Prozac Nation author Elizabeth Wurtzel among a dozen writers being taking to court to recoup advances for books that the publisher says didn't materialise
by: Alison Flood
Prozac Nation author Elizabeth Wurtzel is one of 12 writers being sued by the publisher Penguin in a New York court for failing to deliver books they were signed up to write.
The Smoking Gun, the investigative American website that unveiled James Frey as a liar in 2006, has found that Penguin filed lawsuits against five authors who have not delivered books for which they were paid significant advances. As well as Wurtzel, the blogger Ana Marie Cox is being asked to return her $81,250 advance (and at least $50,000 in interest) for not writing a "humorous examination of the next generation of political activists", signed in 2006, and Herman Rosenblat, a Holocaust survivor whose story of how he met his wife turned out to be a fabrication, is being chased for a $30,000 advance (and at least $10,000 in interest).
The Wurtzel lawsuit makes clear that the bestselling author signed a $100,000 deal in 2003 to write "a book for teenagers to help them cope with depression", of approximately 250 pages, by 2004. She received a $33,300 advance, with the rest of the money to follow on delivery and publication. But "despite repeated and frequent demand by Plaintiff … Defendant has refused or failed to repay the advance and remains indebted to Plaintiff in the amount of $33,000", writes Penguin in its lawsuit. The publisher has now taken to the courts to recoup the $33,000 from Wurtzel, "as well as interest of not less than $7,500". "[Wurtzel is] in possession of the sum of $33,000 that is the rightful property of Plaintiff," writes Penguin. "As a result, [she has] been unjustly enriched by [her] activities and Plaintiffs have suffered a detriment."
Other authors being sued by Penguin include New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead, from whom Penguin wants $20,000 and at least $2,000 in interest for failing to deliver "a collection of the author's journalism", and "hip-hop minister" Conrad Tillard, who signed a deal to write about his "epic journey from the Ivy League to the Nation of Islam". Penguin is suing Tillard for around $38,000.
Penguin is also suing seven other authors, as revealed by Edward Champion and confirmed in the New York Supreme Court's records library, including Bob Morris for a $20,000 advance and interest of not less than $4,000, for not handing in "a narrative about fishing lures and their history
A spokesperson for Penguin said: "Penguin regrets that it had to initiate litigation in these cases, and it did so reluctantly, only after its repeated attempts at amicable resolutions were ignored."
But the outcome of the case will depend on what, if anything, the authors did deliver, and major American literary agent Robert Gottlieb called the legal action "wrong-headed".
"Authors beware. Books are rejected for reasons other than editorially, and publishers then want their money back," he wrote in a comment posted on the Smoking Gun. "Publishers want to reject manuscripts for any reason after an author has put time and effort into writing them all the while paying their bills. Another reason to have strong representation. If Penguin did this to one of Trident's authors we could cut them out of all our submissions."
• This article has been amended to add a link to Edward Champion's Reluctant Habits website
from: Guardian
Friday, September 28, 2012
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Banished Words
Is slang the natural evolution of language, or just a ginormous trickeration of all that is sensible?
by: Jerry DeNuccio
As it has every year since 1976, Lake Superior State University has released its latest “List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse, and General Uselessness.” The annual list, the impish brainchild of LSSU’s Public Relations Office, contains the twelve most nominated words among the thousands sent mostly by folks from the United States and Canada. The 2012 list of unfriended words includes the following: amazing (the most nominated), baby bump (a close second), shared sacrifice, occupy, blowback, man cave, the new normal, pet parent, win the future, trickeration, ginormous, and thank you in advance.
Of more interest than the list, however, are the comments that accompany the nominations, for they reveal a rather flinty linguistic conservatism, a curmudgeonly sense that words have gone wild, have wrinkled proper discourse beyond the smoothing ministrations of even a steam press. Like beleaguering lexical Visigoths, the comments suggest, the nominated words have battered down the gate and spread their rampaging, disarray within the sacrosanct wall of the language community.
One large group of comments asserts that overuse, especially by celebrity culture, has led to a degradation or even possible loss of the word’s original meaning and has usurped a simpler and better word. These commenters see overuse as a kind of lactic acid buildup leading to meaning muscle fatigue. They appear to assume a meaning checkpoint beyond which a word should not stray, lest it wander into a Claymore-filled semantic field. Martha Stewart is particularly pilloried for overusing “amazing.” “Every talk show uses this word at least two times every five minutes,” writes one commenter. “Hair is not ‘amazing.’ Shoes are not ‘amazing’ . . . I saw Martha Stewart use the word ‘amazing’ six times in the first five minutes of her television show.” Writes another, “I blame Martha Stewart because to her, EVERYTHING is amazing.” Perhaps we now know one reason Hallmark Channel’s cancelling Stewart’s show, due to its paltry average of 225,000 viewers. And lest we think such criticism is gender exclusive, another commenter notes “Anderson Cooper used it three times recently in the opening 45 second of his program.”
Other indictments of celebrity culture include “baby bump” (“I’m tired of a pregnancy being reduced to a celebrity accessory”), “the new normal” (“Often hosts on TV news channels use the phrase shortly before introducing some self-help guru who gives glib advice to the unemployed and other people having financial difficulties”), and “man cave” (Overused by television home design and home buying shows” and “has trickled down to sitcoms and commercials”). We adore our celebrities. We despise our celebrities because we despise ourselves for adoring them. Do we contradict ourselves? Well, that’s OK; we’re large; we contain multitudes.
Other commenters note that overuse has diluted what they take to be the word’s true signification. For “amazing”: “People use ‘amazing’ for anything that is nice or heartwarming. In other words, for things that are not amazing.” “There are any number of adjectives that are far more descriptive.” “The word which once aptly described the process of birth is now used to describe such trivial things as toast, or the color of a shirt.” For “baby bump”: “Why can’t we use the old tried-and-true ‘pregnant?’ For “occupy”: “It has been overused and abused even to promote Black Friday shopping.” For “blowback”: “the word ‘reaction’ would have been more than sufficient.” For “trickeration”: “What’s wrong with ‘trick’ or ‘trickery?’” For “ginormous”: “This word is just a made-up combination of two words. Either word is sufficient.”
Alas, language changes whether we want it to or not. They have to: things change, we change, and language changes so we can talk about it all. As University of Illinois linguist Denis Baron says, “Like all living languages, English is always changing: new words are coined and old ones are modified or discarded, as we scramble to keep up with the human imagination and an ever-changing world.” And that means words broaden and narrow their meanings, or we metaphorically extend words ready at hand. “Holy Day” became “holiday;” “cool” once referred to a specific style of jazz rather than a general expression of approval. “Meat” once indicated any kind of food, “deer” any kind of animal, “vulgar” once meant ordinary, “girl” any young person. We “surf” the Internet, likely using a “mouse” to do so and hoping to experience no “bugs” or “viruses” or “worms.” Language is irrepressibly mutable, gloriously so, I think. The only immutable languages are dead languages.
