We featured Google Documents a while ago, back when it was still Writely.  Now Google’s updated their online document and spreadsheet web app to allow better file organization.

Mark Frauenfelder, in his blog Rule the Web, writes:

Today, Google Docs & Spreadsheets has unveiled a a whole new look. Now, files are organized into folders, which makes navigating through your various documents a breeze. No more lost files.

If you haven’t given the service a look, now is an excellent time. GD&S does all kinds of nifty things that MSWord doesn’t, like let you collaborate on a document at the same time as someone else at another browser. It also saves automatically as you go, so someone could theoretically blow up your PC mid-sentence and your document would be safe, scattered around Google’s various servers. It would take a worldwide electromagnetic pulse to really get rid of a document stored with Google.

Link

Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing says:

Clarion West is one of the family of Clarion science fiction writers’ workshops, bootcamps that train some of the best writers in the field. It’s run as a charity, and relies on fundraising to keep the lights on.

Clarion West board member Eileen Gunn sez, “The Clarion West Writers Workshop is running an unusual fundraising auction on eBay this week, offering bidders the right to appear in stories by various science-fiction and fantasy writers: Paul Park, Eileen Gunn, Vylar Kaftan, and K. Tempest Bradford. Eight auctions are underway already and will end at some point after 9:30 p.m. PST on June 26.” Link

Go into any bookstore and you’ll see photos on covers everywhere. I’m not sure whether publishers think photography sells books better or they’re just too cheap to pay an artist, but it seems to be a growing trend in cover design.

[…]

The thing is, when a publisher buys a photo, they don’t get exclusive rights to it unless they commission the photo shoot themselves (which is rare) - meaning anyone can come along and pay to use the same image, including other cover designers.

View full story on the Novelish blog for three examples of stock photography being repeated on book covers.

The Guardian writes:

The American writer Norman Mailer is to use a “remote pen” to do a book-signing from the other side of the Atlantic, after age and ill-health forced him to cancel a rare public appearance in the UK.

…Mailer will use an internet-based technique devised by the Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood for remotely signing books called LongPen.

Mailer will be at his home in Provincetown on the east coast near New York, while his audience will be in the tented city which is built in a Georgian square in Edinburgh’s New Town each year for the festival.

According to an older Guardian article on the subject of the LongPen’s launch last year (via Neil Gaiman’s blog archives):

LongPen allows an author to see the reader she is signing for, and vice-versa, using a videoconferencing system, and an image of the page to be signed.

She then writes her inscription on a touch-sensitive LCD screen and presses a button. That sends a signal to the remote bookstore, where the robot arm, clutching an ordinary ballpoint pen, copies out the message on to the book.

A signing through the LongPen is certainly better than a complete cancellation, though in my opinion it leaves something to be desired over an in-person encounter with a favorite author. Still, if the alternative is a tired/grouchy/sick author, a signing through the LongPen might actually allow better “quality time” with them.

It’ll be interesting to see whether more authors will begin to take advantage of technology like the LongPen to make appearances at signings they wouldn’t otherwise have been able to attend. Though authors have been slower than members of other employment sectors to take advantage of virtual interaction, there’s been a recent push to take advantage of technology to interact with readers: commonplace videoconferencing at events and George R. R. Martin’s appearance in Second Life are only a couple examples.

New Millennium writing awards:

Four prizes of $1,000 each and publication in the 2007 issue of New Millennium Writings and on the journal’s Web site are given for a poem, a short story, a short short story, and a work of creative nonfiction that have not appeared in a publication with a circulation above 5,000. Prizes are given twice yearly, in the spring and the fall. Submit three poems of no more than five pages total or up to 6,000 words of prose (or 1,000 words for a short short story) with a $17 entry fee by June 17.

See contest page for guidelines. (Blurb from P&W contest calendar)

Hidden River arts awards:

An annual prize of $1,000 and publication in The Hidden River Anthology, published by Hidden River Arts, a nonprofit literary arts organization in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania will be given in the following categories: (1) to the best unpublished short story or novel excerpt (2) the best unproduced full-length play.

Guidelines:
The William Van Wert Memorial Fiction Award
Eligible: Any previously unpublished short story or novel excerpt of 25 pages or less.
The Hidden River Arts Playwrighting Award
Eligible: Any previously unpublished and unproduced full-length play.

Submissions should be postmarked no later than June 20, 2007.

See contest page for guidelines.

As the end of the Harry Potter series approaches this July, publishers and booksellers are stepping up the search to find a new big hit to fill the coming hole in their profits.  Tunnels, by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams, is one of the latest candidates.

Interestingly, Tunnels was originally self-published; then went on to be picked up by one of the stars of the publishing business.

The latest candidate arrives under the aegis of the man who, as an editor at Bloomsbury, was the first to spot Potter’s potential, and who has gone on to publish the popular Cornelia Funke books. Barry Cunningham is now tipping a fantasy tale about a boy archaeologist, who discovers a world of thrilling adventure after digging a hole, as the next enormously big thing.

Cunningham found the first of the books, Tunnels, after its joint authors Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams pooled their resources to self-publish a deluxe edition. The first print run, sold through Gordon’s local bookshop in Norfolk, apparently sold out within hours - a sensational success for a self-published book - and word reached Cunningham.

With the backing of Cunningham - a man considered something of a magician himself in the publishing world - the book has gone on to sell pre-publication rights in 15 languages around the world, securing advances totalling more than £500,000. Cunningham is currently in Hollywood, in discussions to sell the film rights.

Link to the full Guardian article

Here’s a great project that really makes me wish I lived in London:

The London Book Project is a free book exchange on a massive scale. Using the London Underground as a high speed distribution network, we aim to bring real literature to London’s commuters. Scrap the freesheets - read a free book instead!

Over the next two weeks we’ll be distributing thousands of second hand books across the tube and we want YOU to get involved. If you see one of our books, please pick it up! Then read it and replace with any book of your choice. Let’s make the tube a giant, free library!

Link (via BoingBoing)

From The New York Times:

We asked a handful of writers what books they’ve enjoyed most over the last few months, and why. Their choices — from best sellers to poetry collections to a philosophy of science — are idiosyncratic and instructive.

Writers contributing to the article include Stephen King and Ursula Le Guin. View full story here.