Modern-day trade publishing in large houses is a game of numbers, employed in the service of reducing risk. In the world of the Big Five, acquisition meetings can be characterised as boardroom affairs, where data, market analysis and profit projections hold sway. They are gladiatorial events in which editors pitch book proposals to sceptical investors in the sales, marketing, PR and rights teams, overseen by publishers as referees. A consensus is reached that homogenises decisions to publish books that provide incremental insights to concepts that have already sold well in the marketplace.
Links of the week December 18 2023 (51)
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:
18 December 2023
The acquisitions process agrees with Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four when he says, "The best books... are those that tell you what you know already". With technology at stakeholders' fingerprint - and trends only a Google search away - predictions for future book sales are made on what happened in the past regarding comparable titles. Participants in acquisitions meetings are playing Moneyball: decision-making is reduced to making predictions by algorithm. As the Party slogan in Nineteen Eighty-Four states: "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past".
However, in the ever-evolving landscape of the book trade, major literary prizes often find their way into the hands of small, independent publishing houses. Their triumphs, underscored by their ability to unearth literary gems that resonate with readers and critics alike, raise pertinent questions about the state of acquisition at the Big Five publishing giants. How can these industry behemoths, with vast resources and immense reach, compete in a game where the underdogs seem to have the upper hand?
Sales of print books enjoying lift from success of genre fiction and interest from young readers
When e-readers like the Amazon Kindle burst onto the scene, showing up next to menorahs and under Christmas trees in the early 2000s, they were predicted to bring about the death of the print book - and maybe the independent bookstore too.
But publishing sales data and on the ground observations from booksellers indicate that neither prediction has come true - in fact, sales of print books appear to be enjoying a bit of a lift driven by strong performance in genre fiction and interest from younger readers.
Print book sales are up 10‒14 per cent over three years in most major English-speaking markets, says Duncan Stewart, a consumer forecasting analyst for Deloitte who lives in Toronto and specializes in media and technology. He says those are quite nice numbers "for an industry that many people thought was dying."
While the focus here is on book discovery to fuel future purchases, and not necessarily tracking and reviewing books, as on Goodreads, there's a lot of overlap with Amazon's other platform for book lovers it acquired back in 2013, and has done little to modernize since. As on Goodreads, the new tool will help users organize their own collection of the books they've read and those they aim to, and will help them find new ones. But instead of reading through reviews from other Goodreads users, the reviews here are from Amazon shoppers.
While the focus here is on book discovery to fuel future purchases, and not necessarily tracking and reviewing books, as on Goodreads, there's a lot of overlap with Amazon's other platform for book lovers it acquired back in 2013, and has done little to modernize since. As on Goodreads, the new tool will help users organize their own collection of the books they've read and those they aim to, and will help them find new ones. But instead of reading through reviews from other Goodreads users, the reviews here are from Amazon shoppers.
The launch of the new book recommendation resource arrives alongside another scandal facing Goodreads, where an author lost a book deal after admitting to anonymously "review bombing" other debut authors' books. The issue of review bombing has been an ongoing issue on Goodreads, as The New York Times reported in June, often tanking new books before they're even published. For authors, that means Goodreads has become a double-edged sword - the same features that can generate excitement around their new titles can also be used against them.
The influential user review site has suffered a year of controversies, from cancelled book deals to review-bombing, and exposed a dark side to the industry
For Bethany Baptiste, Molly X Chang, KM Enright, Thea Guanzon, Danielle L Jensen, Akure Phénix, RM Virtues and Frances White, it must have been brutal reading. All received scathing reviews on Goodreads, an online platform that reputedly has the power to make or break new authors.
But the verdicts were not delivered by an esteemed literary critic. They were the work of Cait Corrain, a debut author who used fake accounts to "review bomb" her perceived rivals. The literary scandal led to Corrain posting an apology, being dropped by her agent and having her book deal cancelled.
A first-time author has been dropped by her U.S. publisher and her agent after readers and fellow authors accused her of posting fake negative reviews to a popular book recommendation website.
Many within the book community last week appeared to publicly turn against Cait Corrain, the author of the coming sci-fi fantasy novel "Crown of Starlight," after allegations surfaced that she made fake accounts on the Amazon-owned book review platform Goodreads to post negative user reviews online about fellow authors - a practice known as review-bombing.
Del Rey Books, owned by Penguin Random House, said Monday on X that it was "aware of the ongoing discussion" around Corrain, who goes by she/they pronouns, and that her book, originally scheduled for publication on May 14, is no longer on its 2024 publishing schedule.