And “trickeration”? You can find it in the Oxford English Dictionary, which records it as part of African American Vernacular English, first used in 1940. Langston Hughes’s Montage of a Dream Deferred contains the lines, "I believe my old lady's pregnant again! Fate must have some kind of trickeration to populate the cullud nation.” And “ginormous?” It’s included in the 2007 update of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and was first used in 1948 in a British dictionary of military slang. And “blowback?” Sure, it means “reaction,” but that meaning has been extended to include effects and practices in such areas as forensics, jurisprudence, helicopter rotors and smoking marijuana — as well as being used as the title of three books, a film, and a role-playing game. And “baby bump?” Could it not be an attempt to make “pregnant,” which has no gradations to denote more or less, a gradable term meaning “just a little bit pregnant”? We see such an attempt when folks say “very pregnant” to indicate a late, quite noticeable stage.
The fact is that words are always prone to vandalism, to being pilfered from their secure semantic niches and made the possession of others, to serve their own particular purposes. And amid this linguistic leveraging, it’s unlikely that whatever prototypical meaning a word has will be lost. After all, we all know, and will continue to know, what “pregnant” means, even if we do use such phrases as “a pregnant pause,” or “a pregnant question” or describe a thundercloud “pregnant with rain.” And we will continue to find it amazing.
Many of the comments on the banished twelve centered on their sound, specifically, the disagreeable sensation the word provoked. Banish “amazing,” one commenter said, “to stop my head from exploding,” while another claimed it made her “teeth grate” and her “hackles rise” and “annoyed” her dog to boot. “Baby bump “makes pregnancy sound like some fun and in-style thing to do.” “Pet parent” is “cloying” and “capable of raising my blood sugar,” “trickeration” “sounds unintelligent,” “ginormous” “makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck every time I hear it” and “just sounds ridiculous,” “the new normal” fosters “cynicism about the ability of government to improve people’s lives,” and the overuse of “occupy” is not “palatable.”
Linguists will tell us that words are simply strings of sounds, and that those sounds in no way determine the words’ legitimacy. An opera in Italian is not better than one in German because you dislike the supposedly “harsh,” guttural, deep-in-the-throat sound of German. Being put off by the soundscape of a language is a matter of taste, a subjective experience of its words, not an objective fact about them. The bickering such judgments foster leads nowhere, for every person’s experience is, finally, true. Still, it is interesting that we do more than see and hear words; we feel them. Language is embodied, not just a baked-in set of abstract principles. Words have physical impact, a texture, a sensation. They are visceral, and perhaps this helps explain linguistic conservatism: any change is felt, not simply noted.
But, as Columbia University linguists John McWhorter maintains, language is “disheveled,” logically untidy and convoluted enough to send an efficiency expert scrambling for the exit. According to McWhorter, language conservatives are text bound; they cleave to the change-resistant written word and view deviations from it as a ginormous trickeration toward language traditions they cherish and, therefore, wish to preserve. For journalist and author Robert Lane Greene, such “aggrieved conservatism” is blowback against a change of style they feel should go out of style. But, as Greene notes, “Yesterday’s abomination is today’s rule.” As the life of any language reveals, language conservatism is a position cannot be long occupied, is thankless in advance, and will not win the future. Language change is the old normal. The spoken word always has and always will amble blithely away from its written tradition, with scarcely a backward glance.
***Jerry DeNuccio is a professor of English at Graceland University.***
from: The Smart Set
by: Jerry DeNuccio
As it has every year since 1976, Lake Superior State University has released its latest “List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse, and General Uselessness.” The annual list, the impish brainchild of LSSU’s Public Relations Office, contains the twelve most nominated words among the thousands sent mostly by folks from the United States and Canada. The 2012 list of unfriended words includes the following: amazing (the most nominated), baby bump (a close second), shared sacrifice, occupy, blowback, man cave, the new normal, pet parent, win the future, trickeration, ginormous, and thank you in advance.
Of more interest than the list, however, are the comments that accompany the nominations, for they reveal a rather flinty linguistic conservatism, a curmudgeonly sense that words have gone wild, have wrinkled proper discourse beyond the smoothing ministrations of even a steam press. Like beleaguering lexical Visigoths, the comments suggest, the nominated words have battered down the gate and spread their rampaging, disarray within the sacrosanct wall of the language community.
One large group of comments asserts that overuse, especially by celebrity culture, has led to a degradation or even possible loss of the word’s original meaning and has usurped a simpler and better word. These commenters see overuse as a kind of lactic acid buildup leading to meaning muscle fatigue. They appear to assume a meaning checkpoint beyond which a word should not stray, lest it wander into a Claymore-filled semantic field. Martha Stewart is particularly pilloried for overusing “amazing.” “Every talk show uses this word at least two times every five minutes,” writes one commenter. “Hair is not ‘amazing.’ Shoes are not ‘amazing’ . . . I saw Martha Stewart use the word ‘amazing’ six times in the first five minutes of her television show.” Writes another, “I blame Martha Stewart because to her, EVERYTHING is amazing.” Perhaps we now know one reason Hallmark Channel’s cancelling Stewart’s show, due to its paltry average of 225,000 viewers. And lest we think such criticism is gender exclusive, another commenter notes “Anderson Cooper used it three times recently in the opening 45 second of his program.”
Other indictments of celebrity culture include “baby bump” (“I’m tired of a pregnancy being reduced to a celebrity accessory”), “the new normal” (“Often hosts on TV news channels use the phrase shortly before introducing some self-help guru who gives glib advice to the unemployed and other people having financial difficulties”), and “man cave” (Overused by television home design and home buying shows” and “has trickled down to sitcoms and commercials”). We adore our celebrities. We despise our celebrities because we despise ourselves for adoring them. Do we contradict ourselves? Well, that’s OK; we’re large; we contain multitudes.
Other commenters note that overuse has diluted what they take to be the word’s true signification. For “amazing”: “People use ‘amazing’ for anything that is nice or heartwarming. In other words, for things that are not amazing.” “There are any number of adjectives that are far more descriptive.” “The word which once aptly described the process of birth is now used to describe such trivial things as toast, or the color of a shirt.” For “baby bump”: “Why can’t we use the old tried-and-true ‘pregnant?’ For “occupy”: “It has been overused and abused even to promote Black Friday shopping.” For “blowback”: “the word ‘reaction’ would have been more than sufficient.” For “trickeration”: “What’s wrong with ‘trick’ or ‘trickery?’” For “ginormous”: “This word is just a made-up combination of two words. Either word is sufficient.”
