This past March, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, in the middle of the house, my wife was watching television. This was not her style. The kids had been home for three weeks, she was finishing up graduate school, and we were still shooting for a semblance of normalcy. This was back when everyone mistakenly thought we were on collective pause. The truth, though we didn't know it yet: we were inside a transformation. We just couldn't see it.
Links of the week September 14 2020 (38)
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:
21 September 2020
People were choosing to watch their elected leaders because they were stuck at home and they wanted to feel part of something, like citizens banded together. The president was on TV every day too, but not like this. These various briefings told wildly different stories of leadership under fire in the midst of a national crisis, and they were being played out day after day in the public eye. With careful selection and some editing, Anton suggested, it might work as a book.
Amelia Earhart climbed into her plane on July 2, 1937 en route to Howland Island in the central Pacific Ocean. She was never seen or heard from again. There are theories. She was a castaway on Gardner Island in the Republic of Kiribati. She was a prisoner in the Marshall Islands. Even with all of our computing capability and satellites 83 years later, we have no idea where she is.
Agatha Christie kissed her daughter Rosalind good night, climbed into her Morris Cowley, and for eleven days, could not be found.. See, her husband cheated on her again, this last time with Theresa Neal. The famous novelist, traumatized so much that she developed psychogenic amnesia, adopted a new personality as Neele and straight-chilled at a spa in Harrogate. She was alive and well - at least not suffering from injuries that could be seen with the naked eye
The translator is a writer. The writer is a translator. How many times have I run up against these assertions? - in a chat between translators protesting because they are not listed in a publisher's index of authors; or in the work of literary theorists, even poets ("Each text is unique, yet at the same time it is the translation of another text," observed Octavio Paz). Others claim that because language is referential, any written text is a translation of the world referred to.
In recent months, I have been dividing my working day between writing in the morning and translating in the afternoon. Maybe comparing the two activities would be a good way to test this writer-translator equation.
I'm writing a novel. It began to present itself as a possibility perhaps a year before I started work on it. Two vague ideas that had been bumping around for a while came together and took on a little form. One: an older man, once prominent in cultural circles, has withdrawn from all contact with his peers and stopped following news or media in any form; he lives as a kind of urban hermit, an acute observer but, as it were, uninformed. Two: someone receives, out of the blue, an invitation to attend the funeral, in a foreign country, of an extremely distinguished colleague, friend, and rival of many years ago.
Your book readers are moving online, and so should you. More and more buying decisions are made online, and virtual storefronts make it easy for customers to go from browsing to purchasing within a single click of a button.
As soon as you integrate virtual activities into your book marketing plan, you'll have access to the ever-expanding global marketplace. The more people you can reach, the higher your chance of increasing your book sales.
Before you start reaching out to potential readers via the Internet, make a list of the niches and industries that cover content related to your book. Assess how your content can help them and their readers.
Then send a pitch email, or query letter, to the bloggers and content creators that could be interested in your book's topic or your author story. Your pitch should include the benefit you and your content will provide to their readers. Be transparent about what type of collaboration you're hoping to create.
For much of history, reading was a fairly noisy activity. On clay tablets written in ancient Iraq and Syria some 4,000 years ago, the commonly used words for "to read" literally meant "to cry out" or "to listen". "I am sending a very urgent message," says one letter from this period. "Listen to this tablet. If it is appropriate, have the king listen to it."
Only occasionally, a different technique was mentioned: to "see" a tablet - to read it silently.
Today, silent reading is the norm. The majority of us bottle the words in our heads as if sitting in the hushed confines of a library. Reading out loud is largely reserved for bedtime stories and performances.
But a growing body of research suggests that we may be missing out by reading only with the voices inside our minds. The ancient art of reading aloud has a number of benefits for adults, from helping improve our memories and understand complex texts, to strengthening emotional bonds between people. And far from being a rare or bygone activity, it is still surprisingly common in modern life. Many of us intuitively use it as a convenient tool for making sense of the written word, and are just not aware of it.
Expectations for the new Dune movie from director Denis Villeneuve are sky-high after the release of a promising first trailer earlier this month. But anyone who's seen the David Lynch version from 1984 knows that Dune is a hard book to adapt. Science fiction author Rajan Khanna notes that the Lynch film struggles to balance storytelling with exposition.
The biggest problem with the Lynch film is that it tries to cram a nearly 700-page story into just two hours. Geek's Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley is hopeful that the new version, which covers only the first half of the book, will fare better.
John Sargent, Macmillan's longtime chief executive, will leave the publishing company in January because of disagreements over its direction, according to an announcement from its parent company, Holtzbrinck, on Thursday.
The news came as a shock to many in the publishing world, where Mr. Sargent has been a prominent and influential figure in a career spanning more than three decades. Macmillan%u2019s president, Don Weisberg, an industry veteran, will step in as chief executive of Macmillan's English-language trade publishers, which include Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Henry Holt and Flatiron Books, in 2021.
The shake-up comes after months of turmoil at Macmillan.
