Agents applaud Macmillan

After negotiation between Amazon and Macmillan, and lots of discussion and speculation among agents, readers, and writers, it seems an agreement has been reached that has made many industry agents happy.


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Zora! Festival begins

The Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities is underway, celebrating the life and work of Zora Neale Hurston, who was from Eatonville.


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Bloomsbury changes 'white-washed' book cover

There was a great deal of controversy this week over the cover art of Jaclyn Dolamore's debut novel, Magic Under Glass.  Bloomsbury USA, the publishing house, decided to depict a Caucasian model on the cover of the book, despite the protagonist being described as having brown skin.  Bloomsbury apologized on Thursday for the decision, and will not be supplying any more copies of the book until the cover has been redesigned.


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Kerouac House writers' workshop

Orlando's very own Kerouac House will be the meeting place for a writer's workshop on January 30, 2010 with Alicia Shandra Holmes, a writer in residence with the Jack Kerouac Writer in Residence Project of Orlando.


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Writing about hot topics

As a writer, it's always great when a local news story or topic spreads to the national level.  The local weather, for example, has been covered by news people all over the nation, and thanks to the Internet, up-to-the-minute information can be provided about any topic, local or national.  It's great for readers who want the latest on a topic or news bit, and for journalists who want their articles to feature updated information.  For freelance writers, though, it can mean your article is one of many topics trending on a particular day.


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Industry news: Agents and Editors' Blogs

Getting information from people in the industry is a good way to keep up with publishing information.  That's why blogs by agents and editors can be an excellent resource for writers.


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Children's Book Recall

A children's book published by Simon & Schuster has been recalled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.


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Industry news: Publishers Weekly

The Internet age has made it much easier to keep up with industry news.  Between blogs and websites, email updates and newsletters, you can get up-to-the-minute publishing industry information.  As a writer, it's important to utilize those resources so you can learn as much about the business of writing as you do about the craft of writing.


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Industry news

When you read about writing, a lot of emphasis is put on the craft of writing.  That is, sentence construction, voice, style, genre, etc.  And it's true that this is an important aspect of a writing career.  But anyone who wants to be published should also remember that the publishing industry is a business, and needs to be treated as a business.


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P.S. from Nathan

On the heels of this week's Fiction Friday post about publishing trends, literary agent and awesome guy Nathan Bransford pointed readers to this article (which points readers to this article) about the up and coming trend: Amish romances, or "bonnet books."

I'm curious what it is that draws people to these books.  I'm also curious if this new subgenre will improve sales for other Christian romance writers, such as Janette Oke.

Frank McCourt near death

According to his brother, author/actor Malachy McCourt, the award-winning author Francis "Frank" McCourt is gravely ill, and not expected to live very long. McCourt is in a New York hospice with meningitis and, according to Malachy, "his faculties are shutting down." The meningitis is likely a complication from the melanoma for which he was treated earlier this year.

The author is best known for his novel Angela's Ashes (1996), a memoir of his impoverished Irish Catholic childhood, and won the Pulitzer Prize. The book was followed by 'Tis (1999), which picks up where Angela's Ashes left off, and follows McCourt's young adulthood upon his return to New York. The chronicle of McCourt's life was finished in his final memoir, Teacher Man (2005), describing his career in New York high schools and colleges.

Frank McCourt was born on August 19, 1930 in Brooklyn, New York.



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UK Poet Laureate(ss)

Ladies and...ladies, our time is here!  After 341 long years, Britain can boast a female poet laureate!

Carol Ann Duffy has succeeded Andrew Motion in the post.  However, the acceptance of the position was not an automatic one for her:

Ms. Duffy told the BBC radio program "Woman's Hour" that she had thought hard about accepting the post and that the decision to take it came "purely because they hadn't had a woman."

She added: "I look on it as recognition of the great women poets we now have writing," and said that she hoped to use the job "to contribute to people's understanding of what poetry can do, and where it can be found."

Duffy plans to donate her stipend as poet laureate to the Poetry Society to finance a poetry prize.

