Books of the Year 2010: Books for Young People

There’s no formula for choosing the books of the year. Some break ground, some tackle familiar themes with new energy. Some represent the best work from established authors, some introduce us to important new voices. And some are simply in-house favourites we feel deserve a little more attention. Here are the Books for Young People that made the most impact in 2010.

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Writers’ groups outline objections to Bill C-32

A coalition of seven English-language national writers’ organizations has formally outlined its objections to the copyright modernization act now before Parliament. In a formal brief addressed to the industry and heritage ministers, the group calls on the government to throw out several proposed amendments, including a provision to expand the definition of “fair dealing” to include education as well as provisions pertaining to non-commercial user-generated content and inter-library loans of digital files. The brief also underlines the importance of collective licences in supporting publishers and writers.

The signatories to the document are the Canadian Authors Association, the Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators and Performers, the League of Canadian Poets, the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada, the Playwrights Guild of Canada, the Professional Writers Association of Canada, and The Writers’ Union of Canada. From the brief:

It is essential that Canada’s copyright law reflects the new technological developments that are transforming the way that writing and other forms of cultural expression are created and distributed. However, Canadian writers have deep concerns about the impact of the long list of new exemptions in Bill C-32

For background on Bill C-32, which underwent second reading in the House of Commons last week, read Q&Q‘s coverage of the issue. Or you can read the entire brief, which has been posted online by the Professional Writers Association of Canada.

Daily book biz round-up: Arthur Slade wins $25,000; U.K. to review copyright laws; and more

Today’s book news:

• Arthur Slade scores $25,000 with the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award
• Mysterious Press to return via Grove Atlantic
• British government announces review of copyright laws to make them “fit for the Internet age”
• Adult hardcover book sales drop by 40 per cent
• Meet the new Spider-Girl

Should writers be paying closer attention to the copyright bill?

There’s a lot of talk about Bill C-32, the government’s proposed amendment to the Copyright Act. Most of the discussion has focused on consumer rights. Not many writers have weighed in, perhaps because the word copyright seems tantamount to saying thorazine or income tax or let’s watch great aunt Irma’s vacation slides.

The bill contains a new educational exemption for fair dealing that could allow teachers to copy and distribute materials without compensating creators. Given the fact that annual public lending right cheques and other collective licensing schemes can sometimes provide more income than royalty pay-outs, authors should take note. But as always, it’s hard to parse what’s real, and what’s hyperbole. (Full details on the bill, provided you’re fully caffeinated, can be found here.)

Nino Ricci fills this void today in The Globe and Mail with a piece claiming that Canadians need to get angry, because should the bill pass, writers and publishers are going down.

Imagine if a government tried to reduce its education budget by requiring the makers of blackboards to provide them for free. Far from getting free blackboards, schools would soon find themselves with no blackboards at all, since every blackboard maker would have had to close up shop.

As far-fetched as this scenario seems, it is exactly what the government proposes in a new bill to reform the Copyright Act. Bill C-32, now making its way through Parliament, has a clause that will allow the free use of copyrighted material for “educational” purposes.

Many readers have commented that Ricci’s article is far-fetched and lacking nuance. But again, few of the opinions are coming from working writers. It would be useful to hear further perspectives, and not just from tech-celebs or pundits, but everyday working writers who represent the majority.

Daily book biz round-up: Houellebecq steals from Wikipedia; the evils of present tense novels; and more

Today’s book news:

• Did Michel Houellebecq steal from Wikipedia? And if so, should he feel bad about it? Discuss
• Philips Pullman and Hencher bemoan inclusion of present tense novels on the Booker shortlist
• Booker judge Andrew Motion on this year’s selection process
• Coming soon: colour e-Ink
• Michael Geist suggests that universities dump Access Copyright

Copyright holders “greedy” say Woodlief, Curtis

In a July 9 Wall Street Journal article, Tony Woodlief argues that current practices for securing permission to reprint copyrighted material are too intricate and costly to survive. He cites his own experience writing a memoir and attempting to secure permission to use copyrighted material as chapter epigraphs:

When I asked to use a single line by songwriter Joe Henry, for example, his record label’s parent company demanded $150 for every 7,500 copies of my book. Assuming I sell enough books to earn back my modest advance, this amounts to roughly 1.5% of my earnings, all for quoting eight words from one of Mr. Henry’s songs.