Alas, language changes whether we want it to or not. They have to: things change, we change, and language changes so we can talk about it all. As University of Illinois linguist Denis Baron says, “Like all living languages, English is always changing: new words are coined and old ones are modified or discarded, as we scramble to keep up with the human imagination and an ever-changing world.” And that means words broaden and narrow their meanings, or we metaphorically extend words ready at hand. “Holy Day” became “holiday;” “cool” once referred to a specific style of jazz rather than a general expression of approval. “Meat” once indicated any kind of food, “deer” any kind of animal, “vulgar” once meant ordinary, “girl” any young person. We “surf” the Internet, likely using a “mouse” to do so and hoping to experience no “bugs” or “viruses” or “worms.” Language is irrepressibly mutable, gloriously so, I think. The only immutable languages are dead languages.
And “trickeration”? You can find it in the Oxford English Dictionary, which records it as part of African American Vernacular English, first used in 1940. Langston Hughes’s Montage of a Dream Deferred contains the lines, "I believe my old lady's pregnant again! Fate must have some kind of trickeration to populate the cullud nation.” And “ginormous?” It’s included in the 2007 update of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and was first used in 1948 in a British dictionary of military slang. And “blowback?” Sure, it means “reaction,” but that meaning has been extended to include effects and practices in such areas as forensics, jurisprudence, helicopter rotors and smoking marijuana — as well as being used as the title of three books, a film, and a role-playing game. And “baby bump?” Could it not be an attempt to make “pregnant,” which has no gradations to denote more or less, a gradable term meaning “just a little bit pregnant”? We see such an attempt when folks say “very pregnant” to indicate a late, quite noticeable stage.
The fact is that words are always prone to vandalism, to being pilfered from their secure semantic niches and made the possession of others, to serve their own particular purposes. And amid this linguistic leveraging, it’s unlikely that whatever prototypical meaning a word has will be lost. After all, we all know, and will continue to know, what “pregnant” means, even if we do use such phrases as “a pregnant pause,” or “a pregnant question” or describe a thundercloud “pregnant with rain.” And we will continue to find it amazing.
Many of the comments on the banished twelve centered on their sound, specifically, the disagreeable sensation the word provoked. Banish “amazing,” one commenter said, “to stop my head from exploding,” while another claimed it made her “teeth grate” and her “hackles rise” and “annoyed” her dog to boot. “Baby bump “makes pregnancy sound like some fun and in-style thing to do.” “Pet parent” is “cloying” and “capable of raising my blood sugar,” “trickeration” “sounds unintelligent,” “ginormous” “makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck every time I hear it” and “just sounds ridiculous,” “the new normal” fosters “cynicism about the ability of government to improve people’s lives,” and the overuse of “occupy” is not “palatable.”
Linguists will tell us that words are simply strings of sounds, and that those sounds in no way determine the words’ legitimacy. An opera in Italian is not better than one in German because you dislike the supposedly “harsh,” guttural, deep-in-the-throat sound of German. Being put off by the soundscape of a language is a matter of taste, a subjective experience of its words, not an objective fact about them. The bickering such judgments foster leads nowhere, for every person’s experience is, finally, true. Still, it is interesting that we do more than see and hear words; we feel them. Language is embodied, not just a baked-in set of abstract principles. Words have physical impact, a texture, a sensation. They are visceral, and perhaps this helps explain linguistic conservatism: any change is felt, not simply noted.
But, as Columbia University linguists John McWhorter maintains, language is “disheveled,” logically untidy and convoluted enough to send an efficiency expert scrambling for the exit. According to McWhorter, language conservatives are text bound; they cleave to the change-resistant written word and view deviations from it as a ginormous trickeration toward language traditions they cherish and, therefore, wish to preserve. For journalist and author Robert Lane Greene, such “aggrieved conservatism” is blowback against a change of style they feel should go out of style. But, as Greene notes, “Yesterday’s abomination is today’s rule.” As the life of any language reveals, language conservatism is a position cannot be long occupied, is thankless in advance, and will not win the future. Language change is the old normal. The spoken word always has and always will amble blithely away from its written tradition, with scarcely a backward glance.
***Jerry DeNuccio is a professor of English at Graceland University.***
from: The Smart Set
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Zadie Smith’s 10 Rules of Writing
by: Maria Popova
“Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.”
In the winter of 2010, inspired by Elmore Leonard’s 10 rules of writing published in The New York Times nearly a decade earlier, The Guardian reached out to some of today’s most celebrated authors and asked them to each offer his or her 10 rules. My favorite is Zadie Smith’s list — an exquisite balance of the practical, the philosophical, and the poetic:
1.When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.
2.When an adult, try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.
3.Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.
4.Avoid your weaknesses. But do this without telling yourself that the things you can’t do aren’t worth doing. Don’t mask self-doubt with contempt.
5.Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it.
6.Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. The presence of a crowd won’t make your writing any better than it is.
7.Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.
8.Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
9.Don’t confuse honours with achievement.
10.Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand — but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.
What a fine addition to other timeless wisdom on writing, including Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 rules for a great story, David Ogilvy’s 10 no-bullshit tips, Henry Miller’s 11 commandments, Jack Kerouac’s 30 beliefs and techniques, John Steinbeck’s 6 pointers, and Susan Sontag’s synthesized learnings.
Smith’s latest novel, NW, seven years in the waiting, came out earlier this month.
from: Brain Pickings
“Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.”
In the winter of 2010, inspired by Elmore Leonard’s 10 rules of writing published in The New York Times nearly a decade earlier, The Guardian reached out to some of today’s most celebrated authors and asked them to each offer his or her 10 rules. My favorite is Zadie Smith’s list — an exquisite balance of the practical, the philosophical, and the poetic:
 |
| image via The Guardian |
2.When an adult, try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.
3.Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.
4.Avoid your weaknesses. But do this without telling yourself that the things you can’t do aren’t worth doing. Don’t mask self-doubt with contempt.
5.Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it.
6.Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. The presence of a crowd won’t make your writing any better than it is.
7.Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.
8.Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
9.Don’t confuse honours with achievement.
10.Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand — but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.
What a fine addition to other timeless wisdom on writing, including Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 rules for a great story, David Ogilvy’s 10 no-bullshit tips, Henry Miller’s 11 commandments, Jack Kerouac’s 30 beliefs and techniques, John Steinbeck’s 6 pointers, and Susan Sontag’s synthesized learnings.
Smith’s latest novel, NW, seven years in the waiting, came out earlier this month.
from: Brain Pickings
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Macmillan Poised to Test Library E-book Model
by: Andrew Albanese
As big six publishers and librarians prepare for more meetings this week in New York, Macmillan officials have confirmed to PW that the publisher has developed a pilot project that would enable e-book lending for libraries—a potentially major development. However, details of the pilot remain undisclosed. “We have been working hard to develop an e-book lending model that works for all parties, as we value the libraries and the role they play in the reading community,” reads a statement provided to PW. “We are currently finalizing the details of our pilot program and will be announcing it when we are ready, and not in reaction to a demand.”