For more than four decades, Michael Eisenberg has been a fixture in children's books, notably in the field of library marketing. Last month, he ended that chapter of his life when he retired from his post at Highlights for Children. PW recently caught up with Eisenberg to ask him to share some highlights of his career and his reflections on the changes he has witnessed in the children's publishing and library marketing spheres.
There have been many significant changes, for better and for worse, in children's publishing - and publishing in general - over the decades. Children's divisions began to receive the respect and attention they deserved after being profitable for years and underwriting many adult divisions. There was a huge increase in the number of children's books being published, incredible growth in young adult publishing, and a proliferation of independent children's bookstores and chain stores. "Library services" departments morphed into "children's marketing" departments, and there was a move to market directly to the consumer. Computers, the internet, social media, and online bookstores brought enormous changes to the business. There are fewer book review outlets in traditional media and getting your books into the right reviewers' hands is key.
According to an oft-cited and oft-lamented statistic, a mere 3% of books published in the U.S. are works in translation. In recent years, several independent publishers have strived to fill this literary chasm, with companies such as Blue Dot Kids Press, Enchanted Lion, Levine Querido, and minedition, and imprints including Archipelago's Elsewhere Editions and Restless Books' Yonder specializing in bringing international children's books to the U.S. Amid the current pandemic, when overseas travel is restricted and people's lives have become more insular, literature in translation offers a vital means of connecting readers across the globe. In honor of World Kid Lit Month, we spoke with 10 acclaimed translators about the unique challenges and rewards of adapting international children's books for English-speaking readers.
German-English translator Elisabeth Lauffer, recipient of the 2014 Gutekunst Prize for Emerging Translators, also spoke of honoring the voice that underscores a given text. "I feel to translate convincingly the aim is for the words to sound as though they were originally written in the language they're translated into," she said.
JK Rowling's new Robert Galbraith thriller Troubled Blood sold almost 65,000 copies in just five days last week, amid widespread criticism of the author's decision to include a serial killer who dresses in women's clothing in the novel.
The latest Cormoran Strike novel, in which Rowling's private detectives investigate the disappearance of a female GP decades earlier, was published last Tuesday. An early review in the Telegraph called one of the novel's murder suspects, Dennis Creed, a "transvestite serial killer", and asked "what critics of Rowling's stance on trans issues will make of a book whose moral seems to be: never trust a man in a dress". This sparked further accusations of transphobia against the author, after her previous comments about trans people, with the hashtag #RIPJKRowling trending on Twitter and incitements to burn the novel. Rowling did not comment on the controversy around Creed, other than to say that he was loosely based on two real-life murderers.
14 September 2020
"It would be so easy to stay...Could one fall in love with a whole country - just like that?"
If the country is Alexander McCall Smith's Botswana, then yes. The speaker is Clovis Andersen, a private detective (though admittedly, not a very good one) from Muncie, Indiana, and the author of The Principles of Private Detection. He has just recently had the chance to meet the mainstays of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in Gaborone-its founder, the "traditionally-built" Precious Ramotswe, and her assistant, the bespectacled Grace Makutsi-and he has been swept away by the warmth, humor, intelligence, and big-hearted blend of traditional and modern values that define not only these two women, but the entire nation.
If you've read even one of the twenty-one books published between 1998 and 2020 that chronicle the professional and domestic adventures of the agency, plus its friends, associates, and families, then you know what he's talking about.
The core of the books lie not in the cases they solve, but in the way they go about it; the interactions both with the people and the land; the wry observations and commentaries; and the deep, sometimes dark, human truths that are revealed along the way. These aren't major crimes, usually, at least not in the way we're accustomed to thinking about them. No one gets murdered. "We aren't here to solve crimes," Mma Ramotswe says in Morality for Beautiful Girls (2001). "We help people with the problems in their lives."
Famed writer and activist Cory Doctorow is selling the audio version of his upcoming book via Kickstarter to sidestep the walled garden of Amazon-owned audiobook platform Audible.
When science fiction writer and activist Cory Doctorow releases his new novel, Attack Surface, next month, you'll be able to pick up a physical copy from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your local independent bookstore. If you'd prefer an e-book, you'll be able to download it on Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Noble's Nook, and other mainstream digital book platforms.
But if you're someone who prefers an audiobook, you'll find the novel, which deals with a corporate cybersecurity expert struggling with the morality of her work, absent from one of the biggest audiobook stores on the internet: Amazon's Audible. Instead, Doctorow is selling the recorded version of the book through a Kickstarter campaign, and it will also be available through non-Amazon vendors like Google's Play store and libro.fm.
Award-winning author (and 2019 Women's Prize shortlistee) Diana Evans is one of the judges of our Grazia First Chapter competition this year. To inspire you to put pen to paper, we asked Diana to put together a few writing tips and tricks.
Write according to your own strengths and instincts. If it suits you to write at night, do it that way. If you're more of an office-hours writer, adopt that structure instead. Some writers can only work on one thing at a time while others need to work on several. Some work in cafes and libraries and others in solitude. There is no right or wrong way to write. Only consistency and commitment are the common prerequisites.
