Writerswrite.com's Writer's Blog

Avatar, Hurt Locker Lead Oscar Race

Tue, 2 Feb 2010 18:00:00 EST

The Oscar nominations were announced this morning by Anne Hathaway. Here are the nominees for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Screenplay:

Adapted screenplay:

District 9 (Sony Pictures Releasing), Written by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell

An Education (Sony Pictures Classics), Screenplay by Nick Hornby

In the Loop (IFC Films), Screenplay by Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (Lionsgate), Screenplay by Geoffrey Fletcher

Up in the Air (Paramount in association with Cold Spring Pictures and DW Studios) , Screenplay by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner

Original screenplay:

The Hurt Locker (Summit Entertainment), Written by Mark Boal

Inglourious Basterds (The Weinstein Company), Written by Quentin Tarantino

The Messenger (Oscilloscope Laboratories), Written by Alessandro Camon & Oren Moverman

A Serious Man (Focus Features), Written by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen

Up (Walt Disney), Screenplay by Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Story by Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, Tom McCarthy

You can see the full list of nominations here.

Photo: Todd Wawrychuk/©A.M.P.A.S.

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Sir Terry Pratchett Calls for Euthanasia Tribunals

Mon, 1 Feb 2010 15:00:00 EST

Bestselling British author Terry Pratchett will deliver the Dimbleby Lecture tonight on the BBC. His topic is a controversial one: euthanasia. Pratchett, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, argues that there should be euthanasia panels which would rule yea or nay on proposed assisted suicides. Pratchett believes that those with incurable illnesses have the right to end their own lives without fear of their families being tried for murder if they assist.

In his lecture, Shaking Hands With Death, the author will volunteer to be a test case before a euthanasia tribunal himself. The tribunal panels would include a legal expert in family matters and a doctor with experience of serious long-term illness.

"If granny walks up to the tribunal and bangs her walking stick on the table and says 'Look, I've really had enough, I hate this bloody disease, and I'd like to die thank you very much young man', I don't see why anyone should stand in her way." He said there was no evidence from countries where assisted dying is allowed of granny being coerced into dying so relatives could get their hands on her money.

"Choice is very important in this matter. But there will be some probably older, probably wiser GPs, who will understand. The tribunal would be acting for the good of society as well as that of the applicant -- and ensure they are of sound and informed mind, firm in their purpose, suffering from a life-threatening and incurable disease and not under the influence of a third party.

"If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice."

Pratchett is the first novelist to be invited to give the Richard Dimbleby Lecture, which is an annual BBC event in honor of the British broadcaster. The Guardian says that polls in England show support for Pratchett's views. Assisted suicide is still illegal in England.

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Secret J.D. Salinger Documentary to be Released This Spring

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:00:00 EST

Deadline Hollywood Daily reports that this spring -- probably at the Cannes film festival -- a new documentary about J.D. Salinger will be released. The project has been kept under wraps -- it took five years to make and has extensive new information about the recently deceased author of The Catcher in the Rye. Mike Fleming, who has actually seen the film, had this to say about some of the film's revelations:

There also are details of: his WWII soldiering in Normandy and interrogation of Nazi prisoners; his love affair with Eugene O'Neill's daughter Oona, and the crushing disappointment of losing her to Charlie Chaplin while Salinger fought in Europe; Salinger's habit of locking himself away in his New Hampshire cinderblock bunker for weeks at a time to write; his penchant for taking a week to craft a single sentence; the damage his silences caused his family; the futile efforts of friends to re-introduce him to the world; Salinger's protectiveness towards his work; his refusal to sell anything to Hollywood, turning down 8-figure offers and first-class filmmakers like Billy Wilder and Steven Spielberg; his determination to maintain total control over his prose (so that when a New Yorker editor once added a comma, Salinger never spoke to him again).

Even more intriguing, Salerno's documentary also reports on what J.D. Salinger literary works might be in the famed secret vault, where 45 years of unpublished writings are rumored to be kept.

Of course, those rumored unpublished works are what make academics' hearts beat faster. The film was financed by, directed and produced by Shane Salerno, a 37-year-old screenwriter whose day job is writing the screenplay for James Cameron's Fantastic Voyage. Salerno's research is said to be intense: he interviewed 150 people and co-wrote (with David Shields) a 700 page companion book to be released at the same time as the film.

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J.D. Salinger Dead at 91

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:50:00 EST

J.D. Salinger, author of Catcher in the Rye, Nine Stories and Franny and Zooey has died. He was 91. The Seattle Post Intelligencer wrote in its obituary:

Salinger died of natural causes at his home on Wednesday, the author's son said in a statement from Salinger's longtime literary representative, Harold Ober Agency. He had lived for decades in self-imposed isolation in the small, remote house in Cornish, N.H.

"The Catcher in the Rye," with its immortal teenage protagonist, the twisted, rebellious Holden Caulfield, came out in 1951, a time of anxious, Cold War conformity and the dawn of modern adolescence. The Book-of-the-Month Club, which made "Catcher" a featured selection, advised that for "anyone who has ever brought up a son" the novel will be "a source of wonder and delight -- and concern."

Enraged by all the "phonies" who make "me so depressed I go crazy," Holden soon became American literature's most famous anti-hero since Huckleberry Finn. The novel's sales are astonishing -- more than 60 million copies worldwide -- and its impact incalculable. Decades after publication, the book remains a defining expression of that most American of dreams: to never grow up.

The cause of Salinger's death is unknown. The AP reports that he died of "natural causes."

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Grand Central Launches New Life & Style

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:00:00 EST

Grand Central is launching a new book imprint called Grand Central Life & Style. Imprints Wellness Central and Springboard Press will be merged into the new imprint. Karen Murgolo will oversee the new imprint; she is currently the publisher of Springboard. Publisher's Weekly reports:

Topics falling into the Life & Style line will range widely, including everything from cooking to beauty & fashion to home design to fitness and parenting. Currently slated titles include Food Network star Claire Robinson's 5 Ingredient Fix and Good Morning America pet care expert Dr. Marty Becker's Your Dog: The Owner's Manual.

Grand Central's Matthew Ballast told PW that the new imprint will release between eight and twelve titles a year and will focus on more commercial titles.

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Screenwriters Age Discrimination Lawsuit Settled for $70 Million

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST

A settlement has finally been reached in the age discrimination class action lawsuit filed years ago by 165 writers against a number of networks, production studios and talent agencies. The settlement is worth $70 million. The Hollywood Reporter reports:

It remains to be seen how much money will flow to the 165 plaintiffs who participated in the class-action suit, and attorneys for both parties involved in the 10-year battle say they are not allowed to talk about Friday's settlement, which is subject to final approval by California Superior Court for the County of Los Angeles.

Sources close to the situation calculate that those who joined the class action early are eligible for amounts ranging from $70,000-$140,000, and in some cases more. Those who joined later could get about 40% less, and a minimum amount has been set at $250.

*****

Of the $70 million, $43 million will be used to pay the class members and taxes on their awards, to fund required reserves and to "activities beneficial to the settlement class members." Two-thirds of the settlement will be paid by insurance companies.

Age discrimination in Hollywood is not limited to actresses who are considered over the hill at 30. Writers and other behind the scenes employees have reported numerous instances of age discrimination.

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Amazon.com to Open App Store for Kindle

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:00:00 EST

Amazon.com announced today that it will create an App store for the Kindle which will go live later this year. Amazon.com has asked developers to create programs for the Kindle, in a move designed to go head on with the upcoming Apple tablet launch. For example, Handmark is building an active Zagat guide featuring their ratings, reviews and more for restaurants in cities around the world. PC World reports:

The Kindle Development Kit (KDK) will be available in limited beta form next month and the new software and other content from the initiative is expected to be in the Kindle Store later this year, Amazon said in a statement.

Examples of what kind of content people can expect for their Kindles include travel books with real-time weather updates and current events, cookbooks that recommend menus for people with allergies or different kinds of parties, and the inclusion of word games and puzzles for the Kindle.

The KDK gives software developers access to programming interfaces, sample code, tools and documentation to build content for Kindle's high-resolution electronic paper and to use its 3G capability and other functions.

You can find out more about the upcoming Kindle App Store here.

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Robert B. Parker Dead at 77

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:00:00 EST

Robert B. Parker, who is best known as the author of the bestselling Spenser detective novels has died at the age of 77. He died unexpectedly at his home, where he was working on his next novel. USA Today reports:

"This is a man who had an enormous following," says Otto Penzler, owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in New York and a friend of the prolific writer for 30 years. "He was extremely successful. People just loved his books." The Associated Press reported an ambulance was sent to Parker's Cambridge home Monday morning on a report of a sudden death. The death was of natural causes and was not considered suspicious, says Alexa Manocchio, spokeswoman for the Cambridge police department.

