Enid Blyton and Arthur Ransome may portray cosier times for children, but more recent reads are redressing the balance
by: Julia Eccleshare
"At a recent discussion of childhood during the past 50 years one speaker said he thought everyone remembered their childhood as being like something out of Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons. Do you think how childhood is portrayed in classic children's books has affected how we think childhood used to be? If so, has it given us too rosy a view of it?"
It is interesting how most people think that childhood is so different from one generation to another and how universally it is thought that children are always getting worse!
Memories of childhood are probably pretty partial. Individually, they are based often based on the best bits, such as special outings or treats. Holidays usually feature and these are reinforced by family photos which seem to confirm that the sun shine a remarkable amount during childhood. Collectively, they are influenced by known facts of the time such as how schools were organised, what shopping or transport was like and the headlines of "average" family dynamics.
Beyond the individual and collective facts, stories about childhood in books are handed down as blueprints of collective behaviour. Enid Blyton's huge-selling family adventures, including The Famous Five and The Secret Seven series, both of which ran into many titles, offered children the chance to identify with adventures in the countryside which were probably just as out of reach in reality as a term at Hogwarts is to today's children. Richmal Crompton's Just William and its sequels also showed children "playing out", inventing activities around their daily lives and well out of sight of their parents.
These tales came to epitomise childhood of the time. When asked about their childhood many think they spent a lot of time outdoors and without adult supervision. But did they really? It may be that they just identified too much with the children they read about.
The rosy, cosy vision of the 1950s and 1960s - often thought of as a golden age of children's fiction - was challenged from the 1970s onwards by an increasing emphasis on books showing different kinds of childhood. These included titles such Jean MacGibbon's Hal, one of the first multi-cultural children's books which featured an Afro-Caribbean girl living in a tower block, and Gene Kemp's award-winning The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler set in a village school and with a girl as its sparky heroine – a far cry from the boy-dominated, private school settings which lay behind Arthur Ransome's children, for example.
The huge success of Jacqueline Wilson's The Story of Tracy Beaker and her very many other bestselling titles frequently showed contemporary children living in challenging circumstances - bed-and breakfast accommodation, with step-families, in dysfunctional families with ineffective parents. These stories gave more children the chance to find a life like their own in a story. They have often been attacked for being too miserable in their portrayal of childhood but the reality is that they probably reflected a far broader range of experiences more truthfully.
When set against the rosy glow of Ransome and Blyton, will historians and sociologists using children's stories as source material see childhood at the turn of the 20th century as grim? Quite possibly, as children's books certainly reflect the society they come from. However, I would hope that they will be also be viewed as the fictional representations they have been created to be.
from: Guardian
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Monday, April 29, 2013
Ebook anxieties increase as publishing revolution rolls on
Amazon's bid for rights to sell secondhand ebooks adds another layer of complexity to a world where the certainties of print culture are dissolving
by: Alison Flood
"My brain," as one reader put it rather dramatically, "fell over at the thought of selling 'used' ebooks". He wasn't the only one. The reaction to the news earlier this year that Amazon had a patent to sell secondhand ebooks was almost universally strong: it could ruin authors' livelihoods, said some commenters. It was dangerous for publishers, said others. It's just boggling my mind, said most.
These are the details we have: the patent is for an "electronic marketplace for used digital objects", where "when the user no longer desires to retain the right to access the now-used digital content, the user may move the used digital content to another user's personalised data store when permissible and the used digital content is deleted from the originating user's personalised data store". Amazon has not commented publicly about it, and it's possible that the book retailer may not be planning to do anything at all with the patent – that it was a defensive move.
But add it to the news last year that a Kindle user had her entire library wiped by Amazon without warning and the fact that, a few years ago, readers woke up to find that their digital copies of various books by George Orwell had vanished from their Kindles, and the possibility that ebooks could be sold as secondhand goods becomes another reminder of the sheer slipperiness – the intangibility – of the mushrooming digital product.
It used to be that a book was published, and that was it. Permanent, physical, tangible, it could be referred to for as long as the copy survived. That's not the case any more. We live in a world where page numbers – if they exist at all – don't correlate from device to device, where digital text can be updated at the touch of a button, where the ebooks we own can vanish without our say-so. It's something which is becoming a real issue, particularly for academics.
"I think it is a very grave problem," says Robert Darnton, scholar, author and Harvard University librarian. "If you're citing a digital version of a book, often you can't cite the pages." He adds that that documents have always been slippery – "there's no definitive text of King Lear" – but the ease with which it is now possible to make changes to published ebooks means "you take a problem like that, multiply it by 1,000, and that is the world we are in."
The issue is compounded, he says, "by the fact a lot of digital texts suffer from faulty editing, not to mention the hands of the scanners [appearing on pages]". He promises that the Digital Public Library of America, which launched last week, will "redo a lot of digitisation and make it right", as well as build in the capacity to make precise references.
"It is a mess, this world of digital texts," says Darnton. "We are living in a very fluid moment. Everything's changing. Nothing seems stable."
Angus Phillips, director of the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies at Oxford Brookes, agrees. "They are starting to put page numbers in some ebooks, and you can do percentages, but it is a bit irritating when you want to reference the pages," he says. "When you're reading and you want to look back, yes, ebooks have got a great search function, but with a physical book, I can flick back. Put [a term] into a search function, you might get 30 different references."
He also worries about what the possibility to update ebooks will mean for quality. "For authors, the printed book means you've finished and that's the final format – you can't keep revisiting it," he says. "You want the author to know this is the final version. If authors have 10 bites of the cherry, will they concentrate as hard as if they think it's the final version? There's a feeling with the web that you can put something up there, and people can change it. One of the advantages of books is that they're permanent."
The ability to update ebooks is there, however. "Publishers can make changes to their books and send us updated files any time," says an Amazon spokesperson.
But "we don't want to be in a situation where someone's book changes without them knowing – that would be bad practice," adds Michael Tamblyn, Kobo's chief content officer. "We do have it in our ability to provide alternative editions of material but it doesn't happen that often – it's a fairly rare thing. Most publishers are very conscious of the integrity of a published book – certainly as a consumer you wouldn't want your book to get shorter, for example."
Amazon says that at present, "if a new version of a book becomes available, the customer is notified and gets to choose if they would like an update, and they can do this in an automated way. They also get to keep their place in the book as well as their notes and highlights."
Textual slipperiness aside, there's also the gnarly issue of who, exactly, owns an ebook. John Scalzi, bestselling novelist and president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, is up in arms over Amazon's secondhand ebooks patent (it was on his blog where the reader's mind fell over).
"We don't know exactly what Amazon's planning to do with this. Every tech company out there files patents for things, but they don't necessarily have a plan to use them," he says. "On the other hand … there is likely to be interest in a secondhand market for electronic books, and the question then becomes how we balance the consumers' rights with the simple fact that pristine electronic copies of books are likely to undercut the incomes of the creators."
Scalzi can understand why consumers might be interested in selling on their ebooks – but "is an electronic file exactly the same as a physical object?" he ponders. "Some say absolutely, no matter what, if you buy it, you've bought it. Others say, if I have a book and take it to a used book store, when I give them the book, it's gone, whereas with an electronic book, it's possible I can make a copy for my archive, and resell the pristine-looking copy."
The issue, it seems, boils down to two things – does a reader own an ebook, or the licence to read an ebook? (Amazon's Kindle terms state that "Kindle content is licensed, not sold, to you by the content provider".) And is it possible to trust readers who wish to sell on their used ebooks not to have secretly made a copy, or two copies, or hundreds of copies, which they're handing out to all and sundry?
"If a large company like Amazon begins selling used works, are people who conscientiously go out of their way to buy books rather than pirate going to see a difference between a new file and an old one, one of which goes to pay me, and the other doesn't?" wonders Scalzi. "It's a very real concern for writers and other creators."
But he isn't panicking quite yet, because he believes that if Amazon, or another online book retailer, begins to sell used ebooks, there's likely to be a whole lot of legal action. "The legal ramifications are fascinating. If Amazon or whoever start selling these electronic files, and it could be proved that someone had made a copy, then we're looking at a really interesting class action suit. It could take years to go through court, and the legal right to sell could get halted while it went through the courts. That would do two things – give writers and publishers some time to figure out the ramifications, and have an effect on consumer behaviour. Regardless of what happens, nothing about this is going to come easy or simply or without a huge amount of legal litigation and ramifications," says Scalzi.
The novelist doesn't think the changes are all bad. "It is part of the overall conversation of what happens when an industry shifts. And in every shift in technology there will be some positives and some negatives."
Darnton, too – despite all his worries – is feeling positive. "As things change new possibilities open up, but we need to reach a point where we can stabilise at least the textual element. That's part of the mission of the Digital Public Library of America."
from: Guardian
by: Alison Flood
"My brain," as one reader put it rather dramatically, "fell over at the thought of selling 'used' ebooks". He wasn't the only one. The reaction to the news earlier this year that Amazon had a patent to sell secondhand ebooks was almost universally strong: it could ruin authors' livelihoods, said some commenters. It was dangerous for publishers, said others. It's just boggling my mind, said most.
These are the details we have: the patent is for an "electronic marketplace for used digital objects", where "when the user no longer desires to retain the right to access the now-used digital content, the user may move the used digital content to another user's personalised data store when permissible and the used digital content is deleted from the originating user's personalised data store". Amazon has not commented publicly about it, and it's possible that the book retailer may not be planning to do anything at all with the patent – that it was a defensive move.
But add it to the news last year that a Kindle user had her entire library wiped by Amazon without warning and the fact that, a few years ago, readers woke up to find that their digital copies of various books by George Orwell had vanished from their Kindles, and the possibility that ebooks could be sold as secondhand goods becomes another reminder of the sheer slipperiness – the intangibility – of the mushrooming digital product.
It used to be that a book was published, and that was it. Permanent, physical, tangible, it could be referred to for as long as the copy survived. That's not the case any more. We live in a world where page numbers – if they exist at all – don't correlate from device to device, where digital text can be updated at the touch of a button, where the ebooks we own can vanish without our say-so. It's something which is becoming a real issue, particularly for academics.
"I think it is a very grave problem," says Robert Darnton, scholar, author and Harvard University librarian. "If you're citing a digital version of a book, often you can't cite the pages." He adds that that documents have always been slippery – "there's no definitive text of King Lear" – but the ease with which it is now possible to make changes to published ebooks means "you take a problem like that, multiply it by 1,000, and that is the world we are in."
The issue is compounded, he says, "by the fact a lot of digital texts suffer from faulty editing, not to mention the hands of the scanners [appearing on pages]". He promises that the Digital Public Library of America, which launched last week, will "redo a lot of digitisation and make it right", as well as build in the capacity to make precise references.
"It is a mess, this world of digital texts," says Darnton. "We are living in a very fluid moment. Everything's changing. Nothing seems stable."
Angus Phillips, director of the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies at Oxford Brookes, agrees. "They are starting to put page numbers in some ebooks, and you can do percentages, but it is a bit irritating when you want to reference the pages," he says. "When you're reading and you want to look back, yes, ebooks have got a great search function, but with a physical book, I can flick back. Put [a term] into a search function, you might get 30 different references."
