July 2010 - Writers Magazine

News Review

• Inspired by Colin Robinson's recent article in The Nation, News Review takes another look at Amazon, still growing fast and now the largest bookseller in the world, with all that entails.  Are they using their power wisely?  What effect do they have on publishers? There's a stop press too, relating to the latest big story on e-books.


• News Review looks at the big international publishing companies and what a recent study shows about how they have fared in the rankings in the last year. Trade publishing is not top of the charts and it is the companies which have a global approach which have grown the most.


• 'Following on from our look at prizes and what effect they have last week, this week’s column will be devoted to new prizes. There has been a proliferation of new prizes launched over the last few years, so there’s quite a lot to evaluate. Some of them focus on new work but only a proportion of them are open for entries from unpublished writers.' News Review looks at new prizes.


• 'The literary world is awash with literary prizes, with new ones being set up every year. But what effect do these prizes have and do they actually sell more books?... The answer is mixed. Some of the biggest prizes do have a major effect on sales but others have surprisingly little impact. The €100,000 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, which bills itself as the world’s largest prize for a single novel, was won recently by a novel in translation which will probably not sell in really significant numbers...'  News Review investigates


• 'An article in a recent edition of the Bookseller has highlighted the ongoing pressure on acquisitions in publishing houses, which has now become acute.Helen Garnons-Williams, Bloomsbury fiction editorial director said: "Our entire business is based on confidence, whether among the publishers or the agents, and pretty much everyone is wobbling because no one knows what will sell." Auctions have often faltered because the recession is causing a massive loss of confidence and publishers are becoming increasingly risk-averse.' News Review has the story.

Comment

• ‘Any bookseller who might be considering whether to order more copies of Brodeck's Report by Philippe Claudel, which last week (in May) took the Independent Foreign Fiction prize, should look at this week's charts. Astonishingly, translations currently account for 40 per cent of Britain's top-ten bestsellers... Boyd Tonkin, Literary Editor of the Independent


• 'I think there was what people sometimes call 'a gap in the market' because I wanted to get away from the fantasy and sensationalism of James Bond and the Ludlum-esque stuff... after a while too much fantasy has a bludgeoning effect: you accept that the guy can fly, or defuse a bomb with bare hands, or whatever.' Jason Elliot, author of The Network, in the Bookseller.


• 'Only now that the book is out have I fully realized what the most frightening part of the is process is. The questions: How will the reading public respond? Do ads work? Do people even read much anymore, beyond vampire books? Is the sophomore slump real? Is the sales rank on Amazon.com a true indicator?... I want people to buy and read my book, but the reasons for this want lie not in sales rank or blog hits. The reasons lie where they always have for the artist. If we do our job right, writers can, in the words of Muhammad Ali, shake up the world. Glenn Taylor, author of The Marrowbone Marble Company on Publishing Perspectives.


• 'A multi-media strategy pays richer dividends to busy, versatile authors for whom film adaptations, TV slots, press columns and the like come easily. For focused literary types who simply want the best deal for their words, other agents still keep faith with books alone.' Boyd Tonkin, Literary Editor, in the Independent.


• 'I've always loved short stories. The process is probably less anxious than writing a novel. There's something about the intensity of a short story that I love... You can reinvent them all the time (whereas) with the novel there's the huge weight of tradition. There's something about modern life that suits the short story. It's a bit snipped up and jagged and raw and I think stories are like that...' Michele Roberts, author of Mud, in the Bookseller.


• 'Books are not dead. They may appear besieged, ever more so as fragile retailers hunker down to re-examine their own business models. There may be fewer new titles published over the next several years...  but I am confident that the book business will evolve, as it has done for hundreds of years, and will occupy a considerable position as a ongoing and valued medium.' Laurence Orbach, CEO of Quarto, in the Bookseller

Writers' Quote

'Poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written, he may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.'
  T S Eliot