Parker will be sorely missed. "People just loved Spenser," Penzler says. "They loved the other books, too, and they sold nearly as well as the Spensers. Let's face it. Sunny Randall (the lead character in six novels) sounded very much like Spenser, and so did Jesse Stone."

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"The Spenser character was a lot like Bob himself," Penzler says. "Very funny and smart-alecky. He had that kind of a mouth. He was honorable and loyal. Those are characteristics that are not as ubiquitous as we might like."

The Spenser novels were made into a tv show called Spenser: For Hire in 1985. The series starred Robert Urich as Spenser, and ran for three seasons. Tom Selleck starred in several Jesse Stone novels which were made into tv film. On February 23rd, Putnam will publish the ninth Jesse Stone novel, Split Image.

We send our condolences to his family and friends.

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Amazon.com Raises Royalty Rates for Publishers and Authors Who Use Kindle Platform

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:00:00 EST

CNET reports that Amazon.com is increasing the royalty amount it pays to publisher and authors who use the Kindle Digital Text Platform (DTP) to 70 percent of the list price of their e-books. Analysts say the move is an attempt to head off competitor Apple which is rumored to be launching its new tablet computer on January 27. The price jump is equal to what Apple pays developers for apps sold in its app store.

Starting on June 30, Amazon says that for each Kindle book sold, authors and publishers who select the new 70 percent royalty option will receive 70 percent of the list price, minus delivery costs. This new option will be in addition to and will not replace the existing DTP standard royalty option, which is set at a 65-35 split, with 65 percent going to Amazon.

Amazon didn't have any comment about whether the new pricing was a response to Apple's royalty program for its App Store, which offers thousands of e-books as self-contained apps along with e-reader apps from Amazon (Kindle Reader, Stanza), Barnes & Noble, and other e-book stores. But it did say that delivery costs will be based on file size and pricing will be 15 cents per megabyte.

"At today's median DTP file size of 368KB, delivery costs would be less than $0.06 per unit sold," the news release notes. "This new program can thus enable authors and publishers to make more money on every sale. For example, on an $8.99 book an author would make $3.15 with the standard option, and $6.25 with the new 70 percent option."

The rumored Apple tablet has quite a few competitors worried. There is an app that allows customers to use the Kindle reader software on their iphones. A larger tablet could easily compete with the Kindle.

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Erich Segal Dead at 72

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 08:00:00 EST

Classics scholar, author and screenwriter Erich Segal has died after suffering a heart attack. He had been battling Parkinson's disease for 25 years, according to his daughter Francesca. Segal was 72. Segal taught at Princeton, Yale, Harvard and Oxford, but is best known for writing the novel Love Story and for co-writing the classic Beatles cartoon Yellow Submarine. The New York Times reports:

Mr. Segal was unusual among American popular novelists and American scholars: he was both. In addition to Love Story, the heart-tugging tale of a Harvard scion and his love affair with a Radcliffe scholarship student who dies shortly after their marriage, Mr. Segal wrote several other novels, including Oliver's Story, a sequel to Love Story; The Class, which traces the fates of five members of the Harvard class of 1958; and Doctors, a melodrama about childhood friends who go through medical school together.

After Yellow Submarine, he wrote screenplays for, among other films, Love Story, the 1970 version of the novel that starred Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw, and A Change of Seasons (1980), about a marriage gone awry, with Anthony Hopkins, Shirley MacLaine and Bo Derek.

Our condolences to his family and friends.

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Up In The Air Wins Best Screenplay at Golden Globes

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:00:00 EST

The film Up In The Air won Best Screenplay - Motion Picture at the 67th Annual Golden Globe Awards. Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner won Golden Globes for their screenplay Up in the Air. Writer/director Jason Reitman said "people like how I write women." He also says he could never write women ithout his wife who is the "fuel to his creative fire." Reitman also thanked George Clooney and his mom and dad. Take a look:

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Twijote Project to Put Text of Don Quixote on Twitter

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST

Fans of Cervante's Don Quixote de la Mancha are determined to put the entire book on Twitter, one tweet at a time. They estimate that it will take 8,200-odd tweets to get through the first volume. That's a lot of tweets.

The Twijote project, as it is known, aims to publish the 470-odd pages of the first volume of Don Quixote's adventures using just the 140-character blocks of text allowed by Twitter. It has set itself strict rules, of the honourable but potentially foolish kind that Don Quixote and his creator, Miguel de Cervantes, might have approved of.

The 8,200-odd tweets needed to get to the end of the first volume must come from one-off visitors to the Twijote site. They are given the next block of 140 characters of text to put on Twitter. "We reckon it will take about a year, if people stick with it," said Pablo Lopez, a web designer from the north-western Spanish city of Vigo who thought up the project. "The idea is to show that culture can exist in social media - that it is not just a place for nerds and freaks," he said.

Twijote has no sponsors and no ambition to make money. "It is something we put up to see what would happen," said Lopez, who pulled in web designers from his company to help. "I had the idea one day and came into the office and persuaded people it was worth doing."

Volunteers from all over Latin Amrerica and Spain have signed up to help with the project. Some Spanish speakers from Finland have also signed on for Twijote. The project is in Spanish, but if it succeeds perhaps an English version might happen as well.

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Screenwriter Dan O'Bannon Dead at 63

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:00:00 EST

Dan O'Bannon, who wrote the screenplay for Alien, Total Recall and The Return of the Living Dead, has died from Crohn's disease. He was 63. The New York Times reports:

The Writers Guild of America confirmed his death. The cause was Crohn's disease, a chronic gastrointestinal disorder that Mr. O'Bannon endured for 30 years, his wife, Diane, told The Los Angeles Times.

Mr. O'Bannon had an early start as a screenwriter when he and the director John Carpenter, students at the time at the University of Southern California film school, wrote the low-budget film Dark Star, which was released as a feature in 1974. After working as a computer animator for the director George Lucas on Star Wars and trying, unsuccessfully, to develop a film based on the Frank Herbert novel Dune, Mr. O'Bannon created the story of Alien with the screenwriter Ronald Shusett and wrote the screenplay on his own.

The film, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Sigourney Weaver, is about a spaceship with a vicious monster loose onboard. (The creature begins as a parasite that explodes from a crew member's chest.) It became a box office hit, a classic of science fiction and horror, and the progenitor of a lucrative Hollywood franchise, with its several sequels.

"I love gore films and I grew up with '50s monster movies," Mr. O'Bannon told the journal Cinefantastique in 1979, speaking of the film's origins. "The idea for the monster in Alien originally came from a stomach ache I had."

Our condolences to his friends and family.

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Authors Guild Says Google Claims Process Simplified

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 20:35:00 EST

The Author's Guild has informed its members of a simplified process for filing claims under the Google Book Settlement.

Claiming a lengthy list of your books, short stories, essays, poems and articles for Google settlement benefits just got much easier. You can now start the process by simply submitting your bibliography to the claims administrator. You need only e-mail -- or send by regular mail -- a list of your books and shorter literary works (poems, short stories, articles) that may appear in books covered by the settlement. When in doubt, we suggest you submit everything.

Although the author's name and the title of the work is enough to get the ball rolling, it's helpful to include this additional information you can find in or on your books: ISBN, publisher, place and year of publication.

E-mail your bibliography to BookSettlement@RustConsulting.com. Feel free to send it as an attachment or paste it into the body of the e-mail itself.

You can see the rest of the notice at the Authors Guild website.

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Stephen King to Appear on Shooter Jennings' Next Album

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 20:00:00 EST

Stephen King is going to provide the voice of a radio host on Shooter Jennings' next album, Black Ribbons.

The concept album, Black Ribbons, will see King provide the voice of late-night talk show host Will O'The Wisp as he gives his final broadcast before being cut off by government censorship. While his character rants about the apocalyptic future that lies ahead for America, he plays songs from Jennings's band Hierophant.

Jennings told music sites that although he had never met King, he knew the author was a fan -- King mentions the musician in his novel Lisey's Story -- and felt he would be the perfect narrator for the album. "To this day I've never met or spoken to Mr King," he said. "Someone who had business contacts with him put us in touch and I presented my ideas to him. Through a string of emails we went back and forth about the character and the story of the album, and then a few weeks later I had a recording of several voiceover clips -- called "The Last Night of the Last Light" -- on my doorstep."

Jennings said the experience "was like a digital correspondence with a spectre from the other side -- very dark, eerie and profoundly mesmerising stuff. I'm extremely grateful and honoured to have him on this record." King said he had "been a huge Shooter Jennings fan from the very beginning, so I was flattered to be asked".

