The London Book Fair is holding its first in-person show in three years Tuesday-Thursday, April 5-7. The fair was canceled abruptly in 2020, just a week before it was scheduled to start, and then offered as a virtual event in 2021. Now with industry members returning to London, fair organizers have high expectations for 2022, even if it is scaled back from the 2019 event.
Links of the week April 4 2022 (14)
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 April 2022
The number of exhibitors registered for this year's LBF is 860, down somewhat from the more than 1,000 registered in 2019. Of the 860, 477 are coming from 56 countries outside of the U.K. Currently, 156 exhibitors are from the U.S. In addition to stands from the U.K. and Canada, the LBF will have large pavilions for China, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Turkey. Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, is the market focus country and will offer a robust program of literary and cultural events. The fair will also feature a special program highlighting authors from Catalonia.
Publishers were overwhelmingly glad to be back in person at London Book Fair as the first physical fair in three years opened it doors. A spirit of international collaboration was in the air, though absences from America have been noted, with reports of last-minute cancellations due to Covid disrupting meetings for some European publishers.
"There's no denying that it has been a trying few years for everyone in the publishing industry but feeling the excitement building in Olympia as exhibitors and attendees arrive it as though no time at all has passed," said Andy Ventris, director of London Book Fair. "The London Book Fair is a unique moment in the publishing calendar and to come together in person again for the first time since 2019 is genuinely moving, reminding us of the unbeatable experience of meeting face-to-face. We hope that attendees have a wonderful fair, learning from our expert speakers, doing business, meeting old friends and making new connections. May the return of LBF mark an exciting new chapter for publishing as we look ahead to what is next for readers and publishers alike."
Progress has been made in several areas to increase diversity in the publishing industry, with targets finally being met on the representation of people from Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) groups. But socio-economic background continues to represent a major barrier to inclusion and a lack of regional diversity "remains stark", according to the Publishers Association's latest annual workforce survey.
Stephen Lotinga, chief executive, said it was heartening to see potential signs that the work that publishers had been doing to improve diversity, inclusion and belonging for staff was "beginning to help move the dial". He warned against complacency, however.
More than 14,000 employees from 60 businesses took part in this year's survey. The results showed representation of people from ethnic minority groups (excluding white minorities) increased to 15%, achieving the Publishers Association's 2022 target after stalling at 13% for the past three years. It put the industry in line with the BAME population of England and Wales (15%), according to the Office for National Statistics' (ONS) 2019 population estimates.
Vivat Publishing was established in 2013 after the merger of the two well-known Ukrainian publishers - Pelican and Argument-Print. Based in Kharkiv, Vivat is the second largest publishing house in Ukraine with approximately 3,000 titles in print. PW interviewed Vivat's CEO, Yulia Orlova, by email about how the company is trying to continue to work, despite its hometown having been under constant bombardment from Russia for the past three weeks and much of the city destroyed.
You know, during these days of war in Ukraine, such a question, as well as simply asking, %u201CHow are you?,%u201D is a expression of genuine love. Any support or care that is shown for us means a great deal and we are grateful to everyone for it. Naturally, talking about safety in the midst of the full-scale war is an arduous task: my colleagues and I are deeply concerned about our own safety and that of our loved ones. We are forced to live in shelters or else are fleeing the regions where there is fighting, but only when that is possible.
Philip Pullman has resigned as president of the Society of Authors (SoA) in the wake of the debate over Kate Clanchy's work, saying he no longer feels free to express his personal opinions in the role.
In a letter to the SoA management committee and c.e.o. Nicola Solomon this month, the bestselling author said it had been a privilege to serve as president, an ambassadorial post he has held since 2013.
Pullman, who will remain a member of the SoA council, went on: "The presidency is not an executive position. Matters of policy are decided by the members through the management committee and the society as a whole is administered by a chief executive. That state of affairs has worked well during most of my term as president, but recent events have made it apparent that when a difference of opinion arises there is no easy way to resolve it within the constitution or the established practices of the society.
