The government's bid to block Penguin Random House's acquisition of rival Big Five publisher Simon & Schuster gets underway today in Washington, D.C., today, with the case expected to run about three weeks. Meanwhile, filings made public late on July 29 shed light on a lingering pre-trial evidence dispute that could impact PRH's defense.
Links of the week August 8 2022 (32)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
8 August 2022
The dispute involves PRH's claims that its acquisition of Simon & Schuster would create "cognizable merger-specific efficiencies." But according to court filings, PRH's expert witness, Edward Snyder, conceded in his testimony he did not seek to independently verify the numbers he used in forming his opinion on such efficiencies, which were drawn from a report by PRH's head of global mergers Manuel Sansigre, and PRH U.S. president and COO Nihar Malaviya. DOJ lawyers argue that the law requires data used by expert witnesses be verified. And because Snyder did not verify the numbers, the government is seeking to bar parts of Snyder's testimony "in order to facilitate a motion...seeking judgment as a matter of law on the issue of efficiencies."
The second day of the DOJ's trial to block Penguin Random House from acquiring rival Big Five publisher Simon & Schuster featured a little star power: bestselling author Stephen King took the stand, telling the court about his rise from struggling freelance writer to mega-bestselling author, and bemoaning the continued consolidation of the publishing industry-which, he contends, is hurting writers.
But in terms of the case before the court, the highlight of the day was the testimony of S&S CEO Jonathan Karp. Karp took the stand with what Judge Florence Pan referred to as a "very impressive binder," which held the contents of his lengthy 14-hour deposition, and proceeded to joust with DOJ attorney Jeff Vernon, who ran Karp through a litany of examples (anonymized for open court) in which S&S editors competed directly against Penguin Random House for books - winning some, losing some, but in each case driving up the author's advance.
American horror novelist Stephen King is taking on a new monster: corporate consolidation.
The author was the star witness in an anti-trust trial to block the two biggest US publishers' $2.2bn merger.
The US Department of Justice called on King to testify about how the proposed tie-up of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster could affect authors.
King, 75, told the court in Washington DC that he felt "the move would be bad for competition in the industry". Both publishing houses have argued the merger would not hinder competition because the companies would continue to bid against each other for the rights to publish novels, even after the transaction is finalised.
If you open up any one of hundreds of news stories of rightwing "parents' rights" groups trying to have book removed from schools for having queer characters or mentioning the existence of sex, you might notice a common refrain: "We aren't banning books. Anyone can buy it on Amazon if they want." There are so many problems with this sentiment, but the first one is that is has become abundantly clear that book banners don't actually know what a book ban is.
It seems like everyone wants to ban a book, and no one wants to be a book banner.
a collage of sentences from news articles all saying "this is not a book ban" and "we're not banning books"But the truth is that a book ban isn't the same as making it illegal to buy or sell that book in the entire country. It's not putting a book title in the same category as selling heroin or looking for elephant tusks on the black market. It's absurd to shift the goal posts by trying to say that book banning is an on/off switch, where as long as someone, somewhere, somehow can access the book, it's never been banned.
Crime fiction is as popular with writers as it is readers. Fans of the genre often try their hand at writing the gripping noir and twisting tales they love. But writing crime fiction comes with its own unique challenges as crime readers demand tight plots, dark settings and gripping mysteries like no other.
Read crime
If you think this is obvious, then you're probably already doing this. However, it's not rare to find someone who wants to write a particular genre, but isn't reading it. And in case it's not obvious, you need to immerse yourself in the genre - you need to understand the style, the language, the tropes, the themes, the plot devices, the characters and how the genre has changed over time so that you can not only write great crime fiction, but work on what you can bring to the genre to make it your own.
Read like a writer: what do you like, and why? What works and why? What doesn't? And why? Importantly ask yourself, how would I do this differently?
Read crime's many sub-genres: from the hard-boiled thrillers of Raymond Chandler to cosy mystery and the suburban crime stories of Harlan Coban.
I doubt you need to be told you should be reading more. There's a good chance you struggle to make time for reading, and it feels like just another obligation, like hitting your daily step goal, or drinking more water.
You're not alone. In early 2021, nearly a quarter of Americans told the Pew Research Center that they hadn't read any books at all the previous year. Earlier this year, a Gallup poll revealed that even those who were reading books were reading fewer than ever.
"So many people tell me that they used to be a reader and then they just fell out of it," Lynn Lobash, the New York Public Library's associate director of reader services, told me, recounting conversations from the past few years. "It's hard to get back into a practice once you've lost it."
Because, look, it's not easy! Books require sustained attention, something few of us have (and some of us have lost altogether) in these pandemic-riddled, anxiety-inducing times. Given some free time, you've probably got a million other things you could be doing: shows to binge, movies to half-watch, browser tabs to skim. Even if you loved to read as a child, when adulthood hits, reading can go out the window, relegated to beach reading on vacations and maybe a couple of books crammed into the corners of life.
As a writing coach, most of my clients come to me after months, years or even decades of trying to write a book on their own and floundering.
I get it. I've written nine books and every single time I start a new one, I come down with book amnesia. I look at my published books on my shelf and think, "Are you sure you wrote those? Because you seem to have no inkling of how to write a book."