Stephen King is doing a lot of interesting projects this year. He published a new poem in Playboy, is plotting a sequel to The Shining and is writing a comic book about the first American vampire.

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Authors' Groups Write Congress About Google Book Settlement

Thu, 7 Jan 2010 18:00:00 EST

Three writers groups have sent a letter to 60 members of Congress listing their reasons for opposing the Google Book Settlement. The National Writers Union, The American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the Science Fiction Writers of America sent the letters to members of Congress who are authors. Quill and Quire has an excerpt from the letter:

The ramifications of the amended settlement for any one author and any one book are exceptionally complex. We've talked to our members, authors like yourself. The ones who got the notice found it incomprehensible and just shook their heads in confusion. Go to the settlement website's poorly implemented database and see for yourself how tricky this is -- has your book been scanned? Is it commercially available? Should you opt out? If you do nothing, you're automatically included in the settlement. If you opt out, Google doesn't even guarantee that it won't steal your work in the future.

It isn't fair. There are millions of book authors in this country who could be locked into an agreement they don't understand and didn't ask for. The Authors Guild represents only a tiny fraction of published writers, yet the new regulatory board set up in the proposed settlement will override individual book contracts -- not to mention common law and even the Constitutional protection of copyright. Mary Beth Peters, Register of Copyrights, testified before the House Judiciary Committee that the settlement would "turn copyright on its head." Nothing in the revised U.S.settlement changes that.

We haven't heard word whether President Obama, who is also a published author, received a copy of the letter.

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Kirkus Reviews May Have Buyer

Wed, 6 Jan 2010 18:00:00 EST

Publisher's Weekly reports that Kirkus Reviews will continue to publish while waiting for a potential sale to go through.

In an email to colleagues today, Kirkus Reviews managing editor and nonfiction editor Eric Liebetrau said the publication, which last month was said to be closing with staff leaving by the end of 2009, is working toward an arrangement with an acquiring company to continue publication. Liebetrau said details will be forthcoming in the next two to three weeks, but asked publishers to "please begin sending galleys to the appropriate editors immediately. We will publish a second issue in January, and then reassess the situation and hopefully continue publication in February and beyond."

Nothing is finalized, but clearly the staff at Kirkus is hoping that the sale will go through. No word yet on who the new buyer is.

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P.D. James Blasts BBC

Mon, 4 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST

Bestselling mystery author P.D. James blasted the BBC in a surprising interview with the British broadcasting network. Baroness James blasted the organization for its bloated executive salaries and failure to pay sufficient amounts to writers and producers of programming.

"I think [the BBC] has changed," said Baroness James, who was one of its governors between 1988 and 1993. "And sometimes it seems like a very large and unwieldy ship that's been floating there since 1920 taking on more and more and more cargo, building more decks to accommodate it, recruiting more officers - all very comfortably cabined, usually at salaries far greater than their predecessors enjoyed -- and with a crew somewhat discontented and some a little mutinous, the ship rather sinking close to the Plimsoll line and the customers feeling they paid too much for the journey and not quite sure where they're going, or indeed, who is the captain."

After conceding that although her view was perhaps "a little unfair", she said it was how many people saw the BBC, and she then slammed a couple more torpedoes into the tubes as she raised the subject of corporation remuneration.

"It is extraordinary that 375 [BBC managers] earn over 100,000 [pounds] and 37-plus more than the prime minister," she said. "An organisation that has 37 of its managers earning more than the prime minister ought to ask itself 'Is this justified?' "

BBC Director General Mark Thompson was left scrambling to defend his own large salary (834,000 pounds sterling) to the 89 year-old grande dame of British crime fiction.

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U.S. Writers Protest Imprisonment of Chinese Dissident Liu Xiaobo

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST

In New York today Edward Albee, E.L. Doctorow and many other writers rallied to demand the release of dissident Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo. The writers gathered in front of the New York Public Library for the protest. Liu has been sentenced to 11 years in prison on the charges of "subversion." Bloomberg reports:

"Any time a country imprisons its creative people, you know that's a country that's got to change," Albee, 81, said in an interview before the New York demonstration. The rally was organized by the PEN American Center, an international human- rights group that defends writers around the world. Anthony Appiah, the center's president and a Princeton University philosophy professor, expressed outrage at Liu's sentence and said the group would lobby for his release.

"We are proud to stand here in solidarity with our fellow writer and with his family," Appiah said as snow swirled around the steps of the library. Liu, 54, had been held in secret for more than a year before a two-hour trial on Dec. 23. An 11-page verdict was delivered on Christmas.

In addition to the prison sentence, Liu was banned from all political activity for two years. The former literature professor has published essays critical of the Chinese government, particularly its human-rights abuses and crackdown on dissent in foreign journals and on the Internet.

At the rally, writers read from the seven sentences that got Liu thrown in jail. The organizers marched to the Chinese Embassy and delivered a letter of protest. The U.S. Embassy in Beijing has called for Liu's release, as have other civil rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch.

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Borders Leaves Some Waldenbooks Stores Open

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 21:00:00 EST

Borders has reversed course and is leaving open a number of Waldenbooks that were scheduled to close. The company has been in the process of closing most of its Waldenbooks chain stores.

In early November, Borders (BGP) announced that it would close 200 of its 330 Waldenbooks stores by early January, cutting 1,500 jobs in the process. But with the new year approaching fast, the bookstore chain is changing its tune ever so slightly, and now plans to spare about 20 stores originally slated for the chopping block.

In Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, Palmer Park Mall manager Beth Samuelson told The Express-Times that store employees removed closing signs last week, and on Monday, corporate offices verified the decision to keep the store open. "It was a total surprise. All the signs saying: 'Store closing: Everything must go' all came down."

Borders spokeswoman Mary Davis wouldn't explain why some stores were remaining open or how those stores were selected. She says that the company won't be explaining the decision, so it's a bit of a mystery.

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Ursula Le Guin Resigns From Authors Guild Over Google Book Settlement

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 21:00:00 EST

Science fiction superstar Ursula LeGuin has resigned her membership in the Authors Guild, saying that the group had "made a deal with the devil" by supporting the Google Book Settlement. MsLeGuin has been a member of the Guild since 1972. In her letter she accuses the group of selling authors down the river. She also says that the Guild has ceded copyright to Google. She posted the statement on her website. Here's an excerpt of her resignation letter:

I am not going to rehearse any arguments pro and anti the "Google settlement." You decided to deal with the devil, as it were, and have presented your arguments for doing so. I wish I could accept them. I can't. There are principles involved, above all the whole concept of copyright; and these you have seen fit to abandon to a corporation, on their terms, without a struggle.

So, after being a loyal if invisible member for so long, I am resigning from the Guild. I am, however, retaining membership in the National Writers Union and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, both of which opposed the "Google settlement." They don't have your clout, but their judgment, I think, is sounder, and their courage greater.

The NWU and the SFWA both oppose the Google Book Settlement. Read the whole letter here.

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Chinese Novelist Sues Google for Copyright Infringement

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:15:00 EST

The Financial Times reports that Google is being sued by a Chinese author whose book was scanned by the search giant as part of its global digitization process. The novelist has sued Google in a Chinese court on the grounds of copyright infringement.

Mian Mian, a 39-year-old author from Shanghai whose realistic descriptions of life with drugs and among prostitutes, gangsters and failed artists, has attracted a large following of young readers, is suing Google for alleged copyright infringement. Sun Jingwei, her lawyer, told the Financial Times that the Haidian People's Court in Beijing would start hearings on December 29.

The case, the first brought against Google by a Chinese writer, underlines the risks that remain to Google's plan to build a digital library which could lay the groundwork for an "iTunes of books" and potentially transform the publishing industry.

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Mian Mian filed her complaint on October 23. The author demands that Google apologises for scanning part of her works, deletes the scanned content from its digital library and pays her Rmb60,000 ($8,800) in compensation, Mr Sun said. He added that the plaintiff had collected evidence of scans of Mian Mian's novels that could be found online although a complete scan of one of her books had been removed in mid-November.

She's suing Google for $8,800? Surely there were some zeros missing from that number? One would think the attorneys' fees alone would cost more than that. Unless, of course, someone in the government is behind the suit and she's a straw man (or woman). Google says it has deleted her novel from its database and is hopeful of winning the case. We can't imagine how much money Google is spending to defend a copyright case in China over one book, but we're sure it's costing the company a lot more than $8,800. Google said it had taken the author's book offline and that it was "confident of a favourable outcome in this case". A third round of talks between the company and copyright associations is expected, it said. "Google Books is fully compliant with US and Chinese law," it said in a statement. "In China like everywhere else, if a book is in copyright we don't show more than a few snippets of text without the permission of the rights holder."

