Penguin Random House's attorneys responded today to the Department of Justice's efforts to block its acquisition of Simon & Schuster, attacking the government's main complaint, that the purchase would "likely result in substantial harm to authors of anticipated top-selling books and ultimately, consumers."
Links of the week December 6 2021 (49)
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:
13 December 2021
In filing its suit to block the deal November 2, the DOJ said that a combined PRH-S&S, along with HarperCollins, "would collectively control more than two-thirds of this market, leaving hundreds of authors with fewer alternatives and less leverage." PRH attacks this charge on several levels and begins by calling the theory of a "top-selling" category "fiction," noting that the government doesn't even identify what size of an advance it is referring to. "The publishing industry does not divide the market for book rights into distinct categories based on the author's compensation for the book," PRH's lawyers said." "The royalty advance for a proposed book is driven mainly by the reader demand a particular editor anticipates for that particular book."
The Romantic Novelists' Association (RNA) has written an open letter to Andrew Holgate, literary editor of the Sunday Times, complaining that romantic fiction was excluded from the newspaper's Best Books of 2021 round-up.
The letter received 496 signatures in just over 24 hours. It states: "At the time the round-up was published, two of our author members were in the Sunday Times top 10 bestsellers chart, with Phillipa Ashley at number nine and Milly Johnson holding the number two spot. To have romantic fiction occupying a fifth of the top 10 is a huge achievement.
It was, therefore, astonishing that in an article claiming to include every genre, romance was nowhere to be seen." The original title for the article was "The 33 best books of 2021 from every genre". This has since been updated to "The 33 best books of 2021".
The publishing industry had an unexpectedly good year in 2020, despite the many challenges created by the pandemic. In the essay below, Hachette Book Group CEO Michael Pietsch uses lessons from last year to make some educated guesses about where the industry may be heading in the near term.
The Future of Publishing
Well, hell! If anyone had doubts about whether book publishing has a bright future, the global pandemic brought proof that our business is one for the ages. The business has been stress-tested by an epochal disruption that severed us from our offices and temporarily closed thousands of booksellers. And while Covid-19 brought untold loss, grief, and isolation, our industry has not just survived but thrived.
Booksellers have kept readers around the UK going throughout a series of lockdowns. Now the reading community is coming together to back their local bookshops, with tens of thousands of pounds donated to support stores in Crickhowell, Brighton and Buckley.
The Booksellers Association said that independent bookshop numbers have actually grown over the past 22 months, with its independent membership up by 12% since the pandemic started to 1,026 stores, the highest since 2012. Fifty-two new bookshops, including chain branches, opened last year, and 57 have opened this year to date.
The White Review has launched a £10,000 crowdfunding appeal to safeguard its future after two "very hard" years for the literary and culture magazine.
The quarterly print and online publication was launched in February 2011 by Ben Eastham and Jacques Testard, publisher at Fitzcarraldo Editions, to provide "a space for a new generation to express itself unconstrained by form, subject or genre", and takes its name from La Revue Blanche, a Parisian magazine which ran from 1889 to 1903.
Along with many publishers, the team is finding competition for public funding harder than ever before, while a hike in postage costs and VAT regulations hampering sales to the European Union has hit the magazine hard. The cost of printing, owing to a rise in the increase in paper prices, has also stretched the company. Despite the constraints of Brexit and the pandemic, editors Rosanna McLaughlin, Izabella Scott and Skye Arundhati Thomas told The Bookseller it was "an exciting time" for the publication.
I felt my bag being yanked from my shoulder before I saw that the person attacking me from behind was practically a child. As soon as I realized what was happening-that I was being robbed-I let go of my purse. The kid, who couldn't have been more than twelve or thirteen, and looked as scared as I felt, had full possession of my bag when he kicked me squarely in the knee. Perhaps it was the pain sending electrical shock waves through my body, or maybe it was my incredulity that he'd successfully stolen my wallet and keys and still felt the need to hurt me, but I kicked him back. Hard. Where it counts, as they say.
Unexpected events or surprising encounters have the power to ignite the stress response, also known as the fight-flight-freeze mechanism. To this day, if anyone approaches me from behind or enters a room too quietly startling me, I can be flooded with emotion, overwhelming my sense of safety. Even when I'm not truly in danger.
So why would someone like me want to write about trauma? Why would anyone read it?
Author Anne Rice died of complications from a stroke on Sunday, December 11. She was 80.
Rice first came to prominence in 1976 when her debut novel, Interview with a Vampire became a huge bestseller. In its review from March 1976, PW called the book "extraordinary," "macabre," "eerie," and "spellbinding," and noted it "as compelling as it is outrageous."
Born on October 4, 1941 in New Orleans, Rice, went on to publish 37 books, ranging from The Vampire Chronicles series, of which Interview with a Vampire was the first, to erotic novels published under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure, as well as several books based on Catholicism and Christianity, such as 2005's Christ the Lord. In all, her books have sold more than 150 million copies around the world, reports Knopf, which remained her primary publisher throughout her life.
"People ask me why my books take so long," Caro said. "I'm very fast. When I was at Newsday, I was on the rewrite desk-I was the fastest rewrite guy," he said barely disguising the hint of pride.
But when it came to writing books, he recalled a piece of advice from an old creative writing professor at Princeton, R.P. Blackmur, a poet and critic perhaps best remembered now for being parodied by Saul Bellow in Humboldt's Gift.
"Mr. Caro," Blackmur told him, "you're never going to achieve what you want to achieve if you don't stop thinking with your fingers." And so Caro endeavored to slow down by whatever means necessary. "I write my first draft in longhand," he continues. "Sometimes many first drafts. And then I go to a typewriter, and I use a typewriter instead of a computer basically because a typewriter is slower."
