Entries Tagged 'Books and Publishing' ↓

By now, you would have heard the anguished cries of authors around Australia railing against the Productivity Commission’s recommendations to lift all Parallel Importation Restrictions (PIR). The Commission’s report can be summed up a few keypoints:

• repeal PIR protecting Australian publishers and independent booksellers in 3 years
• ‘review’ the financial assistance needs of the Australian literary sector
• ABS to survey industry and measure impact of changes in 5 years

In case you didn’t catch the drift there, the Commission is recommending that the currently self-sustaining Australian literary sector be forced to take taxpayer handouts, so that profits can be syphoned off to big booksellers.

Heading the media charge to spin these findings in favour of Australian readers is Dymocks CEO, Don Grover, who heads up the so-called Coalition for Cheaper Books."This will only serve to bring in a more competitive market," says Grover. Excuse me? How is a market where smaller booksellers are wiped out and fewer Australian titles available for sale more competitive? Ah, I see, he mispoke. He clearly meant to say "…a more profitable market. For me." Got it.

Bob Carr claims the report is "A win for Australian literacy". Awesome! This from the man whose political legacy has been to completely trash the infrastructure of the state of New South Wales, and now has the Australian writing and publishing industry in his sights. Good to see he is at least consistent in his strip mining approach to social equity and infrastructure, since the books available to Aussie kids will finally teach them how to pronounce "mom" and "zee" correctly. Bring on the Republic.

To take action against the report or find out how you can support the cause, visit Ausbooks or the Australian Society of Authors.  

For a balanced overview, see this article in The Age. For the flagrant misuse of teen cleavage to sell a lemon, see the front page of The Australian.

At Criminal Brief (The Mystery Short Story Web Log Project), The A.D.D. Detective, Leigh Lunden, observes that

Vanity publishing is like T-ball:

Everyone gets a chance at bat, gets a hit, and takes home a trophy.

But don’t expect anyone other than your mom to applaud.

Crossfire of the Vanities is a brilliant post on the benefits and pitfalls of self-publishing. When does self-publishing work, i.e. when is it an appropriate option for you to consider? And when is it simply an admission that your manuscript is "not quite ready for prime time"? Lunden scores some home-truths and home-runs on the artificially level playing field of vanity publishing.

If I had compiled a sweet social history of my family or community, if I was providing valuable trade instructions, or if I were a touring bush balladeer, then I’d be shopping around for an ethical, professional self-publishing company for sure. Otherwise, I’d bear in mind that ‘neither authors nor readers are well-served by self-published fiction’, and keep putting in the miles; editing my manuscript, attending my crit group, putting my bum on seats at writers events and festivals, and generally serving my apprentice. In honouring the craft, the patient pathway to publication is its own reward.

And, remember, avoid the vampirates at all costs!

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Speakeasy fell in lurve with Alice Pung when we read her post on Becoming a Writer at The Inc. Blot, the blog of Black Inc., independent Melbourne-based publisher of literary non-fiction, fiction and poetry. Unpolished Gem sounds a treasure indeed.

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 Have you seen Inside the Shortlist? It is a guide to the CBCA’s Shortlist Information for teachers from Prep/Kinder through to senior secondary, offering a wealth of ideas for displaying, discussing, and enjoying this year’s best Australian books for young people. Purchasing a copy of this teacher resource keeps the project viable, ensuring young people in Australia continue to have access to locally produced works of art and literature.

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I am now a quiet fan of e-readers. I don’t own one, or foresee myself getting one in the next 3-5 years (maybe I should before they turn into this) just cause there isn’t any great choice in the Australian market yet. Anyway this great article from Kasia over at BookSquare once again highlights the discrepancies in e-book pricing.
With the GFC and all that biz, you’d think that publishers would want people to spend money on their books, not have consumers turn against them.
In other news, as someone who volunteered for an arts organisation to get experience and the kudos of having that organisation’s name on my resume, I found this really weird. When you get your foot in the door, you don’t take it out again and run away. (Maybe he got trapped in a Kindle?)

