Daily book biz round-up, March 15
What you missed over the weekend:
- Yet more op-ed pieces about Amazon setting up shop in Canada. Michael Geist argues for. Morley Walker argues against. (Oh, and some writer from the Calgary Herald rips the Canadian Booksellers Association a new one)
- Still no decision on Amazon from Ottawa
- E-reader that nobody cared about to be delayed
- Doug Wright Awards finalists named
- Spanish author Miguel Delibes dies
- Norman Mailer’s son posts e-book “that explores post-Katrina New
Orleans from the perspective of strippers” - The evolution of Joan Thomas
- Scottish author A.L. Kennedy doesn’t want to be part of club that would have her as member
- Does iPad text-to-voice function violate an author’s audiobook rights?
- The Millions on how to get started in publishing
- St. Martin’s to publish sordid, tawdry details of Dame Judi Dench’s life
Nikolski wins Canada Reads
Nikolski, the debut novel by Quebec author Nicolas Dickner, has won the 2010 Canada Reads competition on CBC Radio. The book, which was first published in French by Éditions Alto in 2005 and then published in English by Knopf Canada in 2008 (with translation by Lazer Lederhendler), beat out runner-up The Jade Peony (Douglas & McIntyre) by Wayson Choy. Winning Canada Reads generally means a phenomenal increase in sales and profile for the winning book.
According to Vintage Canada publisher Marion Garner (Vintage publishes the book in paperback), Nikolski was a hit in Quebec, but English Canada was slow to warm to it. “[The win] is just terrific news because this book has deserved more attention since it was translated…. Now the entire country is aware of it and will invest in it,” she says, adding that she expects sales to go up by “100 per cent.”
In preparation for the win, Vintage recently reprinted the book. Though Garner wouldn’t divulge the size of the new print run, she revealed that 30,000 copies have been printed in total.
Vintage also had a second novel in the running for the 2010 Canada Reads crown – the 1996 bestseller Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald. Garner reports an elevation in sales for both books immediately following the Canada Reads shortlist announcement.
Dickner says he was overjoyed when he heard the news two months ago that his book had won. “We don’t have anything like [Canada Reads] in Quebec,” he says, adding that he was shocked at the amount of people that attended some of the lead-up events in Toronto. “Books very seldom get a second chance nowadays, so Canada Reads is really a unique opportunity to reach a wider audience.”
According to Dickner, he was too sensitive and fearful to listen to the debates himself. “I wouldn’t have been able to bear the punches and the blows to the book,” he says. “Paul Quarrington had the same feeling a few years ago. You’re [listening] to the jurors debating the books on air – you’re seeing something you don’t usually see in the awards.” He did, however, look at some of the online recaps after the fact. “After several years of being a writer I should be used to [criticism], but you never get used to it.”
Though Dickner didn’t expect to win, he wasn’t entirely shocked, because he knew that his on-air defender, editor and reviewer Michel Vézina, would be an excellent panelist, describing him as “very passionate about books, very clever, and a bookworm.”
Besides The Jade Peony, Nikolski beat out Good to a Fault by Marina Endicott (Freehand Books), championed by news anchor Simi Sara; Generation X by Douglas Coupland (St. Martin’s Press/H.B. Fenn and Company), defended by poet Roland Pemberton (aka. Cadence Weapon); and Fall On Your Knees, defended by athlete Perdita Felicien.
The five Canada Reads panelists all agreed that Nikolski is one of the more challenging reads of the bunch, partly because it doesn’t adhere to a traditional linear narrative. In the end, however, Vézina was able to champion the book for this very reason. Dickner, however, found it odd that his book succeeded with the same panel that booted off Coupland’s Generation X in the very first round. “There is something very classic and very experimental in what Douglas Coupland does,” he says. “It is very ironic that his book was the first voted out and that Nikolski got to win. We’re kind of lauding the fact that it’s unconventional, but that didn’t help Generation X.”