So yes, writing a book is hard and if you've been working on yours for a while now, there are probably a couple of other issues getting in your way.
Trying to cram every last thing you know into your book.
Writing a book that serves everybody-or at least a number of very different somebodies.
These are the biggest reasons I see nonfiction books stall: being a subject matter expert and your sweet desire to serve as many people as possible. So I've come up with a few questions to help you reboot your book without overwhelming yourself or your reader. I recommend journaling your responses to these questions until you feel too bored to write another word-and then writing for another page beyond that. Yes, it's tedious, but it works.
Learn how to write a poem through seven easy to follow steps that will guide you through writing completed poem. Ignite a passion for poetry!
This article is a practical guide for writing a poem, and the purpose is to help you write a poem! By completing the seven steps below, you will create the first draft of a simple poem. You can go on to refine your poetry in any way you like. The important thing is that you've got a poem under your belt.
At the bottom of the post, I'll provide more resources on writing poetry. I encourage you to explore different forms and structures and continue writing poetry on your own. Hopefully, writing a poem will spark, in you, a passion for creative writing and language.
Why readers on TikTok love this sentimental slop
Last year, in a piece titled "How Crying on TikTok Sells Books," the New York Times tracked how the social media app was ushering readers into the Age of the Ugly Cry: clusters of videos dedicated to "books that will make you sob" have reached millions of views and were having, according to publishing-industry insiders, a seismic effect on sales. Years-old novels about domestic violence (It Ends With Us), childhood sexual abuse (A Little Life), bisexual yearning in Old Hollywood (The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo), and getting your favourite twink killed in the Trojan war (The Song of Achilles) have experienced massive, ongoing increases in sales, largely based on videos that promise they will make you "sob until you can't breathe" or will leave you "heartbroken and shattered for days." Your local bookshop probably has a TikTok table; at least half the books on it will be designed to make you weep into your breakfast muffin, if you're a breakfast muffin person.
Beloved creator of Fungus the Bogeyman and Father Christmas brought a distinctive strain of melancholy to the genre
Raymond Briggs, the writer and illustrator who delighted children and inspired adults with bestselling cartoons and picture books, died on Tuesday morning aged 88, his publisher Penguin Random House has said. Ranging from the enchanting magic of The Snowman to a devastating apocalypse in When the Wind Blows, Briggs created a host of much-loved characters including his angst-ridden Fungus the Bogeyman and his curmudgeonly version of Father Christmas. A career spanning six decades brought him numerous awards, with television adaptations making him a fixture of British Christmas viewing.
Author Anthony Horowitz has said it's wrong "writers are running scared" due to a fear of offending, elaborating on comments he made earlier this year at Hay Festival.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Horowitz, author of the Alex Rider series as well as numerous other novels, said it is "wrong that writers should have to worry about what they are writing", and that they're now "following the agenda rather than setting it".
He told the newspaper: "It should be creative people who decide what is or is not acceptable. These days, the nervousness, the cancel culture, the fear of offending, of causing a Twitter storm, or the sudden laser-like focus that some writers attract - J K Rowling is the obvious example - strikes me as worrying and saddening."
In May, the author told the Hay Festival he'd been taken aback by his editor's notes on his then-upcoming book Where Seagulls Dare: A Diamond Brothers Case (Walker Books, 2nd June 2022), saying: "I have just suffered from my last book notes from my publisher which absolutely shocked me about things that I could or couldn't say, which is a children's book, not an adult book."
IN 1978, BILL GROSE, editor-in-chief at Dell, decided to make a star of a young author from San Francisco. Grose was a thumper of novelizations from popular film and television, a fan of media tie-ins, a man with his finger in the air to feel the direction of the wind. Dell, a mass-market house, had recently been acquired by the trade giant Doubleday, which also owned radio and television stations and would in two years buy the New York Mets. Grose and Dell were looking for the next big thing. This woman, Grose thought, was it. She had a made-for-marketing name, too. Danielle Steel.
Steel arrived at work looking like Audrey Hepburn: big eyes, short hair, outfitted in the season's high fashion. She was quickly named director of public relations and vice president of marketing. She buzzed around the office with incredible energy, chain-smoking, making needlepoint kitsch, and typing letters to prospective clients in French, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese (if not always with perfect grammar). One of her clients, an editor at Ladies' Home Journal, saw promise in Steel as a writer, and told her so.
Her touching verses about heartbreak, fat-shaming and body hair have made her Britain's most-followed poet on social media - and now she's heading for TV
hen Nikita Gill was growing up, she was constantly told she was oversensitive. It was a label she didn't like, even if it did seem fairly accurate. "I used to feel things really deeply all the time," she says. "The world is overwhelming, especially when you're young." Today, Gill is Britain's most followed poet, with more than a million fans online, who feel that her fine-tuned emotions are not her weakness, but her superpower.
On Instagram, TikTok and elsewhere, Gill posts stylish snippets of her work which are savoured by readers who include Alanis Morissette, Sam Smith and Khloe Kardashian. Her success, since one of her pieces blew up on Tumblr six years ago, has seen her lumbered with another unwanted label: Instapoet. The 35-year-old has never liked the epithet, which she feels is almost invariably used for female and marginalised writers who broke through online after failing to get past traditional gatekeepers. She was even less impressed when one article casually dismissed her work as "sad girl" poetry.