February Issue
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BooksBeat
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Rushdie Berates Indian Cancellation
Satanic Verses author attacks Indian politicians for failing to protect free speech after video link appearance is scrapped
However, in an interview with the local NDTV network, the 64-year-old author reserved his harshest words for the "Muslim groups that were so unscrupulous, and whose idea of free speech is that they are the only ones entitled to it".
"[If] Anyone else, who they disagree with, wishes to open his mouth, they will try and stop that mouth," Rushdie said. "That's what we call tyranny. It's much worse than censorship because it comes with the threat of violence."
The interview followed the last-minute cancellation of Rushdie's speech to thousands waiting at the Diggi Palace, a heritage hotel in the centre of Jaipur.
British writer and historian William Dalrymple, one of the festival's directors, said the decision had been taken by the owners of the venue.
"The police commissioner told us there would be violence in the venue and a riot outside where thousands were gathering if we continued," Dalrymple said.
"Our host was unwilling to bear responsibility for … possible deaths in a venue full of children and old people. It's a bad day, and a horrible moment for us all."
Sanjoy Roy, producer of the festival, said that "once again we are being bullied and we are having to step down".
Rushdie was scheduled to participate in several events at the festival but withdrew on Friday citing security fears after a warning of an assassination plot from local police. In his interview with NDTV he said he now felt the scare seemed "incredibly fishy" and that he felt "a bit of a fool to have been taken in by it".
"The threat of assassination was either exaggerated or fabricated. And my view is that it was probably fabricated," Rushdie said.
Smut, Amazon, And You!
by Paul Oliver
They also have made it possible to anonymously and nimbly rip off the work of other writers. Adam Penenberg reports for Fast Company:
Amazon’s erotica section isn’t just rife with tales of lust, incest, violence, and straight-up kink. It’s also a hotbed of masked merchants profiting from copyright infringement. And even with anti-piracy legislation looming, Amazon doesn’t appear too eager to stop the forbidden author-on-author action.
The Fast Company expose details the ins and outs (ahem) of Amazon’s dirty little secret, which is namely that they are unable to monitor their new little micro-publishing economies. The article follows the investigations of one erotic fiction author, who writes under the name Sharazade, as they uncover the dirty deals of Amazon’s red light district. In this case it is the “work” of someone writing under the name of Maria Cruz:
After checking the author page for Maria Cruz, who that day had the top-selling erotica book in Amazon’s U.K. Kindle store, she counted 40 erotica ebook titles, including Sister Pretty Little Mouth, My Step Mom and Me, Wicked Desires Steamy Stories and Domenating [sic] Her, plus one called Dracula’s Amazing Adventure. Most erotica authors stay within the genre, so Sharazade was surprised Cruz had ventured into horror. Amazon lets customers click inside a book for a sample of text and Sharazade was impressed with how literate it was. She extracted a sentence fragment, googled it, and found that Cruz had copy and pasted the text from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Curious, Sharazade keyed in phrases from other Cruz ebooks and discovered that every book she checked was stolen.
And they weren’t all public domain, either:
It turns out Cruz isn’t the only self-published plagiarist. Amazon is rife with fake authors selling erotica ripped word-for-word from stories posted on Literotica, a popular and free erotic fiction site that according to Quantcast attracts more than 4.5 million users a month, as well as from other free online story troves. As recently as early January, Robin Scott had 31 books in the Kindle store, and a down-and-dirty textual analysis revealed that each one was plagiarized. Rachel M. Haven, a purveyor of incest, group sex, and cheating bride stories, was selling 11 pilfered tales from a variety of story sites. Eve Welliver had eight titles in the Kindle store copied from Literotica and elsewhere, and she had even thought to plagiarize some five-star reviews. Luke Ethan’s author page listed four works with titles like My Step Mom Loves Me and OMG My Step-Brother in Bisexual, and it doesn’t appear he wrote any of them. Maria Cruz had 19 ebooks and two paperbacks, all of which were created by other authors and republished without their consent, while her typo-addled alter ego Mariz Cruz was hawking Wicked Desire: Steamy bondage picture volume 1.
It seems that authors looking to publish with Amazon should take a long pause before getting in bed with them. What’s to stop another Amazon author from plagiarizing from them and undermining their sales.
Obviously it will be interesting to see what, if anything, Amazon does to fix these illegalities. Or perhaps Amazon can convince some of these authors that have had their work plagirized that it was all part of some sort of meta “violation fantasy.”