"When it became clear that statements of mine were being regarded as if they represented the views of the society as a whole (although they did nothing of the sort, and weren't intended to) and that I was being pressed by people both in and out of the society to retract them and apologise, I realised that I would not be free to express my personal opinions as long as I remained president. That being the case, with great regret and after long consideration I chose to stand down."
The Society of AuthorsThe British authors’ organization, with a membership of over 7,000 writers. Membership is open to those who have had a book published, or who have an offer to publish (without subsidy by the author). Offers individual specialist advice and a range of publications to its members. Has also campaigned successfully on behalf of authors in general for improved terms and established a minimum terms agreement with many publishers. Recently campaigned to get the Public Lending Right fund increased from £5 million to £7 million for the year 2002/2003. Regularly uses input from members to produce comparative surveys of publishers’ royalty payment systems. http://www.societyofauthors.org/ (SoA) has called on Amazon to cut its e-books returns window to 48 hours, after the online retailer was criticised in an online petition signed by more than 33,000 people for offering refunds on e-books to customers who have finished reading.
The online retailer's returns policy allows customers to receive a full refund within 14 days of purchase, even if they have read every word, depriving authors of royalties from those sales.
Nicola Solomon, chief executive of the SoA said: "Seven days is more than enough to read a whole e-book and exchange, and it is not fair to deduct the author's royalty for books that have been or could have been read." She said royalties should be deducted only in cases of accidental purchase.
A petition demanding the policy be changed has received more than 33,000 signatures in a matter of days. Authors say this is a growing problem, with one claiming that more than 100 copies of their books were returned last month, compared with fewer than 10 in the first two months of the year.
Last October, while Amazon opened its first four-star stores in the UK, more than 500 book and publishing industry professionals gathered for a two-day conference called "Reimagining Bookstores". Led by Praveen Madan, a former big-tech consultant and current CEO of Kepler's Books (a 67-year-old bookstore in the heart of Silicon Valley), the conversation acknowledged a fundamental truth about the current models of in-person bookselling: they cannot support the work of bookselling. In order for bookstores to thrive in the 21st century, we must rethink the whole enterprise.
As we know, the biggest corporate bookseller gave it a shot. When Amazon established their bookstores in the US in 2015, and the UK last October, they too were trying to reimagine bookstores. Their stores only stocked books and authors with proven sales records in nearby postcodes. By creating a highly efficient model of bookselling, and by reducing friction borne of the inefficiency of our industry, Amazon thought they might build the bookstore of the future.
They failed.
Earlier this month, Amazon announced that it would close all its physical bookstores. Meanwhile, unit sales of print books were up 8.9% in 2021, according to Publishers WeeklyInternational news website of book publishing and bookselling including business news, reviews, bestseller lists, commentaries http://www.publishersweekly.com/. Many publishers reported significant increases in backlist titles - books older than two years, whose sales are no longer driven by media attention or front-of-store placement at bookstores.
When the final Harry Potter installment was published on July 21, 2007, bookstores across the U.S. celebrated with midnight release parties - some with booze, befitting a series whose earliest readers were now in their 20s. These parties took place at thousands of bookstores at a time that was, in retrospect, Peak Bookstore.
"That era, 1997 to 2007, was truly a sweet spot for readers," Jenna Amatulli reminisced in HuffPost in 2017. "They watched the fandom bloom from nothing, lined up willingly outside of a physical store - oftentimes without a celebrity-sighting incentive - and read without the fear of a push-alert or Twitter spoiler."
Turnout for the same release today would be lower, because of Amazon.com Inc., because of dying malls, because of J.K. Rowling's support for gender essentialism - and because there are simply fewer bookstores. Between 1991 and 2011, the U.S. lost 1,000 chain bookstores. A story in The Bulwark checking in on Borders locations 10 years after its 2011 bankruptcy revealed that some had become Books-A-Million, but many more of their "medium-box" locations now sold food, furniture or clothes.