I guess when it comes to digital publishing and ‘the future of the book’ we all just need to take a leaf out of Dave Eggers’ book and ‘calm the f*** down’. People will still love reading and the written word. No need to get all crazy about it.
But if you do feel the need to get active and save the book personally, join in the fight to save Salt Publishing. The publisher was set up after Oxford University Press closed its poetry list 10 years ago. But now they no longer have funding to operate. So they need YOU! They started a viral campaign on Facebook (as well as this). Go and buy a book now!

In amongst all that east coast rain, a big Amazon storm hit over the Easter long weeekend. In an attempt to stop potentially offensive material popping up in the top spots of search results, Amazon stripped the sales rankings from over 57,000 books within specified "adult" metadata categories, effectively making the books invisible unless searched for by exact title. Problem was, the categories extended beyond "adult" to "even vaguely possibly offensive to certain subgroups", so that the well-known children’s book Heather has Two Mommies was included, along with Lady Chatterley’s Lover and books on surviving sexual assault.

Commentary on the snafu includes: a google-bombing revenge campaign by smart bitches, a glitch as reported in the New York Times, unintentional homophobia in cumbersome corporate culture as seen by Patrick at Making Light, and Richard Nash’s (formerly of Soft Skull Press) exceptionally cogent "guilty until proven innocent" argument on why it is always the non-normative books that get caught in the glitches.

Amazon has issued an apology for, and an intention to rectify, what they have termed an "embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error", and aggrieved authors like Mark Probst are willing to forgive and forget. But given that this issue began at least in early February, when writer/photographer Craig Seymour documented his own Amazon-ranking wrangle, the whole #amazonfail debacle highlights the enormous control over authors, publishers, and readers that is increasingly flowing along Amazon’s corporate corridors. Brrr, makes me shiver to think of the power of that "buy" button. At least the Easter showdown has demonstrated the democratising checks and balances of life online can effectively fight the power, as bloggers and tweeters brought the issue to light.

Building an author platform for unpublished writers can be daunting. Editiorial Anonymous has some sage advice on what to include – and what to leave out –  for writers without any publications to list in their bio.

For those lucky writers who do make it through the gauntlet to publication, Chris Currie, writer and bookseller, is critiquing book covers over at Furious Horses. A quality problem, sure: "Oh I know that getting published has been my lifelong dream that I have sacrificed everything to achieve, but now that I’ve managed to achieve it, I just hate the cover they’ve put on my book!" [cue teensy weensy violins]. The best advice seems to be to give your considered input as the author, and then leave it to the design-and-marketing experts to decide. But as Chris’s posts show, that doesn’t always result in a winner…

And in the wake of Bob Stein’s visit to Australia, over at Another Lost Shark Graham Nunn is asking "What is a Book". For those of us who have heard Stein speak during his Australian sojourn, the concept and reality of a book has become a series of questions and discussions rather than a simple "medium for ideas’ kinda thing. So here’s my thoughts on it:

For me, the book is an experience of ideas. It is candlelight and comfy cushions, a wild ride, a knotted rope to freedom. It is a place beyond place and time where I can find like minds. So whether it’s a tree-book or an e-book or an open-ended interplay of on-and-offline experiences, it is a book. And if I find like minds in and behind and around the story, it’s a good one.

Bob Stein got me thinking about writers as leaders of research and story-telling, rather than as owners of a finished product: ‘the book’. A community of readers is drawn around the cyber-fire to embellish and guide the tale. Wonderful! But I am left with the access and equity puzzle unsolved: who benefits from the new-look book? Will a class of interwebbed literati leave the rest of the world out in the cold?

Remember: Writing Race for subscribers tonight at AWMonline Forums 8-9pm AEST, with special guest Angela Slatter.

Call for proposals for the 2009 This Is Not Art, the  Festival which showcases emerging art and new media, are now open. Of particular interest to writers are the National Young Writers Festival and Critical Animals (including students, academics, and quasi-intellectuals…).

Kat Meyers’s new media book review brigade  includes links to Review Blogs and all good things bookish, including stuff as varied as a critique of the muted Korean edition of Twilight and the new Book Roast Pitch Party thread for aspiring authors.

And while we’re talking about new books … two beautiful new titles by Kate Middleton and Adam Aitken are available in Giramondo’s award-winning poetry series.