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Golden Globe Nominations For Best Screenplay

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST

The Golden Globe nominations were announced yesterday. Here are the nominees for Best Screenplay:

District 9
Written by Neill Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell

The Hurt Locker
Written by Mark Boal

Inglourious Basterds
Written by Quentin Tarantino

It's Complicated
Written by Nancy Meyers

Up In The Air
Written by Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner

You can see the full list of nominations here.

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Borders UK Will Close if Buyer Not Found By December 22

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:00:00 EST

The Bookseller reports that Borders U.K. (which is no longer affiliated with the U.S. Borders Group after a sale) will close down if if a buyer is not found for the chain by December 22, 2009. The chain is in administration, which is the British equivalent of bankruptcy proceedings.

[Admininstrator] MCR said it was at "advanced stages" of negotiations with a number of parties about purchasing certain stores or assets. But it added that unless a business took Borders over as a going concern, "regrettably all stores will formally cease trading the evening of the 22 December 2009". The final day of employment for the 1,150 Borders staff will be Christmas Eve.

Phil Duffy, partner at MCR, said: "Staff consultation will continue throughout this week and a further update will be given for each store at the end of the week.We have reassured staff that they will be paid for all of their work during the administration."

Earlier today, a document leaked to The Bookseller suggested that a buyer had The Bookseller got ahold of a leaked document which indicates that a buyer has been found for 23 of the stores, but that the deal had not been finalized. We certainly hope the rumors are true. This has been a very difficult year for booksellers and all of the Borders UK employees will be out of a job if a buyer is not found in time.

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Author's Sales Soar After Book Spotted in Tiger Woods Wrecked SUV

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:00:00 EST

Physicist Dr John Gribbin was quite surprised when a friend emailed him photos of the SUV that Tiger Woods crashed in his driveway over Thanksgiving weekend. In the wreckage was Dr. Gribbin's out of print book, Get a Grip on Physics. Dr. Gribbin says that he was thrilled that he was reading about physics, but that if he had paid attention the book he would have realized that he could not speed into an immovable object without dire consequences. Dr. Gribbin is quite funny. Take a look:

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Kirkus, Editor and Publisher Being Shuttered

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST

The shocking news this week in the writing and book worlds is that Kirkus Reviews and Editor and Publisher are both being shuttered by Nielsen Co. The company is also selling eight other publications to e5 Global Media LLC, a newly formed company. The publications being sold include The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard.

The newly formed company, e5 Global Media LLC, announced earlier today it has agreed to purchase eight brands belonging to Nielsen Business Media. Pluribus Capital Management and Guggenheim Partners formed e5 jointly.

The brands being acquired are AdweekMedia (which includes Adweek, Mediaweek and Brandweek), The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, Backstage, The Clio Awards and Film Journal International. E5 Global Media will also acquire the Film Expo business, which includes ShoWest, ShowEast, Cinema Expo International and CineAsia trade shows. The parties declined to identify a purchase price, which other media reports have put at $70 million.

"We decided this was a great time to buy media assets," said Jimmy Finkelstein, chairman e5 Global Media. "We're going to create great businesses in print, online, on mobile, [and] in events, and we think it's the right time to do it."

Pluribus Capital Management is led by Finkelstein, ex-Hearst International president and CEO George Green and Matthew Doull, who will all be putting their own money into the company. The deal is expected to close Dec. 31, 2009. The new company expects to name a new CEO by February.

Romanesko has the memo in which Nielson announced the sale and the closings.

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French President Takes Aim at Google

Wed, 9 Dec 2009 18:00:00 EST

Irritated by the fact that Google, an American company, is leading the way in digitizing the world's books, French president Nicolas Sarkozy has announced a new French book digitization project.

Although he did not name Google directly, Mr Sarkozy was thought to be alluding to the search giant, which has recently attracted criticism from authors, publishers and libraries for its plans to scan out-of-copyright books and make them digitally searchable online.

"We won't let ourselves be stripped of our heritage to the benefit of a big company, no matter how friendly, big or American it is," said the French president. He told the audience at a public meeting that a French book digitisation project would be financed by a national loan. "We are not going to be stripped of what generations and generations have produced in the French language, just because we weren't capable of funding our own digitisation project," he said.

France is grappling with how best to manage the digital revolution, which is affecting everything from music to movies. The French prime minister, Francois Fillon, has established a commission to look at the best ways of insulating the publishing industry from the difficulties that faced the record labels and film studios, while still innovating in the internet age. He said that he wanted to avoid another cultural industry being "threatened by looting".

The president of France just accused Google of "looting" its literary heritage? That's quite dramatic. We wonder how the French populace feels about the government's borrowing money to digitize books?

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Rare Copy of Poe's Tamarlane to be Auctioned at Christies's Tomorrow

Thu, 3 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST

A rare copy of Edgar Allen Poe's first published work, Tamarlane and Other Poems, is expected to fetch a high price at auction tomorrow. Dubbed the "black tulip of American publishing," the book was published in 1827 by Poe under the name "a Bostonian." There were between 40-50 copies of the book published and only 12 are believed to exist today.

Christie's, which is auctioning a stained and frayed copy in New York, said the book could set a record price for American literature. Poe wrote the poems, inspired by the work of Byron, as he tried to launch his literary career after moving from his childhood home in Virginia to Boston, the city of his birth. He had at the time been trying to distance himself from his foster father, John Allan, in Richmond, Virginia, with whom he had a difficult relationship.

The book was published in complete obscurity, paid for entirely by the author and printed by a man who normally produced flyers and labels. When he later re-published the poems under his own name, Poe apologised for their quality and said they had never been intended for publication. A copy of the original book did not surface until more than 25 years after it was published, prompting some poetry experts at the time to claim it had never existed.

The elderly owner of the book is liquidating his rare book collection so that his children won't have to do the upkeep. The book is expected to fetch between $500,000 to $700,000 at auction.

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Cormac McCarthy Auctioning Off Typewriter to Benefit Santa Fe Institute

Wed, 2 Dec 2009 18:00:00 EST

Cormac McCarthy is about to part ways with his beloved Olivetti typewriter. He is auctioning off the manual typewriter on which he wrote No Country For Old Men and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road for charity. Christie's will handle the auction. McCarthy has had the typewriter for more than 40 years and it's finally giving out on him.

The machine, which he bought in a Tennessee pawnshop for $50 in 1963, is beginning to betray understandable symptoms of old age and hard usage. If the Lettera 32 had hooves, it would have been dragged out to meet the bolt gun years ago.

"It has never been serviced or cleaned other than blowing out the dust with a service station hose," said the writer. "I have typed on this typewriter every book I have written including three not published. Including all drafts and correspondence, I would put this at about 5m words over a period of 50 years."

When a friend offered to buy the 76-year-old Pulitzer-prizewinner a replacement, McCarthy volunteered to auction his machine and has promised the proceeds to the Santa Fe Institute, a "transdisciplinary research community" dedicated to expanding the boundaries of scientific understanding.

The machine and a letter of authenticity will go up for auction this Friday in New York at Christie's. The auction house estimates that it could sell for between $15,000 and $20,000.

Photo: Christie's

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Roger Avary Moving to County Jail for Tweeting

Tue, 1 Dec 2009 14:00:00 EST

Oscar-winning screenwriter Roger Avary has been yanked out of the work furlough program he was in and has been transferred to the Ventura County Jail where he will finish out the rest of his sentence for DUI. Avary was discovered to have been tweeting from jail about the terrible conditions and that is thought to be the reason he was transferred to county. Under the work furlough program he slept in a barracks like hangar, but was allowed to leave to work during the day. Now he will be incarcerated full time.

Pulp Fiction" screenwriter Roger Avary won't be tweeting again any time soon, a Ventura County sheriff's official said Monday. Avary probably will serve the rest of his yearlong sentence for a fatal drunken driving accident in the county jail instead of a lower-security work furlough program, said Sheriff's Department spokesman Ross Bonfiglio.

He's expected to be released next July. Until last week, Avary had been permitted to leave the furlough program daily to work at a production office, where he sent out tweets about strip searches, lockdowns and talks with gangbangers, officials said.

But after The Times published reports about the short messages, Avary was transferred on Thanksgiving to county jail. The tweets played a role in the decision, Bonfiglio said, but he said probation officials also had "security issues." "He really messed up," Bonfiglio said. "He could have done nine months out of a year sentence, and not even in lock-up, for killing someone. Now he is going to do the remainder of that time in county jail."