He also worries about what the possibility to update ebooks will mean for quality. "For authors, the printed book means you've finished and that's the final format – you can't keep revisiting it," he says. "You want the author to know this is the final version. If authors have 10 bites of the cherry, will they concentrate as hard as if they think it's the final version? There's a feeling with the web that you can put something up there, and people can change it. One of the advantages of books is that they're permanent."
The ability to update ebooks is there, however. "Publishers can make changes to their books and send us updated files any time," says an Amazon spokesperson.
But "we don't want to be in a situation where someone's book changes without them knowing – that would be bad practice," adds Michael Tamblyn, Kobo's chief content officer. "We do have it in our ability to provide alternative editions of material but it doesn't happen that often – it's a fairly rare thing. Most publishers are very conscious of the integrity of a published book – certainly as a consumer you wouldn't want your book to get shorter, for example."
Amazon says that at present, "if a new version of a book becomes available, the customer is notified and gets to choose if they would like an update, and they can do this in an automated way. They also get to keep their place in the book as well as their notes and highlights."
Textual slipperiness aside, there's also the gnarly issue of who, exactly, owns an ebook. John Scalzi, bestselling novelist and president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, is up in arms over Amazon's secondhand ebooks patent (it was on his blog where the reader's mind fell over).
"We don't know exactly what Amazon's planning to do with this. Every tech company out there files patents for things, but they don't necessarily have a plan to use them," he says. "On the other hand … there is likely to be interest in a secondhand market for electronic books, and the question then becomes how we balance the consumers' rights with the simple fact that pristine electronic copies of books are likely to undercut the incomes of the creators."
Scalzi can understand why consumers might be interested in selling on their ebooks – but "is an electronic file exactly the same as a physical object?" he ponders. "Some say absolutely, no matter what, if you buy it, you've bought it. Others say, if I have a book and take it to a used book store, when I give them the book, it's gone, whereas with an electronic book, it's possible I can make a copy for my archive, and resell the pristine-looking copy."
The issue, it seems, boils down to two things – does a reader own an ebook, or the licence to read an ebook? (Amazon's Kindle terms state that "Kindle content is licensed, not sold, to you by the content provider".) And is it possible to trust readers who wish to sell on their used ebooks not to have secretly made a copy, or two copies, or hundreds of copies, which they're handing out to all and sundry?
"If a large company like Amazon begins selling used works, are people who conscientiously go out of their way to buy books rather than pirate going to see a difference between a new file and an old one, one of which goes to pay me, and the other doesn't?" wonders Scalzi. "It's a very real concern for writers and other creators."
But he isn't panicking quite yet, because he believes that if Amazon, or another online book retailer, begins to sell used ebooks, there's likely to be a whole lot of legal action. "The legal ramifications are fascinating. If Amazon or whoever start selling these electronic files, and it could be proved that someone had made a copy, then we're looking at a really interesting class action suit. It could take years to go through court, and the legal right to sell could get halted while it went through the courts. That would do two things – give writers and publishers some time to figure out the ramifications, and have an effect on consumer behaviour. Regardless of what happens, nothing about this is going to come easy or simply or without a huge amount of legal litigation and ramifications," says Scalzi.
The novelist doesn't think the changes are all bad. "It is part of the overall conversation of what happens when an industry shifts. And in every shift in technology there will be some positives and some negatives."
Darnton, too – despite all his worries – is feeling positive. "As things change new possibilities open up, but we need to reach a point where we can stabilise at least the textual element. That's part of the mission of the Digital Public Library of America."
from: Guardian
Friday, April 26, 2013
Author sightings create new literary experiences
by: Carrie Ruth Moore
Somehow, it’s not quite the same as running into George Clooney.
As native Angelenos know, casually bumping into movie stars is a likely possibility. A chance meeting can occur while waiting for a table at L.A. Live, standing in the luggage queue at LAX or even just walking the streets of Beverly Hills. And when it happens, many of us are reduced to starstruck admirers, unapologetically speechless as we confront the people who embody our favorite film characters.
With authors, however, the interaction is a bit different. Sure, some of our favorite novelists might be just as attractive and charismatic as Hollywood icons, but when their written creations are laid out on the blank page before us, we feel a certain closeness that we don’t necessarily get with stars of the screen.
Perhaps this feeling of intimacy comes with navigating the relationship between “creator” and “created.” Musicians, for example, usually gain respect when listeners learn that they have written their own lyrics or composed their own songs.
Artists simply feel more “authentic” if they’ve taken the time to put their own feelings — whether imaginary or not — on paper.
Imagine, for example, if Eminem didn’t write his own songs. Even for an artist who’s been criticized for his masochistic lyrical tendencies, the Grammy-winning rapper has earned respect for his unflinching ability to talk about his experiences with bullying and fatherhood in songs such as “Brain Damage” and “Hailie’s Song.”
And say what you like about Taylor Swift, but no one can deny that she’s not afraid to share her emotions when she’s discussing her friend Abigail in “Fifteen” or telling Drew “he’s the reason for the teardrops on her guitar.”
For authors, however, negotiating the territory between “creator” and “created” is a little ickier. As creative writers know, it’s extremely difficult to isolate yourself from the characters and worlds you create. Personal experiences creep in through the nouns and adjectives. Inner hopes and fears weave their way into character descriptions and plot development. Even though a story might not be true, per se, it is still an inseparable part of the one who created it.
Perhaps that’s why events like the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books draw so much attention. This weekend, the festival celebrates its 18th year of existence and its third year on USC’s campus. Last year, the Festival of Books drew more than 100,000 attendees, all lovers of literature who were eagerly anticipating a chance to get their hands on some rare books or interact with their favorite writers. Eric Jerome Dickey, Anne Rice and Julie Andrews all made appearances, dazzling crowds with their insightful takes on literature and the writing process.
This year, the so-called literary “headliners” feature everyone from Joyce Carol Oates to Lemony Snicket to Jamaica Kincaid, and fans of their works can easily spend more than an hour simply waiting in line for a three-second encounter with the admired authors.
But why is meeting an author in person accompanied by so much enthusiasm? Perhaps it’s because readers realize that by enjoying a particular novel, they are, in essence, enjoying a writer’s mental space. Unlike movie stars, who fit themselves into the predetermined molds of their characters, writers create the space being filled, starting from scratch as they ingrain themselves in each persona and detail.
When talking about the beloved characters in Harry Potter, for example, meeting Daniel Radcliffe or Emma Watson has a different connotation than meeting J.K. Rowling. Radcliffe might be charming as the loyal Harry, but Rowling, as the author, is Harry. She’s inhabited his mind, formed his history and mannerisms. And, yes, she might be lacking a lightning-shaped scar on her forehead, but Harry’s psychology has been wrought out of Rowling’s own reality and imagination.
This week, attendees at the Festival of Books will get the chance to interact with A Series of Unfortunate Events’ Count Olaf just by attending Snicket’s Saturday reading. And Offred of A Handmaid’s Tale will make an appearance in Bovard Auditorium as author Margaret Atwood engages in a conversation with KCRW’s Michael Silverblatt.
I exaggerate to make a point, but when we meet our favorite writers, it’s undeniable that we are meeting the psychologies and ideologies of the people who have touched us with their stories.
When reading the likes of Dana Johnson’s Elsewhere, California, for example, readers are essentially engaging with California and Los Angeles the way the author sees it.
And perhaps the author of Inkheart, Cornela Funke, never found herself physically trapped inside the world of a book, but underneath it all, there’s a startling metaphor about the joys of good literature. Fans of Inkheart certainly won’t have experiences battling the evil Capricorn, but they will understand that a story can capture your attention and feel just as tangible as their everyday realities — just as Funke intends them to.
It is the philosophy of these authors and the chance to recognize our own fears and hopes in other people that gets our blood pumping at the prospects of meeting them.
Sure, we might joke that authors are playing God as they create a world and characters that capture our hearts. But more importantly, we can realize that they are also playing themselves.
from: Daily Trojan
Somehow, it’s not quite the same as running into George Clooney.
As native Angelenos know, casually bumping into movie stars is a likely possibility. A chance meeting can occur while waiting for a table at L.A. Live, standing in the luggage queue at LAX or even just walking the streets of Beverly Hills. And when it happens, many of us are reduced to starstruck admirers, unapologetically speechless as we confront the people who embody our favorite film characters.
With authors, however, the interaction is a bit different. Sure, some of our favorite novelists might be just as attractive and charismatic as Hollywood icons, but when their written creations are laid out on the blank page before us, we feel a certain closeness that we don’t necessarily get with stars of the screen.
Perhaps this feeling of intimacy comes with navigating the relationship between “creator” and “created.” Musicians, for example, usually gain respect when listeners learn that they have written their own lyrics or composed their own songs.
Artists simply feel more “authentic” if they’ve taken the time to put their own feelings — whether imaginary or not — on paper.
Imagine, for example, if Eminem didn’t write his own songs. Even for an artist who’s been criticized for his masochistic lyrical tendencies, the Grammy-winning rapper has earned respect for his unflinching ability to talk about his experiences with bullying and fatherhood in songs such as “Brain Damage” and “Hailie’s Song.”
And say what you like about Taylor Swift, but no one can deny that she’s not afraid to share her emotions when she’s discussing her friend Abigail in “Fifteen” or telling Drew “he’s the reason for the teardrops on her guitar.”
For authors, however, negotiating the territory between “creator” and “created” is a little ickier. As creative writers know, it’s extremely difficult to isolate yourself from the characters and worlds you create. Personal experiences creep in through the nouns and adjectives. Inner hopes and fears weave their way into character descriptions and plot development. Even though a story might not be true, per se, it is still an inseparable part of the one who created it.
Perhaps that’s why events like the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books draw so much attention. This weekend, the festival celebrates its 18th year of existence and its third year on USC’s campus. Last year, the Festival of Books drew more than 100,000 attendees, all lovers of literature who were eagerly anticipating a chance to get their hands on some rare books or interact with their favorite writers. Eric Jerome Dickey, Anne Rice and Julie Andrews all made appearances, dazzling crowds with their insightful takes on literature and the writing process.
This year, the so-called literary “headliners” feature everyone from Joyce Carol Oates to Lemony Snicket to Jamaica Kincaid, and fans of their works can easily spend more than an hour simply waiting in line for a three-second encounter with the admired authors.
But why is meeting an author in person accompanied by so much enthusiasm? Perhaps it’s because readers realize that by enjoying a particular novel, they are, in essence, enjoying a writer’s mental space. Unlike movie stars, who fit themselves into the predetermined molds of their characters, writers create the space being filled, starting from scratch as they ingrain themselves in each persona and detail.
When talking about the beloved characters in Harry Potter, for example, meeting Daniel Radcliffe or Emma Watson has a different connotation than meeting J.K. Rowling. Radcliffe might be charming as the loyal Harry, but Rowling, as the author, is Harry. She’s inhabited his mind, formed his history and mannerisms. And, yes, she might be lacking a lightning-shaped scar on her forehead, but Harry’s psychology has been wrought out of Rowling’s own reality and imagination.
