There was a time I prided myself on being able to write in airports. I could write in my quiet office, sure, but I could also write in a high school gymnasium during a volleyball tournament. I could type on the bleachers. I could go to Italy and sit at a shaky little table made out of twisted wire and type. On the airplane going home, I could type on the plastic fold-down meal tray. I could work no matter where I was.
Links of the week November 29 2021 (48)
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:
29 November 2021
But then my right shoulder began its incremental journey upwards, creeping in the direction of my right ear. After writing all morning, I would meet a friend for lunch. "Did you do something to your shoulder?" my friend would ask. I looked over and there it was, chin level. I looked like I was holding a phone between my shoulder and ear but without the phone. I consciously eased it down. My husband never asked about my creeping shoulder, he just tapped it lightly whenever he passed, reminding me that I was askew.
In 1859, workers at a dock in New York City noticed that a barrel that had been shipped into town smelled particularly foul and decided to open it up. The first thing that they saw when they pried the barrel open was a woman's face, detached from the body parts beneath, but still recognizably a face and, in some accounts, even still beautiful, despite the fact that the woman had been dead for several weeks.
An age-old proverb holds that "murder will out." The phrase appears in print, twice, in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, written in the late 14th century, but it is probably much older. Simply put, the proverb cautions that no one can get away with covering up a murder. The crime will always be discovered. A person might steal something and have the owner never realize it is gone, or tell a lie and never have it exposed, but the laws of nature dictate that a violation as abominable as murder cannot go undetected.
Lockdown offered many frustrated writers a key to unbolt the constraints of daily routine and an opportunity to work on the novel or work of nonfiction that has been gathering dust in their minds or in a bottom drawer for years. If 2022 is the year to take your book to the next stage - we asked authors and publishing professionals for their advice on how to make that happen.
Donal Ryan - Literary fiction novelist and mentor
Multiple award-winning author of The Spinning Heart and Strange Flowers and creative writing lecturer at the University of Limerick, Donal Ryan, understands the pain of rejection when it comes to publishing the written word. "A writing life is poxed and pockmarked by rejection. It never ends. Your work will be precious to you but you can't expect everyone else to treat it as such. People will say ‘no. No. Get out. I'm calling security.'"
The Nguni languages, isiXhosa and isiZulu, are closely related lyrical languages spoken by the majority of people in the eastern regions of South Africa, and are particularly rich in imagery and metaphor. Both languages as well as the traditions, customs, cosmology and history of these two peoples have been the focus of a lifetime of research.
Everything I have written - including children's books - has had its genesis in my fascination for these subjects and, more importantly, my love of the region in which I grew up and its people - the Eastern Cape.
There are, at this moment, still five US commercial book publishers of mega-size. Penguin Random House is the biggest; HarperCollins is 2nd; and Hachette, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster round out the Big Five. PRH is, approximately, as big as the other four combined (about $4 billion in sales) and HarperCollins is, approximately, as big as the three behind them combined (about $2 billion in sales). By acquiring Simon & Schuster, which PRH is attempting to do, they would widen their lead over Harper as the biggest player in the market.
The US Department of Justice has chosen to oppose the merger that would give PRH an even more commanding share of the US commercial book market. As a piece in The New York Times called "Monopoly's Bad Cousin" by Binyamin Appelbaum spells out, this signifies an important shift in US policy about policing monopolies. For the past several decades, anti-trust law restraining monopolies intended primarily to keep the monopoly from raising prices to consumers. That was the adverse consequence most feared and protected against.
This time, the anti-trust action is meant to protect "producers"; the authors who have had five potential bidders for their biggest projects and would now only have four. This is, within the world of books, a tiny percentage of the "producers". The only authors affected would be those who might get offers from all five, and they would have reliable track records of delivering books that sold extremely well, and, in addition, an even smaller handful of new authors who are personally so famous or have stories so compelling that strong sales are virtually guaranteed despite no prior track record.
Following through on its pledge made in June 2020 to audit the diversity of its contributors, Penguin Random House's initial report found that the demographics of its authors, illustrators, translators, and other creators "do not reflect U.S. reader demographics when it comes to race and ethnicity."
White contributors accounted for 76% of books released in the 2019-2021 period, significantly higher than the 60% white people comprise in the U.S. general population. The 76% share, however, as PRH noted, correlates closely to the 74% mark that white people represent in the PRH workforce. Advocates pushing for publishers to diversify their workforce have long argued that publisher's list will only become more diverse after they diversify their workforce.
Two new looks at audiobook sales trends in the United Kingdom appeared late last week during the American Thanksgiving holiday, and today (November 29), we want to touch on them.
In this article, we have an interim report from the January-to-June period of this year, from the London-based Publishers Association.
As Joynson points out, the "big jump" news is that in the first six months of this year, audiobook sales were up a massive 71 percent over the sales of the same six-month period in 2019, ahead of the onset of the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic.
For the sake of comparison, consumer ebook sales in this same comparative period in the UK were up 10 percent this year over the 2019 levels, while consumer print was up 6 percent. Needless to say, that means that in the "digital acceleration" we talk about in association with the pandemic's effects, audiobooks in the UK, at least up until June of this year, appear to be leaving their sister formats in the dust.
When 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 released its final industrywide sales report for 2020 last month, it showed another basically flat year, with sales of $25.71 billion, down 0.2% compared to 2019. The small decline was in keeping with the overall pattern over the past five years. Between 2016 and 2020, overall publishing sales rose only in 2019, up 1.7% over 2018, and 2020 sales were down 3.9% compared to 2016.