Welcome to BookTok. TikTok's book recommendations, reviews and releases have amassed 185 billion views, making it one of the platform's most active communities. According to the Publisher's Association, 59% of 16- 25-year-olds have rekindled their love for reading thanks to the trend.
This is true for BookToker Nicole Murphy, who has 42,000 followers on the app.
"I stopped reading as I got older. But when I stumbled upon BookTok, it seemed like a positive space and I started reading more. I wasn't part of a specific community and thought it'd be nice to be part of," she tells The Big Issue.
"It's made reading cool again," Murphy continues. Addressing BookTok's reputation for competitiveness she says, "Someone might say ‘I've read 30 books this month', but they haven't said ‘I'm better than you because of that'. It's internal pressure people get from seeing this, like with anything online."
After two decades of making our living as mystery authors, we thought, hey, we must have done something right. If you think so, too (or you're simply curious), read on. Just to be clear. This is not a list of mechanical techniques. Much has been written on genre tropes and tricks. This is a list of how we survived them.
3. Be a storyteller. What makes a good story? "A story!" That simple, staccato answer, given by the late, great film director Samuel Fuller may appear vague, but it hit us like Tony Soprano on amphetamines. If you want to write mysteries, you better enjoy telling stories-and stories within stories. Stare at this Escher painting and you'll begin to get the Penrose triangle picture. You are creating the equivalent of optical illusions inside the reader's mind. The mystery novel demands not one but multiple such illusions. Stories on the page. Stories off the page. Narratives that come together only in your readers' heads as they put together motives and clues and deduce imaginary outcomes. But how do we begin?
The author of The Witch's Daughter on historical research, the occult, and the genius of Nabokov
How did you research The Witch's Daughter, and what do you think makes a good historical novel?
I spent many days, months, years, reading all the books on that period that I could find. I travelled to St Petersburg to find the houses that they lived, and walked the streets that they walked in. The problem is that they were not hugely well-known figures and, as women and not the victors, they don't get to be in the history books. What makes a good historical novel is detail and pace. You need to wear your research lightly and be careful of hindsight. You know what direction you are travelling in and what happens at the end, but your character does not!
Whether your story is set in the urban northeast or a western wilderness, the question still arises.
Every story has to start somewhere.
And be somewhere.
Take Dennis Lehane's 2003 novel, Mystic River. Its setting is so pivotal to the plot that you can find it right there in the title. As it happens, Mystic River is a real river in Massachusetts, coursing seven miles through the towns of Arlington, Somerville, Everett, Medford, Chelsea, Charlestown, and East Boston.
Each of those towns, like the river that flows through them, has a distinct history and identity, but Lehane conflated them into the fictional town of East Buckingham, where the story takes place. Even so, the urban grittiness of a working-class Boston neighborhood colors every page the novel, from scene descriptions to dialogue. The central mystery wouldn't work without its cast of characters, who are mired in their community's social mores and expectations. The setting not only informs their choices; it predicts their outcomes.
"There was no call for him to be as unkind as he was," says famed author Patricia Cornwell, who single handedly created the forensic science crime fiction genre.
Robert Merritt, the theater and arts critic for the Richmond Times-Dispatch in 1989, trashed his fellow Richmonder's first crime novel, Postmortem, calling her protagonist, Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a whiner who complained about male chauvinists who obstructed her way to the top of her profession. She was also an unlikeable divorcee with a big ego-something, one must surmise, women weren't allowed to be or have in the 1980s.
"It's far removed from a mystery-loving Agatha Christie, and more attuned to unexplained scientific acronyms and gruesome bodily details," Merritt wrote. He concluded his review noting, "If Postmortem has a glimmer of a promising debut, it's in the author's insights into the reality of crime."
Postmortem was Cornwell's fourth attempt at publishing a novel and now she was being trashed in her hometown newspaper. Even the local bookstore, Volume One Books, refused to carry her new novel because of its graphic content-content not seen before in crime fiction. And even though she used part of her $6,000 advance from Scribner's to print and post handbills promoting her first signing at Cokesbury Books, nobody came.
Benjamin Zephaniah has died aged 65.
An announcement made by his family on the poet's Facebook page stated that he died in the early hours of 7th December 2023, eight weeks after being diagnosed with a brain tumour.
Neil Astley, editor at Bloodaxe Books, said: "I knew and loved working with Benjamin for over 30 years, publishing four books of his poetry at Bloodaxe, from City Psalms in 1992 to To Do Wid Me in 2013. He was a writer and performer of extraordinary range: an oral poet, novelist, playwright, children's writer, reggae artist, actor, television personality and political activist. But what shone through most in all his work was his humanity, decency and ability to connect with everyone, both onstage and offstage.
