Though there were four debuts on the Booker shortlist, it's been more than a decade since a debut won. And with two magisterial novels from established writers in Maaza Mengiste's The Shadow King and Tsitsi Dangarembga's This Mournable Body on the list, first-timer Douglas Stuart's success may come as a surprise. But it will be an immensely popular one, for readers have already taken Shuggie Bain to heart: it was the bestselling novel on this year's shortlist, and the favourite to win.
Links of the week November 16 2020 (47)
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:
23 November 2020
Stuart's tale of a Glaswegian childhood in the 1980s, blighted by parental addiction and the deprivation of Thatchers Britain, is a bolt from the blue: extraordinarily immersive, heartbreaking but never mawkish, a clear-eyed story of love and resilience in the most difficult of circumstances.
Last week, Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain was announced this year's Booker Prize winner. It's no small feat for any writer, but what makes this win so spectacular is the fact that Shuggie Bain is a debut novel. (It's only the fifth debut novel to win in the Booker's 51-year-old history.) During his brief speech at the virtual award ceremony, Douglas Stuart thanked his editor for being the only one to take a chance on him in New York City.
Peter Blackstock, a senior editor at Grove Atlantic, is no stranger to the Booker Prize. He also acquired last year's winner, Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other. (Not to mention Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Sympathizer, Akwaeke Emezi's Freshwater, Sayaka Murata's Convenience Store Woman, and a slew of other amazing titles.) What's his secret? In the midst of his celebrations, Blackstock graciously took the time to answer a few questions for us.
Espionage has been called the second oldest profession, and with good reason. Sun Tzu's The Art of War, a famous textbook on waging an effective war, devoted a great deal of significance to espionage and the creation of a secret spy network. All warfare is deception, he stated, and "Be subtle! Be subtle!" he intoned, and "use your spies for every kind of business." It was published in 510 BC.
The craft of espionage has fascinated people ever since stories were told, whether orally, on the printed page as journalism or fiction, or on a screen. The secrecy, manipulation, deception, and potential danger combine to produce an aura of romance and adventure to the enterprise.
Atwood combines metafiction, sex, feminism, death, and the end of the world in her latest poetic masterpiece, Dearly
Poems accumulate in longhand, wherever I may happen to be, and sooner or later I type them up and work on them. These were written from 2007 to August 2019. Graeme [Atwood's partner], to whom the book is dedicated, died in September.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama just published his memoir two days ago, and already it's on track to become the bestselling presidential memoir of all time. But how does it compare to other memoirs and other books?
Obama's fourth book, A Promised Land, was released on Tuesday, when it set a first-day sales record of almost 890,000 copies, which includes audiobooks, e-books and pre-orders. That marked the biggest 24-hour sales period for any book published by Penguin Random House, which has also published the Fifty Shades of Grey series and John Grisham's books.
It's not just a great debut. It puts him well ahead of first-day sales of memoirs by his two predecessors, George W. Bush (220,000) and Bill Clinton (400,000). And Obama's the bestselling author in the house, though not by much-his wife, Michelle, sold 725,000 for the first day of her memoir, Becoming.
Penguin Random House purchasing Simon & Schuster is not the gravest danger to the publishing business. The deal is transpiring in a larger context-and that context is Amazon.
On paper, this merger is deplorable and should be blocked. As book publishing consolidates, the author tends to lose-and, therefore, so does the life of the mind. With diminished competition to sign writers, the size of advances is likely to shrink, making it harder for authors to justify the time required to produce a lengthy work. In becoming a leviathan, the business becomes ever more corporate. Publishing may lose its sense of higher purpose. The bean counters who rule over sprawling businesses will tend to treat books as just another commodity. Publishers will grow hesitant to take risks on new authors and new ideas. Like the movie industry, they will prefer sequels and established stars. What's worse, a giant corporation starts to worry about the prospect of regulators messing with its well-being, a condition that tends to induce political caution in deciding which writers to publish.
Three days before I sat down to write this blog post, I finished reading Drama High by Michael Sokolove. I clutched the book to my heart, and thought, no one will ever see books like this again.
Then I mentally slapped myself. I had slipped into traditional writer think.
Drama High was published by Riverhead Books in 2014. Riverhead was once a literary imprint of Penguin Publishing, and got subsumed into the whole Penguin Random House merger. Imprints lose their identity in mergers like this, and Riverhead is no exception. I doubt the imprint would have published a book like this in 2019.