This week, attendees at the Festival of Books will get the chance to interact with A Series of Unfortunate Events’ Count Olaf just by attending Snicket’s Saturday reading. And Offred of A Handmaid’s Tale will make an appearance in Bovard Auditorium as author Margaret Atwood engages in a conversation with KCRW’s Michael Silverblatt.
I exaggerate to make a point, but when we meet our favorite writers, it’s undeniable that we are meeting the psychologies and ideologies of the people who have touched us with their stories.
When reading the likes of Dana Johnson’s Elsewhere, California, for example, readers are essentially engaging with California and Los Angeles the way the author sees it.
And perhaps the author of Inkheart, Cornela Funke, never found herself physically trapped inside the world of a book, but underneath it all, there’s a startling metaphor about the joys of good literature. Fans of Inkheart certainly won’t have experiences battling the evil Capricorn, but they will understand that a story can capture your attention and feel just as tangible as their everyday realities — just as Funke intends them to.
It is the philosophy of these authors and the chance to recognize our own fears and hopes in other people that gets our blood pumping at the prospects of meeting them.
Sure, we might joke that authors are playing God as they create a world and characters that capture our hearts. But more importantly, we can realize that they are also playing themselves.
from: Daily Trojan
Thursday, April 25, 2013
So Hot Right Now: Has Climate Change Created A New Literary Genre?
by: Angela Evancie
When Superstorm Sandy hit New York City last fall, the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux, like most everything else, totally shut down. It was a week before power returned to FSG, according to Brian Gittis, a senior publicist. When he got back to his office, he began sorting through galleys — advance copies of books. And one of them caught him off guard.
Its cover had an illustration of the Manhattan skyline half-submerged in water.
"It was definitely sort of a Twilight Zone moment," Gittis recalls.
The book was Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich. Its protagonist is a boy genius who spins out worst-case scenarios and sells his elaborate calculations to corporations. Given what happens next — a disastrous hurricane floods New York City — it's tempting to say that Rich himself predicted Sandy. He didn't, of course. He was as surprised as anyone else.
"I had the very strange experience of editing the final proof of my novel one night, going to sleep, and waking up and essentially seeing it adapted on cable television the next morning," Rich says. "It was eerie. But I think this is the time that we live in now. We live in this time where our worst fears are being realized regularly."
Odds is the latest in what seems to be an emerging literary genre. Over the past decade, more and more writers have begun to set their novels and short stories in worlds, not unlike our own, where the Earth's systems are noticeably off-kilter. The genre has come to be called climate fiction — "cli-fi," for short.
"I think we need a new type of novel to address a new type of reality," says Rich, "which is that we're headed toward something terrifying and large and transformative. And it's the novelist's job to try to understand, what is that doing to us?"
Of course, science fiction with an environmental bent has been around since the 1960s (think J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World). But while sci-fi usually takes place in a dystopian future, cli-fi happens in a dystopian present.
According to Judith Curry, professor and chair of Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, when novelists tackle climate change in their writing, they reach people in a way that scientists can't.
"You know, scientists and other people are trying to get their message across about various aspects of the climate change issue," says Curry. "And it seems like fiction is an untapped way of doing this — a way of smuggling some serious topics into the consciousness" of readers who may not be following the science.
Curry, who began assembling a list of cli-fi stories a few months ago, says she first saw a renewed interest in climate change fiction with Michael Crichton's 2004 novel, State of Fear, which is about ecoterrorists. Then came such books as Solar by Ian McEwan and Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver. When Kingsolver spoke with NPR in November, she said her writing was driven by a simple question: "Why do we believe or disbelieve the evidence we see for climate change?"
"I really wanted to look into how we make those choices and how it's possible to begin a conversation across some of these divides," Kingsolver said, "between scientists and nonscientists, between rural and urban, between progressive and conservative — that when it comes to understanding the scientific truths about the world, there must be another way to bring information to people ... that's beyond simply condescending and saying, 'Well, if only you had the facts. If only you knew what I did, then you would be a smart person.' That gets you nowhere."
Writers can be sneaky in this way. Read all 300 pages of Odds Against Tomorrow, and you won't see the phrase "climate change" once. Rich says that was intentional: "I think the language around climate change is horribly bankrupt and, for the most part, are examples of bad writing, really. And cliche — 'climate change,' as a phrase, is cliche. 'Global warming' is a cliche."
As far as Rich is concerned, climate change itself is a foregone conclusion. The story — the suspense, the romance — is in how we deal with it.
"I don't think that the novelist necessarily has the responsibility to write about global warming or geopolitics or economic despair," he says. "But I do feel that novelists should write about what these things do to the human heart — write about the modern condition, essentially."
Other writers are a little more explicit. Daniel Kramb's 2012 novel From Here is about climate change activists — and Kramb says he wanted it to be overtly political.
"Some people are using climate change as a kind of wider setting," says Kramb, "whereas other people — I, certainly, in my novel — put it at the very heart of the novel."
Kramb says climate fiction is still kind of a niche. But it will make its mark on the world of literature.
"In fact," Kramb says, "I think when [people] look back at this 21st century ... they will definitely see climate change as one of the major themes in literature, if not the major theme."
War and peace ... and climate change?
**********************************************
Books Mentioned In This Story
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
From Here by Daniel Kramb
Solar by Ian McEwan
State of Fear by Michael Crichton
The Drowned World by J. G. Ballard
from: NPR
When Superstorm Sandy hit New York City last fall, the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux, like most everything else, totally shut down. It was a week before power returned to FSG, according to Brian Gittis, a senior publicist. When he got back to his office, he began sorting through galleys — advance copies of books. And one of them caught him off guard.
Its cover had an illustration of the Manhattan skyline half-submerged in water.
"It was definitely sort of a Twilight Zone moment," Gittis recalls.
The book was Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich. Its protagonist is a boy genius who spins out worst-case scenarios and sells his elaborate calculations to corporations. Given what happens next — a disastrous hurricane floods New York City — it's tempting to say that Rich himself predicted Sandy. He didn't, of course. He was as surprised as anyone else.
"I had the very strange experience of editing the final proof of my novel one night, going to sleep, and waking up and essentially seeing it adapted on cable television the next morning," Rich says. "It was eerie. But I think this is the time that we live in now. We live in this time where our worst fears are being realized regularly."
Odds is the latest in what seems to be an emerging literary genre. Over the past decade, more and more writers have begun to set their novels and short stories in worlds, not unlike our own, where the Earth's systems are noticeably off-kilter. The genre has come to be called climate fiction — "cli-fi," for short.
"I think we need a new type of novel to address a new type of reality," says Rich, "which is that we're headed toward something terrifying and large and transformative. And it's the novelist's job to try to understand, what is that doing to us?"
Of course, science fiction with an environmental bent has been around since the 1960s (think J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World). But while sci-fi usually takes place in a dystopian future, cli-fi happens in a dystopian present.
According to Judith Curry, professor and chair of Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, when novelists tackle climate change in their writing, they reach people in a way that scientists can't.
"You know, scientists and other people are trying to get their message across about various aspects of the climate change issue," says Curry. "And it seems like fiction is an untapped way of doing this — a way of smuggling some serious topics into the consciousness" of readers who may not be following the science.
Curry, who began assembling a list of cli-fi stories a few months ago, says she first saw a renewed interest in climate change fiction with Michael Crichton's 2004 novel, State of Fear, which is about ecoterrorists. Then came such books as Solar by Ian McEwan and Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver. When Kingsolver spoke with NPR in November, she said her writing was driven by a simple question: "Why do we believe or disbelieve the evidence we see for climate change?"
"I really wanted to look into how we make those choices and how it's possible to begin a conversation across some of these divides," Kingsolver said, "between scientists and nonscientists, between rural and urban, between progressive and conservative — that when it comes to understanding the scientific truths about the world, there must be another way to bring information to people ... that's beyond simply condescending and saying, 'Well, if only you had the facts. If only you knew what I did, then you would be a smart person.' That gets you nowhere."
Writers can be sneaky in this way. Read all 300 pages of Odds Against Tomorrow, and you won't see the phrase "climate change" once. Rich says that was intentional: "I think the language around climate change is horribly bankrupt and, for the most part, are examples of bad writing, really. And cliche — 'climate change,' as a phrase, is cliche. 'Global warming' is a cliche."
As far as Rich is concerned, climate change itself is a foregone conclusion. The story — the suspense, the romance — is in how we deal with it.
"I don't think that the novelist necessarily has the responsibility to write about global warming or geopolitics or economic despair," he says. "But I do feel that novelists should write about what these things do to the human heart — write about the modern condition, essentially."
Other writers are a little more explicit. Daniel Kramb's 2012 novel From Here is about climate change activists — and Kramb says he wanted it to be overtly political.
"Some people are using climate change as a kind of wider setting," says Kramb, "whereas other people — I, certainly, in my novel — put it at the very heart of the novel."
Kramb says climate fiction is still kind of a niche. But it will make its mark on the world of literature.
"In fact," Kramb says, "I think when [people] look back at this 21st century ... they will definitely see climate change as one of the major themes in literature, if not the major theme."
War and peace ... and climate change?
**********************************************
Books Mentioned In This Story
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
From Here by Daniel Kramb
Solar by Ian McEwan
State of Fear by Michael Crichton
The Drowned World by J. G. Ballard
from: NPR
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
25 Most Popular Apps Used By Librarians
Libraries have and will likelyemain one of the biggest and most important sources of knowledge in the world. While the internet has diminished the overall level of use that libraries see today, they are still important and are relied on by the public, by students, and by academics around the world. Technology has made it even easier to get the most from libraries, and today there are numerous apps for your mobile device that can help librarians get the most from their days.
Reading
1.Kindle – This is the most popular eReader app on the market and offers a huge selection of downloadable books to choose from, including numerous free ones.
2.iBooks – This is the Apple iOS eReader app and functions similarly to Kindle, though with a somewhat smaller selection.
3.Nook – Barnes and Noble’s official answer to the Kindle, this app also features many free books as well as the latest e-releases.
4.Free Books – Just like its name sounds, Free Books offers access to plenty of great free classic books.
5.Audiobooks – When you don’t have time to read, you can still listen to audiobooks. This app lets you access nearly 3,000 different classics in audio form.
6.GoodReader – GoodReader lets you access and read scholarly documents and literature on your mobile device. It also lets you store them on your mobile device and then access them later.
Organization, Productivity, And Work
7.Outliner – Outliner makes it easy to plan out projects and maintain good organization when you’re at the library.
8.Box Net – This is a cloud storage system that lets you back up your data and access it from other computers or mobile devices through the internet.
9.Pages – This app makes it easy to create documents and is often used for handouts and newsletters, including those that a library would issue.
10.iNapkin – This iOS app lets you make quick and easy notes, categorize them, and access them easily.