Dickner’s second novel, Apocalypse for Beginners, will be released in English by Knopf Canada in 2011. (It has already been published in French by Éditions Alto under the name Tarmac.) “We’re speeding it up a bit because of Canada Reads,” he says. Dickner is currently at work on his third novel.
Daily book biz round-up, March 12
Come ‘n get yer scoops:
- Hilary Mantel wins National Book Critics Circle Award
- Margaret Atwood to sing her little heart out in Score: A Hockey Musical. And if you don’t believe that, here’s some pics.
- Crummey and Mitchell win Commonwealth book prizes
- You can’t have an iPad yet, but you can pay for one right now!
- More breathless iPad revelations: book selections to be categorized … and sub-categorized!
- Hachette Livre takes off glove, slaps Paris Book Fair in face
- “Unknown mid-list author from Canada” begs for dough on Dragon’s Den
- Macmillan CEO (and heartthrob) John Sargent ponders the “thorny” problem of e-books and libraries
- John Sargent again, this time taking questions from his adoring fans
Daily book biz round-up, March 11
News, news, and more news:
- Graphic novel glitch just keeps getting worse as Amazon removes Diamond’s buy buttons
- Stephenie Meyer floats Hachette’s boat
- Italy falls in Google’s big game of Axis & Allies
- How many ISBN codes does one e-book need? Discuss.
- Simon Winchester gets in time machine, sets dial to “good ol’ days”
- First Nelson Mandela, then the Dalai Lama, now… John Ralston Saul
- Can e-books save long form journalism?
Event photos: Ann Towell gets Grease-y, Chantal Simmons gets Love Struck, and Stuart Ross goes Rogue
Ann Towell launched her YA novel Grease Town (Tundra Books) on March 6, at the Oil Museum of Canada in Oil Springs, Ontario. Furthermore, oil. (Photo by Larry Towell/Magnum/Courtesy of Tundra Books)
Chantal Simmons launched her new novel, Love Struck (Key Porter Books), on March 4 at Mark Burstyn Photography Studio at an event co-sponsored by Key Porter, Centennial, and Barefoot Wines. Flanking the befrocked Simmons (who is displaying the classic “three-fingered novel grip”) are Key Porter publicist Kelly Ward and vice-president of marketing Tom Best. (Photo by David Cuthbertson of DC Photography/Courtesy of Key Porter Books)
Stuart Ross braved both the cold and a MacGyver-esque approach to microphone technology at the Feb. 27 Parliament Hill launch for Rogue Stimulus: The Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology for a Prorogued Parliament (Mansfield Press), co-edited by Stephen Brockwell and Ross himself. (Photo by Pearl Pirie)
Ian Weir doles out writing advice at the Afterword Reading Society wrap-up
Last night, book lovers gathered at Ben McNally Books in Toronto for the National Post’s inaugural Afterword Reading Society wrap-up. Brad Frenette, Afterword co-editor, hosted a Q&A with Ian Weir, whose novel Daniel O’Thunder (Douglas & McIntyre) has been discussed on the Post book blog for the past two months or so (and was one of Q&Q’s “Overlooked Books” of 2009). The novel has also been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize and the Amazon.ca First Novel Award.
Weir, a successful playwright and screenwriter, spoke frequently of how his background influenced the writing process of his first novel, and offered up some writing advice.
“I find it really useful to think of myself as an actor playing the role of the character,” he said. “If I were an actor, what would I be doing with this moment? What would I be doing with this character? So often as a writer you stay outside the character and discover that you’ve written characters who make a certain intellectual sense to you, but don’t actually have life.”
Weir also said that he appreciated the creative freedom that comes with writing a novel – the usual budget constraints associated with writing for the screen or stage did not apply.
“That’s the wonderful thing about being a writer,” he said. “It costs just the same to set a story with a bazillion characters in the streets of London in Victorian England as it does to write a novel with one character in the streets of London in 2011.”