And it looks like some people in traditional publishing are finally beginning to understand that the changes they've been living through these past 20 years are permanent. The way Things Are Being Done has to change.
The article I mentioned above, by Mike Shatzkin, is startling for a couple of reasons. First, he's late to the party, but he has arrived. (And he's arrived with a business that will profit off clueless writers. There are ways to get the same services he provides for a lot less money. Just a warning, before you click on over.)
His point, that trade publishing is an outdated business model, is one I've been making for a decade now. Most indies understand this very, very well.
Covid-19 has greatly affected the publishing industry across all divisions and markets, and the marketing and publicity divisions of trade publishers have required particularly swift and frequent changes to their ways of doing business. In the opening panel of PubTech Connect 2020, which was copresented by PW and NYU School of Professional Studies Center for Publishing and was held virtually this year through Zoom on November 17, the topic of the hour was new marketing strategies.
The panel focused on how to capture consumer interest in a marketplace that has shifted to digital sales, the benefits of virtual events, the importance of fleshing out direct-to-consumer marketing, and how libraries are adapting to an emphasis on digital resources.
The word of the day was "nimble," and Fassler opened the discussion with an emphasis on adaptation in the marketplace. "We've learned a lot this year during a time of distraction and disruption," she said. "I think one of the biggest challenges has been how to conduct effective outreach when we're hampered by the way we used to do things, like galley mailings. I used to do a lot of creative partnership work at conferences, pitching our books and explaining how our products are aligned. It's been necessary to be creative even earlier."
Anand Limaye of Indian Printing Works in Mumbai is a book printer and publisher. Every year during the festival season, he is "super-duper busy" with Diwali Anks, the bumper-size magazines published in Marathi during Diwali, featuring literary writings and ads in equal measure. "This year, instead of 19 Diwali Anks, we have printed 11," Limaye said.
This is not too bad for Limaye's press, which has been operating a single shift in its Wadala and Bhiwandi factories since March. For Limaye and many others like him, the factories are running again post-lockdown. Printing equipment is the life-blood of any printing factory. These machines are expensive and need regular running and maintenance. That they were unable to do this during the lockdown was the biggest problem faced by printers when things came to a standstill.
Poets House, the poetry library in lower Manhattan founded in 1986, has suspended operations indefinitely, effective immediately, due to budgetary issues caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The library hopes to reopen late in 2021, provided that the pandemic "is under control" and that the organization "has reconfigured its operations," according to a press release.
"This is an unprecedented moment in Poets House history and, indeed, the world," Robert Kissane, chairman of the Poets House board, said in a statement. "The board took these measures in order to withstand what we all are facing and ensure that the organization and its collections survive."
Following the announcement that Poets House would suspend operations, a group of anonymous former employees released a counterstatement. The release argues that the organization's "unexpected closure follows months of staff-led organizing to hold management and the board accountable in light of frequent complaints of workplace discrimination, sexual harassment, and exploitative labor practices." In addition, the anonymous employees assert their belief that the closure and layoffs were "a direct, retaliatory response to our efforts to form a union at Poets House with UAW Local 2110 and to address discriminatory and exploitative practices at the institution."
16 November 2020
When Shakespeare wrote, "What's past is prologue" in The Tempest, he could never have imagined that the phrase would be used for a consumer promotion in China. But millions of Chinese understand perfectly why e-commerce giant Alibaba adopted it as a marketing slogan for its hugely successful Singles' Day. They are optimistic about their future, despite the unprecedented global pandemic, and have retained an undiminished enthusiasm for shopping.
Singles' Day - held annually on 11/11- was created by Alibaba in 2009, to celebrate "being single" by shopping to treat yourself. It has since been rebranded as "Double 11", and has grown to be the world's biggest online shopping festival.
This year it has achieved another sales record of £56bn (RMB 372.3bn), 20 times bigger than sales on Amazon's Prime Day last month. Chinese publishers, who had already benefited from strong online sales in the summer, put their faith in Singles' Day to maximise their post-Covid recovery.
Two African women are in the running for the 2020 Booker Prize, in a historic first for the UK's most prestigious literary prize - and a major boost for storytellers on the continent.