11.Evernote – Another app devoted to making notes, Evernote lets you jot down ideas and information or even use the audio feature to speak aloud and let the iPad take the notes for you.
12.Dictionary – No librarian can afford to be without a dictionary, and the Dictionary app lets you look up any word in an instant.
13.Wikipanion – While some librarians hate Wikipedia, the fact is that it’s one of the world’s largest sources for information. The Wikipanion app is basically Wikipedia for mobile devices. You can look up information and answer the questions of your guests quickly and easily with this app.
14.Osfoora HD – Libraries have begun sending Tweets as a way to attract patrons and to let employees stay in touch with what’s going on in the library. Osfoora HD lets you utilize multiple Twitter accounts when you need to Tweet for work.
15.Dropbox – Another Cloud storage server, Dropbox offers 2 gigs of storage for free and then additional storage at affordable rates.
16.Quickoffice – No mobile device would be complete without office functionality, and Quickoffice provides you with the ability to edit Word and Excel documents on the go. It’s only ten bucks, and well worth the price.
17.Adobe Reader – A huge number of documents out there today exist as .pdf files, and this app lets you read them without hassle.
18.World Book This Day In History – Give yourself something to talk to patrons about or to post on a library bulletin board with this app, which gives you interesting bits of history that occurred on the respective day.
19.Offline Pages – This app lets you actually store entire web pages on your mobile device. You can then read the web page later even when you don’t have access to the internet. It’s great for librarians on the go.
20.iAnnotate – This app also lets you read .pdf files as well as editing them. It’s a great tool for librarians who need to have the power to modify documents on the go.
News
21.Newsrack – Newsrack lets you access news from around the world in mobile form. Librarians have to be up on current events, and this is an excellent way to go about staying up on what’s going on around the world.
22.The Guardian Witness – Basically, this is the mobile version of the world famous “The Guardian”. It lets you keep up with European news that may be ignored by American media.
From The Library Of Congress
23.Virtual Tour – This is a virtual tour of the Library of Congress and offers a digital experience of the famous library.
24.The Congressional Record – This app provides you with access to the Congressional Record on a daily basis.
25.Aesop for Children – This reading app is offered by the Library of Congress and is a free book containing more than 140 of the most beloved fables in history. from: Library Science List
Reading
1.Kindle – This is the most popular eReader app on the market and offers a huge selection of downloadable books to choose from, including numerous free ones.
2.iBooks – This is the Apple iOS eReader app and functions similarly to Kindle, though with a somewhat smaller selection.
3.Nook – Barnes and Noble’s official answer to the Kindle, this app also features many free books as well as the latest e-releases.
4.Free Books – Just like its name sounds, Free Books offers access to plenty of great free classic books.
5.Audiobooks – When you don’t have time to read, you can still listen to audiobooks. This app lets you access nearly 3,000 different classics in audio form.
6.GoodReader – GoodReader lets you access and read scholarly documents and literature on your mobile device. It also lets you store them on your mobile device and then access them later.
Organization, Productivity, And Work
7.Outliner – Outliner makes it easy to plan out projects and maintain good organization when you’re at the library.
8.Box Net – This is a cloud storage system that lets you back up your data and access it from other computers or mobile devices through the internet.
9.Pages – This app makes it easy to create documents and is often used for handouts and newsletters, including those that a library would issue.
10.iNapkin – This iOS app lets you make quick and easy notes, categorize them, and access them easily.
11.Evernote – Another app devoted to making notes, Evernote lets you jot down ideas and information or even use the audio feature to speak aloud and let the iPad take the notes for you.
12.Dictionary – No librarian can afford to be without a dictionary, and the Dictionary app lets you look up any word in an instant.
13.Wikipanion – While some librarians hate Wikipedia, the fact is that it’s one of the world’s largest sources for information. The Wikipanion app is basically Wikipedia for mobile devices. You can look up information and answer the questions of your guests quickly and easily with this app.
14.Osfoora HD – Libraries have begun sending Tweets as a way to attract patrons and to let employees stay in touch with what’s going on in the library. Osfoora HD lets you utilize multiple Twitter accounts when you need to Tweet for work.
15.Dropbox – Another Cloud storage server, Dropbox offers 2 gigs of storage for free and then additional storage at affordable rates.
16.Quickoffice – No mobile device would be complete without office functionality, and Quickoffice provides you with the ability to edit Word and Excel documents on the go. It’s only ten bucks, and well worth the price.
17.Adobe Reader – A huge number of documents out there today exist as .pdf files, and this app lets you read them without hassle.
18.World Book This Day In History – Give yourself something to talk to patrons about or to post on a library bulletin board with this app, which gives you interesting bits of history that occurred on the respective day.
19.Offline Pages – This app lets you actually store entire web pages on your mobile device. You can then read the web page later even when you don’t have access to the internet. It’s great for librarians on the go.
20.iAnnotate – This app also lets you read .pdf files as well as editing them. It’s a great tool for librarians who need to have the power to modify documents on the go.
News
21.Newsrack – Newsrack lets you access news from around the world in mobile form. Librarians have to be up on current events, and this is an excellent way to go about staying up on what’s going on around the world.
22.The Guardian Witness – Basically, this is the mobile version of the world famous “The Guardian”. It lets you keep up with European news that may be ignored by American media.
From The Library Of Congress
23.Virtual Tour – This is a virtual tour of the Library of Congress and offers a digital experience of the famous library.
24.The Congressional Record – This app provides you with access to the Congressional Record on a daily basis.
25.Aesop for Children – This reading app is offered by the Library of Congress and is a free book containing more than 140 of the most beloved fables in history. from: Library Science List
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Next-generation ebooks introduced at London Book Fair
Faber trails 'fully immersive' version of The Thirty-Nine Steps, and a bespoke ebook using digital format to rethink conventional narrative
by: Claire Armistead
Fiction edged its way closer to a digital incarnation with the publication this week of an interactive visual version of John Buchan's classic thriller, The Thirty-Nine Steps.
Publisher Faber&Faber announced that it had up with two software publishers and a developer, The Story Mechanics, to create a "fully playable, fully immersive product" which it believes breask new ground in digital reading.
It said the app includes classic stop-frame animation and original silent film music. It would allow readers to "unlock dozens of achievements and items to collect on their reading journey, and explore hundreds of hand-painted digital environments and context from 1910s Britain."
Published originally as a serial in Blackwoods magazine in 1915, The Thirty-Nine Steps was the first of five novels to feature the 20th century's earliest and most famous action hero, Richard Hannay, a man constantly on the run.
Buchan described the novel as a "shocker" – an adventure so unlikely that the reader is only just able to believe that it could really have happened. A number of film and TV adaptations, beginning with Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 version, have taken the book beyond the printed page, but Faber promises another step beyond Buchan's original storytelling.
Henry Volans, head of Faber Digital, said: "The Story Mechanics have come up with something completely new in the landscape of fiction ebooks. It's a new way of reading with John Buchan's story at its heart, presented afresh through a TV and gaming-inspired lens." The Thirty-nine Steps will be available for iPad, Mac, and Android tablets.
Faber also took advantage of this week's London Book Fair to introduce another innovative piece of fiction, Arcadia, by Iain Pears – which will be published in digital form in the autumn, with a book following next year.
Demonstrating the structure to publishers, Pears explained that the novel was inspired by quantum physics, and written in "nodes" which had been mapped on to a graph constructed after consultation with an Oxford mathematics professor.
The aim was to create an infinite number of ways in which the story could be read – though Pears emphasised that Arcadia was not an interactive novel. "I'm still in charge of the story because I'm arrogant enough to feel that I'm a better story-teller," he said.
One result of its format, he said, was to get the story beyond the constraints of time. "It also gets rid of causality. I use the analogy of dropping a cup and causing it to break. It's also possible that the cup breaking causes you to drop it."
The novel is being constructed in partnership with a software developer and a digital designer and will be rewritten for the print version, which will be "like the director's cut", said Pears.
Volans said: "Too often publishers ask themselves how they can bolt something on to a finished novel, like retro-fitting a car. This is posing a much more profound challenge: it's a novel in conceived form written on bespoke software."
from: Guardian
by: Claire Armistead
Fiction edged its way closer to a digital incarnation with the publication this week of an interactive visual version of John Buchan's classic thriller, The Thirty-Nine Steps.
Publisher Faber&Faber announced that it had up with two software publishers and a developer, The Story Mechanics, to create a "fully playable, fully immersive product" which it believes breask new ground in digital reading.
It said the app includes classic stop-frame animation and original silent film music. It would allow readers to "unlock dozens of achievements and items to collect on their reading journey, and explore hundreds of hand-painted digital environments and context from 1910s Britain."
Published originally as a serial in Blackwoods magazine in 1915, The Thirty-Nine Steps was the first of five novels to feature the 20th century's earliest and most famous action hero, Richard Hannay, a man constantly on the run.
Buchan described the novel as a "shocker" – an adventure so unlikely that the reader is only just able to believe that it could really have happened. A number of film and TV adaptations, beginning with Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 version, have taken the book beyond the printed page, but Faber promises another step beyond Buchan's original storytelling.
Henry Volans, head of Faber Digital, said: "The Story Mechanics have come up with something completely new in the landscape of fiction ebooks. It's a new way of reading with John Buchan's story at its heart, presented afresh through a TV and gaming-inspired lens." The Thirty-nine Steps will be available for iPad, Mac, and Android tablets.
Faber also took advantage of this week's London Book Fair to introduce another innovative piece of fiction, Arcadia, by Iain Pears – which will be published in digital form in the autumn, with a book following next year.
Demonstrating the structure to publishers, Pears explained that the novel was inspired by quantum physics, and written in "nodes" which had been mapped on to a graph constructed after consultation with an Oxford mathematics professor.
The aim was to create an infinite number of ways in which the story could be read – though Pears emphasised that Arcadia was not an interactive novel. "I'm still in charge of the story because I'm arrogant enough to feel that I'm a better story-teller," he said.
One result of its format, he said, was to get the story beyond the constraints of time. "It also gets rid of causality. I use the analogy of dropping a cup and causing it to break. It's also possible that the cup breaking causes you to drop it."
The novel is being constructed in partnership with a software developer and a digital designer and will be rewritten for the print version, which will be "like the director's cut", said Pears.
Volans said: "Too often publishers ask themselves how they can bolt something on to a finished novel, like retro-fitting a car. This is posing a much more profound challenge: it's a novel in conceived form written on bespoke software."
from: Guardian
Monday, April 22, 2013
Oil, Chavez And Telenovelas: The Rise Of The Venezuelan Novel
by: Marcela Valdes
For more than 40 years, the most important book prize in South America has been bankrolled by the region's most famous petro-nation: Venezuela. Yet Venezuelan novelists themselves rank among the least read and translated writers in the entire continent. Over and over again as I worked on this article, I stumped editors and translators with a simple question: Who are Venezuela's best novelists?
"If you were to ask me about Mexico or Nicaragua ..." one translator hedged. A second tried guessing that "there can't be a lot happening in a country that basically represses." A third editor was more frank. "I know zip about the country's literature," she confessed. "How embarrassing."
