How to improve lit awards

From a piece in the North Shore News by Friend of Q&Q Caroline Skelton:

If only literary awards could be more like the Grammys.

The organizers of that famed event don’t seem to give a hoot that each year their audience twitches fitfully through 90 per cent of the evening, en route to album of the year. Tuning in to see whether Amy Winehouse would trounce Rihanna this year, for instance, you were first apprised of Jimmy Sturr and His Orchestra’s big win in Field 17 — Polka.

At the B.C. Book Prizes, announced tomorrow, there’s but seven little categories. And out of all the B.C. fiction published this year, there’s just one Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.

Reading through the five books on the shortlist, it struck me as unfair that one should go home with all the proverbial marbles.

What about the many charms and peccadillos of the other four? Not one little ode for all those finely realized characters, lushly painted scenes and hold-onto-your-socks-lest-you-get-blown-away metaphors?

Click through to read the author’s suggestions for new awards, including the “I can smell the cobblestones!” award, the bad sex award, and the madwoman/madman in the attic award.

The story of &

In recent weeks, the font nerds over at Hoefler & Frere-Jones have taken readers on an exciting adventure in kerning and answered their burning questions about the origins of the pilcrow.

This week, they recount the history of the ampersand, which stretches at least as far back as Pompeiian grafitti in 79 A.D.:

As both its function and form suggest, the ampersand is a written contraction of “et,” the Latin word for “and.” Its shape has evolved continuously since its introduction, and while some ampersands are still manifestly e-t ligatures, others merely hint at this origin, sometimes in very oblique ways. The many forms that a font’s ampersand can follow are generally informed by its historical context, the whims of its designer, and the demands of the type family that contains it.

…

As for the word “ampersand,” folk etymologies abound. The likeliest account, offered by the OED, is explained by early alphabet primers in which the symbol was listed after X, Y, Z as “&: per se, and.” Meaning “&: in itself, ‘and’”, and inevitably pronounced as “and per se and”, it’s a quick corruption to “ampersand,” and the rest is history. Though I do like one competing explanation offered by a retired signpainter I once met, who insisted that the symbol got its name from its inventor, and was henceforth known to the trade as Amper’s And. This Mr. Amper has never surfaced, nor have any of his contemporaries who lent their names to competing models; I would have liked to see Quick’s And, on which this tale is surely built.

Vancouver aiming to be City of Literature

Vancouver is gunning to be named the second UNESCO City of Literature, after Edinburgh was named as the first in 2005. It’ll have to beat out competition from Amsterdam, Alexandria, and Krakow.

Alma Lee, founder of the Vancouver International Writers Festival, is spearheading the campaign, with the help of representatives from the Association of Book Publishers of B.C., the University of B.C., Simon Fraser University, Tourism B.C., and, naturally, Douglas Coupland.

From the Vancouver Sun:

“I decided the best way to present us as a city was as new; you know, we’re new, we’re young, we’re vibrant, we’re part of a new world,” said Lee, who has been talking to representatives of the Paris-based United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization since 2004

…

Lee said application to UNESCO must be made by the City of Vancouver. She said the bid already has the support of Mayor Sam Sullivan, Coun. Elizabeth Ball and Coun. Peter Ladner.

“Personally, I don’t see how [city council] can say no — you never know, of course — and I certainly don’t see how UNESCO can say no.”

Bookmarks: Huckabee writes, Vlad gets a library, Darwin goes digital

Some book-related links:

• Mike Huckabee to publish post-election book (Reuters)
• U.S. Congress pushing for greater transparency in textbook pricing (New York Times)
• Vladimir Putin gets a library to preserve his legacy, following in the footsteps of U.S. presidents like Nixon, Reagan, and, most recently, George W. Bush (Reuters)
• Starbucks ditching music label; could books be next? (Los Angeles Times)
• Cambridge University puts Darwin’s notes online (NPR)
• Sci-fi mag reaches out to the galactic demographic (Marketing Week)

Attack of the robo-authors

Philip M. Parker is the (computer-aided) author of more than 200,000 books. And, thanks to the wonders of print-on-demand, he has yet to lose money on a single one. His work represents the tip of a very long tail.

From the New York Times:

Among the books published under his name are “The Official Patient’s Sourcebook on Acne Rosacea” ($24.95 and 168 pages long); “Stickler Syndrome: A Bibliography and Dictionary for Physicians, Patients and Genome Researchers” ($28.95 for 126 pages); and “The 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India” ($495 for 144 pages).

But these are not conventional books, and it is perhaps more accurate to call Mr. Parker a compiler than an author. Mr. Parker, who is also the chaired professor of management science at Insead (a business school with campuses in Fontainebleau, France, and Singapore), has developed computer algorithms that collect publicly available information on a subject — broad or obscure — and, aided by his 60 to 70 computers and six or seven programmers, he turns the results into books in a range of genres, many of them in the range of 150 pages and printed only when a customer buys one.