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"History" by Carol Ann Duffy

She woke up old at last, alone, bones in a bed, not a tooth in her head, half dead, shuffled and limped downstairs in the rag of her nightdress, smelling of pee.              Slurped tea, stared at her hand--twigs, stained gloves-- wheezed and coughed, pulled on the coat that hung from a hook on the door, lay on the sofa, dozed, snored.              She was History. She'd seen them ease him down from the Cross, his mother gasping for breath, as though his death was a difficult birth, the soldiers spitting, spears in the earth;              been there when the fisherman swore he was back from the dead; seen the basilicas rise in Jerusalem, Constantinople, Sicily; watched for a hundred years as the air of Rome turned into stone;              witnessed the wars, the bloody crusades, knew them by date and by name, Bannockburn, Passchendaele, Babi Yar, Vietnam. She'd heard the last words of the martyrs burnt at the stake, the murderers hung by the neck,              seen up-close how the saint whistled and spat in the flames, how the dictator strutting and stuttering film blew out his brains, how the children waved  their little hands from the trains. She woke again, cold, in the dark,              in the empty house. Bricks through the window now, thieves in the night. When they rang on her bell there was nobody there; fresh graffiti sprayed on her door, shit wrapped in a newspaper posted onto the floor.

The Debate Continues...

In a recent article by Joanne Kaufman, the issue of digital books and the publishing industry rages on.  However, she adds a new depth to the discussion:

The publishing world is all caught up in weighty questions about the Kindle and other such devices: Will they help or hurt book sales and authors’ advances? Cannibalize the industry? Galvanize it?

Please, they’re overlooking the really important concern: How will the Kindle affect literary snobbism? If you have 1,500 books on your Kindle — that’s how many it holds — does that make you any more or less of a bibliophile than if you have the same 1,500 books displayed on a shelf? (For the sake of argument, let’s assume that you’ve actually read a couple of them.)

The practice of judging people by the covers of their books is old and time-honored. And the Kindle, which looks kind of like a giant white calculator, is the technology equivalent of a plain brown wrapper. If people jettison their book collections or stop buying new volumes, it will grow increasingly hard to form snap opinions about them by wandering casually into their living rooms.

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It’s a safe bet that the Kindle is unlikely to attract people who seldom pick up a book or, on the other end of the spectrum, people who prowl antiquarian book fairs for first editions. But for the purpose of sizing up a stranger from afar, perhaps the biggest problem with Kindle or its kin is the camouflage factor: when no one can tell what you’re reading, how can you make it clear that you’re poring over the new Lincoln biography as opposed to, say, “He’s Just Not That Into You”?

Interesting.

I suppose it's a similar point that was raised as MP3 players became more popular, and people no longer had stacks and stacks of albums in plain sight by which people could judge their music tastes.  (After all, it's much easier to hide your secret love of bad hair metal on an iPod than in your living room!)

Kaufman goes on to raise other issues that will concern the literati, including the image that comes with toting, say, Anna Karenina vs. a digital book reader.  And where will it leave the faux-intellectual college students who listen to punk music, drink coffee, and read Jung, whose personalities and popularity depend on the intrigued smiles they get from girls (or guys) who notice the weighty text they're reading "for pleasure" (they don't say what type of pleasure, do they?) in the coffee house, student union, or library?

I encourage you to read her article, whether you're a literati or not.  No matter how you feel about the technology, and no matter how you feel about the issues it raises, it's a good read, and I'm interested to know your reaction.

If you have or will have a digital reader, will you still peruse brick-and-mortar bookshops?  Will you still relish the weight of a book on your lap, or the smell of ink and paper when you open your favorite paperback for the thousandth time?

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Reading for Writers

For anyone who's been thinking about the explosion of ebook readers lately (thanks, iPhone) and wondering how it will affect writers and the publishing industry, you may want to read this article by author Steven Johnson.

Grammar lovers may want to raise a toast to the 50th birthday of The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White.

In sadder news, author J. G. Ballard passed away this past Sunday in London.  He was the author of the 1984 novel Empire of the Sun.

Finally, American authors Marilynne Robinson, Ellen Feldman, and Samantha Hunt have been short-listed for the Orange Prize, a British award for best novel of the year written by a woman.

Reading for the Writer

For those who are writing or developing plots or thinking about that next big project, you may want to read this article about technology in literature.

If you've finished writing and you're looking to publication, consider this.

Plath and Hughes fans may find this interesting, just as Vonnegut fans may find this interesting.

Language lover?  Check this out.

And writers will want to peruse this list, put out by Writer's Digest.