Yet since 1967, a Venezuelan award, the International Novel Prize Rómulo Gallegos, has been the kingmaker of Spanish-language book prizes. Among the crowned: Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Elena Poniatowska, Roberto Bolaño, Javier Marías, Enrique Vila-Matas and Ricardo Piglia. Gerald Martin, whose biography of García Márquez covers more than 70 years of literary history, judges it "the only Latin American prize which does the same for Latin America as the Nobel does for the world."
Rómulo Gallegos himself wrote Venezuela's most influential novel, Doña Barbara. Published in 1929, Doña Barbara is at once a political tract, a national icon, a precursor to magical realism and a pop culture sensation. It has spawned two movies, an opera, three telenovelas and hundreds of YouTube mash-ups.
"Doña Barbara is exactly Gone With the Wind for Latin America," says Brown University professor Julio Ortega. Its action — the power struggle between a sexy, barbaric woman and a young, idealistic technocrat — mirrors the clash between feudalism and modernity that consumed South America in the early 20th century.
It also makes for a great, cleavage-baring script. Here's an early description of the villain: "She's a woman who has pocketed heaps of men, and she never misses when she begins sweet-talking. She gives a man a love potion and ties him to her apron-strings, and then does what she likes with him, because she knows witchcraft." Who could resist filming a soap opera from lines like that?
Gallegos was a politician, and Doña Barbara is, in part, his shot against Gen. Juan Vicente Gómez, the dictator who ruled Venezuela for 27 years. In 1947, Gallegos himself was elected president by a landslide, becoming the country's first civilian leader. Nine months after he took office, he was tossed out by a military coup.
In exile Gallegos asserted that U.S. oil companies had backed his ouster because he'd hit them with a 50 percent tax on profits. Yet if oil subverted his presidency, it also financed the prize that bears his name. Oil profits allowed Venezuela to create three major literary institutions: the Rómulo Gallegos Center for Latin American Studies, the Ayacucho Library Foundation and the publishing house Monte Ávila.
These institutions published, promoted and salaried Venezuelan writers for decades. Because of them, Venezuelan cultural critic Michelle Roche explains, Venezuelan novelists never looked to multinationals like Anagrama or Alfaguara to sell their books. Nor did they emigrate to seek better fortunes abroad. The government of Venezuela was the only patron they needed. So much so, Roche says, that "writing for the reader was considered superficial."
Everything changed when Caracas erupted in riots and looting in February 1989. After the so-called Caracazo, University of Connecticut professor Miguel Gomes explains, "Everyone opened their eyes. They didn't think they belonged to that kind of Latin American country. And then Chavismo came."
Chávez upended the old state system that fiction writers depended on for income, firing staff and importing intellectuals from Cuba. His monetary policies also made it expensive to import books, which forced booksellers to look for novels closer to home. The upshot: Venezuelan fiction boomed with major new works by authors like Federico Vegas, Francisco Suniaga, Ana Teresa Torres and Slavko Zupcic. These days, says critic and journalist Boris Muñoz, Venezuelan fiction has "opened up to find a bigger audience, through noir novels, historical novels, without renouncing its own Venezuelan idiosyncrasies."
Among the most important writers of this new wave is Alberto Barrera Tyszka. His first novel, The Sickness, is a swift, piercing story about a doctor who must decide whether to tell his own father that he's dying of cancer. In 2006, it became the first Venezuelan work to win Anagrama's coveted Herralde Award for the Novel. Since then, it has been translated into six languages. In England, it was a finalist for The Independent's foreign fiction prize.
Chávez may have indirectly spurred the resurgence of Venezuelan fiction, but his officials have also kneecapped Venezuelan novelists abroad. Translator David Unger told me that at the La Paz International Book Fair in 2006, he was stunned to hear Venezuelan officials announce that they would not sell books at the event because they opposed the commercialization of literature. Venezuela was the fair's featured country; it had brought authors to Bolivia to participate in the fair's panels as well as some 25,000 books. Yet rather than sell those copies to the editors, critics and translators who could help bring attention to Venezuelan authors, officials hauled the books to the streets of La Paz and to the impoverished town of El Alto, where they gave them out for free. Many were snagged by book pirates.
"It just seemed like this typically absurd moment in Chavazean reality," Unger says, "where you think you're giving books away to 'the people' who are mostly native Bolivians who can't read Spanish, and all these sharks went up there and sold them and made a lot of money."
That may be why in the past several years two separate delegations have traveled from Venezuela to Guadalajara, Mexico, where Latin America's most important book fair is held every fall. One delegation is organized by the government of Venezuela. The other is assembled by Venezuela's new clutch of independent publishers. "We finally have a strong literature," Roche says. "This market is very slow, but I'm positive that [the translations] will come." Until then, as Venezuelan critic Antonio Lopez Ortega says, Venezuela's fiction will remain "the Caribbean's best kept secret."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10 Venezuelan Novelists To Know:
In the course of reporting this story, I was told about more than 30 Venezuelan writers who deserve to be better known in the United States. Only a handful of them have been translated into English. Below you find a list of ones who are making their way into my personal library because their novels sound too good to pass up.
1.Romulo Gallegos (1884-1969) The former president of Venezuela published nine novels, but Doña Barbara (1929) is the most delicious. Steamy with witchcraft and intrigue, it's also a serious attack on rural despotism.
2.Teresa de la Parra (1889-1936) According to Professor Julio Ortega, there's a movement afoot to grant de la Parra her rightful place in Venezuelan letters. Her first book, Iphigenia (1924), ruffled feathers with its fierce portrait of Caracas high society. Her second novel, Mama Blanca's Memoirs (1929), made nice with sweet descriptions of a childhood spent on a sugar plantation.
3.José Balza (1939-) An avant-garde stylist, Balza has published eight novels and even more collections of short stories. His dense, poetic novel Percussion (1982) is widely considered his best. In it, an old man's return to his birthplace provokes a hallucinatory trip down memory lane. None of his books has been translated into English.
4.Victoria de Stefano (1940-) The Clarice Lispector of Venezuela, de Stefano writes beautiful, difficult fiction. Her novel Histories of the Foot March (1997) was a finalist for the Rómulo Gallegos Prize the same year that Roberto Bolaño won for The Savage Detectives. None of her books has been translated into English.
5.Ana Teresa Torres (1945-) "Ana Teresa Torres revolutionized Venezuelan fiction with her work Doña Ines vs. Oblivion," says Caracas bookseller Katyna Henríquez Consalvi. Based on a real Venezuelan court case, this novel traces 300 years of Venezuelan history through one woman's beyond-the-grave quest to recover a lost piece of jungle property.
6.Federico Vegas (1950-) Vegas' historical novel Falke (2005) caused a sensation in Caracas with its account of a band of revolutionaries who attempted to overthrow the dictator Juan Vicente Gómez in 1929. Since then, Vegas, who trained as an architect, has published four more novels and several collections of stories. None of his books has been translated into English.
7.Francisco Suniaga (1954-) A lawyer, Suniaga once worked for the United Nations in East Timor. His books include a noir novel (The Other Island) and a political thriller (Truman's Passenger). What raises him above genre-writing, says critic Boris Muñoz, is "his acute perception of the pathos that characterizes Venezuelan identity." None of his books has been translated into English.
8.Alberto Barrera Tyszka (1960-) Co-author of an influential biography of Hugo Chavez, Barrera Tyszka is also Venezuela's best-known contemporary novelist. "Immediately," says editor Jorge Herralde, "The Sickness seduced me with the elegance and concision of its prose, its depth and fluidity, with its unaffected approach to the subject of a father's death." One critic in Spain compared it to Philip Roth's Patrimony.
9.Slavko Zupcic (1970-) One of two Venezuelans to make the prestigious Bogota 39 list — which named 39 exceptional Latin American writers under the age of 39 — Zupic has published three novels: Barbie, Croatian Circle and My Deepest Sympathies, as well as several short-story collections. None of his books has been translated into English.
10.Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles (1977-) Named after a pricey brand of Johnnie Walker whisky, Sánchez Rugeles' best-known novel, Blue Label/Etiqueta Azul, is an acidic take on middle-class Venezuelan society. Its protagonist is a young woman whose highest ambition is to become French. Sánchez Rugeles now lives in Spain. None of his books has been translated into English.
Marcela Valdes is the books editor of The Washington Examiner and a specialist in Latin American literature and culture.
from: NPR
For more than 40 years, the most important book prize in South America has been bankrolled by the region's most famous petro-nation: Venezuela. Yet Venezuelan novelists themselves rank among the least read and translated writers in the entire continent. Over and over again as I worked on this article, I stumped editors and translators with a simple question: Who are Venezuela's best novelists?
"If you were to ask me about Mexico or Nicaragua ..." one translator hedged. A second tried guessing that "there can't be a lot happening in a country that basically represses." A third editor was more frank. "I know zip about the country's literature," she confessed. "How embarrassing."
Yet since 1967, a Venezuelan award, the International Novel Prize Rómulo Gallegos, has been the kingmaker of Spanish-language book prizes. Among the crowned: Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Elena Poniatowska, Roberto Bolaño, Javier Marías, Enrique Vila-Matas and Ricardo Piglia. Gerald Martin, whose biography of García Márquez covers more than 70 years of literary history, judges it "the only Latin American prize which does the same for Latin America as the Nobel does for the world."
Rómulo Gallegos himself wrote Venezuela's most influential novel, Doña Barbara. Published in 1929, Doña Barbara is at once a political tract, a national icon, a precursor to magical realism and a pop culture sensation. It has spawned two movies, an opera, three telenovelas and hundreds of YouTube mash-ups.
"Doña Barbara is exactly Gone With the Wind for Latin America," says Brown University professor Julio Ortega. Its action — the power struggle between a sexy, barbaric woman and a young, idealistic technocrat — mirrors the clash between feudalism and modernity that consumed South America in the early 20th century.
It also makes for a great, cleavage-baring script. Here's an early description of the villain: "She's a woman who has pocketed heaps of men, and she never misses when she begins sweet-talking. She gives a man a love potion and ties him to her apron-strings, and then does what she likes with him, because she knows witchcraft." Who could resist filming a soap opera from lines like that?
Gallegos was a politician, and Doña Barbara is, in part, his shot against Gen. Juan Vicente Gómez, the dictator who ruled Venezuela for 27 years. In 1947, Gallegos himself was elected president by a landslide, becoming the country's first civilian leader. Nine months after he took office, he was tossed out by a military coup.
In exile Gallegos asserted that U.S. oil companies had backed his ouster because he'd hit them with a 50 percent tax on profits. Yet if oil subverted his presidency, it also financed the prize that bears his name. Oil profits allowed Venezuela to create three major literary institutions: the Rómulo Gallegos Center for Latin American Studies, the Ayacucho Library Foundation and the publishing house Monte Ávila.