Amanda Knox, a Delicate Bet for Publishers
by Julie Bosman
Her personal charm aside, however, Ms. Knox’s story is complex, disturbing and still hotly debated by an American public that loves to take sides when it comes to did-she-or-didn’t-she crime tales.
This makes the next step trickier for publishers vying this week for the rights to her memoir, whose blockbuster allure has a backdrop of unsettling details: Ms. Knox was arrested in 2007 in the murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, in what prosecutors described as a sex escapade gone wrong, spent nearly four years in an Italian prison and was exonerated last October after an appeals court overturned the original conviction.
The surge of media attention that will surely accompany the book’s release — normally good for publishers — comes with risks. To some members of the public, Ms. Knox was an innocent abroad who was imprisoned for a crime she did not commit. To others, she is a cunning femme fatale who got away with murder.
New Baseball Novel Due from Grisham
by Carol Memmott, USA TODAY
Calico Joe comes out April 10, just a week after the 2012 Major League Baseball season begins. Here's the plot description posted on Grisham's website today:
"In the summer of 1973 Joe Castle was the boy wonder of baseball, the greatest rookie anyone had ever seen. The kid from Calico Rock, Arkansas dazzled Cub fans as he hit home run after home run, politely tipping his hat to the crowd as he shattered all rookie records.
"Calico Joe quickly became the idol of every baseball fan in America, including Paul Tracey, the young son of a hard-partying and hard-throwing Mets pitcher. On the day that Warren Tracey finally faced Calico Joe, Paul was in the stands, rooting for his idol but also for his Dad. Then Warren threw a fastball that would change their lives forever."
Jill Biden Writes Kids' Book for Troops
by Hillel Italie, AP
The wife of Vice President Joe Biden has completed a children's story, "Don't Forget, Nana, God Bless Our Troops," told from the point of view of granddaughter Natalie Biden and a tribute to soldiers and their families. Biden, called Nana by her granddaughter, has met with many military families and said she thought of doing the book as she realized how many people did not understand their experiences. The story is especially personal because son Beau Biden, Delaware's attorney general and a major in the state's Army National Guard, spent a year in Iraq.
"I really feel that you write your best about what you know best," Jill Biden, who taught in Delaware before moving to Washington, said Tuesday during a brief telephone interview with The Associated Press. "That's what I teach to my students, so I thought using my own experience would have a little more meaning and a little more heart to it."
The book will be published June 5 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers and will be illustrated by Raul Colon, who has worked on stories by Frank McCourt and Libba Moore Gray. According to Simon & Schuster, "Readers will follow Natalie's experience as she learns to cope with missing her father and finds comfort in the kindness of members of her community, including teachers and neighbors and the strength and pride that she and her mother and brother felt from being part of a military family. The book will also include resources about what readers can do to support military service members and their families serving at home and abroad."
Biden said she came up with the title after putting Natalie to bed one night. They read some stories and said their prayers, and Biden got up to say goodnight. As she was leaving, Natalie said, "Don't forget, Nana, God bless our troops."
"It just shows how ingrained it is in them, that it is part of our family life," Biden said. Biden is receiving no advance. She and the publisher said all net author proceeds are being donated to charities, to be determined, for military families. Biden was represented by Washington attorney Robert Barnett, who has handled book deals for President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama.
Writing Competitions
Let us know if you'd like to see more such listings by e-mailing us from our CONTACT link on the site's home page, www.amsaw.org.