You would be forgiven for having missed one particular news story that did the rounds in August this year. ‘Briton suspected of spying for Russia arrested in Germany' read the BBC headline, and the accompanying article, describing the arrest of a Scottish security guard working at the British embassy in Berlin, suggested that the same old shadow games were still being played.
One of the most remarkable things about the story was that journalists who visited the suspect's apartment in Potsdam peered through his window and saw "two Russian flags alongside scores of military history books, some in Russian." Two Russian flags? Isn't it astonishing that someone working for the other side would have two Russian flags in their apartment? If he absolutely had to have two Russian flags in his apartment, did they have to be in direct line of sight of anyone walking past his window? Was there nowhere else he could put them? Was his bedroom so full of Stalin memorabilia and pictures of Putin on horseback that there was no room for flags?
When I was younger and someone asked what the best thing was about being a writer, I had a ready, two-part answer. The first - that I could go to work in my pajamas - was a bit facetious, and the second - that I got to live other lives through my characters-was sincere, but also borrowed (or stolen) from Anne Tyler.
Looking back, I realize that the truly best thing about being a young (well, middle-aged) writer was the lovely, easy flow-the gush, often-of language, the way words and phrases seemed to find me, sometimes at odd times and places. If I was in bed when inspiration struck, and had a pen or pencil nearby, I would scribble on the margin of a newspaper or in my date book. Crossing the street, I'd write on the palm of my hand. But if I was in the shower or somewhere else without a writing implement, I could depend on memory most of the time. Whole paragraphs, pages, even chapters!-were safely retained in my head until I was able to write them down. I once heard John Irving refer to this phenomenon as "the enema syndrome."
Elderly now, I find that language can be elusive, and not just when I'm trying to write. Like many people my age, I seem to lose a noun or two every day lately. They're like buttons that have fallen off my shirt and rolled under the bed, and I can't bend down to retrieve them. I can no longer count on my famous short-term memory either. Recent events can seem as ephemeral as dreams. And those jokes that I used to find so amusing about old people and forgetfulness-"Rose, what do you call that flower with thorns?"-aren't quite as hilarious these days. Anyone who claims that age is "just a number" is either very young or works for Hallmark.
A book by Billie Eilish seemed like a great bet. One of the most famous pop stars in the world, Ms. Eilish has 97 million followers on Instagram and another 6 million on Twitter. If just a fraction of them bought her book, it would be a hit.
But her self-titled book has sold about 64,000 hardcover copies since it came out in May, according to NPD BookScan, which tracks most printed books sold in the United States - not necessarily a disappointing number, unless Ms. Eilish got a big advance. Which, of course, she did. The book cost her publisher well over $1 million.
It's difficult to predict whether a book will be a hit. A jar of tomato sauce doesn't change that much from year to year, making demand reasonably predictable. But every book is different, an individual work of art or culture, so when the publishing industry tries to forecast demand for new titles, it is, however thoughtfully, guessing. Because there are so few reliable metrics to look at, social-media followings have become some of the main data points publishers use to try to make their guesses more educated.
An author's following has become a standard part of the equation when publishers are deciding whether to acquire a book. Followings can affect who gets a book deal and how big an advance that author is paid, especially when it comes to nonfiction. But despite their importance, they are increasingly seen as unpredictable gauges of how well a book is actually going to sell.
There are few commercial principles more reliable than this: there will always be another James Bond movie.
It isn't always easy to see how he'll get to where he's going next - and the franchise's producer, Barbara Broccoli, isn't sure either.
Speaking earlier this week, she admitted she hadn't settled on how to reconcile the final scenes of No Time To Die - those who haven't seen the film should turn away now - with the promise in the final credits that "James Bond will return".
With that in mind, the Guardian turned to some expert writers to see how they would revive 007.
A miracle recovery %u2013 and a quest to save his daughter John Banville, the revered Irish literary novelist with his own crime-writing twin under the pseudonym Benjamin Black, hadn%u2019t seen the film, but was surprised to learn of Bond%u2019s apparent demise. Advertisement %u201CI wonder why they killed him.%u201D As for a resurrection, he sees little to fuss about: why shouldn%u2019t the most indestructible secret agent of all time be granted a miracle recovery?
It's strange that the literature of a language that rubs up against so many others should be as wary of translation as English is. For English speakers, there seems to be an expectation that the entire world should be instantly legible, and if it isn't, that it be brought in seamlessly and domesticated. An intimate aspect of empire is the reassurance that you can travel almost anywhere and assume you'll be able to order in your own language; monocultural English speakers are rarely made to experience the childlike vulnerability of fumbling through a new grammar.
That has led to a gold standard for translations into English where the translator and her work are invisible on the page. There is a dictum that a translation should read as though it was originally written in English: concise, declarative sentences, non-English words avoided or marked as foreign through italics, culturally specific references shifted or explained to avoid any confusion - the latter a tendency revealed in the Squid Game brouhaha, when some Korean-speaking viewers accused the show's subtitle writers of changing the dialogue so much that, as one person tweeted, "if you don't understand Korean you didn't really watch the same show." The art of subtitling is distinct from book translation, not least for its specific demands on rhythm and brevity, but it serves as a reminder that translation is inherently political. Much of the world thinks of it that way, notes writer and translator Madhu H. Kaza in the foreword to her groundbreaking 2017 anthology Kitchen Table Translation. Translation in an Anglophone context, however, has emphasized "an artfully inconspicuous technique."