What’s in the water in Melbourne. you guys?? There’s yet another fabulous Melbourne-based indie literary magazine: stop drop and roll will launch Issue One Crash Course, on Friday 20 March at Yah Yah’s, 99 Smith Street, Fitzroy, from 8.30pm. Best promotional tagline ever: ‘A compact sucker-punch of new writing and art from Australia and overseas’. It includes a range of short fiction, poetry, and essays. Available online from their funky website.

Writing Race word count update: 11,705. As one new racer put it: "I will probably use most of what I wrote last night so the exercise paid off big time for me. I am going to try to make it a regular event on Tuesday evenings. You are all great motivators." A big thank you to Belinda Jeffrey, who was an inspiring guest racer. Belinda’s book Brown Skin Blue is due to be launched in June.

In more ‘Tales of the Past and Future’ let us travel back all the way to the year 1842 when Edgar Allan Poe wrote a letter to his publishers apologising for his behavior during a trip to New York.

“Will you be so kind enough to put the best possible interpretation upon my behavior while in N-York? You must have conceived a queer idea of me – but the simple truth is that Wallace would insist upon the juleps, and I knew not what I was either doing or saying.”

As a massive fan of the Poe-ster (I used to read his books late at night as a kid and scare myself silly) I don’t know what I love more about this letter – the fact that he is apologising for becoming ‘queer’ on too many juleps or that his letter (which is basically just a submission letter and an apology for his drunken behaviour) will now sit in a library collection to be viewed as an historical document. Brilliant!).

Entering the future now and Faber & Faber is ‘pulling a radiohead’. Radiohead offered their most recent CD, In Rainbows, as a download from their site where customers could nominate what they wanted to pay. Faber & Faber plan to follow suit and release early e-book versions of upcoming titles on a ‘pay what you like’ scheme. While a scheme like this was probably not in any danger of losing considering it was done by one of the biggest bands in the world. But it’s great news for e-book readers. With the release (in the US) of Kindle 2, Sony Reader and the Apple iPhone, technology that will accommodate e-books is definitely evolving at a cracking pace. And publishers need to catch up.

Quoting Faber marketing executive, Silvia Novak, (from an article you can read in full here) "We’re wondering whether a reader’s perspective will change from the initial rush of getting something for free — or close to — to an actual enjoyment of a piece of work, and whether that would translate into wanting to pay more for that experience.”

I think this is great news, but my knowledge of digital publishing is still only about a teaspoon of the whole chocolate sundae. So I am very excited to hear about BookSquare University. Yeah for online uni!

A Long Winter: This erudite article by Peter Olsen looks at the impact on book prices (and therefore on writers) of the decline in bookstore profitability due to the combined pressures of online selling and economic downturn, added to increasing tensions between booksellers and publishers. He argues that Kindle reinforces the direct-marketing relationship of Amazon to readers in a way that may force publishers to renegotiate their terms all round, exerting a downwards trend on prices, profitability, and the commissioning of new projects.

It’s stuff to make your brain ache in any number of ways, but worth digesting, if only for its expert use of the terms "disintermediation" and "p-books" (in contrast to "e-books"). Almost as good as Freevangelism!

Olsen foreshadows a demand-based pricing system for e-books that means, as Bransford puts it, "a pricing algorithm where a book that’s downloaded 1,000 times a week costs $14.95 and a book that’s downloaded 2 times a week costs $2.95." Do Australian writers need to be nervous about this forecast? The potential domestic readership of an Australian book is so small to begin with, in contrast to US and European markets. Wouldn’t "demand-based pricing" for e-books necessarily be biased against writers publishing in a country with a small population base?

And how does the e-book impact on international publishing rights – that lovely bonus cheque some Australian writers get when their work is picked up at the Frankfurt Book Fair?

However, it’s possible that demand-based pricing might work in favour of the Australian writer. It would remove the prohibitive price barrier that Australian books suffer from in contrast with their OS counterparts (On my first visit to America, I was shocked to purchase a new title from my favourite author for $4.95… A similar product at home would have cost $20-$30). If an e-book is priced competitively, and the population of online book-browsers and buyers is ever-increasing, this may restructure the sales timeline of a new book, taking the pressure off that "make or break" first thirty days of a p-book’s shelf life. It may give a book time to grow a reputation, before it is whipped off the shelves to make room for next month’s hopefuls in the publication schedule.