Even so, that HuffPost story, now five years old, may have played taps for the chain bookstore too soon.
This past fall, I came across an essay published by Literary Hub in defense of genre labels. Author Lincoln Michel argued that, while genre labels are fraught, they are "highly useful" and we "actually need them more than ever."
This point of view intrigued me because it's rare, especially coming from a fiction writer. Many novelists, especially those who consider themselves literary novelists, are loath to define their genre. Why reduce their work to a label or box? Doesn't confining oneself in this way impede the very process of creating art? Some writers wouldn't mind dissolving genre altogether.
As it turns out, publishing executives also have reservations about labels. Earlier this month in Poets & Writers, Dutton editor-in-chief John Parsley said that one of his biggest pet peeves is "the pressure to classify a book as either literary or commercial." This also surprised me since, as Parsley notes, it's generally those within the trade who encourage such classifications. It also made me wonder if "literary" and "commercial" could be considered genres.
In my favorite episode of the now defunct, deeply pleasurable, and totally bisexual television series Dickinson, it's Christmas and Louisa May Alcott comes to dinner. Played by Zosia Mamet, Alcott has just made $35 from her first book, and she will not stop talking about money. She invites Emily on a run before dinner to give her some no-bullshit advice about publishing: write what sells, so "you'll be out there making a living on your own." When Emily tells Alcott she's a poet, Alcott's swift reply is, "Ah. That's another problem."
At the heart of that episode is the question of how a woman with no access to inheritance, property, or work might support herself. Emily must marry or live as a spinster with her parents, and eventually at the discretion of her brother, who will inherit everything. Or, like Alcott, she must write books that sell.
Kate Folk's short story "The Bone Ward" ends thusly: "Coyotes wail in the distance. Soon they will find me and sink their teeth into my boneless flesh. I pray that my bones will reconstitute inside them at sunrise, piercing their organs, killing them. My eyes sparkle with their own starlight and I know I'm about to pass out from the pressure on my brain. I comfort myself with unlikely scenarios." The narrator suffers from Total Nocturnal Bone Loss (TNBL), a disorder that liquifies the victim's skeleton overnight, dissolving the minerals into the blood, until morning when each bone grows back, an excruciating process.
"The Bone Ward" is part of Folk's debut collection Out There, a book that's been called "weird," "otherworldly," "unsettling," all words that skirt the encroaching wine spill of "genre." Like so many recent works of fiction, Folk's stories begin with the absurd, the exaggerated, and go from there. Like so many recent works of fiction, Folk's stories can often be narrated by wan, disaffected white women.
Out There feels of a piece with other works of "internet gothic fiction," like Mary South's collection You Will Never Be Forgotten (South seems to have coined the term "internet gothic fiction") and Beth Morgan's novel A Touch of Jen. Such a new genre has a limited number of referents to point to, but the general vibe is one of screen-mediated, app-addled anxiety, paranoia, a bodylessness, combined with a distinct obsession with its functions. The speculative surrounds these stories like a cosmic microwave background, a fact of each world rather than a discovery, and rarely something any character has a tonally heightened interest in. On the occasion that such an incongruous discovery is made, say, a sudden void that appears on earth in Folk's "The Void Wife," it's easily adjusted to. Unsettling realities are mundane, the weirdness stemming from both the extremity of the characters' lack of feeling or surprise, as well as the sometimes intensely violent actions that occur.
The Bridgerton books got a makeover inspired by the steamy Netflix adaptation-the latest in a long line of redesigns that show how tricky marketing romance can be.
Following Bridgerton's surge of popularity in 2021, Avon did what any good publisher would do: It rolled out new tie-in covers for each of the books in the series that inspired the Netflix megahit. The first two books' covers are, understandably, the only ones to show the actors' full faces, as many characters in the later books have yet to be introduced or even cast. The rest feature cropped torso photography, hiding the features of each individual while still providing visual clues to their personality, like the bright yellow gown and auburn hair that distinguish one character in the series. The pseudo-anonymous torso shot is a common romance-cover trope, allowing readers to project onto romantic figures that are still left somewhat to the imagination. Cross-promotion, however, isn't meant to be quite so subtle-each cover also includes a prominent Netflix badge.