It is tone-deaf of Rowling to write a killer who disguises himself in women's clothing, but we should be wary when one review in the Telegraph is reproduced without question
Before it had even come out, criticism of JK Rowling's new Robert Galbraith thriller, Troubled Blood, was already wall-to-wall, after an early review in the Telegraph claimed that its "moral seems to be: never trust a man in a dress". But is that the moral of the book? I've read it, the latest outing for Rowling's private detective Cormoran Strike and his partner Robin Ellacott. In Troubled Blood, they have been tasked with investigating the disappearance of GP Margot Bamborough more than 40 years earlier...
She's one of the world's most famous living authors - and recently, she's been using her platform to speak out on a highly sensitive area: sex, gender and trans issues.
Some have accused JK Rowling of transphobia, others have commended her "bravery" for discussing an issue they say is rooted in misogyny. One thing's clear: what she's said has sparked controversy and caused some pain.
What remains unclear, though, is how much the furore will impact sales of her upcoming book, Troubled Blood, released this week under her nom de plume, Robert Galbraith.
Publishing insiders say her brand as a talented and versatile writer - even under her now well-recognised pseudonym - may supersede her controversial opinions.
But a growing number of LGBTQI people and their allies are turning their backs on an author who was thought to have theirs.
I adore a good gothic and a somewhat creepy novel (but not too creepy, mind you), so in June, when a reliable friend recommended Simone St. James's The Sun Down Motel, I ordered a copy immediately, and read it the moment it arrived. Loved it. It's in my recommended reading list for July.
As soon as I finished, I ordered a copy for my sister, who also likes this type of book. Immediately, a notice flashed on my screen: she wouldn't get the book until September. I was stunned. I looked at the publisher, thinking I was dealing with a specialty press, but no. I wasn't. How odd.
That was my entire reaction: How odd. The book had released in February, so I should have been able to get my hands on a copy quickly. But I couldn%u2019t. That same thing had happened with a couple of other books I had ordered for my sister back in May. They were backlist for an author I knew my sister hadn%u2019t tried, but would love. It took six weeks for her to get the books, with the shipment getting delayed more than once. Because so many other things were going on, I hadn%u2019t put my experiences together with something I wrote about at the end of April. Traditional publishing was headed for a trainwreck, and I was worried about it.
The publisher of Jessica Krug, the white academic who revealed she had pretended to be black for years, says she is "sickened, angered, and saddened" and that all proceeds from Krug's book will go to a fund supporting black and Latinx scholars.
Krug, a white Jewish woman from Kansas and professor focusing on imperialism, colonialism and African American history at George Washington University, admitted in a Medium post earlier this month that she had "assumed identities within a blackness that I had no right to claim: first North African Blackness, then US-rooted blackness, then Caribbean-rooted Bronx blackness". After the university cancelled classes taught by Krug, and her colleagues called on her to step down, Krug resigned from her position last week .
On a typical day, a long-time user of Goodreads, the world's largest community for reviewing and recommending books, will feel like they're losing their mind. After numerous frustrated attempts to find a major new release, to like, comment on, or reply to messages and reviews, to add what they've read to their "shelf" or to discover new titles, users know they'll be forced to give up, confronted with the fact that any basic, expected functionality will evade them. Sometimes even checking what they've already read will be next to impossible. Across a huge range of reading habits and preferences, this the one thing that unites millions of Goodreads users: that Goodreads sucks, and is just shy of unbearable.
There should be nothing in the world more benign than Goodreads, a website and app that 90 million people around the world use to find new books, track their reading, and attempt to meet people with similar tastes. For almost 15 years, it has been the dominant platform for readers to rate books and find recommendations. But many of the internet's most dedicated readers now wish they could share their enthusiasm for books elsewhere. What should be a cosy, pleasant corner of the internet has become a monster.
Misery is learning that, in 1930, I could have earned the equivalent of $2,130 for one lousy review.
I'm no nearer finding somewhere to live, but I have made a start by drinking lots of wine, and - this is the clever bit - keeping the boxes. This is so I can pack my stuff in them when I have to move. Living out of a suitcase (more or less) as I do, I shouldn't need too many; but I do seem to have amassed rather a few books.
This is because I read a lot, either because I am paid to or, more likely these days, because books keep me out of mischief during the long hour before the bolts slide back on the doors of my internal pub.
I don't get paid to review them that often, though. Having done one a week for a certain newspaper for a quarter of a century leaves one feeling that maybe one can take it a bit easy, especially if the way that one has parted with that newspaper has left one with a nasty taste in the mouth.
Hilary Mantel will not win a third Booker prize with the final novel in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, after American writers made a near clean sweep of this year's shortlist.
With four writers of colour among its six authors, the shortlist, announced on Tuesday, is the most diverse line-up in the prize's history. Four debut novelists - Diane Cook, Avni Doshi, Douglas Stuart and Brandon Taylor - are up against the acclaimed Zimbabwean Tsitsi Dangarembga, and the Ethiopian-American Maaza Mengiste for the £50,000 award.
Apart from Dangarembga, all the authors are from the US or hold joint US citizenship. The rules were changed in 2014 to allow any writer writing in English and published in the UK to compete for the award. This has been widely criticised by the British publishing industry, which warned it would lead to its domination by US authors. Two, George Saunders and Paul Beatty, have won the Booker since the rule change.