Daily book biz round-up: evil mobsters, filthy librarians, and more

Your assortment of book news tidbits:

• Victoria booksellers told to be on lookout for ex-mobster
• Moore, Mantel make Orange Prize shortlist
• Hearty French and Dutch manage to make it to the LBF; Americans, Italians, and Spaniards wuss out
• Proof: librarians even more filthy-minded than once thought
• Kelley bio ain’t no thang to Oprah
• New Stephen King novella goes to Kindle first
• Nielsen to divest itself of The Bookseller

Daily book biz round-up, March 18

What’s the buzz? What’s a happenin’? Here’s what’s a happenin’:

• Having had its butt kicked by the major publishers, Amazon starts beating up on the weaker kids
• Harper government flip-flops on funding for Internet access at libraries. We think. (We had to read this story a few times…)
• Amazon releases beta version of Kindle app for Mac
• Stanza has disappeared from the Apple app store! Oh wait, no it hasn’t. Never mind
• Gerald Posner: dirty plagiarizer times two
• Some new Just So Stories
• Who’s at fault for the joylessness of the Orange Prize titles? It’s the publishers, stupid!
• U.S. library full of dead bats! City brings in “professional bat exclusionist”

Daily book biz round-up, March 17

The green beer can wait. Get some news in ya first:

• Mantel, Moore, and Waters make Orange Prize longlist
• Roy MacSkimming on allowing Amazon to set up shop in Canada
• Comic book and graphic novel retailers still waiting for better days
• Fast on the heels of Colorado dust-up, Amazon threatens Connecticut, too
• How Joe Hill climbed out from under dad Stephen King’s shadow
• Salon’s Laura Miller plays Book Critic Cliché Bingo
• The New York Times on the tricky business of archiving authors’ digital materials
• A contrary view of modern library design
• Kurt Vonnegut meets Rodney Dangerfield, and other literary film cameos

The book industry: this week in quotes

“I suddenly understood what fiction was for…I had to read books that I wouldn’t have necessarily read. I had to read them well and I had to read them in a short space of time. Back to back. Annie Proulx and ­Margaret ­Atwood and Beryl Bainbridge and Anne Michaels – boom, boom, boom. And I started to realise what fiction could be. And I thought, wow! You can be ambitious, you can take on the world – you really can.” – Andrea Levy, on judging the 1997 Orange Prize

“It’s important to note that we are not looking to the agency model as a way to make more money on e-books. In fact, we make less on each e-book sale under the new model; the author will continue to be fairly compensated and our e-book agents will make money on every digital sale. We’re willing to accept lower return for e-book sales as we control the value of our product–books, and content in general. We’re taking the long view on e-book pricing, and this new model helps protect the long term viability of the book marketplace.” – David Young, CEO of Hachette Book Group, in a letter to agents supporting Macmillan and the agency pricing model for e-books

“We are removing Amazon.com links from our website. Our authors depend on people buying their books and since a significant percentage of them publish through Macmillan or its subsidiaries, we would prefer to send traffic to stores where the books can actually be purchased.” – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America

“Forlorn as this hope may be, I can only fantasize that at least you might read my letter through and consider the pleasures and prestige of being an author at Faber, the last great family-owned independent publishing house in the western hemisphere.” – Faber editorial director Lee Brackstone in an open letter to Morrissey requesting he publish a memoir with Faber

Bookmarks (negation editon): the book collector who couldn’t read, the bestselling author who doesn’t exist, and the book prize judge who quit

Some book-related links:

• 79-year-old book collector finally learns to read (Houston Chronicle)
• A bestselling novel by a soap opera character (The New York Times)
• Lily Allen drops out of Orange Prize jury (BBC)
• The (Stephen) King family live onstage (Washington Post)
• Weidenfeld & Nicolson “ditching history for celebrity” (Telegraph)
• 30 years of Virago (The Guardian)
• Bonus tabloid link: Man charged with preying on kids in Toronto bookstores and libraries (Toronto Sun)

Moore, Lansens have eyes on Orange prize

Two Canadian authors have made the longlist for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (the award formerly known as the Orange Prize). Among the 20 contenders are Lori Lansens’ The Girls (published by Knopf Canada here and Little, Brown in the U.K.) and Lisa Moore’s Alligator (House of Anansi Press here and Virago there). Not to mention Stef Penney’s Canada-set The Tenderness of Wolves (Penguin Canada here, Quercus there), which already has a Costa Book of the Year (the award formerly known as the Whitbread Prize) win under its belt.

The Canadian and Canada-friendly titles are up against Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, which has already won the Man Booker Prize (the award formerly known as the Booker Prize); Nell Freudenberger’s The Dissident; and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, among others. The winner will be announced on June 6.

As this Guardian piece notes, the presence of Desai and Penney on the longlist seems to buck an unspoken but longstanding trend on the BritLit awards scene:

But the decision goes far beyond this. None of the richer awards since the first of them, the Booker, was founded in 1968 has gone to a book which has previously won a sizeable rival award. Few if any have even gone to titles shortlisted or longlisted for a rival.

“No prize committee wants to come second,” one of the most seasoned ex-judges said yesterday.

So an as-yet-unawarded Canadian author could be just the ticket.

Orange Prize: there’s good news and bad news

An article for the Independent discusses the recently announced longlist for Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, a prize for women writers, and the overall disappointment that this year’s chair, Muriel Gray, feels about the books that were submitted this year.

Gray says the works “lacked imagination, and focused too narrowly on their own lives and personal issues,” calling the tendency “rural schoolteacher syndrome.” These are strange comments when looking at the longlist, which includes the Booker Prize-winning The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai and Costa winner Stef Penney’s The Tenderness of Wolves. However, Gray does not want her comments taken out of context.

It might seem odd for a chair of a prize celebrating women’s fiction, but she was careful to position her remarks in the context of the “more level playing field” for women’s writing that has been created in part by the Orange Prize. The prize was necessary, not because women writers were “different or inferior, but because the publishing world, the media and the marketplace treated them as if they were”, said Gray. Must try harder, girls.

The article counters Gray’s argument with a brief survey of women writers who refute her point, and of male authors who also are guilty of writing about their own lives, and looks at how this year’s nominees measure up to Gray’s accusations.

For the complete list of the Orange Prize nominees click here.

Gathering no Mosse

In The Independent, Marriane Brace talks with Kate Mosse about her new novel, Labyrinth. The co-founder of the Orange Prize comments on the similarities between her book and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, and how she researched and wrote the book with an aim to entertain the reader. She also explains why the novel features two female protagonists, one from the 13th century and the other from the present day: “I was keen to see if I could write an adventure story where the women get to have lovely frocks, sex and swords and don’t wait to be rescued.”

Related links:
Click here for the article in The Independent