Avary pleaded guilty to gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated in connection with a car accident in which he was driving and his passenger Andreas Zini was killed and Avary's wife Gretchen was seriously injured. Avary crashed into a telephone road on a rural road on the way home from dinner.

So what security issues were so bad that necessitated moving him to county? We think it was the tweets. Conditions in the county jail are going to be much worse than what Avary reported on at the work furlough camp, that's for sure.

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Experts Debate Cause of Jane Austen's Death

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:00:00 EST

Years after her death, scholars and medical experts are still debating what caused the death of Jane Austen. The accepted view is that she died at 41 of Addison's disease. But that diagnosis is being reviewed and today medical experts think she actually died of tuberculosis that she contracted from cattle. Katherine White writes in the British Medical Journal's Medical Humanities magazine about the alternative theories about Austen's death.

White writes: "In 1964, [the surgeon Sir] Zachary Cope proposed that tubercular Addison's disease could explain her two-year deterioration into bed-ridden exhaustion, her unusual colouring, bilious attacks, rheumatic pains and the absence of more specific indicators of disease."

By contrast, one of Austen's most recent biographers, Claire Tomalin, suggested in 1997 that lymphoma (cancer of the lymphatic system) would be a better fit for the novelist's reported symptoms.

Examining her symptoms, as described in the novelist's letters, White agrees that Cope's diagnosis of Addison's disease could be correct, but notes: "Most patients with the disease experience mental confusion, generalised pain, weight loss and loss of appetite. None of these symptoms appears in Miss Austen's letters." Less than two months before her death, Austen wrote: "My head was always clear, and I had scarcely any pain." She even dictated 24 lines of comic verse from her sickbed to her sister in her last days.

Contemporary reports of Austen's skin discolouration, White adds, may have referred to the dark circles under her eyes. "Therefore, we can conclude that it is most likely she did not die from Addison's," she writes.

"While lymphoma would be one possible cause of the exhaustion, recurrent fever, bilious attacks and rheumatic pains described by Austen, disseminated tuberculosis affecting the joints and liver -- probably of bovine origin -- would offer a simpler explanation for her symptoms.

In any event, it seems a terrible way to go. Without DNA evidence it will be impossible to finally determine how Jane Austen died, but the new analysis is quite interesting.

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Stephen King Writing Sequel to The Shining

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:00:00 EST

Stephen King is writing a sequel to The Shining. The sequel will focus on Jack Torrance's clairvoyant little boy Danny, who barely escaped from the nightmare at the Overlook Hotel. In the sequel Danny is 40 and working at a New York hospice. King told fans in Toronto that he's been working on the idea since last summer.

Danny, he said, was certain to have been left "with a lifetime's worth of emotional scars" after his experiences at the Overlook, where his father was possessed by the hotel, tried to kill him and his mother and eventually died.

How Danny deals with both his nightmarish experiences and the clairvoyance, or "shining", which saved him, might make "a damn fine sequel", King said, according to local Toronto news website the Torontoist. His vision of the book -- tentatively called Doctor Sleep -- sees Danny now aged 40, working at a hospice for the terminally ill in upstate New York. He is apparently an orderly at the hospice, but his real work is to help make death a little easier for the dying patients with his psychic powers -- while making a little money on the side by betting on the horses.

King's fans got so excited that he seemed a bit worried, saying he wasn't "completely committed" to the project yet. Then he waffled some more, saying "Maybe if I keep talking about it I won't have to write it." Oh, it's much too late to back out now. He can't tease us like that and not follow through.

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Video: Lemony Snicket Makes a Youtube Video

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:00:00 EST

Lemony Snicket (aka Daniel Handler) has decided to take to Youtube to discourage his many readers from taking advantage of the fact that the first book in the Series of Unfortunate Events, #1: The Bad Beginning is now available to be read for free online. By squinting, we can just make out what books Lemony is currently reading: A Century of Horror, The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford and Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex by Judith Levine and Joycelyn M. Elders. Unfortunately Lemony is interrupted before he can tell us his second important message. Take a look:

If you must, you can read the first book in the series here.

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Book Industry Laments the End of The Oprah Winfrey Show

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:00:00 EST

The book publishing industry is pretty unhappy about Oprah's announcement that she is ending The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2011. Her impact on the book work has been immense.

"It's a blow," said Lorraine Shanley, a partner in the consulting firm Market Partners International Inc., who earlier this week watched former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin promote her book on Ms. Winfrey's show.

"Oprah Winfrey has supported many authors, and her book club has had a huge impact on America's reading habits," added Ms. Shanley. "She made Faulkner a best seller again. She also promoted an eclectic group of authors and created publishing successes for many commercial writers."

*****

Over the years, the book club has helped to bring the works of well-known writers such as Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison and Cormac McCarthy to even broader audiences. The show has also introduced writers such as Edwidge Danticat to millions of readers.

"Other than a book being turned into a popular movie nothing brings readers to a book like Oprah," said Dawn Davis, editorial director of the Amistad imprint of News Corp.'s HarperCollins Publishers. (News Corp. also owns The Wall Street Journal.) "She brings a variety of readers to a variety of books. Her impact is immeasurable."

Oprah has not revealed what she will do next. But she is going forward with the Oprah Winfrey Network on cable, which is a joint venture with The Discovery Channel. Oprah will be running the network, and it's possible that she will host a talk show there as well. If she does that, it's possible the Oprah Book Club will rise again. The book industry certainly hopes so.

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Judge Preliminarily Approves Revised Google Book Settlement

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:00:00 EST

A federal judge today preliminarily approved a revised Google Book Settlement which removes most European authors from the deal. But the the Open Book Alliance still objects to the proposed settlement saying it gives Google a virtual monopoly on digital books.

In an order Thursday, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin in Manhattan granted preliminary approval to the pact and set Feb. 18 as the date for a fairness hearing on the settlement. Last week, Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers submitted a revised agreement that would allow Google to distribute millions of digital copies of books online, but narrowed the number of books covered by the pact.

The revised settlement was designed to allay concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice and others that the original pact granted broad rights and immunities to Google and was anti-competitive. The Justice Department said earlier this week that its review of the revised settlement and its probe into the agreement is ongoing.

The Open Book Alliance's co-Chairman Peter Brantley said: "By performing surgical nip and tuck, Google, the AAP, and the AG are attempting to distract people from their continued efforts to establish a monopoly over digital-content access and distribution; usurp Congress' role in setting copyright policy; lock writers into their unsought registry, stripping them of their individual contract rights; put library budgets and patron privacy at risk; and establish a dangerous precedent by abusing the class-action process."

The hearing to determine fairness will give the objectors a forum to voice their opinions on the settlement.

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Dan Brown Sets Ebook Sales Record for Random House

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:00:00 EST

Crain's got ahold of an internal Random House memo which reveals that Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol increased the company's ebook sales by 400% over the prior year. In the first week alone, 100,000 copies were sold for the Kindle. That's a lot of ebooks sold.

According to an internal Random House report, sales of its Kindle e-books through September 2009 came to $22.6 million, an increase of almost 700% over the $2.9 million in revenue that the Kindle generated during the same period in 2008. The Lost Symbol was a big part of that growth. Published Sept. 15, the thriller sold 100,000 e-books its first week out, or about 5% of total sales for the book.

In the first half of 2009, Random House e-book revenue grew by 400%, says a spokesman. He declined to comment on the more recent numbers, which were disclosed to Crain's by an industry insider with access to the report. The majority of e-books are sold through Amazon's Kindle store.

Random House had sales of $1.3 billion in 2008, so ebooks are just a tiny part of that revenue. The internal report says that ebook sales are still in an "incubatory period" but that it is an exciting time.

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Melissa Rosenberg Talks New Moon Screenplay

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:00:00 EST

Screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg, who has adapted Stephenie Meyer's bestselling novels Twilight, New Moon and Eclipse into screenplays, talked to The L.A. Times about working with author Stephenie Meyer so closely to make sure the author's vision was translated into film, while still having her own stamp on the script.

In the first book, with "Twilight," I don't think I even met her until I was well into a draft and I was worried about meeting her because she was the 500-pound gorilla, she was the heavyweight. I was really protective of my process. I was afraid. I didn't know her from Adam, and I was afraid of getting run over and of not being able to create what I wanted to create or in some way have my voice stifled. When I met her, I realized, "Oh, that's not going to happen at all." But she was cautious too. She was looking at me going, "Are you going to butcher my child?" By the time I finished "Twilight," her reaction to it, it was still one of the great moments of my career, having the author say such wonderful things about the script. From that moment she relaxed about can I deliver and I relaxed about inviting her into my process.

