Awards presented to Shapcott, Walcott, and book apps

There’s been a flurry of book award activity over the past few days (take that, Academy Awards). The awards in this roundup range from the time-honoured and prestigious to the trendy and cutting edge.

Costa Book of the Year Award
Costa Book Awards named Jo Shapcott’s poetry collection Of Mutability (Faber & Faber) its Book of the Year. The U.K. award culls its shortlist from winners across five categories: first novel, novel, biography, poetry, and children’s book. The 2010 shortlist also featured Witness the Night, a first novel by Kishwar Desai; The Hand That First Held Mine, a novel by Maggie O’Farrel; The Hare with Amber Eyes, a memoir by Edmund de Waal; and Out of Shadows, a children’s book by first-time author Jason Wallace. Shapcott receives £25,000; the winner in each category receives £5,000.

T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry
Also based out of the U.K., the Poetry Book Society awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize to Derek Walcott for White Egrets (Faber & Faber). Walcott, 81, is a Nobel laureate and currently serves as distinguished scholar in residence at the University of Alberta.

The £15,000 prize is given annually to the author of the best new poetry collection published in the U.K. or Ireland. Anne Stevenson, chair of the judging panel, described Walcott’s collection as a “moving, risk-taking and technically flawless book by a great poet.” Also included on the shortlist were Sam Willetts, Seamus Heaney, and Pascal Petit.

Publishing Innovation Awards
Digital Book World opened last night in New York City by handing out the first-ever Publishing Innovation Awards for e-books and apps. The winners are selected based on “their merits in the areas of origination, development, production, design, and marketing.”

The inaugural winners are:

Fiction:  DRACULA: The Official Stoker Family Edition (PadWorx Digital Media)
Non-fiction: Logos Bible Software (Logos Bible Software)
Children’s:  A Story Before Bed (Jackson Fish Market)
Reference:  Star Walk for iPad (Vito Technology)
Comics: Robot 13 (Robot Comics)

Super Thursday in Britain, and what U.S., U.K. publishers will be taking to Frankfurt

Americans have “Black Friday,” the Friday after Thanksgiving, which is the start of the Christmas shopping fiasco season, and which can, on occasion, lead to actual loss of life. It’s hard to imagine book buyers trampling store employees to death to get their hands on the new Audrey Niffenegger title, but British retailers are boning up for what they’re calling “Super Thursday” this Oct. 1, when a staggering 800 titles will publish in advance of the Christmas selling season.

With the months between October and December accounting for anywhere from 30% to 40% of annual sales, publishers obviously have a lot invested in the books that will drop this week. But one wonders how anyone hopes to break out of the pack with so many titles appearing on store shelves simultaneously. From the Guardian:

“It’s nice to have a day that feels quite special, because it is a rare title that is truly big enough to be a publishing event in itself,” says Julia Kingsford, head of marketing at bookseller Foyles. “But the inevitablility, with 800 books coming out on this one day, is that there will be things that are missed. There are an awful lot of books published, and not everything can be number one.”

Of course, British publishers can breathe (somewhat) easier knowing that the behemoth blockbuster of the fall, Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, has already dropped, so they’ll only have the ripple effects of its publication to deal with. Still, with new books from Terry Pratchett, Kate Mosse, Ozzy Osborne, and Stieg Larsson among those set to appear on Thursday, it’s a tight field.

Meanwhile, publishers in both the U.S. and Britain are gearing up for that other fall ritual: the Frankfurt Book Fair. Publisher’s Weekly gives a rundown of some of the big titles that reps will be taking with them to the annual fair, and it’s another cornucopia of big names and potential blockbusters. Some highlights:

• Imperial Bedrooms, Bret Easton Ellis’s sequel to Less than Zero
• 1Q84, Haruki Murakami’s doorstopper of a novel
• The Living Dead, zombie maestro George A. Romero’s first novel
• Stones into Schools, Greg Mortenson’s follow-up to the best-selling Three Cups of Tea
• Insatiable, a modern-day sequel to Dracula by chick-lit mainstay Meg Cabot
• Horns, by best-selling Stephen King progeny Joe Hill
• The Memory, an adult novel from “Sisterpants” author Ann Brashares
• Committed, the new book from Elizabeth Gilbert, of Eat, Pray, Love fame
• The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, a typically uncontroversial novel from Philip Pullman
• Revenge, the fiction debut from Sharon Osbourne (what’s good for the goose…)

Penguin wants to suck your blood

Q&Q received a press release this morning outlining some of Penguin Canada’s promotional plans for the new Bram Stoker family-endorsed Dracula sequel, Dracula: The Un-Dead, and one line in particular caught our attention:

Through our partnership with Canadian Blood Services and the Randolph Academy, you can expect to see a spectacular surprise event, and Dracula-themed blood drives in select cities across the country.

Yes folks, you read that right: Dracula-themed blood drives. Because who doesn’t want to combine book promotion with giving the gift of blood? It’s hard to guess what such events will entail, but lets hope it’s Canadian Blood Services that’ll be sticking the needles in, and that the kids from the Randolph Academy (more commonly known as the “triple-threat” Toronto school for young actors) are only on hand to provide sexy, Elvira-like nurses and Bat-Dancers.

Richard Poplak and more in the May Q&Q

Jet-setting author Richard Poplak travelled to 17 different countries to research his latest book, which looks at the influence of American pop culture in the Muslim world, and he’s Q&Q’s cover subject in the May 2009 issue. Also in the issue, we look at the surprising success of Harlequin Enterprises at 60 and at how print-on-demand is changing the bookstore of the future. Our Library Special Report examines the tricky task of putting Canada’s archival history online. Plus reviews of new books by Colin McAdam, Emily Schultz, Giles Blunt, Lynn Johnston, Barry Callaghan, and more.

Pop goes the world
Richard Poplak bets that tawdry TV and banal bubblegum can bring cultures together

Print-on-demand: The dream and the reality
The bookstore of the future, and why POD machines are waiting for books in the present

Love wins out
While other major publishers are bleeding money, Harlequin Enterprises is raking it in. How the firm has managed to beat the odds

History, bit by bit
What’s the best way to put our national heritage online?
AND MORE IN THE LIBRARY SPECIAL REPORT: Coping with rising patron demand, and learning to LOL at the reference desk

FRONTMATTER

• Ninety minutes with Stuart Ross
• Comedy is easy, kidlit is hard
• The adventures of Pierre Turgeon: a timeline
• Cover to Cover: Lauren Kirshner’s Where We Have to Go
• Snapshot: Alexandra Moore of Word on the Street
• Breakwater unbroken
• David Bezmozgis moves from control to collaboration

REVIEWS

• Heaven Is Small by Emily Schultz
• Though You Were Dead by Terry Griggs
• The English Stories by Cynthia Flood
• Plus more fiction, non-fiction, and poetry

BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

• Dance Baby Dance by Andrea Spalding
• Dracula Madness by Mary Labatt and Jo Rioux
• Soccer Sabotage by Liam O’Donnell and Mike Deas
• Swim the Fly by Don Calame
• Plus more fiction, non-fiction, and picture books

THE Q&Q/BOOKNET CANADA BESTSELLERS

THE LAST WORD
Lesley Choyce does the math on three decades in writing

The ongoing battle to make reading cool

Penguin Books U.K. has launched an innovative promotional contest and website for its audiobooks line. The Penguin Remixed site contains a number of samples from the company’s line of audiobooks. Visitors to the site can download any of these samples and mix them with original music, then submit the remixes to the site. The best entries are posted on the site, and listeners can vote for their favourite remix. The sampled audiobooks are a mixture of the classic and hip (the only author with more than one book represented is Nick Hornby). Some of the posted remixes are quite clever, including the current favourite, a sample of Richard E. Grant reading from Bram Stoker’s Dracula mixed with an ambient, triphop soundscape.

Related links:
Visit the Penguin Remixed site