News that Ethiopian-American Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King, and Zimbabwean Tsitsi Dangarembga, with her novel This Mournable Body, were on the shortlist for the £50,000 ($66,000) award was received with celebration on the African literary scene.
"The fact that there are two Africans, there are three black people on this list, feels like this is a clarion call to the industry that it is possible to judge something fairly, not fall into tokenism, to judge a work for what it is. It feels like it sets a new path for the competitions," Maaza said after the announcement that she was on the shortlist of six.
That HC and PRH are the two leading companies for HC is no surprise. HC has long eyed further expansion into book publishing and, as PW previously reported, HC CEO Brian Murray noted at a company Town Hall meeting this summer that the publisher was looking at acquiring S&S. PRH, seen by some as possibly too big to acquire S&S, was thrust into the mix in September when Thomas Rabe, CEO or PRH parent company Bertelsmann, told the Financial Times that the company was indeed very interested in buying S&S and said he had no antitrust concerns. "We looked at [antitrust concerns] and we don't think it is an issue," Rabe told the FT.
That HC and PRH are the two leading companies for HC is no surprise. HC has long eyed further expansion into book publishing and, as PW previously reported, HC CEO Brian Murray noted at a company Town Hall meeting this summer that the publisher was looking at acquiring S&S. PRH, seen by some as possibly too big to acquire S&S, was thrust into the mix in September when Thomas Rabe, CEO or PRH parent company Bertelsmann, told the Financial Times that the company was indeed very interested in buying S&S and said he had no antitrust concerns. "We looked at [antitrust concerns] and we don't think it is an issue," Rabe told the FT.
Author-illustrator Diane Alber self-published her first children's book, I'm Just a Scribble, in the fall of 2017 after a successful Kickstarter campaign. Fifty titles and nearly one million print unit sales later, she has partnered with Surge Licensing to expand her brand and characters globally.
The plan is to sign a traditional publisher to help expand distribution, formats, and geographic regions, and then move into other product categories such as toys, arts and crafts, school supplies, bedding, apparel, and more. The sweet spot for both publishing and products is kids ages 5-7.
"Diane has these incredible sales numbers, and it's solely from Amazon," said Elan Freedman, executive v-p of Surge Licensing, the agency Alber retained to find a publisher and handle consumer products licensing. "The success she has achieved and the audience she has captured through Amazon alone is indicative of a larger audience. She has this base of teachers and parents who love what she does, and she deals with social-emotional issues that kids need answers to right now and that parents need help in giving them those answers. We see an endless runway to grow this brand."
The Nigerian-American author won the Orange Prize in 2007 and her ‘Half of a Yellow Sun' has been voted the best of the Women's Prize's 25 years of winners.
As has become the custom for so many awards programs reaching significant anniversaries, the 25th year of the United Kingdom's Women's Prize for Fiction has used a public vote to select a "best of the best" honor.
Today (November 12), the organization in London has announced that the Nigerian-American author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been named the program's "Winner of Winners" for her 2006 Half of a Yellow Sun (Penguin Random House). At the time of her 2007 win 13 years ago, the award program was called the "Orange Prize" for its lead sponsor.
In a statement, Adichie is quoted today saying, "I'm especially moved to be voted ‘Winner of Winners' because this is the prize that first brought a wide readership to my work-and has also introduced me to the work of many talented writers."
Sci-fi anthology stalled since 1974 will be produced by executor, screenwriter J Michael Straczynski, adding stories by today's big-name SF writers
It is the great white whale of science fiction: an anthology of stories by some of the genre's greatest names, collected in the early 1970s by Harlan Ellison yet mysteriously never published. But almost 50 years after it was first announced, The Last Dangerous Visions is finally set to see the light of day.
The late Ellison changed the face of sci-fi with the publication of anthologies Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions, in 1968 and 1972, which featured writing by the likes of Philip K Dick, JG Ballard, Kurt Vonnegut and Ursula K Le Guin. Ellison, who was known for his combative nature - JG Ballard called him "an aggressive and restless extrovert who conducts life at a shout and his fiction at a scream" - announced a third volume, The Last Dangerous Visions, would be published in 1974. Contributors were said to include major names such as Frank Herbert, Anne McCaffrey, Octavia Butler and Daniel Keyes.