I didn't have a director of "New Moon" until I was finished, so on "New Moon" I became much more involved with her, and with "Eclipse" I was getting her notes on the outline. With "Eclipse," because I was taking some liberties with the storytelling, it was really important to me that I stay true to her mythology, her voice. She gave me notes as far back as the outline and on every draft since. We're very tight and very much in each other's world.

In case you've been hiding in a cave somewhere, New Moon will be released in every theater on the planet on Friday, November 20.

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Biopic Shows Enid Blyton as Cruel, Vindictive and a Terrible Mother

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:00:00 EST

A new British television biopic of Enid Blyton stars Helena Bonham Carter. Helena studied the life of the famous author, whose children's books have sold 600 million copies around the world. She discovered that everyone agreed that Enid was not a very nice person, to say the least. Her last living child said she was a selfish bully and a terrible parent who was mean and spiteful, like a teenager who never grew up. She also was an adultress many times over.

Blyton lived at her cottage, Old Thatch, near the Thames at Bourne End, then at Green Hedges, a mock-Tudor house in Beaconsfield. Bonham Carter told a UK tabloid, "Enid's self-awareness was brilliant and she was incredibly controlling, too. I was attracted to the role because she was bonkers. She was an emotional mess and quite barking mad. What I found extraordinary, bordering on insane, was the way that Enid reinvented her own life. She was allergic to reality -- if there was something she didn't like then she either ignored it or re-wrote her life."

"She didn't like her mother, so let her colleagues assume she was dead. When her mother died, she refused to attend the funeral. Then the first husband didn't work out, so she scrubbed him out. There's also a scene in the film where her dog dies, but she carries on pretending he's still alive because she can't bear the truth."

*****

However, she was unable to relate as a normal mother with her two daughters Gillian and Imogen, with her first husband, Hugh Pollock. She is said to be distant and unkind to her younger daughter Imogen. Imogen Smallwood, 74, told the tabloid: "My mother was arrogant, insecure and without a trace of maternal instinct. Her approach to life was childlike, and she could be spiteful, like a teenager."

Imogen visited the set and told Helena that -- in addition to being cruel -- her mother always did everything very fast, so that she could get back to her writing and her fantasy worlds.

It sounds like it's going to be quite a biopic. It certainly won't be boring. Enid's books still sell 8 million copies a year.

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Comedy Writer David Lloyd Dead at 75

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:00:00 EST

Emmy winning comedy writer David Lloyd has died. He was 75. Lloyd wrote the classic "Chuckles Bites the Dust" episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Lloyd died of prostate cancer Tuesday at his home in Beverly Hills, said his son, writer-producer Christopher Lloyd. "I do think he was the preeminent writer of television comedy," said Les Charles, co-creator of "Cheers," for which Lloyd wrote numerous episodes. "If you consider how long his career was and how much he wrote for such really popular shows, he's got to have been responsible for a record number of laughs in this world," Charles said.

His four-decade comedy career began with writing jokes for Jack Paar on "The Tonight Show" in 1962 and included writing for "The Bob Newhart Show," "Phyllis," "Rhoda," "Lou Grant," "Taxi," "Frasier" and many other shows. "He was a remarkable writer," said Allan Burns, who created "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" with James L. Brooks and began working with Lloyd when he moved to Hollywood from New York in 1974 to write for the series.

"The word 'wit' doesn't come up an awful lot when you're talking about television comedy, but that's what David was: a genuine wit," said Burns. "And he was just remarkable in his ability to write wonderful stuff very quickly. "I would sit at my desk and laugh out loud, which I don't do often. His drafts always made me laugh out loud and with such unexpected, off-the-wall humor."

Our condolences to his family and friends.

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U.S. Media Running Afoul of British Libel Laws

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:00:00 EST

Libel laws are much stricter in Great Britain than they are in the U.S. and there no constitutional right to free speech. This puts U.S. newspapers in legal jeopardy when they sell U.S. publications, such as The New York Times, in Britain. Many expatriates read major U.S. newspapers, which are readily available in London. But now the newspapers are getting ready to pull out of Great Britain, saying that the hassle and lawsuit threats aren't worth the readership. They are also going to block access to their websites by the British in order to comply with the libel laws.

A memorandum submitted to a Commons select committee, ahead of a meeting with US publishers, states: "Leading US newspapers are actively considering abandoning the supply of the 200-odd copies they make available for sale in London -- mainly to Americans who want full details of their local news and sport. They do not make profits out of these minimal and casual sales and they can no longer risk losing millions of dollars in a libel action which they would never face under US law. Does the UK really want to be seen as the only country in Europe -- indeed in the world -- where important US papers cannot be obtained in print form?"

The submission, on behalf of a number of US media outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and MacMillan (US), as well as Human Rights Watch, Global Witness US and Greenpeace International, added: "The consequences of making media organisations liable for putting articles -- perfectly lawful by the law of their own domicile -- on websites which are occasionally accessed in England should be obvious. The cost of fighting libel actions may lead internet publishers to build 'fire walls' against access from the UK, in order to avoid such actions."

This is yet another instance of globalization leading to difficult legal issues. Articles that regularly appear in The Washington Post would get the newspaper sued if it were published by a British newspaper. But blocking British access to American newspaper sites seems an absurd outcome of these laws. But legally we don't see any way around it without fundamentally changing British libel laws. When there is no constitutional right to freedom of speech, it does make thinks difficult for journalists, authors and publishers.

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Lemony Snicket Moves to Little, Brown

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:00:00 EST

Daniel Handler, who writes the bestselling Lemony Snicket books, has moved from HarperCollins to Little, Brown. He signed a deal to write four new Lemony Snicket books and one stand alone young adult title.

In August, Egmont U.K. bought British rights to the four-book series; no U.S. publisher was announced at that time.

The Handler/Snicket team will work with longtime editor Susan Rich who has joined LBYR in the newly created position of editor-at-large. Rich was formerly at HarperCollins Children's Books, first in the New York office and then in Toronto.

A Series of Unfortunate Events was a blockbuster for HarperCollins, selling 60 million copies. We loved the series and can't wait to see Mr. Snicket has in store for us this time.

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Study Finds Texting Lingo Doesn't Harm Spelling

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:00:00 EST

The Washington Post reports that a University of Alberta study found that texting probably does not mean students will become bad spellers. They also found that text lingo or "chatspeak" has its own set of emerging rules and that young people already seem to know the correct way to spell words in text language.

The study was proposed by a group of third-year psychology students who surveyed roughly 40 students ages 12 to 17. The participants were asked to save their instant messages for a week. At the end of the study, the participants completed a standardized spelling test.

Varnhagen said the researchers were pleasantly surprised by the results. The young people surveyed seem to know, without any sort of instruction, that there are "correct" ways of spelling in chatspeak. For instance, "probably" is abbreviated as "prolly," but never "proly"; "want to" becomes "wanna," never "wana" or "wanta"; "should've" is always "shoulda" and never "shuda."

"Kids who are good spellers [academically] are good spellers in instant messaging," she said. "And kids who are poor spellers in English class are poor spellers in instant messaging."

It is good that texting does not appear to be harmful to spelling but it does seem possible that we will end up with a bunch of new words being used and that eventually the original spelling of the word could be forgotten.

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British Book Sales: Nonfiction Slumps, Fiction Sells

Fri, 6 Nov 2009 21:00:00 EST

The Bookseller reports that sales of nonfiction in Britain are slumping while sales of fiction are up 90%.

Sales of this year's top 10 non-fiction books in October were down 52% year on year, while sales of hardback fiction titles have soared by 90%. Figures for the most recent week to 31st October showed non-fiction continuing to underperform. Only Guinness World Records and Delia Smith's Delia's Happy Christmas (Ebury) sold more than 10,000 copies last week. Last year 10 hardback non-fiction titles passed this threshold during the same period.

*****

Cookery titles have in the past been a Christmas staple, with celebrity chefs whipping up high sales. However, sales of Jamie's America (Michael Joseph) have been well behind Jamie's Ministry of Food (Michael Joseph) from last year. Sally Hughes of Books for Cooks said: "Jamie did well when he was on TV but has fallen off quickly. River Cafe is not moving as well as we thought it might-it is selling but it seems a bit slow." However, retailers hailed the success of Guinness World Records, which knocked Dan Brown off this week's top spot with sales of 31,812.

