Category Archives: Articles

Writers discuss their inspirations

Posted on April 14, 2007 by Keren

As a preview for the upcoming book How I Write: The Secret Lives Of Authors, the Guardian has released an interesting excerpt in which several authors write about “what gets their creative juices flowing”.  The list includes some unlikely things (including earplugs, chocolate and a squeaky chair) as well as the more usual pictures, music and taking a bath.

Read it here.

Posted in Articles, Authors |

Booker International shortlist released

Posted on April 13, 2007 by Keren

The shortlist for the second Man Booker International award was announced yesterday.  15 authors from all over the world are in the running for this prestigious award; some well known (Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan) and some more obscure.

The judges said: “With this list, we offer a gift to readers all over the world, an opportunity to join a conversation on 15 writers, diverse in nationality, language, themes and techniques, but united in their dedication to the power of the word.”

The award, designed “to highlight one writer’s continued creativity, development and overall contribution to fiction on the world stage,” is presented to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is available in translation in the English language.

The International Booker prize, unlike the annual Booker prize, is open to English-language authors of any nationality and is awarded for an author’s entire body of work rather than a specific title.  The 60,000-pound prize is awarded every two years.

Link to the Guardian article.  Yahoo News has two articles on the subject: 1 2

Posted in Articles, Authors, Awards |

Shortlist for British National Short Story Prize announced

Posted on April 13, 2007 by Keren

The shortlist for the British National Short Story prize has been announced.  The prize, only in its second year, is the world’s richest short story prize, with £15,000 going to the winner, a prize of £3,000 for the runner-up and £500 going to each of the other finalists.
The five finalists are:

  • ‘Slog’s Dad’ by David Almond
  • ‘The Morena’ by Jonathan Falla
  • ‘The Orphan and the Mob’ by Julian Gough
  • ‘How to Get Away with Suicide’ by Jackie Kay
  • ‘Weddings and Beheadings’ by Hanif Kureishi

The prize exists to raise the profile of the often-neglected short story in Britain.  The chair of the judges, Mark Lawson, said:

“This prize exists partly because many – perhaps even most – publishers and literary editors still regard the novel as the most important form of story-telling and are suspicious of short stories,” he said. “But this year’s selection makes very clear that there is no connection at all between word-count and the scale of subject matter or characterisation that can be achieved.”

Link to the Yahoo News article

Posted in Articles, Awards, Contests, Short stories |

Do free ebooks push sales?

Posted on April 9, 2007 by Keren

Interesting article from Bloggasm, discussing whether releasing a book under a Creative Commons license really does increase sales. Their advice: get BoingBoinged.

“The thing is, there’s a confound here,” Watts explained. “It wasn’t the CC release per se that gave me the boost; it was all the people talking about it. Boingboing doesn’t pimp every novel that comes down the pike. It has to be newsworthy in some way, and an author giving his work away is, for the time being, newsworthy. It attracts attention.”

“So what happens when this catches on?” Watts said. “What happens when everybody releases their work through a Creative Commons licence? Then it’s no longer newsworthy, and while it will certainly continue to make my work more accessible to people who already know of my existence, it certainly won’t lure in any new readers the way the Blindsight campaign has done. It’s a niche strategy, in other words. It only works as long as most artists aren’t doing it– and as long as that’s the case, I’d certainly consider releasing my future books under a CC license.”

Link (via Futurismic)

Previously:
Peter Watts releases SF novel under Creative Commons license

Posted in Articles, Authors, E-books, Interviews |

25 most influential books of the past 25 years

Posted on April 9, 2007 by Keren

USA Today has a feature on “the most memorable books of the last 25 years”. Number one is (big surprise) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I’m only surprised that The Da Vinci Code isn’t right behind it in second place. Here’s the full top ten list:

  1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
  2. The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard (1996)
  3. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (2003)
  4. The 911 Commission Report by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks (2004)
  5. Chicken Soup for the Soul by Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield (1993)
  6. Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus by John Gray (1992)
  7. Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution by Robert C. Atkins (1992)
  8. And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts (1987)
  9. Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)
  10. The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw (1998)

    Link (via The Leaky Cauldron)

    Posted in Articles, Contests |

    Oprah's new book pick: McCarthy's "The Road"

    Posted on March 29, 2007 by Keren

    Oprah Winfrey on Wednesday picked Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” as her next book club selection, a nod bound to launch a sales boom for the American writer’s dark tale of a post-apocalyptic father-son journey.

    Winfrey called the book “haunting and inspiring” with a lasting affect on the reader. “It is a quick read and a journey well worth taking,” she added.

    In the past, Oprah’s book club picks have pulled obscure books onto the best-seller lists, bringing publicity to previously unknown authors. In this case, though, McCarthy is already a fairly widely-read and award-winning author (other works include All the Pretty Horses and Blood Meridian).

    Oprah’s previous selections have ranged from Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” to Elie Wiesel’s “Night.” Her most recent selection before Wednesday’s was actor Sidney Poitier’s “The Measure of a Man.”

