Aussie readers asked for input about future of publishing

Last week, the Internet behemoth Google launched its e-book sales site, Google eBooks, in the U.S. The e-book market is now crowded with offerings from Amazon, Kobo, Apple, and Sony, which in turn has spawned a cottage industry for articles about the future of reading and the future of publishing. Amid all this cacophony, it’s small wonder publishers have responded to the rapidly diversifying marketplace with a mixture of fear and confusion.

In Australia, a consortium called the Book Industry Strategy Group is directly petitioning readers about their reading habits, desires, and preferences as a way of gaining clearer insights into the way forward. Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, Barry Jones, chair of the BISG, states that the group is “seeking ideas from all Australians on how to face the challenges of the digital age, and to turn them into opportunities.” Jones suggests that opportunities lie in the flexibility and ready availability of e-books as against their print counterparts:

Where Amazon and Apple have got it right is the immediacy of purchasing an eBook. Both the Kindle and the iPad come with wireless connectivity to the Amazon and Apple stores, respectively. In the case of the Kindle, if you have an Amazon account, the Kindle comes preconfigured with your details so you can buy a book at 3am if you so desire. New York Times technology writer Nick Bilton calls this Me Economics, which is really just instant gratification in book buying. But it beats late-night television.

And although Jones throws a bone to those of us who still enjoy reading printed books (which he refers to as “pBooks”), it is clear that the digital arena is where he and his group are most invested:

And what about people who like the smell of books or the feel of books, or the cover artwork, or who just want to scribble over the pages? No, these sorts of people will mix up their reading habits and buy both pBooks and eBooks.

Public libraries are starting to offer access to eBooks via downloads or by access, by borrowers, to subscriptions taken out by the library. We want to hear about these initiatives and your experiences with them.

School kids will agree that carrying an eReader with all their textbooks on it beats carrying a heavy school bag with all their textbooks in it. And textbooks form a large part of the book industry in Australia. Can we hear your thoughts?

The public can submit comments and suggestions to the BISG until Jan. 31, 2011. One hopes that they will be slightly more innovative and nuanced than the sort of shopworn analysis Jones allows himself above.

Eye Weekly launches new book club

When Oprah announced last November that she is calling it quits in 2011, publishers blessed by the mojo of the daytime television doyenne’s eponymous book club started biting their collective nails, wondering where they would get such valuable free publicity in the future.

While it likely won’t boast Oprahesque numbers, the Toronto-based alternative newspaper eye Weekly announced today that it is inaugurating a monthly book club, called Pop Fiction.

Each month, on Mondays, the club will debate a single title, with the book’s author taking part in the final week to respond to our praises, or our criticisms. Over the first few months of the year, expect visits from Canadian greats like Yann Martel and Andrew Kaufman as well as new voices on the international scene, like Eleanor Catton and Kathleen Winter.

(Quillblog is puzzled about the “international” nature of Newfoundland-based writer Winter, but never mind.)

The book club is hosted by author and eye Weekly book columnist Brian Joseph Davis, and features poet and Toronto bookstore staffer Kyle Buckley, blogger and Penguin Canada publicity assistant Bronwyn Kienapple, eye Weekly staff writer Chandler Levack, and editor of the National Post‘s Afterword blog Mark Medley.

The first book on the club’s agenda is Gil Adamson’s Help Me, Jacques Cousteau. Discussion of this title kicks off one week from today.

Ray Robertson on baiting the Giller

Writing in the National Post books blog, novelist Ray Robertson says that while Alice Munro may have to forcibly remove her work from Scotiabank Giller Prize consideration, he doesn’t even bother with the formality – he just writes the kind of gritty, contemporary novels that offend the priggish literary sensibilities of the established “culture industry.”

There’s inevitably been some point during the writing of every one of my six novels when I knew that I was unofficially but no less effectively disqualified for Giller Prize consideration.