If you, like me, want to get your head around these issues, make a date to see Bob Stein next month, in conversation with Kate Eltham at Wordpool. Bob is founder and Co-Director of the Institute for the Future of the Book and founder of The Voyager Company. 

How to make it in the business of writing?

Honour your practice, and stay informed.

Developing an online presence is crucial to the career of emerging writers. Writers are now applying their prodigious creativity to the issue of marketing itself. A perfect example is Brisbane writer Joanne Schoenwald. She is sharing her novel Woodford Virgins for free online: http://www.scribd.com/share/upload/8610196/2giwzr6mh1qfrmv2qrc5 . Here’s a quick interview Speakeasy did with Joanne earlier today about her experience. We look forward to hearing how it goes, so stay posted!

MV: What gave you the idea, or prompted you, to share your novel for free through Scribd, rather than to use other strategies?

JS: Woodford Virgins is a novel that I began about seven years ago and it has gone through three completely different versions (and several drafts of each version) in that time. It’s a novel that I really love and, as an artist, I want to be able to share my work. If a painter or sculptor creates something, they can find myriad ways to display it and share it but I felt frustrated that my work was sitting on my computer or in reams of paper on my shelves. I am really driven to write about topics and themes that bring joy to the world and I can only do that if it actually makes it out into the world. So, I opted to do something constructive and I thought I would embrace the opportunity to release it to the wider community for free, rather than having to invest money into producing hard copies. 

MV: How did you research and choose which social media platform to use, and was the process straightforward enough?

JS: Attending Kate Eltham’s workshop on "Promoting Yourself Online" last December really inspired me to embrace the many technologies out there that are not only available to authors but which have possibly become a necessity. I have built my website with Wordpress because that was Kate’s recommendation and I can see that Wordpress has so many more features than other types of blogs. I came across Scribd while searching through the Wordpress help forums.

I wouldn’t say that it was a straightforward experience–I have spent many hours investigating ebook options and websites and the forums of Wordpress itself. But I don’t consider myself to be a technological whizz and I managed so I think anyone who has an understanding of the web could manage it. Having done it once, I am keen to apply the same process to other projects (including for my husband’s business). It’s the kind of thing that’s a bit fiddly but once you’ve got the system up and running it’s very easy to replicate. The beauty of all of this is that it has all been for free, from ‘designing’ a cover for the ‘book’ to creating pdfs to hosting the book and website. Doing things for free means that there are sometimes a few extra steps along the way but it’s well worth the effort because you would pay so much more to get someone else to do it. 

MV: What do you hope to gain from sharing your novel for free?

JS: I’m a big believer in just ‘putting things out there’ and seeing what happens. The highest priority for me was to finish the cycle of creating a novel, from first idea through to sharing those words. I am open to the idea that people might read it and give me constructive feedback that I can use to continually improve the book, so that it becomes a living document. I am open to the idea of building a following that could serve me down the track. And, of course, I am also open to the idea that soooo many people will read the book and love it that a publisher cannot help but pick it up  

MV: What do you see as the benefits of social media for writers?

JS: It’s taken me a long time to come to terms with the role of technology in the lives of writers and the future of writing. But now that I’ve jumped on board, I can see that this could really be an exciting time for us. Basically, the future possibilities are fluid, changing all the time, and I felt I needed to jump into the pool now so that I could know into which direction to swim as the currents change. It’s the great unknown of it all that is both a little intimidating and exciting. Social media provides a way to get back some of the control of your work and to feel empowered by choosing its destiny, rather than sitting back and waiting for something big to happen.

MV: Congratulations on initiating this exciting experiment with social media. We wish you every success, and encourage all our readers to go and download your book!

     Literary criticism is dwindling in importance in mainstream print media, yet there are more readers than ever in America. The NEA report goes against the grain of the general contraction in the publishing industry at present – like at DC Comics and Oxford. 

In Australia, we have an estimated 600,000 plus people engaged in writing, of whom a mere 20,000 odd are professional writers. It all paints a daunting picture for beginning and emerging writers. While reading is a favourite activity of 61% Australians, even if there remains a market of readers, will there be the other necessary cultural and business infrastructure needed to publish?

There’s always the hope that the recession might work in our favour: we may spend our limited personal income on entertainment in a miraculous biostatic feedback loop of stress and pleasure. Amazon’s sales are up, so maybe it’s true!