    Not all of her picks have been on target. Her selection of James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces” got caught in a controversy after the author admitted making up key parts of his best-selling drug and alcohol memoir.

    Link to the Yahoo News article

    Previously:
    Oprah chooses Sidney Poitier memoir
    Oprah to announce new book club title

    Posted in Articles, Authors, Reading |

    Why commercial ebooks won't displace books

    Posted on March 29, 2007 by Keren

    Interesting article on the failure of the e-book market:

    Right now, many of the largest publishers charge a cover price for ebooks that is 80% to 100% of the hardcover price. Virtually nobody except Baen (and now a couple of other publishers who’ve dipped a toe in the Webscription market, and some self-publishers) is even thinking about trying to establish what an ebook is really worth in the market.

    We know roughly what it costs to produce a book, and we can point to the areas where ebooks are cheaper than paper editions (no dead trees and ink, for one thing; no warehousing or distribution for another) and more expensive (downloads, website maintenance). But we don’t really know what an ebook is worth to the readers, because the market that could give us meaningful feedback on pricing has been strangled in the crib.

    My take on ebooks is that they are — and should be seen as — the cheapest form of disposable literature. They’re not cultural artefacts (pace Cory Doctorow); you don’t buy them in signed, slipcased, limited editions. They’re like stripped mass market paperbacks without even the value-added of doubling as wood pulp wall insulation once you’ve read them.

    Now, there exists within writing and publishing circles a neurotic fear that sooner or later (probably In Five Years’ Time — that seems to be the normal window) a cheap digital paper based ebook reader will come along, that makes the experience of reading text on a screen no different from the experience of reading a lump of dead tree stitched inside a piece of pigskin. And, as the horror story has it, we will be In Big Trouble, because the pre-existing availability of pirate ebooks will lead to enormous proliferation and a total crash in the value of books. Some pretty smart people believe this story, and the result has been to give it more credibility than it actually deserves. And it leads them to draw what I believe to be faulty conclusions. [...]

    It’s the received, prevalent wisdom — and it’s a load of rubbish.

    Link to full article (via BoingBoing)

    Posted in Articles, E-books |

    Poetry workshop: dramatic poetry –UPDATE: Results

    Posted on March 29, 2007 by Keren

    Poet and translator Sasha Dugdale presides over this month’s poetry workshop at the Guardian. This time, readers are challenged to submit a dramatic poem.

    I would like to encourage readers to try writing and submitting a dramatic poem.

    Dramatic poetry is poetry in which a character or characters discuss a situation. It can be monologue or dialogue. The important thing is that the poet assumes the speech patterns, interests and personality of his characters when writing the poem.

    Email your entries, with ‘Poetry workshop’ in the title field, to books.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk by midnight on Wednesday March 21. The shortlisted poems, and Sasha’s responses, will appear on the site soon afterwards.

    Read the rest of the instructions here.

    Update: Read the poems that made the workshop’s shortlist, along with Dugdale’s comments and reviews. Some interesting works here.

    Posted in Articles, Authors, Contests, Poetry, Resources, Workshops |

    Banco del Libro wins Lindgren prize for promotion of reading

    Posted on March 19, 2007 by Keren

    Banco del Libro, a nonprofit Venezuelan network that has been distributing books to children for nearly half a century, is the 2007 winner of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for Literature.

    The award, which includes a cash prize of $710,000, was established by the Swedish government in 2002 and is the largest children’s book award in the world.

    Banco del Libro, or the Book Bank, has helped distribute books in the South American country since 1960, and was honored as a pioneer in “disseminating books and promoting reading among children in Venezuela,” the award jury said in announcing the honor on Wednesday.

    “The Banco del Libro has had very difficult moments, moments of strong economic crises,” Banco del Libro Executive Director Maria Beatriz Medina told The Associated Press in an interview from Caracas, Venezuela. The prize money will go to continue its efforts and “reach other corners of the country where we haven’t reached.”

    She said the organization has won other international prizes but that “this prize is the most important, it is like the Nobel in the promotion of reading.” It was the fifth time the organization was a candidate.

    Link to the Yahoo News article

    Posted in Articles, Awards, Education |

    Top unread books in Britain

    Posted on March 15, 2007 by Keren

    You know all those books you buy, start, and can’t seem to pick up again?  A British survey reveals a list of the top five fiction and non-fiction books Britons buy but never finish.

    Top 5 fiction:

    • Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre
    • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling
    • Ulysses by James Joyce
    • Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
    • Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

    Top 5 non-fiction:

    • The Blunkett Tapes by David Blunkett
    • My Life by Bill Clinton
    • My Side by David Beckham
    • Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss
    • Wild Swans by Jung Chang

    Though this list could be taken as a positive indicator of a books popularity (commercially, at least) and cultural standing, apparently some of the people behind these books didn’t take the results so well.  “These people must have the intelligence of plankton not to be able to get through 204 pages of a comic, readable book,” said Andrew Franklin, a publisher involved with the bestselling book Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

    Read more in the Guardian article.

    Posted in Articles, Reading |