Woodlief writes that the compromise between rewarding artists for creating original works and allowing the appreciation and dissemination of those works to be as easy and widely available as possible has been historically skewed too far in the former direction.

The copyright thicket is a growing frustration among writers and editors. One editor of a popular literary anthology (who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals from publishers) confirmed that many publishers pursue illusory short-term profit at the expense of both profit and art. By demanding fees that most people won’t pay, they forsake free advertising for the artists they claim to protect. If restaurants behaved that way, not only would they deny you the right to take home leftovers to your dog, they’d try to charge you for smelling their food when you pass by.

It’s a clever analogy that has only one problem: it’s wrong. The proper analogy would involve someone walking into a restaurant, going up to the pass, taking some food off a plate, walking out and handing the food to a passerby on the street without paying for it, but charging the passerby a fee, which is then pocketed (Woodlief’s “modest advance” is surely combined with a royalty scale in his contract).

This minor inaccuracy, however, does not prevent Richard Curtis from picking up on Woodlief’s line of reasoning and extending it to encompass enhanced e-books that incorporate other media such as video and music:

What’s the problem?  For a recent webinar on the subject I stated it this way: “The challenge of clearing rights for enhanced e-books is so dauntingly complex that nothing less than an overhaul of the current antiquated system is necessary if enhanced e-books are not to die aborning.”

Curtis goes on to bemoan the process of tracking down permissions for copyrighted material, which he calls “extremely tedious,” as though the relative interest level of the task itself renders it untenable. He suggests that in the digital era, the battle over copyright “is intolerable and will simply have to stop.”

The rationale for this conclusion seems to be that traditional copyright protections make the production of enhanced e-books too complicated, meaning that only “auteurs” who produce, write, edit, direct, and score their own material will be able to create them. The faulty assumption here is that just because a particular technology (i.e. the ability to “mash up” videos, text, music, etc. to produce enhanced e-books) exists, everyone should be able to exploit it without restriction. This is the new digital fundamentalism, and it is deleterious to the notion that artists deserve to be adequately compensated for their artistic output.

It is, however, a notion that is becoming accepted if only through repetition. Jonathan Lethem (in “The Ecstasy of Influence”) and David Shields (in Reality Hunger) have both made the argument that artistic products should be freely available to be recombined, plagiarized, and enhanced as anyone sees fit. The ability to do this is made manifest by the digital tools that are now at our fingertips. Arguing that these digital tools are poisonous to the process of artistic creation is reductive, but so is the notion that the copyright battle currently underway “is intolerable.”

Daily book biz round-up: Target to sell Kindle; props to Galchen and Bezmozgis; and more

Browse and click!

• Canadians Rivka Galchen and David Bezmozgis make The New Yorker‘s 20 Under 40 list
• New copyright legislation gets tough about breaking digital encryption locks
• Target to become first brick-and-mortar retailer to sell Kindle
• Simon & Schuster U.S. publisher David Rosenthal gets the ol’ heave-ho
• Follett of Canada to begin renting textbooks to college students
• Indie booksellers in U.K. find yet more reasons to be mad at Amazon

New copyright legislation likely this Thursday

According to a Canadian Press report, Industry Minister Tony Clement is likely to table long-awaited legislation amending Canada’s Copyright Act this Thursday. The legislation apparently includes a revised definition of “fair dealing” that would make it easier for academics to employ primary-source material in their work without running afoul of the Act, and will make it a crime to circumvent copy protection on DVDs and CDs.