*****

In spite of non-fiction's woes, sales of fiction are thriving in early autumn. Hardback fiction was up almost double (90.2%) in October year on year. Books by Dan Brown, Martina Cole and Terry Pratchett have been enjoying healthy sales figures despite the recession. Rachel Russell, business unit director for books at W H Smith, said: "Fiction is doing very well and seems to be muscling into the non-fiction market. I expect gifting to come later in non-fiction because Christmas falls on a Friday."

So why is fiction suddenly outselling nonfiction like crazy? Perhaps the terrible economy has something to do with it. Fiction is an escape. When times are bad, it's quite relaxing to dip into a fictional world. Other than cook books and lifestyle titles, most of the nonfiction is a tad depressing. Just dip into any of the finance/fall of Wall Street titles, for example, and prepare to be horrified.

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Publisher's Weekly Under Fire for All Male Best Books List

Thu, 5 Nov 2009 17:00:00 EST

Publisher's Weekly is under fire for putting out list of the ten best books of the year that includes no female authors.

"The absence made me nearly speechless." said poet and creative writing professor Cate Marvin, co-founder of new US literary organisation Women in Letters and Literary Arts (WILLA). WILLA has gathered more than 5,500 members since it launched in August with the aim of bringing "increased attention to women's literary accomplishments and [questioning] the American literary establishment's historical slow-footedness in recognising and rewarding women writers' achievements".

The group pointed to new books published this year by Lorrie Moore, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, Rita Dove, Heather McHugh and Alicia Ostriker. "It continues to surprise me that literary editors are so comfortable with their bias toward male writing, despite the great and obvious contributions that women authors make to our contemporary literary culture," said Marvin.

Announcing the list, novelist and journalist Louisa Ermelino said that PW "wanted [it] to reflect what we thought were the top 10 books of the year with no other consideration". "We ignored gender and genre and who had the buzz. We gave fair chance to the 'big' books of the year, but made them stand on their own two feet," she said, adding that "it disturbed us when we were done that our list was all male".

Poet Erin Belieu, WILLA's other co-founder and director of the creative writing programme at Florida State University, said that "when PW's editors tell us they're not worried about 'political correctness', that's code for 'your concerns as a feminist aren't legitimate'". "They know they're being blatantly sexist, but it looks like they feel good about that," said Belieu. "I, on the other hand, have heard from a whole lot of people -- writers and readers -- who don't feel good about it at all."

You can see Publisher's Weekly's controversial list here.

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Stephen King Pens Poem for Playboy Magazine

Wed, 4 Nov 2009 15:00:00 EST

Stephen King has written a new poem for Playboy magazine called "The Bone Church." The Guardian reminds us that Playboy actually has a long literary history, publishing such authors as As a young, miserable, unpublished author Stephen King says he used to fantasize about being interviewed in Playboy. But he knew the magazine only interviewed successful, serious authors.

Playboy has a perhaps surprisingly strong literary background, publishing works by authors including John Irving, John Updike, Vladimir Nabokov and Margaret Atwood. This summer, literary editor Amy Grace Loyd acquired first serial rights in Vladimir Nabokov's final, unfinished novel The Original of Laura for its December issue. It has also enjoyed a lengthy relationship with King, interviewing the author back in 1983.

"The protagonist of Salem's Lot, a struggling young author with a resemblance to his creator, confesses at one point, 'Sometimes when I'm lying in bed at night, I make up a Playboy Interview about me. Waste of time. They only do authors if their books are big on campus.' Ten novels and several million dollars in the bank later, your books are big on campus and everywhere else," the interviewer said to King.

The author replied that the passage reflected his state of mind in the days before he sold his first book, Carrie, when nothing seemed to be going right. "When I couldn't sleep, in that black hole of the night when all your doubts and fears and insecurities surge in at you, snarling, from the dark -- what the Scandinavians call the wolf hour -- I used to lie in bed alternately wondering if I shouldn't throw in the creative towel and spinning out masturbatory wish fulfilment fantasies in which I was a successful and respected author. And that's where my imaginary Playboy interview came in," he said.

"The Bone Church" is the story of an ill-fated jungle expedition told by a man in a bar. "There were thirty-two of us went into that greensore/ and only three who rose above it./ It doesn't have a happy ending, so you've been warned. You can read the poem for free here.

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New York Public Library Acquires E. Annie Proulx Archive

Tue, 3 Nov 2009 22:00:00 EST

The New York Public Library just acquired treasure trove of research notes, book drafts and other materials belonging to novelist E. Annie Proulx, author of The Shipping News.

The trove, housed in the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, includes:

* 200 pages of short stories, essays, poems and screenplays
* 145 pages of preparatory notes and research
* 10,200+ pages of typescript
* 2100 galley proofs
* 4500+ pages of correspondence

"To me there is an odd sense of balance that material dealing with some of the most rural landscapes in North America will reside in our major city," Proulx commented.

The author noted that she wanted to donate the archive for several reasons. There is insight into the creative process, to be sure. But she says that the letters, emails, and financial reports will help shed light on this era of American publishing and literature to future historians. She also said that "We are currently undergoing major changes in the way we regard intellectual property and literary work; some of anxieties of that metamorphosis are reflected in my archive."

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Washinton Post Newsroom Erupts With Fistfight

Mon, 2 Nov 2009 18:25:00 EST

Things are tough in the newspaper industry. Falling circulation, layoffs, drops in ad revenue have taken their toll as tempers fray. And now the newsroom at The Washington Post has erupted into fisticuffs. Politico reports:

Washington Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli found himself in the middle of an altercation Friday evening between Style reporter Manuel Roig-Franzia and editor Henry Allen, but will not say whether the two have been reprimanded by the paper. "We take this incident seriously and will address it appropriately," Brauchli told POLITICO, declining to comment further.

Reports that Allen punched Roig-Franzia surfaced Monday morning on FishbowlDC, Washingtonian and City Paper (which reported Brauchli was traveling). Multiple Post sources independently confirmed to POLITICO that Roig-Franzia got hit while defending colleague Monica Hesse from harsh criticism leveled by her editor, Allen. Allen, according to the Washingtonian, had told Hesse that a piece she had written was "the second worst story I have seen in Style in 43 years." Roig-Franzia, also working a story with Hesse that ran Saturday, told Allen not to be such a "c-sucker."

Allen swung twice, with one punch hitting Roig-Franzi, according to sources. Next, staffers on the 4th floor -- including Brauchli, whose office is temporarily across from the Style section -- jumped in to break up the altercation. Allen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor who already took a buyout, has just three weeks left on his contract, and was not in the office Monday. Roig-Franzia is in the office.

Allen, who is 68, commented that he was shocked at the media attention the scuffle engendered. He said that in the old days, expletive-filled newsroom scuffles were everyday occurrences. Ah, the good old days.

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Cuba Giving Copies of Hemingway Documents to Kennedy Library

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:37:00 EST

The Kennedy Library in Boston will be getting copies of a number of Ernest Hemingway's papers from the government of Cuba.

The Boston Globe reported that Cuba's Ministry of Culture had given the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum copies of 3,000 letters and documents Hemingway amassed during his years in Cuba, from 1939 to 1960. Among the documents are corrected proofs of "The Old Man and the Sea" and an alternate ending to "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (The Globe report did not say what that ending was), as well as correspondence with Robert Capa, Marlene Dietrich, Sinclair Lewis, Lillian Ross, Ingrid Bergman and various members of his family. The library is already home to the Hemingway Archive and the Hemingway Room, which was dedicated in 1980, and includes relics like a lion-skin throw rug, journals of his fishing trips and shrapnel from wounds he suffered during World War I.

Copies are better than nothing at all, but you just know they wish they could get their hands on the originals. But those aren't leaving Cuba anytime soon.

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Ang Lee to Direct Film Version of Life of Pi

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:00:00 EST

Director Ang Lee says that he has finally gotten a first draft of the screenplay for the film version of Yann Martel's 2002 Man Booker prize-winning novel Life of Pi. The film rights were sold almost a decade ago, but no one could figure out how to film a book about a boy and a tiger adrift at sea. But it's really happening this time, and Ang Lee is ready to roll.

Martel's acclaimed novel chronicles the travails of a shipwrecked teenage boy stuck on a life raft with only a female orangutan, injured zebra, hungry hyena and brooding Bengal tiger for company. In recent years the likes of M. Night Shyamalan, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Alfonso Cuaron have all been attached at one time or another to the project, but none has managed to get a movie into production.

Lee told the Digital Spy website his version was still at the scripting stage and he had not yet begun to think about casting. "I'm delivering the first draft," he said. "I think I've cracked the structure of the movie and I'll figure out how to do it later. "How exactly I'm going to do it, I don't know - A little boy adrift at sea with a tiger. It's a hard one to crack!"