Jordan Lees' début children's fantasy, The Whisperwicks: The Labyrinth of Lost and Found, has been on an incredible journey over this past year. In October 2022, publication was announced by Puffin, which acquired three books in a massive seven-figure pre-empt, and it was revealed at the Frankfurt Book FairWorld's largest trade fair for books; held annually mid-October at Frankfurt Trade Fair, Germany; First three days exclusively for trade visitors; general public can attend last two. foreign rights had been sold in 10 languages, with auctions taking place in France, Italy, Greece and more.
Though in reality The Whisperwicks, a novel about a boy who falls into a magical, labyrinthine world and goes on a quest to find a missing child, is the culmination of a process that has been brewing for a much longer period of time. Lees, a self-confessed quiet and bookish child, first began writing a book about a magical doll (Benjamiah, the hero of The Whisperwicks, has a "poppet") as a teenager, and he then spent 10 years living in that imaginary world. An early attempt at getting the story on paper in his early 20s didn't work, but about four years ago he got a draft down on paper and the journey to getting a massive publishing deal was set in motion.
Her best-selling debut has sold 6m copies and been made into a hit TV series. The author discusses how a bad day in the office was the spark for worldwide success
Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus's hit first novel, came about because of a bad day at the office. A highly experienced copywriter in the tech industry, Garmus gave a presentation for a million-dollar campaign to a room full of male colleagues. It was greeted with silence, she recalls when we meet in the Chelsea flat where the American author now lives. "Finally, this man who I hadn't met before speaks up: ‘Well, I'll tell you what I think we should do!' Then he basically just read my entire presentation, start to finish." When she pointed out that she had already said all that, he ignored her as if she wasn't there. "That's brilliant!" all her colleagues congratulated him.
"Oh, Bonnie, don't forget we need that thing by five," one team member called out as she left. She stomped back to her desk in a fury and wrote the first chapter of Lessons in Chemistry instead. "I did it on their dime," she says, banging the dining table that also serves as her desk. "Well, thank you! That's the best financial decision I ever made."
Demetrious Polychron ordered to destroy all copies of The Fellowship of the King after claiming Amazon prequel infringed his copyright
A Lord of the Rings fanfiction writer has lost a copyright lawsuit over the publication of his own sequel to the much-loved series after opening up a counterproductive legal battle against JRR Tolkien's estate.
The US-based author Demetrious Polychron published what he described as the "pitch-perfect" Lord of the Rings follow-up in 2022, titled The Fellowship of the King. He planned for the book to be the first of a seven-part series inspired by the franchise.
But the following April, Polychron attempted to sue the Tolkien estate and Amazon over the spin-off TV series The Rings of Power, which he claimed infringed the copyright in his book. A California court dismissed the case after the judge ruled that Polychron's text was, in fact, infringing on Amazon's prequel, released in September 2022.
A study from the University of Valencia found that print reading could boost skills by six to eight times more than digital reading
Researchers at the University of Valencia analysed more than two dozen studies on reading comprehension published between 2000 and 2022, which assessed nearly 470,000 participants. Their findings suggest that print reading over a long period of time could boost comprehension skills by six to eight times more than digital reading does.
"The association between frequency of digital reading for leisure and text comprehension abilities is close to 0," said Ladislao Salmerón, a professor at the University of Valencia who co-authored the paper. This may be because the "linguistic quality of digital texts tends to be lower than that traditionally found in printed texts", he added. Text on social media, for example, may be conversational and lack complex syntax and reasoning.
Reports of the death of the textbook have been exaggerated, writes Eirik G Wahlstrøm
"I read more than my share of textbooks," wrote Bill Gates in his annual "letter", published on his blog, GatesNotes, in 2019. Gates had chosen nine "surprises" to share. For his eighth surprise, he claimed that "textbooks are becoming obsolete... It's a pretty limited way to learn something," he wrote, describing various benefits of an online education: videos, quizzes, and other engaging tools.
What Gates failed to recognise, though, was the convergence between augmented reality (AR) and educational publishing. Despite progress in online education, textbooks remain an important part of education today, and publishers are breathing new life into them by integrating those exact same "online benefits" that Gates mentioned in his letter, as well as even more engaging media.
From interactive 3D models of the heart to animated asteroids, AR can turn print textbooks into living, breathing wells of educational material. Students can continue to learn in a way that they're used to - by reading passages of text - while also experiencing the benefits of digital learning. They could witness a historical event unfold in an immersive experience or navigate a human brain in three dimensions.
Writers and their cats
A feast of fantastic new children's Christmas poems from the weekly blog of the Children's Poetry Summit
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