These institutions published, promoted and salaried Venezuelan writers for decades. Because of them, Venezuelan cultural critic Michelle Roche explains, Venezuelan novelists never looked to multinationals like Anagrama or Alfaguara to sell their books. Nor did they emigrate to seek better fortunes abroad. The government of Venezuela was the only patron they needed. So much so, Roche says, that "writing for the reader was considered superficial."
Everything changed when Caracas erupted in riots and looting in February 1989. After the so-called Caracazo, University of Connecticut professor Miguel Gomes explains, "Everyone opened their eyes. They didn't think they belonged to that kind of Latin American country. And then Chavismo came."
Chávez upended the old state system that fiction writers depended on for income, firing staff and importing intellectuals from Cuba. His monetary policies also made it expensive to import books, which forced booksellers to look for novels closer to home. The upshot: Venezuelan fiction boomed with major new works by authors like Federico Vegas, Francisco Suniaga, Ana Teresa Torres and Slavko Zupcic. These days, says critic and journalist Boris Muñoz, Venezuelan fiction has "opened up to find a bigger audience, through noir novels, historical novels, without renouncing its own Venezuelan idiosyncrasies."
Among the most important writers of this new wave is Alberto Barrera Tyszka. His first novel, The Sickness, is a swift, piercing story about a doctor who must decide whether to tell his own father that he's dying of cancer. In 2006, it became the first Venezuelan work to win Anagrama's coveted Herralde Award for the Novel. Since then, it has been translated into six languages. In England, it was a finalist for The Independent's foreign fiction prize.
Chávez may have indirectly spurred the resurgence of Venezuelan fiction, but his officials have also kneecapped Venezuelan novelists abroad. Translator David Unger told me that at the La Paz International Book Fair in 2006, he was stunned to hear Venezuelan officials announce that they would not sell books at the event because they opposed the commercialization of literature. Venezuela was the fair's featured country; it had brought authors to Bolivia to participate in the fair's panels as well as some 25,000 books. Yet rather than sell those copies to the editors, critics and translators who could help bring attention to Venezuelan authors, officials hauled the books to the streets of La Paz and to the impoverished town of El Alto, where they gave them out for free. Many were snagged by book pirates.
"It just seemed like this typically absurd moment in Chavazean reality," Unger says, "where you think you're giving books away to 'the people' who are mostly native Bolivians who can't read Spanish, and all these sharks went up there and sold them and made a lot of money."
That may be why in the past several years two separate delegations have traveled from Venezuela to Guadalajara, Mexico, where Latin America's most important book fair is held every fall. One delegation is organized by the government of Venezuela. The other is assembled by Venezuela's new clutch of independent publishers. "We finally have a strong literature," Roche says. "This market is very slow, but I'm positive that [the translations] will come." Until then, as Venezuelan critic Antonio Lopez Ortega says, Venezuela's fiction will remain "the Caribbean's best kept secret."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10 Venezuelan Novelists To Know:
In the course of reporting this story, I was told about more than 30 Venezuelan writers who deserve to be better known in the United States. Only a handful of them have been translated into English. Below you find a list of ones who are making their way into my personal library because their novels sound too good to pass up.
1.Romulo Gallegos (1884-1969) The former president of Venezuela published nine novels, but Doña Barbara (1929) is the most delicious. Steamy with witchcraft and intrigue, it's also a serious attack on rural despotism.
2.Teresa de la Parra (1889-1936) According to Professor Julio Ortega, there's a movement afoot to grant de la Parra her rightful place in Venezuelan letters. Her first book, Iphigenia (1924), ruffled feathers with its fierce portrait of Caracas high society. Her second novel, Mama Blanca's Memoirs (1929), made nice with sweet descriptions of a childhood spent on a sugar plantation.
3.José Balza (1939-) An avant-garde stylist, Balza has published eight novels and even more collections of short stories. His dense, poetic novel Percussion (1982) is widely considered his best. In it, an old man's return to his birthplace provokes a hallucinatory trip down memory lane. None of his books has been translated into English.
4.Victoria de Stefano (1940-) The Clarice Lispector of Venezuela, de Stefano writes beautiful, difficult fiction. Her novel Histories of the Foot March (1997) was a finalist for the Rómulo Gallegos Prize the same year that Roberto Bolaño won for The Savage Detectives. None of her books has been translated into English.
5.Ana Teresa Torres (1945-) "Ana Teresa Torres revolutionized Venezuelan fiction with her work Doña Ines vs. Oblivion," says Caracas bookseller Katyna Henríquez Consalvi. Based on a real Venezuelan court case, this novel traces 300 years of Venezuelan history through one woman's beyond-the-grave quest to recover a lost piece of jungle property.
6.Federico Vegas (1950-) Vegas' historical novel Falke (2005) caused a sensation in Caracas with its account of a band of revolutionaries who attempted to overthrow the dictator Juan Vicente Gómez in 1929. Since then, Vegas, who trained as an architect, has published four more novels and several collections of stories. None of his books has been translated into English.
7.Francisco Suniaga (1954-) A lawyer, Suniaga once worked for the United Nations in East Timor. His books include a noir novel (The Other Island) and a political thriller (Truman's Passenger). What raises him above genre-writing, says critic Boris Muñoz, is "his acute perception of the pathos that characterizes Venezuelan identity." None of his books has been translated into English.
8.Alberto Barrera Tyszka (1960-) Co-author of an influential biography of Hugo Chavez, Barrera Tyszka is also Venezuela's best-known contemporary novelist. "Immediately," says editor Jorge Herralde, "The Sickness seduced me with the elegance and concision of its prose, its depth and fluidity, with its unaffected approach to the subject of a father's death." One critic in Spain compared it to Philip Roth's Patrimony.
9.Slavko Zupcic (1970-) One of two Venezuelans to make the prestigious Bogota 39 list — which named 39 exceptional Latin American writers under the age of 39 — Zupic has published three novels: Barbie, Croatian Circle and My Deepest Sympathies, as well as several short-story collections. None of his books has been translated into English.
10.Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles (1977-) Named after a pricey brand of Johnnie Walker whisky, Sánchez Rugeles' best-known novel, Blue Label/Etiqueta Azul, is an acidic take on middle-class Venezuelan society. Its protagonist is a young woman whose highest ambition is to become French. Sánchez Rugeles now lives in Spain. None of his books has been translated into English.
Marcela Valdes is the books editor of The Washington Examiner and a specialist in Latin American literature and culture.
from: NPR
Friday, April 19, 2013
The Tebow Problem: The Hot and Cold Nature of the Biography Section
by: Travis Jonker
Biography section – why are you so vexing?
I think my frustration can be nicely summed up in one image:
I like to call it “The Tebow Problem”. Has there ever been a biography subject that has gone from must-purchase to weeding candidate more quickly? Unless someone did a bio on Michael Phelp’s Mom, I’d hazard to say no. If your situation is similar to mine, you were just getting a Tim Tebow book on the shelves as the demand was vanishing. And now it sits¹. My Tebow problem hints at a bigger biography section issue – I want to stock the section with research staples of course, but also want students to visit without being sent there by a teacher.
Ay, there’s the rub.
Kids are interested in reading about famous figures today, but many of the in-demand titles are about pop stars, actors, and actresses who quickly fall in and out of favor – much more quickly than your standard fiction or nonfiction title.
What I’m saying is, it’s difficult to invest in books about people when popularity heats up and cools off at the drop of a hat. So do I ignore the trends and focus on the past? That seems like a path to biography section cricketsville.
My current approach is this: selectively purchase current bios that are in high demand, keep an eye out for standout stuff on historical figures, and supplement it all with a subscription to an online encyclopedia. We’ve been happy with Worldbook, but there are others that do a fine job. This way information on historical figures and current stars is easy to find.
I don’t know if I’ll ever truly figure you out, bio section, but I’ll keep trying. Do you have a secret recipe for bio section happiness?
¹As for Tim Tebow books, I envision them suffering the same fate as the infamous E.T. game for the Atari.
There are millions of the suckers lying in a New Mexico landfill as we speak.
(Image: E.T.: 2600 by nickstone333 http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickstone333/3550990059/)
from: School Library Journal
Biography section – why are you so vexing?
I think my frustration can be nicely summed up in one image:
I like to call it “The Tebow Problem”. Has there ever been a biography subject that has gone from must-purchase to weeding candidate more quickly? Unless someone did a bio on Michael Phelp’s Mom, I’d hazard to say no. If your situation is similar to mine, you were just getting a Tim Tebow book on the shelves as the demand was vanishing. And now it sits¹. My Tebow problem hints at a bigger biography section issue – I want to stock the section with research staples of course, but also want students to visit without being sent there by a teacher.
Ay, there’s the rub.
Kids are interested in reading about famous figures today, but many of the in-demand titles are about pop stars, actors, and actresses who quickly fall in and out of favor – much more quickly than your standard fiction or nonfiction title.
What I’m saying is, it’s difficult to invest in books about people when popularity heats up and cools off at the drop of a hat. So do I ignore the trends and focus on the past? That seems like a path to biography section cricketsville.
My current approach is this: selectively purchase current bios that are in high demand, keep an eye out for standout stuff on historical figures, and supplement it all with a subscription to an online encyclopedia. We’ve been happy with Worldbook, but there are others that do a fine job. This way information on historical figures and current stars is easy to find.
I don’t know if I’ll ever truly figure you out, bio section, but I’ll keep trying. Do you have a secret recipe for bio section happiness?
¹As for Tim Tebow books, I envision them suffering the same fate as the infamous E.T. game for the Atari.
There are millions of the suckers lying in a New Mexico landfill as we speak.
(Image: E.T.: 2600 by nickstone333 http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickstone333/3550990059/)
from: School Library Journal
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Ten ways self-publishing has changed the books world
As the DIY approach gains more and more writers and readers, traditional publishers must reinvent themselves
by: Alison Baverstock
After a boom year in self-publishing the headlines are getting a little predictable. Most feature a doughty author who quickly builds demand for her work and is rewarded with a large contract from the traditional industry. But in our rush to admire, there's a risk we overlook the wider cultural significance of what is going on. As publishers from all over the world prepare for next week's London book fair, here are 10 changes that they ignore at their peril:
1. There is now a wider understanding of what publishing is – and that it is more difficult than it looks. The industry has long suffered the irony that effective publishing is most evident when invisible; it is only when standards are less than felicitous that we realise how well what we read is managed most of the time. Now that school cookbooks, or fundraising brochures for sports teams, can be effectively self-published, people are learning the process and what is involved. In the past, the industry has tended to recruit heavily from those in the know (the offspring of former publishers and authors being particularly well-represented); wider awareness of publishing is now promoting wider diversity.
2. Gone is our confidence that publishers and agents know exactly what everyone wants to (or should) read, and can spot all the material worth our attention. Soft porn and fantasy have emerged as particularly under-represented in the industry's official output.
3. The copy editor, a traditionally marginalised figure, is now in strong demand. If you are well-connected through social media, can isolate what your writing has to offer and get the message noticed by a reading public, you can probably manage the marketing of your work. The one thing it's really hard to do is self-edit. Long ago publishers outsourced copy editing, relying on the freelance labour market – and freelancers are now being actively sought by self-publishing authors too. The price for services for which there is both high demand and scarce supply tends to rise.