Some point, in other words, when I knew that the tender sensibilities of that year’s distinguished arbiters of taste would no doubt be chafed by some damning reference of mine to either bodily functions (because we all know that people in works of literature don’t go to the bathroom) or popular culture (because we all know that people in works of literature spend the majority of their time occupied not with jobs and families and television and boredom, but with either travelling to remote countries looking for lost lovers or distant family members or else sitting in abandoned lighthouses alternately listening to the mournful sounds of the sea and brooding upon those timeless day-to-day concerns of time, loss, and memory) or for simply failing to set said novel in a sufficiently charmingly bucolic and/or fascinatingly exotic locale (because we all know that real literature doesn’t take place where most people actually live and work and go to the mall and die).

Certainly, there’s room to criticize and debate this year’s Giller shortlist, but Robertson’s embattled tone seems a little self-serving. Consider, for instance, that while historical novels are generally well-represented on the Giller shortlist, the odd gritty, urban novel does occasionally slip past the censors – think Rawi Hage’s De Niro’s Game or Cockroach. And never mind that Robertson’s latest novel, David, is in fact an historical novel set in the Elgin Settlement, near Chatham, Ontario. Presumably, there are enough references to bodily functions to have effectively disqualified it from consideration.

Robert “Jackpot” Sawyer on tonight’s FlashForward premiere

It’s been a decade in the making, but tonight will see the premiere of the new ABC television series FlashForward, based on the novel by Robert J. Sawyer. The show, which is being billed as the next Lost, is already receiving advance raves from some critics. Besides basking in all the positive attention, Sawyer tells the National Post that he’s now filthy rich.

“It really has changed my life,” he says. “To the point where my bank manager called me and said, ‘What are you going to do with all this money that’s sitting in your account?’ I said I still have no idea. I haven’t even wrapped my head around that. I haven’t had time to catch my breath and think about how I’m going to spend the money … It’s not a bad problem.”

Douglas Coupland video clips available on iTunes

Fans of quirky writer, visual artist, and Canadian cultural icon Douglas Coupland can watch three free video clips inspired by his new novel Generation A via the iTunes Store.

Set in the near future, Generation A revolves around five people from different parts of the world and their shared experiences of being stung by bees in a time when bees have supposedly become extinct.

 The clips were developed by Toronto-based production company Crush Inc. in collaboration with Coupland and his publisher, Random House Canada.

In the 10-minute clip “Generation A – 10 Questions for Douglas Coupland,” the author is seen trapped in a sterile white room with a psychologist’s couch and yellow coffee mug, answering questions posed by a faceless female questioner with a clinical British accent. Coupland provides answers to questions such as, “What is the most evil letter?” (answer: j) and “What is the loneliest letter?” (m). He also provides long-winded philosophical replies to unheard inquiries:

 The reason we have books, the reason we have stories … it allows someone else to come in and hijack your internal voice for awhile so that you don’t have to do any of the work. When you hear a story and when you read a story, it sort of somehow ennobles our life … 

In order so that we don’t go crazy, we imagine that our lives have to be stories … whether or not it’s true, it sort of works.

The clip is frequently interrupted by brief “commercials” advertising a fictional television news team and a drug called “Solon CR,” both of which are featured in Generation A.

The other two clips correspond to some aspect of the novel. “Colour Samples” is narrated by a character who eases his mind by concentrating on unique paint colours, while “The Tragic Death of the Channel Three News Team” tells the story of a religious cult bent on killing celebrities, beginning with the Channel Three News Team, in a graphic novel-inspired animated feature.

The film clips will be available on iTunes until Sept. 14. 

Bookmarks: literature on television and updating guides

Sundry links from around the web:

• The L.A. Times shines a light on author Conn Iggulden’s historical fiction, which pretty much sounds like the sort of material you’d expect the co-author of The Dangerous Book For Boys to write.
• The L.A. Times also spotlights an interesting trend: television viewers reading the books that influenced their favourite TV shows. (This Quillblogger read Atlas Shrugged, which inspired the video game Bioshock, for similar reasons.)
• The Guardian blogger Judith Flanders on why Nicholas Hughes’ death made headlines for all the wrong reasons.
• William Zinsser on writing and updating his landmark guide, On Writing Well, for 35 years and counting.