Sources have said the legislation will make it a crime to pick a “digital lock” attached to a piece of music, film, electronic game, or other product. For example, overriding the copyright code on a song to burn it to a CD would violate the Act. Format shifting, moving digital material around from say, a CD to an iPod, or burning from a PVR to a DVD, will be considered legal for personal use as long as no digital lock is picked.

That doesn’t sit well with many vocal proponents of user rights, who say big entertainment multinationals will be given too much sway over what Canadians do in their own homes, with their personal property. When the Conservatives last tried to introduce changes two years ago, a massive online campaign erupted to oppose it and they were forced back to the drawing board, striking cross-country consultations and going back and forth within cabinet.

Perhaps in a pre-emptive move to counter exactly this kind of criticism, Clement is reaching out to opposition MPs to support the bill, and suggesting that he is open to amendments:

“I’m not coming down from the mountain with this chiselled in stone,” Clement said.

“This bill may have elements in it where we could seek some consensus and there could be some positive amendments to this bill. That’s certainly in the realm of possibility too, and let the process begin.”

Clement stated that the legislation will attempt to balance the interests of content creators and users, but acknowledged the many competing concerns, would make it virtually impossible to please everyone.

“That’s why this bill is going to be thoroughly discussed and debated…. I would just urge people to wait for the bill and read the bill, and they can make up their own minds.”

Daily book biz round-up, May 17

Your Monday links round-up:

• Scholastic issues statement of support for Robert Munsch after he admits to struggles with addiction
• Mount Allison profs continue to protest honorary degree for Indigo’s Heather Reisman
• Cursor admits it will be selling those gorgeous worthwhile dead-tree books after all
• U.K. publishers told they must be “in control” of agreements made with Apple
• Kobo’s Michael Tamblyn offers his Bookcamp 2010 summer wine picks

Michael Geist’s covert ties to Amazon

[This post has been updated]

The debate surrounding Amazon’s planned Canadian expansion has produced many arguments both for (the editorial boards at The Globe and Mail and National Post) and against (the Canadian Booksellers Association, the Association of Canadian Publishers). While such polarized opinions are to be expected, one of the most surprising voices to come out in support of Amazon is copyright activist and University of Ottawa academic Michael Geist, known for his anti-corporate stance on many copyright issues in the digital age.

In Monday’s Toronto Star, Geist went after the Canadian Booksellers Association, arguing that the “CBA’s attempt to cloak the issue as a matter of Canadian culture is unsurprising, but [Heritage Minister James] Moore should recognize this for what it is – a transparent attempt to hamstring a tough competitor that ultimately hurts the Canadian culture sector.” Geist went on to suggest that Amazon’s (theoretically) unlimited selection of books is a good thing for Canadian culture and that the “scarcity of space in brick-and-mortar stores has long been a key concern for Canadian authors and publishers, who fear that their titles might get squeezed off the shelves.”

In the wake of Geist’s op-ed, U.S. blogger Christian L. Castle, described on his blog as a Los Angeles–based journalist, has unearthed ties between Amazon and an Internet think tank headed co-created by Geist:

First of all, it should not be overlooked that Geist’s U.S.-backed Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, the Alcan of IP with its almost 100% American board, “was established in 2003 with the aid of a start-up grant from an Amazon.com Cy Pres fund, received by Prof. Michael Geist.” Now I’m sure that Geist would deny that he personally received any money, but if that’s true, they might want to revise that sentence on the SG-CIPPIC website.

It’s entirely possible that Geist, in his ignorance of book retailing and the publishing sector, truly believes that independent booksellers are a threat to Canadian culture. If that’s the case, however, he should have been above-board about his past dealings with Amazon.

[Update] Michael Geist responds: “The Amazon grant was money that came via a court order through a class action settlement. It was used to establish the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic in 2003. Being part of a Cy Pres Fund, Amazon did not oversee or make the award. A court did. There is no conflict and nothing hidden. In fact, look back at my earlier columns criticizing them for the Kindle to see how much influence they have over what I say. None.”