Category: publishing

We’re in a Golden Age of children’s literature. “What does it mean to call a specific period of literary endeavour ‘golden’, without it being mere hype? What it doesn’t necessarily mean is a golden age as accountants might understand the term. Publishers mutter gloomily that while there are a huge number of children’s books out there, there hasn’t actually been a rise in the number of authors selling books. The market share for children’s literature is stuck at 15%. What is happening is that a few (a very few) children’s authors are selling loads; the names you know already – JK Rowling, Jacqueline Wilson, Philip Pullman.”

Patricia Ferguson was puzzled when she couldn’t get a publisher for her new book, especially since she had a good track record. Eventually she signed on with a tiny publish-on-demand business. “After a slow start and a couple of favourable reviews, the book, It So Happens, takes off. At first the author and publisher are bemused at the sudden influx of orders. All becomes clear when the author, reading her daily newspaper, comes across a feature on the Orange Prize longlist – and discovers to her amazement, that she has made the grade.”

The Foetry website has been on a mission to expose conflicts of interest in poetry competitions. But if a poetry competition judge awards prizes to former students and colleagues, does that really prove bias? “They haven’t proved manipulation per se, by producing a smoking gun. But if you are running a big state lottery like Powerball, how does it look if the buddy of the Powerball operator keeps winning the big prize? Maybe it was just a random drawing, but it sure looks funny.”

A new report on book-buying habits in Canada “shows that 48 per cent of all Canadian households bought books, spending a total of $1.1 billion on them. Though a greater percentage of Canadian households spent money on newspapers (63 per cent) and movies (61 per cent), the total amount spent on each category was similar to that spent on books: overall spending on newspapers and movies amounted to $1.2 billion each. By comparison, Canadians spent $451 million on live sporting events.

“Bloomsbury, the publisher of Harry Potter, today said it expects to make a £20m profit this year based on strong advanced orders of the latest instalment in the adventures of the boy wizard.”

Ian McEwan has a new book. It’s a hit. But he wonders if he’ll be allowed into the US to promote it. “McEwan’s diplomatic woes began a year ago when U.S. officials turned him away from entering the country in error. But that error has remained on the books to haunt him still. ‘Once you have been refused entry to the States, you go into the computer and you are regarded with suspicion. It is a matter of enormous irritation. I only got in this time by the skin of my teeth. This could well be the very last time I ever get in’.”

“Author Andrea Levy has won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Small Island, her novel about West Indian immigrants in postwar London. It is the third major literary prize for the best-selling book, which also took the Orange Prize and the Whitbread.”

The class action award to freelancers this week for violating electronic copyright could result in big payouts. “Besides Lexis Nexis, database companies involved include Proquest, Dow Jones and West Group—as well as The Times, whose online archives include more than 100,000 articles written by some 27,000 freelance writers. The Times and The San Diego Union-Tribune are also liable on the print-publishing side, joining publishers including Time Inc., the Washington Post Company and the Hearst Corporation.”

“Some blame reality TV for our social woes (MTV’s “Real World” encourages alcoholism, “The Apprentice” is a guide to corporate backstabbing, blah, blah, blah). Allow me to chime in and add my voice to the chorus: Reality television, in part, intensifies our voyeuristic appetite for the tawdry details of the lives of others. On television, we call those details trash (although suit-wearing executives at TV stations call them “rating boosters”). But in book form, it’s more likely to be deemed literature.”

Free lance writers win a $10 million-$18 million award to compensate for work that has been posted online. “Plaintiffs, who filed on behalf of thousands of freelance writers, included the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Authors Guild, the National Writers Union and almost two dozen freelance writers. Under the terms of the settlement, freelance writers who had work published between August 1977 and December 2002 will be eligible to fill out a form — online or by mail — that will entitle them to money for works to which they had not signed away their rights to electronic publication.”