Brooklyn Library head resigns over Up in the Air–style firing scandal
You probably thought the corporate downsizing company featured in the George Clooney movie Up in the Air was a fiction, but sadly it was not. There really are companies like that, and one of them – The Five O’Clock Club – has figured in a scandal that is engulfing the Brooklyn Public Library. According to the New York Daily News, library head Dionne Mack-Harvin has resigned after her decision to hire the Five O’Clock Club resulted in a very public embarrassment:
After taking a 5% cut to her $80 million budget, Mack-Harvin hired corporate downsizing experts to fire 13 employees. The Manhattan-based firm, the Five O’Clock Club, was being profiled at the time by a Washington Post reporter, who was allowed to witness the library bloodbath – and chronicled it in painful detail.
The reporter didn’t name names, but the article contained enough detail that the staffers’ reactions to arguably one of the most crushing moments in their lives were laid bare – and made them easily identified to co-workers and friends. There was the axed receptionist who came out with “tear stains on her blouse” and had to surrender the only employee rest room key.
[...]
Worse, sources said, Mack-Harvin appeared to lie about the gaffe after the story appeared.
“The notion that you let a reporter in to this very personal moment was very poor,” said one insider. “And then there’s the way they dealt with it. It was a case of the coverup is worse than the crime.”
Daily book biz round-up, Mar. 10
Here’s what’s making news around the Web today:
- The New York Times Book Review? There’s going to be an app for that
- Could Google put translators out of business?
- A portrait of the reader as a basket case
- Is Penguin trying to rewrite history with its Popular Penguins series?
- Hodder & Stoughton brings Coronet imprint back
- Salon’s Laura Miller weighs in on David Shields’ anti-novel manifesto Reality Hunger
- Would you buy a $31 Kindle title?
New book re-examines JFK’s death via letters to Jackie
When U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, the nation – and the world – expressed its grief by sending over one million letters to his wife, Jackie – some even came from Canada. Although there were far too many letters to sift through at the time, many were preserved in Boston’s John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. Now, historian Ellen Fitzpatrick has collected 240 of those letters in Letters to Jackie: Condolences From a Grieving Nation (HarperCollins). From The Globe and Mail:
The notes reveal how many Americans perceived the first television president – as a war veteran and family man, a leader who endured relatively little public criticism by today’s standards, Prof. Fitzpatrick says.
“People really took delight in following the activities of a lot of this young family,” she said. “This collective grief response represented a change in America.”
To avoid copyright issues, Fitzpatrick had to seek out each of the letter writers or their surviving family members for permission to print their letters. The writers vary widely, from widows who felt empathy for Jackie, to the doctor who assisted in John Jr.’s birth and later attended the president’s inauguration ceremony. The presidential library still holds about 200,000 pages of letters – the rest had to be destroyed because of storage limits.
New prize announced for Canadian science titles
The Fitzhenry Family Foundation, a charitable arm of the Ontario-based publisher Fitzhenry & Whiteside, has unveiled a sizable new prize for authors of Canadian science titles. The Lane Anderson Prize, named after company co-founder Robert Fitzhenry’s mother (Margaret Lane) and wife (Hilda Anderson Fitzhenry), will award a total of $20,000 annually to “the very best science writing in Canada today,” in both the adult and young reading categories.
According to the press release, each of the two $10,000 awards will be determined based on “the relevance of [a book’s] content to the importance of science in today’s world, and the author’s ability to connect the topic to the interests of the general trade reader.”
Two three-person juries drawn from the Canadian academic, publishing, creative, and institutional fields will review submissions in each category, and the jury will be announced along with the winners at an event in Toronto on Sept. 15. The closing date for submissions is April 30, 2010, for books published in 2009. A shortlist will be announced on Aug. 16.
The new award will fill a void of sorts in the Canadian science writing arena. Until now, there has only been one small prize for Canadian science writers, the Science in Society Book Awards, which handed out $1,000 annually to the best science titles for adults and young readers.
