Britain’s authors got talent

The Penguin U.K. blog spotlights Novel Pitch, a live (but non-televised) competition similar to Britain’s Got Talent, but with authors. Hamish Hamilton editor Juliette Mitchell writes:

I was one of a panel of five, and our task was to hear six novels pitched to us by six unpublished writers in the form of extracts and synopses and, gulp, to give immediate feedback. And because it was billed as a spectator sport there had to be an element of competition, so come what may a winner would be chosen – by us and, separately, by the audience.

[...]

As a panel I’d say we acquitted ourselves quite honourably. We talked of strong beginnings, nice detail, good characterisation, the benefits of a good title, and the market (though this, we agreed, should be the publisher’s concern, not the writer’s). And we were able to say good things about everything we heard because the standard was undoubtedly high.

Bookmarks: pulping Penguin, Germany’s black market, and more

Sundry links from around the Web:

• A British hamlet opens a paper recycling mill that, among other things, will specialize in pulping Penguin’s titles.
• Will Austria become a black market for German book buyers?
• Apple’s potential response to the Kindle.

Bookmarks: What would Keith Richards do?, Superman’s creator gets kinky, and more

A trio of links highlighting printed accounts of art and some of its less-than-stable creators:

• What Would Keef Do? The New York Times’ Paper Cuts blog spotlights a collection of worldly wisdom from the Rolling Stones guitarist.
• Amazing Adventures: Paper Cuts also showcases the kinky side of Superman co-creator Joe Shuster’s artwork (examples of which can be found here).
• The stories children’s books tell: The Guardian offers an interesting look at the world (and a book about the world) that spawned the “golden era” of children’s literature.

Yet more developments in the Google Book Search settlement

In response to the rallying opposition to the Google Book Search settlement, a federal judge in New York has extended the opt-out deadline, giving authors an additional four months to consider Google’s terms.

As if that weren’t enough, the U.S. Justice Department has also opened an antitrust investigation into Google’s actions. Mobylives reports:

The probe seems to be focussed on the fact that, as a Reuters wire story reports, the settlement “would allow Google – and only Google – to digitize so-called orphan works” and sell access to them. Orphan works are books that are out of print, but still in copyright. (Reuters is not correct when it indicates that it is unclear who owns copyrights in this situation – often, ownership is clear, as we here at Melville House can attest about several books we’ve brought back into print that are available now through Google Books.)

“There are legitimate antitrust issues related to Google’s ability to solely commercialize this content,” commented Peter Brantley of the Internet Archive. IA also digitizes books, and Brantley “said his organization had ‘multiple conversations’ with the Justice Department about the Google plan,” according to Reuters.

London Book Fair post-mortem

As reported in OMNI on Tuesday, most of the Canadian agents attending this week’s London Book Fair were anticipating lowered attendance. However, most were going and reported full schedules.

It is hardly surprising, then, that one of the first reports coming out of the fair is a positive one. From Publisher’s Weekly:

On Wednesday, the fair’s final day, attendees were walking the show floor in the early morning, and meeting tables at most stands continued to be filled. “Overall attendance may not be that great, but the quality of the attendance has been phenomenal,” said Frank Daniels, chief commercial officer of Ingram Digital. “People are very focused,” he said, and those who did show up “came to do business.”

Who cares about publishers’ imprints? (Answer: the publishers!)

Over at the Penguin blog, Helen Conford, head of the U.K. division’s new Particular Books imprint, presents an odd argument: she begins by acknowledging that few readers care about imprints, explains why publishers do, then goes on to explain the reasoning behind her new imprint, without bothering to explain why readers should pay attention.

Last January Penguin Press had an away day and we started to think that perhaps these books deserved their own home. We thought about the qualities these books shared, and about a name and colophon (or logo) that would represent them. We talked with booksellers about other books and other publishers and imprints who publish well in this area. We asked them what they liked. And in the end we focused on the idea that these books are fun to know: the subject matter is fun to know, the voice of the author is passionate and characterful, the physical book is charming. Georgina Laycock, Editorial Director, came up with the name: Particular Books.

Your e-book speculation for the day

It’s a shame Canadians still can’t experience the apparent bliss that is Amazon’s Kindle 2 (despite the release of that iPhone app that would doubtless work perfectly well on Canadian models), but that hasn’t stemmed our interest in all the commentary on e-book readers, like that which came out of a recent publisher’s conference in Britain.

Meanwhile, American author Steven Johnson’s piece from The Wall Street Journal is perhaps the first article this Quillblogger has read that makes an e-book reader sound like something worth owning:

A few weeks after I bought the device, I was sitting alone in a restaurant in Austin, Texas, dutifully working my way through an e-book about business and technology, when I was hit with a sudden desire to read a novel. After a few taps on the Kindle, I was browsing the Amazon store, and within a minute or two I’d bought and downloaded Zadie Smith’s novel On Beauty. By the time the check arrived, I’d finished the first chapter.

This has obvious benefits for publishers, says Johnson:

Amazon’s early data suggest that Kindle users buy significantly more books than they did before owning the device, and it’s not hard to understand why: The bookstore is now following you around wherever you go. A friend mentions a book in passing, and instead of jotting down a reminder to pick it up next time you’re at Barnes & Noble, you take out the Kindle and — voilà! — you own it.

Strunk & White: 50 years of making people nervous

William Strunk & E.B. White’s The Elements of Style, that indispensable guide for English writers everywhere, is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Not everyone is joining the festivities, however; in an essay that will have many former university students applauding, University of Edinburgh linguistics professor Geoffery K. Pullum outlines his issues with the book:

It’s sad. Several generations of college students learned their grammar from the uninformed bossiness of Strunk and White, and the result is a nation of educated people who know they feel vaguely anxious and insecure whenever they write “however” or “than me” or “was” or “which,” but can’t tell you why. The land of the free in the grip of The Elements of Style.

Bookcrossing

Both The Guardian and the BBC spotlight “Bookcrossing,” a scheme created by a pair of British book-lovers to hand out free paperbacks to subway riders at a selection of supervised kiosks every month. Instead of the ubiquitous commuter dailies highlighting the latest “useless celebrity,” according to cofounder Alfie Boyd, riders can immerse themselves in something more worthwhile. From the BBC:

[Boyd] began the scheme with friend Claire Wilson to give commuters an alternative to the “tonnes of free newspapers dished out and thrown away every day.”

[...]

All the books were donated to the scheme by the pair’s friends and members of the public.

Once they have finished each commuter is encouraged to add their name to a list of readers inside its cover before returning it.

Bookmarks: historical vampires, Nabokov’s last work, and forgotten Pulitzers

Sundry links from around the Web:

• The New York Times looks at established authors who write well into old age.
• The co-author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies announces his next book: Abraham Lincoln, vampire hunter.
• The Wall Street Journal shines a light on the battle against the Comic Sans Serif font. Oddly, while the article provides excellent examples of the detractors’ ire, it doesn’t really establish why they hate the font so much. (Besides, we all know that if it weren’t for Comic, Ransom would take over.)
• Coming soon from Random House: the e-book equivalent of DVD special features.
• Vladimir Nabokov’s final book to be published in November.
• Proving the seven-figure book deal isn’t dead – in Asia, at least – a debut novelist receives a sizable advance from Penguin India.
• The top-ten forgotten Pulitzer-prize winners.