The reference to a demand, meanwhile, comes in response to an open letter written by ALA president Maureen Sullivan, which ramps up the public pressure on publishers to provide access to e-books. In the letter, which PW reported on in Monday’s issue, Sullivan stresses that libraries can no longer “stand by and do nothing while some publishers deepen the digital divide,” or “wait passively while some publishers deny access to our cultural record.” She argues that readers should “rightfully expect the same access to e-books as they have to printed books,” and demanded publishers explore more creative solutions.
“We have met and talked sincerely with many of these publishers,” Sullivan writes. “We have sought common ground by exploring new business models and library lending practices. But these conversations only matter if they are followed by action.”
Depending on the specifics, the Macmillan pilot could be a shot of much-needed good news for the library community. If Macmillan follows through and implements the program, it would leave Simon &Schuster as the only big six publisher out of the e-book game entirely.
It would also halt one negative trend: since talks between publishers and libraries began in late January, there has been no progress—and indeed, regression on the e-book issue. Penguin pulled out of the market entirely, although in June, it started a limited pilot project with vendor 3M and the New York Public Library; in March, Random House nearly tripled its e-book prices to libraries; two weeks ago, Hachette confirmed it would more than double prices on nearly 3,500 backlist e-book titles. HarperCollins continues to implement a 26-lend limit on e-books.
The news comes as librarians and publishers will meet this week in New York, including an AAP-sponsored discussion in which Sullivan will participate.
from: Publisher's Weekly
As big six publishers and librarians prepare for more meetings this week in New York, Macmillan officials have confirmed to PW that the publisher has developed a pilot project that would enable e-book lending for libraries—a potentially major development. However, details of the pilot remain undisclosed. “We have been working hard to develop an e-book lending model that works for all parties, as we value the libraries and the role they play in the reading community,” reads a statement provided to PW. “We are currently finalizing the details of our pilot program and will be announcing it when we are ready, and not in reaction to a demand.”
The reference to a demand, meanwhile, comes in response to an open letter written by ALA president Maureen Sullivan, which ramps up the public pressure on publishers to provide access to e-books. In the letter, which PW reported on in Monday’s issue, Sullivan stresses that libraries can no longer “stand by and do nothing while some publishers deepen the digital divide,” or “wait passively while some publishers deny access to our cultural record.” She argues that readers should “rightfully expect the same access to e-books as they have to printed books,” and demanded publishers explore more creative solutions.
“We have met and talked sincerely with many of these publishers,” Sullivan writes. “We have sought common ground by exploring new business models and library lending practices. But these conversations only matter if they are followed by action.”
Depending on the specifics, the Macmillan pilot could be a shot of much-needed good news for the library community. If Macmillan follows through and implements the program, it would leave Simon &Schuster as the only big six publisher out of the e-book game entirely.
It would also halt one negative trend: since talks between publishers and libraries began in late January, there has been no progress—and indeed, regression on the e-book issue. Penguin pulled out of the market entirely, although in June, it started a limited pilot project with vendor 3M and the New York Public Library; in March, Random House nearly tripled its e-book prices to libraries; two weeks ago, Hachette confirmed it would more than double prices on nearly 3,500 backlist e-book titles. HarperCollins continues to implement a 26-lend limit on e-books.
The news comes as librarians and publishers will meet this week in New York, including an AAP-sponsored discussion in which Sullivan will participate.
from: Publisher's Weekly
Monday, September 24, 2012
EU watchdog raises concerns over e-books price collusion
Apple and four major publishing houses are offering concessions to the European Union's antitrust watchdog to ease concerns that they may have illegally colluded to raise prices for e-books.
The EU Commission opened an antitrust probe into Apple Inc. and the e-books publishers last December and said Wednesday it was inviting comments from other parties in the sector over the next month.
The four publishers are Hachette Livre, a unit of France's Lagardere Publishing; Harper Collins, owned by Rupert Murdoch's U.S.-based News Corp.; CBS Corp.'s Simon & Schuster; and Germany's Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, which owns Macmillan.
If ultimately approved, the publishers' commitments would be legally enforceable and could bring an end to the case.
AP
from: Independent
The EU Commission opened an antitrust probe into Apple Inc. and the e-books publishers last December and said Wednesday it was inviting comments from other parties in the sector over the next month.
The four publishers are Hachette Livre, a unit of France's Lagardere Publishing; Harper Collins, owned by Rupert Murdoch's U.S.-based News Corp.; CBS Corp.'s Simon & Schuster; and Germany's Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, which owns Macmillan.
If ultimately approved, the publishers' commitments would be legally enforceable and could bring an end to the case.
AP
from: Independent
Friday, September 21, 2012
The Down-low on The Word on the Street
The annual Word on the Street festival brings Toronto's noses out of books, into the fresh air, and then back into books again.
by: Carly Maga
Fifteen tents will feature book sales, magazine subscription deals, readings, and discussions for book fans young and old all day, including some very big names in a wide variety of genres. To name just a few: Giller Prize–winner David Bergen (The Time in Between, The Matter with Morris); money management guru Gail Vaz-Oxlade; environmental advocate David Suzuki; and the prolific author and essayist John Ralston Saul. But here are a few more suggestions on whom to check out at Word on the Street, before you check them out at the library:
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Edward Keenan
Vibrant Voices of Ontario Tent, 11:30 a.m.
Ed Keenan isn’t appearing at WOTS to promote a novel or collection of poetry, but rather his new book about our city: Some Great Idea: Good Neighbourhoods, Crazy Politics and the Invention of Toronto. As the lead columnist for The Grid and one of the city’s most insightful City Hall voices, his discussion will definitely be worth stopping in at—if only to hear if there are any updates on his challenge to debate Rob Ford.
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Pasha Malla
Great Books Marquee, 12:30 p.m.
Pasha Malla made a triumphant entrance into Canada’s literary scene in 2008 with the acclaimed collection of short stories The Withdrawal Method, winning him the $20,000 Trillium Book Award, the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and a spot on the Giller Prize longlist. His first novel, People Park, came out in July, boasting his typical wit and quirky humour about the impact of a visiting magician on a fictional city.
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Katrina Onstad
The Remarkable Reads Tent, 12:45 p.m.
You can read Katrina Onstad’s writing in the Globe and Mail, Toronto Life, or even in The New York Times Magazine, but her first novel in 2006 How Happy to Be was one of that year’s most celebrated. Her sophomore book, Everybody Has Everything, is definitely worth a look.
