that unlike such long-lived contemporaries as Graham Greene (died 1991) or Anthony Powell (died 2000), the vast majority of his compendious output (21 volumes to date) is newly out of copyright as of 1 January. Naturally, publishers - who have an eye for this kind of opportunity - have long been at work to take advantage of the expiry date and the next few months are set to bring a glut of repackaged editions.
The Oxford University Press is producing World's Classics versions of the major books and there are several bulky compendia about to hit the shelves - see, for example, the Flame Tree Press's George Orwell: Visions of Dystopia. I have to declare an interest myself, having spent much of the spring lockdown preparing annotated editions of Orwell's six novels, to be issued at the rate of two a year before the appearance of my new Orwell biography (a successor to 2003's Orwell: The Life) in 2023. As for the tide of non-print spin-offs, an Animal Farm video game hit cyberspace in mid-December.
George Saunders once said, ‘when you read a short story, you come out a little more aware and a little more in love with the world around you'...but what is the best way to start? We asked Lynne Bryan - writer, editor and creative writing tutor for NCW, the Arvon FoundationThe celebrated Arvon creative writing courses cover four and a half days and range from Novel Writing to Starting to Write. Some grants are available. (http://www.arvonfoundation.org) and the University of East Anglia - for the most important advice she would offer when embarking on your first journey into the short story form.
Don't over-think word counts
Don't worry too much about rules, about how long the perfect piece of flash fiction should be, or the perfect short story. I think story competitions are great, it's good to have something to aim for, somewhere to send your work to, but sometimes/often stories won't obey competition word-length rules. They just have to be the length they're going to be. The more you actually write stories the more you'll find what suits your voice. I can't imagine the great American writer Lydia Davies producing a story which is as long as the stories of the great Canadian writer Alice Munro. Davies is happiest being pithy whilst Munro likes plenty of pages to roam around in.
Poets & Writers wrapped up its 50th anniversary in 2020 by announcing a $250,000 contribution from Barnes & Noble founder-and longtime P&W supporter-Len Riggio. The donation from Riggio and his wife, Louise, will be used for new initiatives to extend the organization's support of Black and marginalized writers.
"We are deeply grateful to Len and Louise for their generous gift, which will allow us to develop new programming and reach more writers," said Melissa Ford Gradel, Poets & Writers new executive director, in a statement. (Gradel succeeded longtime P&W ED Elliot Figman this month.) "Len has been a strong supporter of Poets & Writers from early on. He chaired our very first annual dinner in 1990, which inspired broad support from the publishing community that helped Poets & Writers grow."
Pitching a manuscript isn't for cowards, the thin skinned, or those with no endurance. Believing your project is worthy, truly believing in it, is required, as is the patience of a saint.
75 rejections taught me this.
I have a spreadsheet listing every agent I contacted. It includes the date I pitched, a follow up date, their proposal requirements (they were not all the same), an expiration date, and some additional notes, if relevant. It is 75 rows long.
Shortly before my book's release date, I had a call with my press publicist. She asked if I was on social media.
I started to laugh. I've been active online for nearly 20 years. "Yes, I have a blog," I said. "I'm on Twitter and Facebook, I am on Instagram, I even have an IG for my dog.""Great," my publicist said, "Many of our authors aren't even on social."
Yet the rejections often said my following was too small. "Apparently, you can't sell a memoir unless you have Kardashian level followers," one writer friend joked.
Michael Morpurgo has denied a Sunday Times report that he "refused" to include The Merchant of Venice in a forthcoming Shakespeare anthology for children due to antisemitism.
The newspaper described the former children's laureate's "21st-century sensibilities" as having prevented the inclusion of the play in Tales from Shakespeare, his retelling of 10 Shakespeare plays for children aged six and older. The Merchant of Venice famously features the Jewish moneylender Shylock, who demands a pound of flesh from the merchant Antonio if a loan is not repaid by his deadline.
"The notion that I censored this, it is such nonsense. I chose the 10 plays I love the most, that I felt young children would respond to," he said. "To be honest with you, The Merchant of Venice is not a play I enjoy myself. I didn't ‘refuse' to include the play, no one told me to do it - I sat down quietly and decided the 10 I would do. It's completely wrong and a kneejerk reaction."
Morpurgo said the book, which will be published next year and was only intended to include 10 of Shakespeare's plays, was focused on plays that had "very strong storylines, and plays that children would be most likely to see at the theatre or study at school". Starting on 8 January, performances of his retellings by the Royal Shakespeare Company will be made available to schools around the UK for free for five weeks.