"Writing is a business and a business needs to be promoted or it will fail."
This year brings a busy schedule of talks for me, and I have been invited to talk at many different venues to a varied audience. Not so long ago, I would never have entertained this as part of my job. I was terrified of standing on a stage and public speaking, but, as an author, I knew my writing was my business, and a business needs to be promoted, or it will fail. I still don't enjoy the nerves ahead of a talk, but knowing it has gone well, I feel a great sense of achievement once over. I hope that my comments below may prove helpful if you find yourself having to give a talk. Good luck!
For nearly two decades, I have been speaking about the ways adult gatekeepers encourage girls to read books about boys but discourage, prevent, or even shame boys from reading about girls. A couple of years ago, a helpful industry professional let me know that gendered reading wasn't an issue anymore. "We've moved past that, you don't need to keep talking about it."
I'd heard that before, always from those who live in large coastal cities. I can't say if those parts of our country have evolved beyond it, but I live in a flyover state, and that very same week, five women had come into my home office one by one to work on a non-publishing project. All were mothers who had at least one son and one daughter, and as copies of my books were in the room, I offered to sign some for their kids as a thank you. Every single one asked me to sign them to their daughter. When I learned their sons were also the target age of the books, I asked if I could sign one for them as well. It was almost comical how identical their reactions were. Uncomfortable. Confused. More than one even spoke those words: "But... it's a girl book."
Children's authors and performers say growing censorship, institutional timidity and online backlash are resulting in stories about diversity, sexuality and even contemporary world events being deemed inappropriate for younger readers.
"It feels like we're living through a second section 28, but one that the UK government has outsourced to an anonymous Twitter lobby," one performer says.
When acclaimed gay author Simon James Green was banned from school visits in the south of England by the Catholic church last month, it drew attention to what many believe is a developing trend that mirrors the escalating censorship of children's reading in the US, described by Art Speigelman recently as "a culture war that's totally out of control".
On Mar. 13, 2020, I posted a piece of writing to my small group of friends on Facebook. My response to lockdown during the first anxious stage of a pandemic was a brief prose poem told from the future, describing the choices we'd made in facing the virus. That night, a friend asked if she could repost it. "Sure," I replied, and that was that.
Two mornings later, my husband was scrolling through his Facebook page and asked, "How could this former student of mine be reposting something you wrote?"
I had no idea.
The next day, a friend texted me: "Deepak Chopra just read your poem on his daily video."
And so it began. During a viral pandemic, my poem went viral. Within a week, my little locked-down life was inundated with hundreds of requests from all over the world. It was chaotic, exhilarating, exhausting, and possibly the greatest learning experience of my life. The blessings outweighed the challenges (though they were many and at times daunting).
In the global refugee crisis, writes Harry Boughton, millions of young people are in need of books, and publishers can help
Around the world, millions of children's only experience of reading comes from a textbook which they must share with their classmates. Regular reading has been shown conclusively to help children do better in school, develop empathy and be more confident - so the benefits of reading follow children throughout their lives.
That is why at Book Aid InternationalSupplies much-needed books to developing countries, raising funds from publishers and general public; 'Reverse Book Club' is masterly idea-for just £5 ($10) month you can provide 48 books to go to where they're most needed we work to give all people - and especially children facing the greatest barriers to reading and learning - access to inspiring and rich book collections. Every year we provide over one million brand new books to schools, libraries, refugee camps, prisons and hospitals worldwide. Two thirds of those books are for children, and they are all donated to us by UK publishers.
Over 160 publishers support us by donating brand new books which our partners tell us again and again are a lifeline for people who would otherwise have few or no chances to read. With publishers' support we are determined to offer the opportunity to read to many more children and young people in the years to come - particularly when war devastates lives.