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Mariko Tamaki
This Is Not The Shakespeare Stage, 1:30 p.m.
The Penguin Pavilion, 4 p.m.
Toronto’s Mariko Tamaki grabbed the literary world’s attention in 2008 with her Governor General’s Award–nominated graphic novel, Skim (illustrated by her cousin Jillian Tamaki), about an outsider at an all-girls Catholic school. She’s back at WOTS with her first young adult novel, (You) Set Me On Fire, about university student Allison, who is covered in burn scars, and her first year in her new all-girls dorm.
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Vincent Lam
The Remarkable Reads Tent, 3 p.m.
If you missed Lam at this summer’s Luminato Festival, then be sure to catch his session at WOTS. He first came to acclaim when he won the Giller for the story collection Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures (now an HBO Canada show); now hear him discuss his debut novel, The Headmaster’s Wager, inspired by the Lam family history as Chinese expats in Vietnam.
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Anthony Del Col
This Is Not The Shakespeare Stage, 4:45 p.m.
As co-creator of Kill Shakespeare with Conor McCreery, Anthony Del Col can not only speak about whether Hamlet, Juliet, and Othello will overcome the evil Lady MacBeth, Iago, and Richard III, but also how the duo is successfully taking their graphic novel across different platforms.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jian Ghomeshi
Scotiabank Giller Prize Bestsellers Stage, 5 p.m.
You know his voice already as the host of Q on CBC Radio 1. And though he makes a living by asking other famous people about their opinions and projects, Ghomeshi’s first book, the memoir 1982, takes a look at his own past growing up in Thornhill, in the area’s only Iranian family, and how the music he loved formed who he was then, and who he is today.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
by: Carly Maga
 |
| Photo by superdubey from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. |
Queen’s Park Circle
September 23, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
FREE
If summer is filled with music, theatre, and food festivals, then the fall clearly belongs to the book lover. Next month is the always-anticipated International Festival of Authors, but first, Torontonians can whet their literary appetites at the 23rd annual Word on the Street festival.
Fifteen tents will feature book sales, magazine subscription deals, readings, and discussions for book fans young and old all day, including some very big names in a wide variety of genres. To name just a few: Giller Prize–winner David Bergen (The Time in Between, The Matter with Morris); money management guru Gail Vaz-Oxlade; environmental advocate David Suzuki; and the prolific author and essayist John Ralston Saul. But here are a few more suggestions on whom to check out at Word on the Street, before you check them out at the library:
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Edward Keenan
Vibrant Voices of Ontario Tent, 11:30 a.m.
Ed Keenan isn’t appearing at WOTS to promote a novel or collection of poetry, but rather his new book about our city: Some Great Idea: Good Neighbourhoods, Crazy Politics and the Invention of Toronto. As the lead columnist for The Grid and one of the city’s most insightful City Hall voices, his discussion will definitely be worth stopping in at—if only to hear if there are any updates on his challenge to debate Rob Ford.
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Pasha Malla
Great Books Marquee, 12:30 p.m.
Pasha Malla made a triumphant entrance into Canada’s literary scene in 2008 with the acclaimed collection of short stories The Withdrawal Method, winning him the $20,000 Trillium Book Award, the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and a spot on the Giller Prize longlist. His first novel, People Park, came out in July, boasting his typical wit and quirky humour about the impact of a visiting magician on a fictional city.
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Katrina Onstad
The Remarkable Reads Tent, 12:45 p.m.
You can read Katrina Onstad’s writing in the Globe and Mail, Toronto Life, or even in The New York Times Magazine, but her first novel in 2006 How Happy to Be was one of that year’s most celebrated. Her sophomore book, Everybody Has Everything, is definitely worth a look.
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Mariko Tamaki
This Is Not The Shakespeare Stage, 1:30 p.m.
The Penguin Pavilion, 4 p.m.
Toronto’s Mariko Tamaki grabbed the literary world’s attention in 2008 with her Governor General’s Award–nominated graphic novel, Skim (illustrated by her cousin Jillian Tamaki), about an outsider at an all-girls Catholic school. She’s back at WOTS with her first young adult novel, (You) Set Me On Fire, about university student Allison, who is covered in burn scars, and her first year in her new all-girls dorm.
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Vincent Lam
The Remarkable Reads Tent, 3 p.m.
If you missed Lam at this summer’s Luminato Festival, then be sure to catch his session at WOTS. He first came to acclaim when he won the Giller for the story collection Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures (now an HBO Canada show); now hear him discuss his debut novel, The Headmaster’s Wager, inspired by the Lam family history as Chinese expats in Vietnam.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anthony Del Col
This Is Not The Shakespeare Stage, 4:45 p.m.
As co-creator of Kill Shakespeare with Conor McCreery, Anthony Del Col can not only speak about whether Hamlet, Juliet, and Othello will overcome the evil Lady MacBeth, Iago, and Richard III, but also how the duo is successfully taking their graphic novel across different platforms.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jian Ghomeshi
Scotiabank Giller Prize Bestsellers Stage, 5 p.m.
You know his voice already as the host of Q on CBC Radio 1. And though he makes a living by asking other famous people about their opinions and projects, Ghomeshi’s first book, the memoir 1982, takes a look at his own past growing up in Thornhill, in the area’s only Iranian family, and how the music he loved formed who he was then, and who he is today.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Ebook price war sees discounts reach 97%
As digital fiction sales rocket, Sony and Amazon push dramatic price cuts – raising concerns from authors
by: Alison Flood
Bestselling ebooks by authors including Jeffrey Archer and James Herbert are being sold for just 20p from Sony and Amazon's digital stores, prompting concerns from writers that the "relentless downward pressure on book prices" could lead to industry ruin.
As news emerged this morning that digital fiction book sales were up 188% by value in the first half of this year, according to the Publishers Association, Sony added another title – Herbert's bestselling horror novel Ash, which has a cover price of £18.99 – to its 20p price promotion, which has been running all summer. Sony's 20p offer, which has seen Amazon.co.uk price-matching each discount, currently includes a range of titles from Kate Grenville's Sarah Thornhill to Chris Pavone's The Expats.
Readers have been quick to take advantage of the cheap titles: Ash currently sits at the top of both Sony and Amazon's digital bestseller charts, with Alice Peterson's 20p title Monday to Friday Man in third place on Amazon, David Baldacci's 20p Zero Day in fifth, Peter James's thriller Dead Man's Grip in seventh and The Expats in ninth place, all discounted by 97% or more.
James has seen his sales soar as a result of the promotion – "at one point I was selling 10-20,000 copies a week," he said – and as both Sony and Amazon are taking the hit on the offer, he and his publisher are still getting paid as if the books were selling for full price.
"I'm still getting royalties as if it were full price … so I'm a really happy bunny," said James.
