Links of the week January 8 2024 (02)

In an open letter, Morpurgo, writing in his role as president of BookTrust, said: "It is not right that children from poorer backgrounds are deprived of a life that is rich in reading." The letter highlighted evidence for the wide-ranging benefits given to children who are read to early on, citing a profound impact on educational success, language development, mental well-being and relationships. Malorie Blackman, Sir Quentin Blake and Julia Donaldson are among the former Children's Laureates who have signed in support of the letter.

New statistics from BookTrust show that although 95% of parents with children under seven know how crucial reading is, one in five children aged 0-4 have a book read to them less than once a month. Further research from the charity shows that less than half of children are read a bedtime story and only half of children aged between one and two from low-income families are read to daily.

 

I understood that if I was going to do it, I would have to put 100% of myself into it," says Richard Osman about writing his debut crime novel The Thursday Murder Club, which was an immediate bestseller when it was published in 2020. He had attempted a novel before, but "I wasn't giving it everything, I had too much on. And this was the first time where I thought: No, I'm able to focus on this for a couple of years now." Osman's agent, Juliet Mushens, adds: "He told me he was working on a novel, but he didn't want to show it to anyone until he finished the whole thing." When he did, "we did a couple of drafts and submitted it to publishers". The rest is history: since The Thursday Murder Club was released, Osman has published three further novels and sold more than 10m books worldwide.

He is the most successful example of a phenomenon that is more prominent than ever: the celebrity novelist.

 

The two biggest surprise hits in the year were Rebecca Yarros's Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, which sold about 1.2 million and one million copies, respectively. A third woman author who had a big 2023 bestseller was Bonnie Garmus, whose 2022 Lessons in Chemistry sold just over one million copies thanks in part to the Apple TV series of the same name. Overall, 17 of the top 25 bestselling print books in 2023 were written by women.

George R R Martin was late delivering the sixth instalment of his A Song of Ice and Fire novel series. Over the years, frustrated fans speculated on his delay and procrastination, with one taking to the internet to ask advice of fellow writer Neil Gaiman. The fan, Gareth, complained: "It's almost as though he is doing everything in his power to avoid working on it. Is it unrealistic to think that by not writing the next chapter Martin is letting me down?" Gaiman's witty response was simple: "Writers and artists aren't machines."

I've worked in and around publishing for 20 years and over that time had many different roles. Thinking back, I've been guilty of treating authors like machines - sorry Neil.

Take one example where I had responsibility for a list of 200 titles. With forthcoming titles represented as a line on a spreadsheet an author was reduced to a unit of production. Publishing margins are increasingly tight, so the hard commercial reality was that each title, and by extension author, was assessed in terms of financial viability.

 

While Daughters of Warsaw is a work of fiction, the novel is inspired by the actions of Żegota, a resistance group operating in Poland during the Second World War, and in particular by one of the group's leaders, Irena Sendler.

Irena was a Catholic nurse and social worker who saved thousands of Jewish children from being murdered by the Nazis by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto. She kept meticulous records of the children's names and aliases, which she buried beneath an apple tree, in the hope they might be reunited with their families once the war was over. Tragically, however, many of the children's families perished in the Nazi death camps. She was recognised as Righteous Among the Nations by Israel in 1965, although she continued to resist being called a "hero" until her death in 2008.

 

I'm often asked where my ideas come from. You might imagine that my upcoming title came from an idea scribbled down long ago and placed in a box for the right moment to bring it to life. That's pretty much how the selection process goes, except The Longest Goodbye is not a story to which normal circumstances apply. This is the book I never wanted to write, one born out of an experience I buried long ago, a shocking and traumatic moment in my life that stayed with me.

I was at home one morning when I heard the tail end of breaking news on the radio: a female Northumbria police officer had been shot in the back at close range, causing life-threatening injuries. I froze. Two years earlier, I'd begun a relationship with a Northumbria detective sergeant who was on duty that day. I don't scare easily, but I had to sit down and remind myself to breathe.

"The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, contends that millions of articles published by the Times were used to train automated chatbots that now compete with the news outlet as a source of reliable information."

Particularly in light of the European Union's "AI Act" agreement on December 9-the first comprehensive legislation of its kind, expected to be a model for many world markets beyond Europe-the Times' court action is thought by many to have the potential to mount the first heavyweight opposition to what many in publishing believe is rampant copyright infringement in the development of the large language models on which many generative AI systems are built.

 

The most obvious connection is with the history Hollands: brothers Tom and James, who co-host "The Rest is History" and "We Have Ways of Making You Talk", respectively. Classicist and élite sportsman Tom Holland and modern historian Dominic Sandbrook's show was the top-rated UK history podcast on Apple last year, and second in the US, helped by their amiable centre-left, centre-right banter. The bulk of his fourth-placed £1.1m comes from a combination of his new title on ancient Rome, Pax (Little, Brown), and The Rest is History (Bloomsbury), a tie-in to the podcast. Aside from the latter, Sandbrook had no new adult book in 2023, but did shift £265,000 from his Penguin-published Adventures in Time kids' series.