FRIENDS OF ACADIA POETRY COMPETITION DEADLINE: January 30, 2012 GENRE: Poetry DETAILS: Nature poetry. 1 - 3 poems, 30 lines max each. PRIZE: $350, $250, $150 URL: http://www.friendsofacadia.org/events/poetrycompetition.shtml
RBC BRONWEN WALLACE AWARD FOR EMERGING WRITERS DEADLINE: January 30, 2012 GENRE: Short Stories OPEN TO: Canadian Authors under 35 with no published books. DETAILS: One story, 5-10 pages, maximum 2,500 words, PRIZE: C$5,000, two runners up prizes of C$1000 URL: http://tinyurl.com/2fsbfu9
AMERICAN KENNEL CLUB FICTION WRITING CONTEST DEADLINE: January 31, 2012 GENRE: Short Stories DETAILS: One story, maximum 2,000 words on any subject, but must feature either a purebred or mixed breed dog. PRIZES: $500, $250, $100 URL: http://www.akc.org/pubs/fictioncontest/
NELSON ALGREN AWARDS DEADLINE: February 1, 2012 GENRE: Short Stories OPEN TO: US Citizens aged 18+ DETAILS: 1-2 stories, maximum 10,000 words each PRIZE: $5000, three runner-up prizes of $1,500 each; winners may be published in the Chicago Tribune or on their website URL: http://tinyurl.com/5ufse9b
ARVON WRITING COMPETITION DEADLINE: February 14, 2012 GENRE: Short stories DETAILS: 2,000 words maximum, theme is 'identity'. PRIZE: £500 plus Arvon Foundation residential writing course worth £575 and publication on website. URL: http://tinyurl.com/7q6ekvc (Scroll down past previous winning entries for full guidelines)
EXPATRIATE TRAVEL WRITING CONTEST DEADLINE: February 15, 2012 GENRE: Nonfiction DETAILS: 1,000-3,000 words, creative travel essays about living and working abroad. PRIZES: $500, $150, $100 plus publication. URL: http://tinyurl.com/2ez54cs
Understanding Children's Digital Publishing
While most teens are still not inclined to adopt eBooks in a meaningful way, with screen size and price the biggest limiting factors, there is significant movement. Nineteen percent of all teens now say that they have at least tried reading an eBook, a substantial increase from only 6 percent in 2010 (6 percent say they read eBooks very often; 8 percent do so fairly often). Sixty percent of teens in the survey also report getting older e-reading devices as "hand-me-downs." Even among children 7-12 eReading is on the rise, with 13% reading on eReaders and 11% reading on tablets.
Although lots of teenagers have mobile devices, 44 percent cited the screen size as a major barrier" against reading on them (and another 14 percent citing the limited battery life.) Fifty-three percent of responders said the cost of buying an eRreading device was too high (up from 44 percent in 2011) while the proportion of responders who didn't see a need (33 percent) or prefer print (37 percent) dipped only slightly from the previous year. Fourteen percent cited restrictions placed upon sharing eBooks by DRM as a factor as well.
For those who do want to read on a device, mobile or otherwise, "it's an Apple-dominated market," Gallagher said: Already the leading devices and smart phones are the iPod Touch (24 percent), the iPhone (15 percent) and the iPad (11 percent). Kindle was at 7 percent; Nook was at 4 percent. Even in advance of Apple's new educational push, the iPad was already the device teens are considering purchasing the most, at 37 percent. (Here's where it would be particularly interesting to see if Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet are now on the radar.)
With respect to digital reading habits, boys are most likely to download free apps or buy books on a tablet (the peak age being 15, when 10 percent and 12 percent of adolescent boys engage in these respective behaviors) while 11 percent of both sexes read books on an e-reader.
In other analyses, Gallagher observed that "high reading households are also high technology households. It’s not a page versus screen paradigm anymore." An encouraging 61 percent of kids 7-12 indicated reading a book not for school (for fun) fairly often or very often--which was higher than those playing electronic games and other online activities. That number remained a respectable 52 percent for teenagers.
Meanwhile, the study reaffirmed that for younger readers traditional picture books remain an important format, largely bought by college-educated mothers between the age of 18 and 44. This group is more likely to engage online, be it working, listening to digital music, playing games, or reading books than do adult fiction buyers. Seventy-five percent of parents of kids between the ages of 0-12 haven't yet bought an eBook, but 56 percent of that group said they are considering it.
Best Sellers' Lists: Why and How They Work
Take Stieg Larsson's "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," for instance. On a single Sunday earlier this month, it was simultaneously in fifth place, seventh place, second place and first place on various best-seller lists in the New York Times. The widely popular crime thriller, adapted into movies for Swedish and American screens, has bounced up and down the Times' Book Review lists for 133 weeks.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times ranked the novel in the No. 2 spot on its paperback fiction list that Sunday.
How do books make it onto best-seller lists in the first place? The answers are elusive. "The creation of a best-seller list is the most nebulous thing you will ever encounter," said Paul Takushi, book promotions and marketing manager for the UC Davis Store. "No one really knows how it's done."
How the New York Times figures its lists is nearly as secret as, say, the recipe for Coca-Cola. Book Review staff editor Gregory Cowles explained in an email: "(The formula) is a secret both to protect our product and to make sure people can't try to rig the system. Even in the Book Review itself, we don't know (the news surveys department's) precise methods."