But the author feels that while the offer is attractive in the short term, "it has a lot of long term dangers". "What's worrying is that the 20p price point sets a precedent. The public starts getting used to paying even less," he said. And unable to compete on price, the sector of the market that will "lose out in the long term is the independent bookshop," believes the novelist. "That's my biggest worry."
Pointing as well to the "price war" currently under way over JK Rowling's soon-to-be-published adult novel The Casual Vacancy, Kate Pool at the Society of Authors said that "some writers favour cheap books, believing that low prices are made up for in substantially increased sales", but that the majority "find the relentless downward pressure on book prices deeply worrying". Rowling's £20 novel, out on 27 September, is on offer for £9.86 from Amazon and Tesco, and for £10 from Waterstones.com.
"Since before the inception of the Society 128 year ago, authors have fought long and hard to ensure that copyright properly protects their fundamental right to control and profit from their creations," Pool said. "If books are perceived to have almost no value, that fight seems pyrrhic indeed, as are the chances of professional authors, of even the most sought-after books, let alone those which are highly researched or costly to produce, making a living from their writing."
Historical novelist Lindsey Davis, chair of the Society, said that while she approved of special offers as loss leaders, she was otherwise "very opposed to the 20p book trend", because "authors should be able to make a living".
Peter Shea, general manager for Sony Digital Reading Services, said the retailer recognised "that there is a concern about a perceived devaluation of ebooks", and that it chose the price point of 20p for some titles "as we see this as such a significant discount off list price that consumers can appreciate it is not the 'new price of ebooks'."
"As a retailer dedicated to ebooks only, we at Reader Store believe that offering exceptional prices on ebooks that people want to read is an engaging way to help curious readers experience digital books, perhaps for the first time," said Shea. "Unlike with physical books, some publishers do not allow their ebooks to be sold at discounted prices. As a result, at Reader Store we aim to provide excellent prices to our customers where we can with a selection of ebooks priced as low as 20p while others are only available at full list price. Of course, the publishers and authors of the ebooks we choose to sell for 20p still receive their full payment for each book we sell. We have found these publishers and authors enthusiastic when informing them of our pricing for their books."
from: Guardian
by: Alison Flood
Bestselling ebooks by authors including Jeffrey Archer and James Herbert are being sold for just 20p from Sony and Amazon's digital stores, prompting concerns from writers that the "relentless downward pressure on book prices" could lead to industry ruin.
As news emerged this morning that digital fiction book sales were up 188% by value in the first half of this year, according to the Publishers Association, Sony added another title – Herbert's bestselling horror novel Ash, which has a cover price of £18.99 – to its 20p price promotion, which has been running all summer. Sony's 20p offer, which has seen Amazon.co.uk price-matching each discount, currently includes a range of titles from Kate Grenville's Sarah Thornhill to Chris Pavone's The Expats.
Readers have been quick to take advantage of the cheap titles: Ash currently sits at the top of both Sony and Amazon's digital bestseller charts, with Alice Peterson's 20p title Monday to Friday Man in third place on Amazon, David Baldacci's 20p Zero Day in fifth, Peter James's thriller Dead Man's Grip in seventh and The Expats in ninth place, all discounted by 97% or more.
James has seen his sales soar as a result of the promotion – "at one point I was selling 10-20,000 copies a week," he said – and as both Sony and Amazon are taking the hit on the offer, he and his publisher are still getting paid as if the books were selling for full price.
"I'm still getting royalties as if it were full price … so I'm a really happy bunny," said James.
But the author feels that while the offer is attractive in the short term, "it has a lot of long term dangers". "What's worrying is that the 20p price point sets a precedent. The public starts getting used to paying even less," he said. And unable to compete on price, the sector of the market that will "lose out in the long term is the independent bookshop," believes the novelist. "That's my biggest worry."
Pointing as well to the "price war" currently under way over JK Rowling's soon-to-be-published adult novel The Casual Vacancy, Kate Pool at the Society of Authors said that "some writers favour cheap books, believing that low prices are made up for in substantially increased sales", but that the majority "find the relentless downward pressure on book prices deeply worrying". Rowling's £20 novel, out on 27 September, is on offer for £9.86 from Amazon and Tesco, and for £10 from Waterstones.com.
"Since before the inception of the Society 128 year ago, authors have fought long and hard to ensure that copyright properly protects their fundamental right to control and profit from their creations," Pool said. "If books are perceived to have almost no value, that fight seems pyrrhic indeed, as are the chances of professional authors, of even the most sought-after books, let alone those which are highly researched or costly to produce, making a living from their writing."
Historical novelist Lindsey Davis, chair of the Society, said that while she approved of special offers as loss leaders, she was otherwise "very opposed to the 20p book trend", because "authors should be able to make a living".
Peter Shea, general manager for Sony Digital Reading Services, said the retailer recognised "that there is a concern about a perceived devaluation of ebooks", and that it chose the price point of 20p for some titles "as we see this as such a significant discount off list price that consumers can appreciate it is not the 'new price of ebooks'."
"As a retailer dedicated to ebooks only, we at Reader Store believe that offering exceptional prices on ebooks that people want to read is an engaging way to help curious readers experience digital books, perhaps for the first time," said Shea. "Unlike with physical books, some publishers do not allow their ebooks to be sold at discounted prices. As a result, at Reader Store we aim to provide excellent prices to our customers where we can with a selection of ebooks priced as low as 20p while others are only available at full list price. Of course, the publishers and authors of the ebooks we choose to sell for 20p still receive their full payment for each book we sell. We have found these publishers and authors enthusiastic when informing them of our pricing for their books."
from: Guardian
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Agatha Christie essay published for the first time
Long-lost piece, commissioned by the Ministry of Information to promote British crime fiction, finally available to UK readers
by: Alison Flood
A long-lost essay by Agatha Christie that was commissioned by the government in 1945 to sing the praises of British crime fiction has finally seen the light of day.
Christie's essay, in which she extols the virtues of the British detective story, has been published for the first time in the UK as the preface to the reissued 1933 collaborative crime novel Ask a Policeman. "I discovered it in 1997 going through her archive but never had an opportunity to publish it," said David Brawn, who publishes Christie at HarperCollins. "Although it was published in a Russian magazine in 1947, it's never been seen in the UK before. She was commissioned to write it by the Ministry of Information in Britain in order to seed it out internationally – it's really a piece of propaganda; they were trying, I guess, to extol the virtues of the British and western way of life, and so the government asked her to write this essay about the crime-writing genre."
The piece sees Christie writing admiringly of Arthur Conan Doyle, "the pioneer of detective writing", before going on to commend John Dickson Carr – "a master magician … the supreme conjurer, the King of the Art of Misdirection" and Ngaio Marsh, "another deservedly popular detective writer".