4. The re-emergence of the book as precious object. Some publishers are marketing luxury books; limited editions available only from them. Similarly, it's becoming relatively common for people to self-publish their holiday photographs in book form; to produce a unique photograph/memory book for special birthdays or to mark a retirement. If these are being presented to those who are not big readers, or regular frequenters of bookshops, the social significance of self-publishing may be particularly strong.
5. The role of the author is changing. With the fragmentation of the media in recent years, publishers were already relying on authors to help with the marketing – and learning how to do so is empowering. Now, as authors meet their readers at literary festivals, run blogs or tweet, they know their readers well and are no longer solely reliant on their publishers to mediate relationships. Looking ahead, authors who understand how publishing works are likely to be vastly less compliant than their forbears.
6. The role of the agent is also changing. Literary agents used to introduce ingenue authors to those who might invest, and then work with them to build longer-term careers. Now that so many self-publishing authors are finding the market themselves, agents need to find new ways to make their work pay. If agencies are multi-faceted (film, television, after-dinner speaking) they may be protected, but smaller agencies will struggle. Selling manuscript development services to those in whom they might not otherwise invest their time is an unsatisfactory way to make a living.
7. New business models and opportunities are springing up, mostly offering "publishing services": advice on how to get published or self-publish; guidance on developing a plot or a whole manuscript; lifestyle support and writing holidays; editorial services and marketing assistance. New writing patterns are developing too: team writing; ghost writing; software to assist the crafting. Publishing is emerging as a process – accessible as a variety of different services to whoever needs them – rather than just being an industry.
8. It's not all about making money. If, as I believe, self-publishing means taking personal responsibility for the management and production of your content, this can be achieved as effectively via a single copy to be kept at home as the sale of thousands online. Self-publishing means recognising, and preserving, content that has value for someone – but the process does not have to yield an income to be worthwhile.
9. An end to the "vanity publishing" put-down. No longer the last resort of the talentless, these days self-publishing is seen as a homing ground of the instinctively proactive: identify your market; meet their needs; deliver direct. It's also a flexible solution; a process not a single product, for which the rationale can be very varied – from book as business card to ebook novel; from hard copy of a work-in-progress, to a team compilation for a local history group.
10. Self-publishing brings happiness. Publishers have long assumed that only if nearing professional standards could a self-published product bring any satisfaction. My research has revealed the opposite. It seems self-publishers approach the process confidently, are well-informed, and aware of how much the process will cost and how long it is likely to take. They emerge both keen to do it again and likely to recommend it to others. Finalising a project you have long planned feels good, and the process builds in the possibility of future discoverability – whether that is in an attic (whenever the family decides they are mature enough to want to know), or by ISBN from within the British Library. Self-publishing as a legacy – should we really be so surprised at its growing popularity?
• A former publisher, Alison Baverstock is Course Leader for the Publishing MA at Kingston University. The Naked Author, her guide to self-publishing, is published by Bloomsbury. The full results of her more recent research will be published in the journal Learned Publishing in July.
from: Guardian
by: Alison Baverstock
After a boom year in self-publishing the headlines are getting a little predictable. Most feature a doughty author who quickly builds demand for her work and is rewarded with a large contract from the traditional industry. But in our rush to admire, there's a risk we overlook the wider cultural significance of what is going on. As publishers from all over the world prepare for next week's London book fair, here are 10 changes that they ignore at their peril:
1. There is now a wider understanding of what publishing is – and that it is more difficult than it looks. The industry has long suffered the irony that effective publishing is most evident when invisible; it is only when standards are less than felicitous that we realise how well what we read is managed most of the time. Now that school cookbooks, or fundraising brochures for sports teams, can be effectively self-published, people are learning the process and what is involved. In the past, the industry has tended to recruit heavily from those in the know (the offspring of former publishers and authors being particularly well-represented); wider awareness of publishing is now promoting wider diversity.
2. Gone is our confidence that publishers and agents know exactly what everyone wants to (or should) read, and can spot all the material worth our attention. Soft porn and fantasy have emerged as particularly under-represented in the industry's official output.
3. The copy editor, a traditionally marginalised figure, is now in strong demand. If you are well-connected through social media, can isolate what your writing has to offer and get the message noticed by a reading public, you can probably manage the marketing of your work. The one thing it's really hard to do is self-edit. Long ago publishers outsourced copy editing, relying on the freelance labour market – and freelancers are now being actively sought by self-publishing authors too. The price for services for which there is both high demand and scarce supply tends to rise.
4. The re-emergence of the book as precious object. Some publishers are marketing luxury books; limited editions available only from them. Similarly, it's becoming relatively common for people to self-publish their holiday photographs in book form; to produce a unique photograph/memory book for special birthdays or to mark a retirement. If these are being presented to those who are not big readers, or regular frequenters of bookshops, the social significance of self-publishing may be particularly strong.
5. The role of the author is changing. With the fragmentation of the media in recent years, publishers were already relying on authors to help with the marketing – and learning how to do so is empowering. Now, as authors meet their readers at literary festivals, run blogs or tweet, they know their readers well and are no longer solely reliant on their publishers to mediate relationships. Looking ahead, authors who understand how publishing works are likely to be vastly less compliant than their forbears.
6. The role of the agent is also changing. Literary agents used to introduce ingenue authors to those who might invest, and then work with them to build longer-term careers. Now that so many self-publishing authors are finding the market themselves, agents need to find new ways to make their work pay. If agencies are multi-faceted (film, television, after-dinner speaking) they may be protected, but smaller agencies will struggle. Selling manuscript development services to those in whom they might not otherwise invest their time is an unsatisfactory way to make a living.
7. New business models and opportunities are springing up, mostly offering "publishing services": advice on how to get published or self-publish; guidance on developing a plot or a whole manuscript; lifestyle support and writing holidays; editorial services and marketing assistance. New writing patterns are developing too: team writing; ghost writing; software to assist the crafting. Publishing is emerging as a process – accessible as a variety of different services to whoever needs them – rather than just being an industry.
8. It's not all about making money. If, as I believe, self-publishing means taking personal responsibility for the management and production of your content, this can be achieved as effectively via a single copy to be kept at home as the sale of thousands online. Self-publishing means recognising, and preserving, content that has value for someone – but the process does not have to yield an income to be worthwhile.
9. An end to the "vanity publishing" put-down. No longer the last resort of the talentless, these days self-publishing is seen as a homing ground of the instinctively proactive: identify your market; meet their needs; deliver direct. It's also a flexible solution; a process not a single product, for which the rationale can be very varied – from book as business card to ebook novel; from hard copy of a work-in-progress, to a team compilation for a local history group.
10. Self-publishing brings happiness. Publishers have long assumed that only if nearing professional standards could a self-published product bring any satisfaction. My research has revealed the opposite. It seems self-publishers approach the process confidently, are well-informed, and aware of how much the process will cost and how long it is likely to take. They emerge both keen to do it again and likely to recommend it to others. Finalising a project you have long planned feels good, and the process builds in the possibility of future discoverability – whether that is in an attic (whenever the family decides they are mature enough to want to know), or by ISBN from within the British Library. Self-publishing as a legacy – should we really be so surprised at its growing popularity?
• A former publisher, Alison Baverstock is Course Leader for the Publishing MA at Kingston University. The Naked Author, her guide to self-publishing, is published by Bloomsbury. The full results of her more recent research will be published in the journal Learned Publishing in July.
from: Guardian
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Cover girls: this year's book jacket fashions
As the London Book Fair showcases this year's literary trends, we showcase the latest must-have looks
by: John Dugdale
What's the fashionable book wearing, with publishing's spring/summer season just begun and its answer to London Fashion Week - the London Book Fair - starting tomorrow? Here are the hottest current looks in jackets; some would call them "cliches", but at Guardian books we prefer "trends".
Look: woman or girl's back in period frock
Example (latest from): Kate Atkinson
Also worn by: plenty, from Francesca Segal to Kate Summerscale
What it says: you'll like her - heroine and author - but she's a bit quirky, elusive and old-fashioned
Look: pure text - just name and title
Example: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Also worn by: Julian Barnes, Gillian Flynn
What it says: bow down - author is such a god that usual visual accessories would be vulgar
Look: red (lettering or background - usually non-fiction)
Example: David Goodhart
Also worn by: eight of the 12 Orwell prize longlistees
What it says: really not as dull as it sounds, trust us; sexy material there if you look for it, admittedly well-buried
Look: sunset and silhouette(s)
Example: Khaled Hosseini
Also worn by: Jhumpa Lahiri, Romesh Gunesekera; also crime, eg Lee Child
What it says: really not as bleak as it sounds; setting is lovely, anyway
Look: giant ancient symbolic object, eg torque
Example: Lindsey Davis
Also worn by: fantasy and hist-fic writers envious of George RR Martin
What it says: series bound to become another HBO drama and cult - or at least we desperately hope it is
Look: WTF – cover image no obvious relation to book
Example: JM Coetzee - jacket seems to be photo of English interwar trio post-tennis, but novel is called The Childhood Of Jesus and about strange Latin utopia
Also worn by: no one yet, but could start trend like McQueen bonkers frocks
What it says: help!
Look: suited man's back, often running
Example: Roger Hobbs
Also worn by: Chris Morgan Jones, Daniel Silva
What it says: trad blokey thriller, by writer who luckily is not a big enough name to make a fuss about our insultingly hackneyed jacket
Look: multicoloured cover resembling gallery art
Example: Taiye Selasi
Also worn by: Zadie Smith, Monica Ali
What it says: we're convinced novel's vibrant multiculturalism will make other fiction seem grey and stale (but have fingers crossed that full-on cover and book alike won't put off punters rather than wowing them)
Look: handwritten name and title, or jumbled typeface
Example: Nicola Barker
Also worn by: Jonathan Safran Foer, Will Self
What it says: linguistic antics from madcap maverick. Of course it's almost unreadable - didn't you get cover's subtext?
Look: copycat cover - references earlier hit crudely or subtly
Example: Sabine Durrant (mimics orange-on-black palette of Flynn's Gone Girl)
Also worn by: dozens of erotica titles imitating EL James black look; SJ Watson wannabes
What it says: we're still gutted about missing out on zillion-selling X, but might pull off a limited recovery if we can convince you Y is almost as good
And what's not hot? On the way out are yellows and pastels; the curious short-lived vogue for showing only women's feet or arms; images of furniture; ostensibly hand-illustrated covers (eg The Art of Fielding) - and the retro look in general has become passe
from: Guardian
by: John Dugdale
 |
| Totes on trend ... the covers for Kate Atkinson and Francesca Segal's new novels |
What's the fashionable book wearing, with publishing's spring/summer season just begun and its answer to London Fashion Week - the London Book Fair - starting tomorrow? Here are the hottest current looks in jackets; some would call them "cliches", but at Guardian books we prefer "trends".