"Everybody has a formula, everybody's list is different, and we do ours our own way," said Dick Donahue, features editor of Publishers Weekly magazine, the bible of the publishing industry. "I don't want to say that how we do ours is a closely guarded secret, but I guess I just did."
World Book Night Coming to a Location Near You
On every first Thursday in March since 1998, the UK has celebrated World Book Day by giving several million British schoolchildren £1 tokens they can use to purchase any book at a bookseller. UK publishers produce special £1 World Book Day editions of select books, and booksellers, schools, and libraries host hundreds of author visits, story times, and dress parties to celebrate the day. By all accounts, World Book Day has become quite successful in bringing books to children and families to bookstores.
A couple years ago, Jamie Byng, managing director of British publisher Canongate, had the thought that the festivities shouldn’t be limited to schoolchildren, that adults who rarely read books could also use some encouragement. He founded World Book Night, an event in which volunteers, including book authors, would give away one million special-edition paperbacks to strangers at train stations, hospitals, prisons and other sites. Margaret Atwood, Alan Bennett, John Le Carré, and Philip Pullman, and other authors kicked off the first World Book Night last year by reading from their favorite books to thousands of people gathered in Trafalgar Square on a chilly March evening.
British media covered World Book Night extensively, and, defying the expectations of some, the publishers and authors of the books given away fared well: book sales rose substantially for nearly all the 25 titles that were handed out.
On April 23rd, World Book Night comes to the US, with much of the publishing industry behind the effort, including major publishers, Ingram, the American Booksellers Association, Barnes & Noble, and the American Library Association. A committee of booksellers and librarians selected the 30 books that are being printed in special World Book Night editions. (Please note, the Authors Guild took no role in selecting the titles.)
Want to volunteer to be a book giver? Choose one of the 30 books (list here) that you particularly enjoyed, choose a place to give away the book, and apply at the World Book Night website.
There’s nothing in it for you, except for the satisfaction of introducing others to a favorite book, and perhaps the glory of a local newspaper or radio story. You’ll likely increase your odds for being chosen if you mention that you’re an author and you choose a distribution site calculated to reach those who rarely read books.
Carl Lennertz, formerly of Random, Harper, Little Brown, and Book Sense, is the executive director of World Book Night US. He’ll be reviewing all applications and pledges to be on the lookout for authors.
The application deadline is February 1st.
The Bookstore's Last Stand
by Julie Bosman
No, the engineers were instead fixated on the forces that are upending the way books are published, sold, bought and read: e-books and e-readers. Working in secret, behind an unmarked door in a former bread bakery, they rushed to build a device that might capture the imagination of readers and maybe even save the book industry.
They had six months to do it.
Running this sprint was, of all companies, Barnes & Noble, the giant that helped put so many independent booksellers out of business and that now finds itself locked in the fight of its life. What its engineers dreamed up was the Nook, a relative e-reader latecomer that has nonetheless become the great e-hope of Barnes & Noble and, in fact, of many in the book business.
Several iterations later, the Nook and, by extension, Barnes & Noble, at times seem the only things standing between traditional book publishers and oblivion.
Inside the great publishing houses — grand names like Macmillan, Penguin and Random House — there is a sense of unease about the long-term fate of Barnes & Noble, the last major bookstore chain standing. First, the megastores squeezed out the small players. (Think of Tom Hanks’s Fox & Sons Books to Meg Ryan’s Shop Around the Corner in the 1998 comedy, “You’ve Got Mail”.) Then the chains themselves were gobbled up or driven under, as consumers turned to the Web. B. Dalton Bookseller and Crown Books are long gone. Borders collapsed last year. No one expects Barnes & Noble to disappear overnight. The worry is that it might slowly wither as more readers embrace e-books. What if all those store shelves vanished, and Barnes & Noble became little more than a cafe and a digital connection point? Such fears came to the fore in early January, when the company projected that it would lose even more money this year than Wall Street had expected. Its share price promptly tumbled 17 percent that day.
Lurking behind all of this is Amazon.com, the dominant force in books online and the company that sets teeth on edge in publishing. From their perches in Midtown Manhattan, many publishing executives, editors and publicists view Amazon as the enemy — an adversary that, if unchecked, could threaten their industry and their livelihoods.