Christie describes herself modestly, as able to "lay claim at least to being an industrious craftsman" – although she points out that "a more aristocratic title was given to me by an American paper which dubbed me the 'Duchess of Death'" – but she isn't a wholly effective propaganda machine. She retains some incisive criticism for Margery Allingham, who "is inclined to subordinate plot to characters. She is so interested in them that the denouement of the crime sometimes comes rather flatly as inevitable, rather than as a surprising bombshell."
And while Dorothy L Sayers is an "exceptionally good detective story writer and a delightfully witty one", she, too, comes in for some unexpected censure from Christie, who writes that Sayers' creation Lord Peter Wimsey is "an example of a good man spoilt". His face, says Christie, "was originally piquantly described as 'emerging from his top hat like a maggot emerging from a gorgonzola cheese'", but Wimsey sadly "became through the course of years merely a 'handsome hero', and admirers of his early prowess can hardly forgive his attachment to, and lengthy courtship of, a tiresome young woman called Harriet".
"I guess at the time because she didn't expect it to be published in Britain, she doesn't pull her punches," said Brawn. "And then there's a lovely bit at the end where she says she's bored to tears of Poirot."
"My own Hercule Poirot is often somewhat of an embarrassment to me – not in himself, but in the calling of his life. Would anyone go and 'consult' him? One feels not," writes Christie. And later: "Poirot has made quite a place for himself in the world and is regarded perhaps with more affection by outsiders than by his own creator! I would give one piece of advice to young detective writers. Be very careful what central character you create – you may have him with you for a very long time!"
Ask a Policeman, in which the preface now appears, was the second novel written by members of the Detection Club, a group of British authors set up in 1930. The book's title was dreamed up by Milward Kennedy, John Rhode thought out the murder and suspects, and Gladys Mitchell, Helen Simpson, Sayers and Anthony Berkeley lent their detective creations to solve the mystery. The authors then swapped characters – so Berkeley, for example, took Lord Peter Wimsey and Sayers took Berkeley's Roger Sheringham – allowing them to poke playful fun at each other.
"The Detection Club was a dining club for crime writers – they used to raise money to pay for their dinners by writing these novels," says Brawn. Christie, a member of the club, contributed to its first collaborative novel, The Floating Admiral, but sat out of Ask a Policeman, so he decided the novel was the perfect opportunity to bring her long-forgotten essay back into print.
"It does show she clearly did read and was aware of what was going on in crime fiction," said Brawn. "She wasn't writing in isolation." Brawn is in conversation with the Detection Club's current president, author Simon Brett, about the possibility of a modern collaboration between club members, who today range from PD James to Sophie Hannah. "He's really keen on one but it's a complicated thing to do," added Brawn. "But the idea is out there … and it might pay for a few more lunches."
from: Guardian
 |
| Agatha Christie: described herself as 'at least an industrious craftsman'. Popperfoto/Getty
|
A long-lost essay by Agatha Christie that was commissioned by the government in 1945 to sing the praises of British crime fiction has finally seen the light of day.
Christie's essay, in which she extols the virtues of the British detective story, has been published for the first time in the UK as the preface to the reissued 1933 collaborative crime novel Ask a Policeman. "I discovered it in 1997 going through her archive but never had an opportunity to publish it," said David Brawn, who publishes Christie at HarperCollins. "Although it was published in a Russian magazine in 1947, it's never been seen in the UK before. She was commissioned to write it by the Ministry of Information in Britain in order to seed it out internationally – it's really a piece of propaganda; they were trying, I guess, to extol the virtues of the British and western way of life, and so the government asked her to write this essay about the crime-writing genre."
The piece sees Christie writing admiringly of Arthur Conan Doyle, "the pioneer of detective writing", before going on to commend John Dickson Carr – "a master magician … the supreme conjurer, the King of the Art of Misdirection" and Ngaio Marsh, "another deservedly popular detective writer".
Christie describes herself modestly, as able to "lay claim at least to being an industrious craftsman" – although she points out that "a more aristocratic title was given to me by an American paper which dubbed me the 'Duchess of Death'" – but she isn't a wholly effective propaganda machine. She retains some incisive criticism for Margery Allingham, who "is inclined to subordinate plot to characters. She is so interested in them that the denouement of the crime sometimes comes rather flatly as inevitable, rather than as a surprising bombshell."
And while Dorothy L Sayers is an "exceptionally good detective story writer and a delightfully witty one", she, too, comes in for some unexpected censure from Christie, who writes that Sayers' creation Lord Peter Wimsey is "an example of a good man spoilt". His face, says Christie, "was originally piquantly described as 'emerging from his top hat like a maggot emerging from a gorgonzola cheese'", but Wimsey sadly "became through the course of years merely a 'handsome hero', and admirers of his early prowess can hardly forgive his attachment to, and lengthy courtship of, a tiresome young woman called Harriet".
"I guess at the time because she didn't expect it to be published in Britain, she doesn't pull her punches," said Brawn. "And then there's a lovely bit at the end where she says she's bored to tears of Poirot."
"My own Hercule Poirot is often somewhat of an embarrassment to me – not in himself, but in the calling of his life. Would anyone go and 'consult' him? One feels not," writes Christie. And later: "Poirot has made quite a place for himself in the world and is regarded perhaps with more affection by outsiders than by his own creator! I would give one piece of advice to young detective writers. Be very careful what central character you create – you may have him with you for a very long time!"
Ask a Policeman, in which the preface now appears, was the second novel written by members of the Detection Club, a group of British authors set up in 1930. The book's title was dreamed up by Milward Kennedy, John Rhode thought out the murder and suspects, and Gladys Mitchell, Helen Simpson, Sayers and Anthony Berkeley lent their detective creations to solve the mystery. The authors then swapped characters – so Berkeley, for example, took Lord Peter Wimsey and Sayers took Berkeley's Roger Sheringham – allowing them to poke playful fun at each other.
"The Detection Club was a dining club for crime writers – they used to raise money to pay for their dinners by writing these novels," says Brawn. Christie, a member of the club, contributed to its first collaborative novel, The Floating Admiral, but sat out of Ask a Policeman, so he decided the novel was the perfect opportunity to bring her long-forgotten essay back into print.
"It does show she clearly did read and was aware of what was going on in crime fiction," said Brawn. "She wasn't writing in isolation." Brawn is in conversation with the Detection Club's current president, author Simon Brett, about the possibility of a modern collaboration between club members, who today range from PD James to Sophie Hannah. "He's really keen on one but it's a complicated thing to do," added Brawn. "But the idea is out there … and it might pay for a few more lunches."
from: Guardian
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Pam van Hylckama Vlieg, Literary Agent, Attacked; Author Taken Into Custody
by: Andrew Losowsky
Police have taken an apparently disgruntled author into custody after a popular literary agent and blogger was attacked in her car Thursday.