The trade segment, the industry's largest, has been the steadiest performer over the past five years, with sales up 3.1% in 2020 compared to 2016. The adult category was the main driver, with sales rising 4.9%, while sales in the children's/YA category fell 0.8%. The decline in children's/YA is slightly deceiving, since 2016 was an exceptionally strong year for children's/YA fiction, where sales were $3.96 billion-a total that has not been reached since. The religious presses category had the largest increase over the period, overcoming an 8.4% decline in 2020 that was largely due to the lockdown of bookstores and religious institutions.
A BookTok clip about Cain's Jawbone has had 4.2 million views, gained over 1 million likes, has attracted 5.300 comments and has been shared over 36,000 times on rival social media platform Whatsapp.
First the history: Published originally in 1943, a puzzle book written by a crossword setter made headlines nine decades ago, but has since languished in obscurity.
Reprinted in 2019 by the crowdfund publisher Unbound, the re-released Cain's Jawbone ticked over gently until it was picked by TikTok's BookTok community.
For the many publisher who are still proudly wearing their 1990s blinkers and have convinced themselves the internet is undermining reading and the publishing industry, be aware of the following:
Unbound is a crowdfund publisher, meaning it operates on the internet encouraging booklovers to contribute cash so it can publish books mainstream publishers aren't too interested in.
Years ago, a novel-writing teacher of mine liked to ask her students, "What is the feeling you want to leave the reader with, when they finish this piece?"
The teacher was Jeanne Cavelos, the Director of the Odyssey Writing Workshop. Her question struck me as perfectly normal and legitimate, but not really central. At the time, I was writing passionately, though without a plan. Writing novels was fun, a kind of grand exploration. It was art was for art's sake...art for my sake. I wasn't thinking about how my work would emotionally land with readers. And shockingly, my novels - wait for it - didn't emotionally land with readers.
After years of writing novels that readers shrugged off, I decided two things. (1.) I really did want to reach readers. (2.) I wanted reach them the way great novels had reached me: with grand, indescribable moods. I wanted to evoke the aching, forlorn beauty at the end of The Great Gatsby; the rugged, mystic hope at the close of Cormac McCarthy's The Road; the awesome compassion for genius on the final pages of Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet.
As I pondered how to do this, I came to a few core realizations.
At a party many years ago, I jokingly told another guest that I'd do my best to remember his name after I published a book to great acclaim. I meant to be funny and disarming, but I bungled the delivery. I came off like a jerk. This other guest was a writer, too, and an equally self-serious one. Predictably, he took offense. He pointed his beer bottle at me. I'll remember you too, he said, when I win my Pulitzer.
I did not shrug off his rejoinder. How could I? He may as well have suggested pistols at dawn. I was young. I was jittery with ambition. I was terrified of failure in all forms. By the time his girlfriend-who'd introduced us-returned with more beers, we were pompously debating who had better odds for a Nobel.
Flash forward to last winter, as I walked to the building where my daughter has choir practice. I wore a thick parka, but I felt my phone vibrate to announce a new email. Once inside the vestibule, I warmed my hands and checked my email to find a message from the agent who'd asked to read my latest novel. "There is really so much to admire in this manuscript," the email began. I stopped reading and put the phone back in my coat pocket. Then marched onward to find my daughter. Already, I knew: rejection. I knew all the words that would come. I'd heard them all before.
The British may not be the most assiduous readers, writes Dominic Selwood, but they can be proud of their literary heritage
"I have always imagined Paradise," Jorge-Luis Borges mused, "will be a kind of library." And Argentinians agree with him. At least, more so than Britons. According to an NOP survey of national reading habits, Britain lags behind 25 other nations in the number of hours per week people spend reading books. Top of the table is India at 10.42 hours, with Britons clocking up less than half of that at a slender 5.18. This is still, however, ahead of Japan and Korea, which poll 4.06 and 3.06 respectively.
Britain may not be topping the reading charts, but it does have a long tradition of literacy and enthusiasm for the printed word. Today, national literacy is at 99%. Although that leaves an alarming 670,000 people who cannot read and write - and one in six of those who are literate have only poor literacy skills (figures from the National Literacy TrustUK-based organisation which has campaigned since 1993 to improve literacy standards across all age groups. Excellent research information and details of the many initiatives the charity is currently involved in. www.literacytrust.org.uk. It also has a useful page of news stories on UK literacy, which links to newsletter http://www.readitswapit.co.uk/TheLibrary.aspx) - it is nevertheless the highest overall level of literacy in the country's history. The story of how we got here is fascinating.
This year's key prizes have gone to writers from Africa and the diaspora. Damon Galgut, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Abdulrazak Gurnah and others explain what winning means to them
This has been a great year for African writing," announced Damon Galgut, accepting the Booker prize earlier this month for his multilayered novel, The Promise, which tells the story of an Afrikaner family amid the political and social upheaval that followed the end of apartheid. "I'd like to accept this on behalf of all the stories told and untold, the writers heard and unheard from the remarkable continent that I come from."
Allies of former President Donald Trump are trying to rip up the traditional book publishing paradigm in politics by setting up a publishing house of their own. And they have the ex-president helping them do it.
Trump announced last week that he was publishing a coffee table book of photographs from his time in the White House - just ahead of the holiday gift rush - with Winning Team Publishing. The outfit is a new imprint with a decidedly MAGA flavor, run by former Trump campaign aide Sergio Gor and Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr.
The book, titled "Our Journey Together," was marketed at $74.99, or $229.99 for a signed copy. But despite the high price tag, Gor said they already have exceeded sales of 70,000 copies in the first week of the preorder.
Trump has not yet written a post-presidential memoir. And part of the reason, sources in the industry say, is that some of the major publishing houses have recoiled at the prospect of having to fact-check his work or the social backlash that would ensue.