Doing the Harper shuffle

Ordinary working people in the arts community who were miffed by the Conservative government’s $45-million cuts to a broad array of arts programs may have reason to breathe a bit easier today. Josée Verner, the Heritage Minister in place when those cuts were announced, has been bounced from her portfolio by newly re-elected Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who announced his new cabinet today. Verner takes over the Intergovernmental Affairs portfolio, while James Moore, MP for Port Moody-Westwood-Port Coquitlam, takes over the Heritage post.

Celebrations within the arts community may prove short-lived, however. According to his official website, the only arts-related experience Moore has had comes from working as a radio broadcaster in Vancouver and Prince George, where he hosted a talk show called “Behind the Headlines.” He has held several positions in the Conservative government, including parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Public Works and, most recently, Secretary of State for the 2010 Olympics, Official Languages, and the Asia-Pacific Gateway.

His website bio reads in part:

In his first term in office, through Private Members’ bills, James proposed legislation that would offer relief to victims of the leaky condo tragedy, toughen laws against date-rape drugs, force the Prime Minister to appoint elected Senators, impose consecutive rather than concurrent sentencing for violent criminals, ban gun ownership for violent criminals, toughen penalties for the illegal trafficking of prohibited weapons and ammunition, and toughen penalties for the trafficking of child pornography online.

It remains to be seen whether this tough-on-crime crusader will be a successful advocate for Canadian arts organizations. This Quillblogger has his suspicions, but will refrain from voicing them at this time.

Also of note in Harper’s newly constituted cabinet is the presence of veteran television broadcaster Peter Kent, who takes over as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs (Americas).

New book show debuting online

The New York Times reports that a new online book show is due to hit the Web in March.

The program will be hosted by Daniel Menaker, former editor-in-chief of Random House.

The show, to be called “Titlepage,” will feature a round-table discussion between Mr. Menaker, 66, a former fiction editor at The New Yorker, and a group of four authors. The first episode will be streamed online at titlepage.tv on March 3. The idea is to take advantage of the fact that it’s much easier to post video online than to get a show on television.

“Titlepage” will combine elements of “Apostrophes,” a popular French literary program; “The Charlie Rose Show” on public television; and “Dinner for Five,” in which a group of actors discussed their craft, on the Independent Film Channel.

Created by documentary filmmakers Odile Isralson and Lina Matta, the program is set to feature authors Richard Price (Clockers), Susan Choi (A Person of Interest), and debut novelist Charles Bock (Beautiful Children) in its premiere episode, followed two weeks later by the second episode, on first-time authors.

James Wolcott’s 1991 Oedipal woes over Mailer

Vanity Fair has unearthed a 1991 television special made by American Psycho director Mary Harron and starring VF culture columnist James Wolcott, in which Wolcott gives his take on both Norman Mailer and his then-current book, Harlot’s Ghost.

Here’s Wolcott on the long-buried video:

“Accompanied by guest star Malachy McCourt (as the bartender), I thrash out my Oedipal woes and critical misgivings over Harlot’s Ghost with some of the most poignant facial expressions ever to emerge from the John Candy school of acting. Satirical as the video is, it’s also a tribute to the sway Mailer had over our imaginations, and the electrical crackle of his personality up to the very end.”

Watch it here.

Bookmarks – Jeanette Winterson on the cult of personality, Britain’s re-reading habits, TVs in bookstores, and more

Some book-related links:

• Jeanette Winterson on the cult of personality (Times Online)
• Britain likes to re-read (The Guardian)
• What do bookstores need? Television! (The New York Times)
• Clive Cussler likes to look for shipwrecks (The Christian Science Monitor)
• Jiang Rong wins the first-ever Man Asian Booker Prize (Yahoo! News)