Category: publishing

“Transita, which plans to publish two paperbacks a month aimed at its target readership, declares itself to be the first publisher devoted to producing fiction for women aged over 45 and over. According to its founder and director, Nikki Read, the idea is to give women of this age-group storylines they can relate to and fictional characters with whom they can empathise. But Read appears to have opened up a veritable Pandora’s box, with critics of the imprint claiming that it is patronising to define women readers in this way.”

Steve Wasserman has resigned as editor of the LA Times Book Review. “Wasserman has been instrumental in building the prestige of the Times Book Prizes and Festival of Books, and at last month’s festival he was treated by many visiting authors and publishing industry figures as something of a celebrity. At USC, he is co-founder of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, which gathers local intellectuals, literati and journalists twice each month for discussions.”

Larry Baker couldn’t get a publisher interested in his book. Then, when he couldn’t get the local book chains in Iowa to give him shelf space, he struck on an inspired idea – sell it in the grocery store, where it sells beyond all expectations…

“With the approaching introduction of a new, potentially revolutionary sales-tracking system, Canada’s publishers, retailers and the media will know for certain, and faster, which books Canadians are actually reading. BookNet Canada, a not-for-profit organization, hopes to launch its BNC Sales Data service in June, in time for the annual publishing industry fair, Book Expo Canada. The new system will collect sales information from retailers across the country and produce weekly reports — the ultimate bestseller list.” Canada is a bit behind the curve on such tracking devices, being the last major English-language market without a nationwide tracking system.

Canada is justly proud of its literary heritage, which, perhaps more than any other part of the country’s arts scene, has come to define its land and people internationally. A new CBC Radio series is devoted to examining how Canadians from the aboriginal population to Quebec’s Francophone majority have told their stories to the world. “The challenge of explaining Canada to itself is a daunting intellectual and logistical enterprise.”

The blurb-o-sphere has inflated the hyping of books (is that even a sentence?). “Acclaimed”, in this fulsome lingo of book ads and catalogs, now means merely “the author received at least one good review.” Widely acclaimed means “two or more, plus a cable TV plug.” Critically acclaimed means “it was decently reviewed in a specialized publication but didn’t sell.”

The book publisher MacMillan has launched a new discount series. The deal is spartan for writers: “If it decides to accept a novel for the list, terms are unnegotiable; no advance will be paid, though writers will receive 20% of royalties from sales. Macmillan will copy edit books, but if manuscripts need more detailed work, it will suggest that writers employ freelance editors. According to notes sent to authors, such editors “will charge realistic fees and this will not in itself guarantee publication”.

“Graphic novels for young adult readers have been popular for many years, but recently have grown from Spiderman and Superman into a global phenomenon of much more artistic and sophisticated products. Publishers have jumped on the lucrative bandwagon, as sales have mushroomed to meet the demand. It’s no surprise that kids who have grown up with a visual connection — TV, movies, videos and video games — also love graphic novels. Many young adult readers, in fact, prefer graphic novels to conventional books. Today all varieties of graphic books are available — original stories, biographies, and even the classics.”

Last week in Edmonton, the Grant MacEwan Author’s Award was handed out as part of the grand arts festival known as Alberta Scene. But those in attendance could be forgiven for having missed the awards ceremony, competing as it was with an orchestra, a blues show, a cowboy music performance, and several other distractions. It does seem to be a truism that writing is the branch of the arts least likely to draw a crowd, and “every serious writer knows what it’s like to read her words to an organizer, her smiling husband, that lost hobo with a crinkly Safeway bag and the other bestselling author on the bill.”

According to everything we know of the world’s most famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes died at the Reichenbach Falls in a desperate struggle with his nemesis, Professor Moriarty. But just as Arthur Conan Doyle felt compelled to resurrect his creation several years after killing him off, so authors postdating Doyle have found Holmes to be an irresistable character for their own work. Why the Holmes obsession? The simple answer is that we keep buying the new stories, and the latest writer to step into the post-Doyle fray, mystery writer Chris Carr, can actually boast of being officially sanctioned by the estate of Holmes’s creator, and says that he is determined to return the detective to the world that Doyle created for him.