Pam van Hylckama Vlieg, an agent in San Francisco with Larsen Pomada who runs the website Bookalicio.us, told The Huffington Post, "I was on my way to my daughter's school ... and just before I turned the corner, my passenger-side mirror popped. I though I'd hit someone's trash can. Then a guy walked out in front of me, with a baseball bat in his hand."
According to van Hylckama Vlieg, the man, whom she did not recognize, reached into the car and repeatedly slammed her head on the steering wheel. Her dog, Jackie, a Jack Russell terrier who was in the car at the time, bit the attacker on the arm and she was able to get away.
After she reported the attack to the San Jose Police Department later that day, officers asked for access to her professional email; one author in particular, said van Hylckama Vlieg, had been emailing her unpleasant weekly messages following her rejection of his manuscript.
Police went to the home of the emailer, whose home address was on the original query, and found a man there with a wound on his arm that seemed consistent with a dog bite, said van Hylckama Vlieg. Police told her the man was taken into police custody.
Van Hylckama Vlieg said the incident taught her to be more cautious about her job and social media usage. Until the incident, she had been a keen user of the location-based social networking service Foursquare, often sharing her location in and around her daughter's school, where the attack took place.
"My husband works for Yahoo," van Hylckama Vlieg says. "A lot of people who work in tech[nology] circles tend to be more open [with their information]."
However, according to author and online safety expert Tee Morris, people with public-facing roles, such as writers and literary agents, should be aware of the potential consequences of social media usage. "Just because you're on Facebook or Twitter, it's not a good idea to share everything," he told The Huffington Post.
"The biggest thing that you have to wrap your brain around is that every time you post something, if you haven't changed your default settings on these services, it promotes what I call 'reckless sharing'. You're going into a public space full of people, telling them where you are and what you're doing. And there are people out there who may not be entirely sane, who don't think that the normal rules of society apply to them."
Morris, who knows van Hylckama Vlieg and is the senior social media coordinator for the American Public University System, has three safety recommendations for social media usage:
1. Be selective about what you share.
2. Ask yourself, 'Do I want to share my location?' If you do, you're inviting elements that may want to cause you harm. If you're at an event with your kids, do you want to share the locations of your kids' school? You're also saying, 'I'm not at home, so if you want to rob my house, you're welcome to'. I have a lot of friends who, when they tweet, announce the location of their home without realizing.
3. Check the default settings for all your social media. Disable location sharing if you can. Or, if you feel the need to share your location, put [the service] on a restricted sharing setting so only your friends and family can see.
And if you do decide you want to get into a Foursquare frame of mind, check in after you leave a place. Then people won't actually know that you're not there anymore.
When you're online in a social media setting, you're not just talking to your friends -- you're also talking to friends of friends, and if you have a public account, everyone else in the world. It's OK to share, just be careful what you share."
As for van Hylckama Vlieg, she said that she is "fine," but that her own social media usage will change.
"The kids will have [online] aliases, there will be no more public pictures of them online, and no more Foursquare for me except at highly publicized industry conferences. I really want agents and editors to think about where they're going to be, and where they say they'll be.
"It's hard to be rejected -- just as it's hard for agents to be rejected by publishers on the books we've acquired. But if that's why this man did it, he was obviously not healthy."
from: HuffingtonPost
Police have taken an apparently disgruntled author into custody after a popular literary agent and blogger was attacked in her car Thursday.
Pam van Hylckama Vlieg, an agent in San Francisco with Larsen Pomada who runs the website Bookalicio.us, told The Huffington Post, "I was on my way to my daughter's school ... and just before I turned the corner, my passenger-side mirror popped. I though I'd hit someone's trash can. Then a guy walked out in front of me, with a baseball bat in his hand."
According to van Hylckama Vlieg, the man, whom she did not recognize, reached into the car and repeatedly slammed her head on the steering wheel. Her dog, Jackie, a Jack Russell terrier who was in the car at the time, bit the attacker on the arm and she was able to get away.
After she reported the attack to the San Jose Police Department later that day, officers asked for access to her professional email; one author in particular, said van Hylckama Vlieg, had been emailing her unpleasant weekly messages following her rejection of his manuscript.
Police went to the home of the emailer, whose home address was on the original query, and found a man there with a wound on his arm that seemed consistent with a dog bite, said van Hylckama Vlieg. Police told her the man was taken into police custody.
Van Hylckama Vlieg said the incident taught her to be more cautious about her job and social media usage. Until the incident, she had been a keen user of the location-based social networking service Foursquare, often sharing her location in and around her daughter's school, where the attack took place.
"My husband works for Yahoo," van Hylckama Vlieg says. "A lot of people who work in tech[nology] circles tend to be more open [with their information]."
However, according to author and online safety expert Tee Morris, people with public-facing roles, such as writers and literary agents, should be aware of the potential consequences of social media usage. "Just because you're on Facebook or Twitter, it's not a good idea to share everything," he told The Huffington Post.
"The biggest thing that you have to wrap your brain around is that every time you post something, if you haven't changed your default settings on these services, it promotes what I call 'reckless sharing'. You're going into a public space full of people, telling them where you are and what you're doing. And there are people out there who may not be entirely sane, who don't think that the normal rules of society apply to them."
Morris, who knows van Hylckama Vlieg and is the senior social media coordinator for the American Public University System, has three safety recommendations for social media usage:
1. Be selective about what you share.
2. Ask yourself, 'Do I want to share my location?' If you do, you're inviting elements that may want to cause you harm. If you're at an event with your kids, do you want to share the locations of your kids' school? You're also saying, 'I'm not at home, so if you want to rob my house, you're welcome to'. I have a lot of friends who, when they tweet, announce the location of their home without realizing.
3. Check the default settings for all your social media. Disable location sharing if you can. Or, if you feel the need to share your location, put [the service] on a restricted sharing setting so only your friends and family can see.
And if you do decide you want to get into a Foursquare frame of mind, check in after you leave a place. Then people won't actually know that you're not there anymore.
When you're online in a social media setting, you're not just talking to your friends -- you're also talking to friends of friends, and if you have a public account, everyone else in the world. It's OK to share, just be careful what you share."
As for van Hylckama Vlieg, she said that she is "fine," but that her own social media usage will change.
"The kids will have [online] aliases, there will be no more public pictures of them online, and no more Foursquare for me except at highly publicized industry conferences. I really want agents and editors to think about where they're going to be, and where they say they'll be.
"It's hard to be rejected -- just as it's hard for agents to be rejected by publishers on the books we've acquired. But if that's why this man did it, he was obviously not healthy."
from: HuffingtonPost
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