If this sounds like cheating to the layman’s ear, it does not to Mr. Parker, who holds some provocative — and apparently profitable — ideas on what constitutes a book. While the most popular of his books may sell hundreds of copies, he said, many have sales in the dozens, often to medical libraries collecting nearly everything he produces. He has extended his technique to crossword puzzles, rudimentary poetry and even to scripts for animated game shows.

All we need now is a machine that reads for us, and we’ll finally be free of the oppressive shackles of literate culture.

Bookmarks (Middle East edition)

• In the face of all-too-obvious problems, small publishing houses and modern printing facilities are popping up throughout the Arab world (Bookseller.com)
• Dubai adds a literary festival to its cultural boom (Kipp Report)
• Iraq’s National Library soldiers on after being looted by vandals and neglected by the occupying powers (The Nation)
• An interview with Bahaa Taher, winner of this year’s inaugural International Prize for Arabic fiction (The Guardian)
• Two independent U.K. publishers join forces to create a list devoted to translations of new Arabic fiction (Bookseller.com)
• And finally, an overview of the progress made by all this progress (The Independent)
• Bonus gossip! Tabloid star Salman Rushdie has a new girlfriend, got writer’s block after divorcing Padma Lakshmi, is appearing as a gynecologist in a film, and was lying when he said he loved Islam.

Coveting thy neighbour’s sales

According to Ben Kaplan of the National Post, the Canadian publishing industry is crazed with envy, obsessively checking up on their rivals’ deals and sales numbers:

Resentment among authors has been around since the first cocktail party lauded the first published word. But in the age of the internet and publicized book deals on Booknet Canada, Publishers Marketplace and the deals section of the Quill & Quire website, first-time novelists now have more tools at their disposal to keep track of opponents – and there’s a certain amount of bloodletting in the Canadian authorship game.
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Publishers, agents and authors all want to keep tabs on their industry. And certain watershed deals – such as the twin fortunes earned by first-time novelists Anne Michaels and Ann-Marie MacDonald in the mid-’90s, Michael Turner’s deal with Doubleday for The Pornographer’s Poem in 1999 or the bidding war that broke out over Tish Cohen’s debut novel last year – attract the industry’s attention and scorn.

“We don’t only go online to check our sales, but also to check everyone else’s sales,” says Kim McArthur, president of McArthur & Co., a publisher and distributor that has seen 63 of its releases become Canadian best-sellers and 21 of them reach No. 1 in Canadian sales. McArthur believes envy is good for publishing, and that deal trackers and sales figures bring moxie to the biz. “Now you can be envious of someone and then go check their figures,” she says. “Really make yourself sick.”

It seems that we here at Q & Q are enablers. We’re sorry, everybody. We had no idea.

DK goes green

As part of the U.K. publishing industry’s eco-kick, Dorling Kindersley has released a series of green books – greener than all those that have come before.

The four new titles are printed using non-toxic glue and vegetable inks on recycled card, and a tree is planted for every one pulped in the process. (And, for a limited time, David Suzuki comes free with every purchase.)

The Times Online notes, though, that while green publishing is certainly admirable, it’s not cheap, and until it becomes cheaper, it may not be sustainable financially:

Manufacturing the books will cost the publisher twice the usual price, largely because DK, part of the Penguin Group, is printing it in Europe instead of the Far East to cut down on unnecessary travel.

“We are launching the range at a bit of a loss leader to see how it goes,” said Gary June, DK’s chief executive.

“We are hoping to pass some of the cost on because people will pay for ethical goods. The demand is there.”

Most publishers are trying to go green. Hachette Livre’s Little, Brown imprint already uses nothing but Forest Stewardship Council-accredited paper, whereby a tree is planted for every one used. However, demand is outstripping supply.

June also aims to produce fewer books, cutting down on the number of unsold copies that are pulped.

I see dead people(‘s libraries)

Library Thing, a social networking website for booklovers, is offering, for your browsing pleasure, the libraries of such luminaries as James Joyce, Sylvia Plath, and Adam Smith, mostly compiled from collections held by museums and estates.

Some libraries provide few surprises: for instance, Ernest Hemingway had about a million books on hunting, bullfighting, and the first World War. But on the other hand, there’s something very touching about picturing Tupac Shakur settling down with a nice cup of tea and The Diary of Anaïs Nin.

Canada snags rare children’s book

From CBC.ca:

When Canadian troops liberated western Holland from Nazi rule in May 1945, a 21-year-old Dutch artist named Mart Kempers was among the cheering throngs who greeted them.

Before the year was out, Mr. Kempers would create a series of visually striking images that captured the moment of liberation for a children’s book, hi ha canada, published in 1945 by Rotterdam publishing house Luctor.

Because of paper shortages due to the war, hi ha canada probably had a print run of only a few hundred copies, making it a rare find. The ever intrepid Library and Archives Canada recently acquired a copy after a long and bloody hunt, and now everyone can go and have a read:

Members of the public can look at the book in a special reading room at Library and Archives Canada if they abide by the rules, which include wearing special gloves to protect its yellowing pages from natural oils on our fingers.

Library and Archives Canada will feature hi ha canada on its website Wednesday as part of a new program to better publicize new acquisitions and treasures in its immense collection of books, maps, newspapers, portraits and music.