William Boyd was 16 in 1968, the year his new novel, Trio, is set. It was a moment of change and social revolution, but Boyd's impetus to write the novel-which centers on a shoot in Brighton, England, for a fictional film titled Ladder to the Moon-was driven by his teenage recollections of an era that was much less political.
During a phone call from his London home, Boyd says he was living in the U.K. in 1968 and then in 1969, he left for Paris. There, at 17, he met numerous people "who had been on the barricades" the previous May, and he soon realized that "the world was going to go to hell on a handcart." But this wasn't the feeling in the U.K.
"In Britain we were in a swinging '60s bubble," Boyd explains. The mood of fun and frivolity was expressed in a string of zany and largely subpar films like A Hard Day's Night and the lesser-known Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? The latter, he notes, was a flop, but it served as an inspiration for the novel. He wanted to "have a swinging '60s movie being made in Brighton, and around it the real world creeps in."
The author of the cult classic novel The Dice Man, in which a bored psychiatrist travels to some very dark places when he lets "the dice decide" his options, has died at the age of 87.
George Powers Cockcroft, who published The Dice Man in 1971 under the pseudonym Luke Rhinehart, died on 6 November, his publishers confirmed to the Guardian.
Although reports of his demise appeared in the French media earlier this week, and his nephew posted on Facebook that "Luke Rhinehart is dead ... This is real. I'm pretty sure", the Guardian waited for official confirmation from his publisher Titan. Rhinehart previously announced his own death in 2012, emailing friends to tell them: "It is our pleasure to inform you that Luke Rhinehart is dead." He was not, describing the letter as "a jeu d'esprit".
"I was getting a little tired of Luke," he told author Emmanuel Carrère in 2014. "I'm getting older, you know. I still love life: seeing what the weather's like when I look out the window in the morning, doing the gardening, making love, going kayaking, but I am less interested in my career, and my career was basically Luke. I wrote that letter for [his wife] Ann to send it to my correspondents when I died. I kept it in a file for two years, and one day I decided to send it."
I'm a writer and a techie. I like tinkering. Over the years I've observed that many writers are stuck using old technology which potentially hampers their creative output. If you'd like to improve your writing setup but don't know where to start, this guide is for you.
Software
When it comes to the practical act of writing, use whatever works for you. As long as you're doing the writing, you're a writer. Whether that means using pen and paper, dictation into a microphone, Microsoft Word or Google Docs is up to you.
The key is to find a process which gets out of the way. I can't write by hand simply due to my appalling handwriting, while I've always found Word to be inefficient for long form projects.
Some days we think of poetry as a dead antelope and poets as the wolves, hyenas, and coyotes who come to fight over the innards, teeth bared, growling. Some days we think of poetry as the center panel of Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights with poets as the naked libertines in small groups that notice only each other, some immersed in a pool balancing apples on their heads, some floating together in a bubble, others riding on the backs of birds. We notice these myriad socialities because we are poets, and because sociality defines who we read and who we listen to and what we think about. But the personal histories and arguments about politics and aesthetics that take up so much of our brain are all irrelevant to the average lay reader.
How does that person, interested in poetry but not involved in the fights and the alliances, decide what to read? While novels and memoirs receive regular review attention in the mainstream media, poetry is largely invisible in American culture. It's not a regular topic of dinner party conversation (unless of course everyone at the table is a poet). In the absence of a poet friend with invariably strong opinions or chance encounters with idiosyncratic staff picks at a local bookstore, it is difficult to sort through the many volumes of poetry published by coyotes and libertines each year, often by small presses with no publicity budget. Enter the literary prize.
2020 was a strange year, for obvious reasons.
Many of us spent a lot of 2020 in lockdown, either trying to keep up with work or looking for a new job.
Some turned to streaming services such as Netflix (for example, I subscribed to Disney Plus so I could finally watch The Mandalorian, only to discover the writing was terrible). Others spent their time learning new skills, while many took this an opportunity to dive into new books and read more.
How did COVID-19 change our reading habits? Which countries read the most this year? And what books were we reading?
Here are a few of the highlights from the infographic.
India reads more than any other country, followed by Thailand and China.
Printed books continue to drive more revenue than eBooks or audiobooks.
However, physical books sales did dip because of COVID-19 (not surprisingly).
Romance is our genre of choice, with one-third of all mass market fiction books being romance novels.
35% of the world read more due to COVID-19.