Lee said the film would most likely be out in two years' time. The Taiwan-born director's next movie in UK cinemas will be Taking Woodstock, his comedy-drama about the 1969 music festival, which premiered in May to lukewarm reviews at Cannes. It screens at the London film festival today and opens nationwide on 13 November.

We can't wait to see what he comes up with. Many directors have passed on the project, saying that it's un-filmable. But Ang Lee clearly loves a challenge.

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Alice Munro Reveals Cancer Battle

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:00:00 EST

At a literary event in Toronto, Man Booker Prize-winning Canadian author Alice Munro revealed that she has been battling cancer. She also has had heart bypass surgery. But she says she feels she's been lucky with her health, because of the availability of treatments she has had access to.

Munro, 78, who earlier this year was named the third recipient of the prestigious Man Booker International Prize, honouring her life's work, briefly alluded to her health Wednesday night at a sold-out literary event in Toronto. In an on-stage conversation with fellow author Diana Athill, Munro said she's had heart bypass surgery and "just had cancer."

Still, Munro said she's "been lucky with her health," unlike her mother, who was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease at a relatively young age and died in her late 50s. "I think some of us are much luckier than others in life," she said. "I think we are lucky now in the kind of medical intervention that keeps us going."

Alice said that things had changed quite a bit for Canadian authors. She said that when she started writing she was told that no one wanted to hear Canadian authors talk in their own voices. She noted that "When I started to write there was a feeling you couldn't write about Canada - nobody would be interested - and there was an extraordinary, I don't know, shyness or a feeling that somehow you had to go to Europe in order to bring out your creativity."

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Chinese Authors Oppose Google Digitzation Plan

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:13:00 EST

A group of Chinese authors are angry and accusing Google of digitizing their books without permission or payment. The authors' right group says that Google has violated their copyrights, which Google denies. Google says it has complied with international law.

The China Written Works Copyright Society (CWWCS) believes Google scanned thousands of books, by over 500 Chinese authors, into its digital library without their permission or compensation, said spokesman Chen Qirong. "Whether you are a small company or big company you still need to respect the copyright of the authors," Chen said.

Google countered by saying it had received permission from over 50 Chinese publishers who allowed the U.S. search giant to digitize more than 30,000 books to be found through Internet searches and for preview. "We believe the book search complies with international copyright law," said Google spokeswoman Courtney Hohne.

Google.com, Gmail and other Google services are not currently available in much of China because the government says Google spreads obscene content over the Internet. Meanwhile, the Chinese government does virtually nothing to stop the theft of non-Chinese authors' works which are republished in China without payment or permission. Remember all the bizarre incarnations of the Harry Potter series that were sold all over China?

As for the Chinese authors, well, they're having a tough time. The Chinese government still actively censors their work and it is dangerous to write about things of which the government does not approve.

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Mexico's Secret Service: Gabriel Garcia Marquez Was a Cuban Spy

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:24:00 EST

Uncovered records reveal that Columbian author and Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez was spied on for decades by the Mexican intelligence agency DFS, which is now defunct. The DFS, which was roughly equivalent to the CIA, considered Garcia Marquez to be a Cuban agent.

The defunct DFS agency bugged the Nobel laureate's phone and monitored his movements from 1967 after he moved to Mexico with his family. The authorities suspected the Colombian author of One Hundred Years of Solitude because of his leftist sympathies and friendship with Fidel Castro. Declassified documents published in the newspaper El Universal revealed the DSF kept a bulging file at least up until 1985, after which documents remain secret. It was era of the "dirty war" waged by rightwing Latin American governments against suspected subversives.

*****

The agency closely monitored the author's mediation between leftist movements and the French president, Francois Miterrand. It also kept tabs on Mexican writers such as Octavio Paz, who won the Nobel prize in 1990, and Salvador Novo.

The declassified information contains a wiretapped conversation between Garcia Marquez and Jorge Timossi, the director of Cuba's Prensa Latina news agency. It reveals the Garcia Marquez gave the rights to his book Chronicle of a Death Foretold to the Cuban government. The DFS report noted that "The above proves that Gabriel Garcia Marquez, besides being pro-Cuban and pro-Soviet, is a propaganda agent at the service of the intelligence agency of that country."

Garcia Marquez is now 82 and divides his time between Cartagena and Mexico City. He still loves to visit Cuba and has maintained his friendship with Castro.

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Patricia Cornwell Suing Financial Advisors Over $40 Million Loss

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:00:00 EST

Bestselling author Patricia Cornwell is suing her financial advisors and accountants for negligence. She has lost $40 million during the time her financial affairs were handled by the New York financial management firm, Anchin, Block & Anchin LLP which also represents such celebrities as Robert DeNiro. Patricia made the fatal error of allowing someone else access to her checkbook. Lloyd Grove of The Daily Beast reports:

"Ms. Cornwell is a bestselling crime novelist whose ability to write is dependent upon the ability to avoid distractions," the lawsuit contends. "A quiet, uninterrupted environment, free of the distractions of managing her business and her assets, was essential to her ability to write and to meet her deadlines. Further, Ms. Cornwell openly acknowledges her diagnosis with a mood disorder known as bipolar disorder, which, although controlled without medication, has contributed to her belief that it is prudent for her to employ others to manage her business affairs."

Cornwell's lawyer told me she ruefully recalls a conversation she had several years ago with Oprah Winfrey, when both found themselves sitting together on a dais. "They were chatting about various things, and Patricia was inquiring about Oprah's business practices. And Oprah said to Patricia, 'I have one guiding principle: Always sign your own checks.' Patricia says she wished she had lived by that advice. She will from now on."

Lloyd says that Anchin is accused of mishandling rental properties, making poor investments and taking actions without her permission. Anchin reportedly even wrote a check from Patricia to his own daughter (who Patricia has never met) for $5,000 as a bat mitzvah gift.

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Furious Row at Frankfort Book Fair May Lead to EU Being Dropped From Google Book Settlement

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:00:00 EST

Due to massive resistance to the Google Book Settlement in Europe, all European Union books might be entirely left out from the deal, according to The Bookseller. The whole thing came to a head at the Frankfurt Book Fair last week when a furious fight arose over the the Settlement.

According to various reports Professor Roland Reuss, a literature professor from Germany's Heidelberg University, struck out at Google and the Settlement, negotiated in the US by the Association of American Publishers, and the US Authors Guild with Google. He described Google's lofty ideals as "just a whole garbage of hysterical propaganda", and warned of a threat to traditional publishing, saying "you revolutionize the market but the cost is that the producers of goods in this market will be demolished".

Reuss then rounded on Bertelsmann's Richard Sarnoff, who negotiated the deal as chair of the AAP, calling him "naive" and arguing that the deal disregarded the Berne Convention, and the rights of copyright holders to determine how their work was used. According to Publishers Weekly, Sarnoff said the parties to the deal did not anticipate the backlash in Europe. And he added that European works may indeed have to be removed from the settlement.

From all accounts, the dispute was quite heated as Professor Reuss blasted the deal and all those involved. The Federation of European Publishers (FEP) definitely wants out of the deal and is furious that the AAP and the American Author's Guild is arrogant enough to thing that they have the right to negotiate on their behalf. The FEP represents publishers associations from 27 countries.

Passions are running very high in the European book community right now.

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Win an Emmy, Then Get Fired

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:44:00 EST

Kater Gordon, the writer's assistant turned writer, won an Emmy for the last episode of last season's Mad Men. She was like the show's own Peggy Olson, the girl who rose through the ranks to win an Emmy. So then why was she fired by Matt Weiner the show's creator and the man who was forced to share an Emmy with her? Nikki Finke had some nonsense about how Matt liked to encourage young writers and that he felt she had gone as far as she could and it was time for new writers. Others told her Kater quit before she could be fired.

I've learned that writer's assistant-turned-staff writer, Robin Veith, quit Mad Men before she could be let go by Matthew Weiner. A source tells me: "It was at the very worst mutual. She needed to move on and see how she would do after leaving the nest. Matt is a genius, and he gave lots of people an opportunity, but never let's anyone forget it. I'm sure he'd never tell anyone she quit, because that is a rejection of him. Anyway, they are friends and made a mutual decision."

A show insider replies, "There are staffing changes every season. It is the nature of television shows to fine tune. Why is it news this season?" Because the show won two best drama Emmy's in a row, and with success comes attention. Deal with it.

What a load of nonsense. No one fires a screenwriter who just penned an Emmy-winning episode unless there is something else going on. Of course, they shared the writing credit so there's no way to know how much of that episode she really wrote. But it's still most peculiar.

We hope she finds a new show quickly, because she clearly has the talent.

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