Like many struggling businesses, book publishers are cutting costs and trimming work forces. Yes, electronic books are booming, sometimes profitably, but not many publishers want e-books to dominate print books. Amazon’s chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, wants to cut out the middleman — that is, traditional publishers — by publishing e-books directly. Bits & Bytes Get Thousands of Additional Listings for AmSAW PROFESSIONAL MEMBERS Today
FICTION Debut Dee Yoder's THE MITING, Amish teens leave home every day, some to party and some simply to rebel, but a few leave to follow Christ; though the Amish religion is known for its Christian roots, the truth of the Old Order and Swartzentruber sects is that many never hear the Gospel, to Dennis Hillman at Kregel, in a nice deal, in a three-book deal, by Terry Burns at Hartline Literary Agency.
Inspirational Two-time Rita finalist Anna Schmidt's LOVE IN PLAIN SIGHT, the story of a member of the Amish community in Celery Fields, Florida and her love for the local blacksmith, to Tina James at Harlequin Love Inspired, in a nice deal, in a two-book deal, by Natasha Kern at Natasha Kern Literary Agency (World).
Debby Lee's novella ONE EVERGREEN NIGHT, to be included in A CASCADES CHRISTMAS, in which an orphan wants nothing more than to take her brother away from the dangerous occupation of a lumberjack, only to fall in love with a reckless man who blames himself for a terrible logging accident, to Rebecca Germany at Barbour, in a nice deal, by Tamela Hancock Murray at the Steve Laube Agency.
Sci-Fi/Fantasy John Birmingham's Dave Hooper Series, set against a backdrop of a man vs. monster war ignited when a deep sea oil engineer drills too far and unleashes a malign force, to David Pomerico at Del Rey, in a good deal, in a three-book deal, for publication starting in 2014, by Russell Galen at Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency (North America). Foreign rights: Danny Baror at Baror International
Women's/Romance Tina Wainscott writing as Jaime Rush's new series, THE HIDDEN, where walking the edge between the glamour of Miami and the Hidden, a place filled with dark magick, deity descendants must fight the seductive lure of their magick, their bloodlust, and hold fast to what makes them human, to Alex Logan at Grand Central, in a nice deal, in a three-book deal, for publication in November 2012, by Nicole Resciniti at The Seymour Agency.
General/Other Reading Jackie author William Kuhn's debut novel MRS. QUEEN TAKES THE TRAIN, about the Queen of England, who one day leaves Buckingham Palace unannounced, an event known only to a ragtag group of six, who vow to find her and bring her back before MI6 and the tabloids turn her disappearance into a national event, to Jonathan Burnham and Claire Wachtel at Harper, at auction, by David Kuhn at Kuhn Projects (NA). UK rights: Caspian Dennis: caspian@abnerstein.co.uk Translation Rights: billy@kuhnprojects.com
NONFICTION Biography Vanity Fair contributing editor Michael Shnayerson's THE SON ALSO RISES: A First Biography of Andrew Cuomo, a look at the New York State governor's life, from his early days running his father Mario's first gubernatorial election campaign in 1982 to the present, to Deb Futter at Grand Central, by Esther Newberg at ICM (World).
Health Dermatologist Patricia Farris and nutritionist Brooke Alpert's THE SUGAR RX, plan to remove sugar from your diet, including a 3-day jumpstart and 4-week longer term approach, to help you lose weight and look younger, to Renee Sedliar at Da Capo, for publication in Spring 2013, by Dan Mandel at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates (NA).
Lifestyle Co-host of Sirius XM's "The Howard Stern Show" Robin Quivers's THE VEGUCATION OF ROBIN, chronicling how, after a slow slide into ill health, she made some radical changes that transformed her life, giving up the foods that were literally killing her, embracing a plant-based, vegan diet and reclaiming her health, to Megan Newman at Avery, for publication in late 2012, by Don Buchwald and Richard Basch at Don Buchwald Agency (World).
Narrative Dean Jobb's PRINCE OF FRAUD, a cautionary tale of 1920s Chicago swindler Leo Koretz, who ran one of the longest and most elaborate Ponzi schemes in history - one with striking similarities to Bernie Madoff's - and then vanished only to resurface under the assumed identity of a literary critic who hobnobbed with the rich and famous, to Amy Gash at Algonquin, by Hilary McMahon at Westwood Creative Artists (World).
Religion/Spirituality Founder and CEO of CaringBridge.org Sona Mehring's HOPE CONQUERS ALL: Miraculous Stories of Healing and Survival from CaringBridge, true stories and inspirational advice from the social networking website that has been visited by more than 44 million people around the world in the past year, to Kate Hartson at Center Street, at auction, by Laurie Abkemeier at DeFiore and Company (NA). Foreign rights: ajs@defioreandco.com
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