The Bookshow Blog

Author hunt in Paris

Thursday, December 2nd, 2010

Jemma Birrell, event organiser, Shakespeare and Company, Paris

I spoke to Chales Recoursé recently, the French editor of Douglas Coupland and translator of David Forster Wallace. He’s going to come and read an extract of his French translation of Infinite Jest next April at Shakespeare and Company in Paris to celebrate the publication of the new Foster Wallace book The Grey King. He was lovely. Lovely! Even in response to my accented overly-enthusiastic-anglophone French. This was a surprise. No patronizing-you’re-not-French-why-are-you-trying-to-speak-our-language tone there…

Working at Shakespeare and Company gives me an unusual position in a sort of no-man’s land between the French and English publishing worlds. We’re not in the heart of either but dabble in and out of both. I’ve been speaking to various French publishers over the last few years, trying to find authors to tap dance in the bookshop. Trying to hunt down anglophone authors coming to Paris is a tricky thing and not easy when you don’t have a budget. And why would French publishers want to organise an event at an English bookshop where there are zero copies of the French editons to sell? I send off emails, randomly call and sometimes go and visit these French publishers. (more…)

Tags: Adam Haslett, Chales Recourse, Dinaw Mengestu, English, Europe, fiction, French, Nam Le, Nick Flynn, publishing, Shakespeare and Company, Wells Tower
Posted in Paris | No Comments »

Five go adventuring again…in the 21st century

Monday, July 26th, 2010

When I was a young student, I did a lot of babysitting, and while I was babysitting, I did a lot of reading aloud of Enid Blyton novels. What I did not realise, until I caught myself editing out Julian’s scathing remarks to his sister Anne that she was ‘just a silly girl’ in a Famous Five book, was that I often censored or edited Blyton’s creaking 1940s prose in order to make the books less offensive and more comprehensible to a 21st-century child.

Hodder Children’s Books, which publishes Blyton’s works, seems to have the same idea. The publisher will be editing the books – beginning with ten Famous Five novels – by modernising the language and removing words which now have offensive connotations. Thus, “mercy me!” has become “oh no!”, “fellow” is now “old man” and “it’s all very peculiar” is “it’s all very strange”. There are no more references to “dirty tinkers” – these are now the much less offensive “travellers”.

I’m not sure exactly how I feel about all this. On the one hand, I’m guilty of editing Blyton’s writing myself, but that was motivated more out of feeling awkward reading sexist and racist material to six-year-old children. However, such official editing seems to suggest some rather unfortunate things about children and their intellectual capacity.
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Tags: children's literature, enid blyton, famous five, history, publishing
Posted in Publishing industry, Reading | 3 Comments »

The price of ebooks

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

I attended the Childrens Book Council of Australia (CBCA)’s conference over the weekend. There was a talk about ebooks and it was a heated debate. Dyan Blacklock from Omnibus suggested that all ebooks should be sold at $5. But would this lessen the value of the book itself?

The pricing model of ebooks is a stumbling block for the digitial revolution. In the US, Amazon were the first to set their ebooks prices to $9.99 (US dollars) Compare that to a $35 RRP (Aus dollars) for a paper book. However, there are people who still think that $9.99 is a rip off. Here’s a forum about ebooks being expensive. There’s an assumption that because there’s no paper, printing or transport costs, an ebook should be dirt-cheap. Greedy publishers and booksellers are just making more money. I’m not sure if this is justified. While you’ll be able to save on making a hardcopy, making a book is still an expensive task: it still has to be written, edited, formatted, marketed etc. Despite this, there was recently a new ebook being sold for just $2.99.  
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Tags: Amazon, Apple, Childrens' Book Council of Australia, digital, ebooks, epublishing, ereaders, price wars, publishing
Posted in Online literary world | 1 Comment »

Avoiding rejection

Monday, June 7th, 2010

JK Rowling and Australian Rebecca James were both published after receiving reams of rejection letters. So should writers keep sending and re-sending their manuscripts, trying to strike publishing gold? At the Sydney Writers’ Festival, I attended the ‘So you can think you can write’ session, where the audience could pitch their stories to publisher Shona Martyn and agent Lyn Tranter. Let me tell you, the ones that were successful in their pitch came prepared! In their three mintues some read their first paragraph and others explained the syponsis. More importantly, they justified why they thought their book deserved to be published.

Both Martyn and Tranter were honest in their assessments, and they explain that their reasons for rejection were not as simple as ‘I didn’t like it’ (though that can be a strong enough reason sometimes). A very common rejection letter may include the words ‘doesn’t fit their current list.’ That’s not a cheap copout. If a publisher churns out successful romantic novels, they’re not going to like your crime fiction novel. Marketing is also a major issue. Just like how Beautiful Malice wasn’t seen as a ‘viable’ YA novel, perhaps your story is going to give bookstores a headache figuring out where they should shelve your book. Sometimes it comes down to timing. If you have a story about falling in love with a vampaire, you may find it hard going to get accepted by a publisher right now.  
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Tags: #swf2010, publishing, rejection letter, writers
Posted in Publishing industry, sydney writers festival | 2 Comments »