Look: woman or girl's back in period frock
Example (latest from): Kate Atkinson
Also worn by: plenty, from Francesca Segal to Kate Summerscale
What it says: you'll like her - heroine and author - but she's a bit quirky, elusive and old-fashioned
Look: pure text - just name and titleExample: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Also worn by: Julian Barnes, Gillian Flynn
What it says: bow down - author is such a god that usual visual accessories would be vulgar
Look: red (lettering or background - usually non-fiction)
Example: David Goodhart
Also worn by: eight of the 12 Orwell prize longlistees
What it says: really not as dull as it sounds, trust us; sexy material there if you look for it, admittedly well-buried
Example: Khaled Hosseini
Also worn by: Jhumpa Lahiri, Romesh Gunesekera; also crime, eg Lee Child
What it says: really not as bleak as it sounds; setting is lovely, anyway
Look: giant ancient symbolic object, eg torque
Example: Lindsey Davis
Also worn by: fantasy and hist-fic writers envious of George RR Martin
What it says: series bound to become another HBO drama and cult - or at least we desperately hope it is
Look: WTF – cover image no obvious relation to bookExample: JM Coetzee - jacket seems to be photo of English interwar trio post-tennis, but novel is called The Childhood Of Jesus and about strange Latin utopia
Also worn by: no one yet, but could start trend like McQueen bonkers frocks
What it says: help!
Look: suited man's back, often running
Example: Roger Hobbs
Also worn by: Chris Morgan Jones, Daniel Silva
What it says: trad blokey thriller, by writer who luckily is not a big enough name to make a fuss about our insultingly hackneyed jacket
Look: multicoloured cover resembling gallery artExample: Taiye Selasi
Also worn by: Zadie Smith, Monica Ali
What it says: we're convinced novel's vibrant multiculturalism will make other fiction seem grey and stale (but have fingers crossed that full-on cover and book alike won't put off punters rather than wowing them)
Look: handwritten name and title, or jumbled typeface
Example: Nicola Barker
Also worn by: Jonathan Safran Foer, Will Self
What it says: linguistic antics from madcap maverick. Of course it's almost unreadable - didn't you get cover's subtext?
Look: copycat cover - references earlier hit crudely or subtlyExample: Sabine Durrant (mimics orange-on-black palette of Flynn's Gone Girl)
Also worn by: dozens of erotica titles imitating EL James black look; SJ Watson wannabes
What it says: we're still gutted about missing out on zillion-selling X, but might pull off a limited recovery if we can convince you Y is almost as good
And what's not hot? On the way out are yellows and pastels; the curious short-lived vogue for showing only women's feet or arms; images of furniture; ostensibly hand-illustrated covers (eg The Art of Fielding) - and the retro look in general has become passe
from: Guardian
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Fifty Shades of Grey and Captain Underpants head US library complaints
Dav Pilkey's children's books top US library association's annual 'challenged books' list with EL James's erotic series at No 4
One list Fifty Shades of Grey was perhaps destined to be among was books most likely to be removed from school and library shelves in the US.
On Monday, E L James's multimillion-selling erotic trilogy was placed No 4 on the American Library Association's annual study of "challenged books". These are works subject to complaints from parents, educators and other members of the public. Objections are based on criteria such as offensive language, and, of course, graphic sexual content.
Top of the list was a not a story of the bedroom, but the bathroom, Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants books (offensive language, unsuited for age group), followed by Sherman Alexie's prize-winning The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (offensive language, racism, sexually explicit), and Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why (drugs/alcohol/smoking, sexually explicit, suicide). Also on the list, at No 10, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison's Beloved (sexually explicit, religious viewpoint, violence).
"It's pretty exciting to be on a list that frequently features Mark Twain, Harper Lee, and Maya Angelou," Pilkey said in a statement. "But I worry that some parents might see this list and discourage their kids from reading Captain Underpants, even though they have not had a chance to read the books themselves."
The library association's Office for Intellectual Freedom defines a challenge as a "formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that a book or other material be restricted or removed because of its content or appropriateness." The office received 464 challenges last year, an increase of more 25% from 2011, but still low compared to the 1980s and 1990s. Exact numbers, including how many books were actually pulled, are hard to calculate. The association has long believed that for every complaint registered, four or five go unreported by libraries, and that some librarians may restrict access in anticipation of objections.
"One reason we think the number went up in 2012 is that we made challenges easier to report by including a portal on our web page," said Barbara M Jones, director of the OIF.
The challenged books list was included in the library association's annual State of America's Libraries report that examines how libraries are responding to budget cuts and the financial advice they offer for patrons during hard economic times.
The Fifty Shades books were released last spring, and public libraries in Georgia, Florida and elsewhere soon pulled the racy romance trilogy or decided not to order the books, saying they were too steamy or too poorly written. Local library representatives at the time denounced the novels as "semi-pornographic" and unfit for community standards.
But the list also included some works highly regarded in the literary community: Morrison's Beloved, winner of the Pulitzer prize; Alexie's novel, a National Book award winner; and a book club favourite, Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner (homosexuality, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit). Young adult novelist John Green was on the list, for Looking for Alaska (offensive language, sexually explicit), along with perennial chart topper And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, the story of two male penguins who raise a baby penguin. Others on the list were Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories (unsuited for age group) and Jeanette Wells's memoir The Glass Castle (offensive language, sexually explicit).
The Captain Underpants books, which Green said he's currently reading to his three-year-old son, have long been debated among parents and educators. Some praise the books because they encourage boys to read, others criticise them for their toilet humour and irreverent attitude; the title character is a superhero devised by two young students about their grouchy school principal, Mr Krupp.
"I don't see these books as encouraging disrespect for authority. Perhaps they demonstrate the value of questioning authority," Pilkey said. "Some of the authority figures in the Captain Underpants books are villains. They are bullies and they do vicious things."
Pilkey said his characters are based in part on teachers and head teachers he had – some of whom were villains who got away with it because they were authority figures.
"None of the children in my school, including me, thought to question them," he said. "So, I do feel there is real value in showing kids that not all authority figures are good or kind or honorable."
Challenged books are a measure of trouble, but also a measure of popularity, whether as a cause or an effect. Some famous entries from recent years have dropped off the top 10, likely a sign of reduced attention overall including JK Rowling's Harry Potter books, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games trilogy. Jones thinks some publishers "love it when their book is mentioned" because of the attention it receives, while Green agrees that getting on the list "means lots of people are reading your book".
The president of Scholastic's trade division, Ellie Berger, said in a statement that the "appearance of Captain Underpants on the 2012 ALA list coincides with the publication of Dav Pilkey's first new Captain Underpants book in six years and the return of the series to national bestseller lists – both of which are evidence that this longtime bestselling series continues to inspire a love of reading (and underpants) for a new generation of kids."
from: Guardian
One list Fifty Shades of Grey was perhaps destined to be among was books most likely to be removed from school and library shelves in the US.
On Monday, E L James's multimillion-selling erotic trilogy was placed No 4 on the American Library Association's annual study of "challenged books". These are works subject to complaints from parents, educators and other members of the public. Objections are based on criteria such as offensive language, and, of course, graphic sexual content.
Top of the list was a not a story of the bedroom, but the bathroom, Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants books (offensive language, unsuited for age group), followed by Sherman Alexie's prize-winning The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (offensive language, racism, sexually explicit), and Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why (drugs/alcohol/smoking, sexually explicit, suicide). Also on the list, at No 10, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison's Beloved (sexually explicit, religious viewpoint, violence).
"It's pretty exciting to be on a list that frequently features Mark Twain, Harper Lee, and Maya Angelou," Pilkey said in a statement. "But I worry that some parents might see this list and discourage their kids from reading Captain Underpants, even though they have not had a chance to read the books themselves."
The library association's Office for Intellectual Freedom defines a challenge as a "formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that a book or other material be restricted or removed because of its content or appropriateness." The office received 464 challenges last year, an increase of more 25% from 2011, but still low compared to the 1980s and 1990s. Exact numbers, including how many books were actually pulled, are hard to calculate. The association has long believed that for every complaint registered, four or five go unreported by libraries, and that some librarians may restrict access in anticipation of objections.
"One reason we think the number went up in 2012 is that we made challenges easier to report by including a portal on our web page," said Barbara M Jones, director of the OIF.
The challenged books list was included in the library association's annual State of America's Libraries report that examines how libraries are responding to budget cuts and the financial advice they offer for patrons during hard economic times.
The Fifty Shades books were released last spring, and public libraries in Georgia, Florida and elsewhere soon pulled the racy romance trilogy or decided not to order the books, saying they were too steamy or too poorly written. Local library representatives at the time denounced the novels as "semi-pornographic" and unfit for community standards.
But the list also included some works highly regarded in the literary community: Morrison's Beloved, winner of the Pulitzer prize; Alexie's novel, a National Book award winner; and a book club favourite, Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner (homosexuality, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit). Young adult novelist John Green was on the list, for Looking for Alaska (offensive language, sexually explicit), along with perennial chart topper And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, the story of two male penguins who raise a baby penguin. Others on the list were Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories (unsuited for age group) and Jeanette Wells's memoir The Glass Castle (offensive language, sexually explicit).
The Captain Underpants books, which Green said he's currently reading to his three-year-old son, have long been debated among parents and educators. Some praise the books because they encourage boys to read, others criticise them for their toilet humour and irreverent attitude; the title character is a superhero devised by two young students about their grouchy school principal, Mr Krupp.
"I don't see these books as encouraging disrespect for authority. Perhaps they demonstrate the value of questioning authority," Pilkey said. "Some of the authority figures in the Captain Underpants books are villains. They are bullies and they do vicious things."
Pilkey said his characters are based in part on teachers and head teachers he had – some of whom were villains who got away with it because they were authority figures.
"None of the children in my school, including me, thought to question them," he said. "So, I do feel there is real value in showing kids that not all authority figures are good or kind or honorable."
Challenged books are a measure of trouble, but also a measure of popularity, whether as a cause or an effect. Some famous entries from recent years have dropped off the top 10, likely a sign of reduced attention overall including JK Rowling's Harry Potter books, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games trilogy. Jones thinks some publishers "love it when their book is mentioned" because of the attention it receives, while Green agrees that getting on the list "means lots of people are reading your book".
The president of Scholastic's trade division, Ellie Berger, said in a statement that the "appearance of Captain Underpants on the 2012 ALA list coincides with the publication of Dav Pilkey's first new Captain Underpants book in six years and the return of the series to national bestseller lists – both of which are evidence that this longtime bestselling series continues to inspire a love of reading (and underpants) for a new generation of kids."
from: Guardian
Monday, April 15, 2013
Former Amazon exec wants to give free ebooks to 'every child on the planet'
by: Rebecca Grant
While volunteering at an orphanage in Ecuador, former Amazon executive David Risher came across a padlocked library. When he asked the orphanage’s leader why it was locked, she said that the key was lost, the books were out of date, and the children were uninterested in reading. That’s when Risher decided to set out to make books more accessible to people in the developing world.
He founded Worldreader in 2009, a nonprofit organization that puts Kindles and electronic books (e-books) in the hands of children and their families. Today, WorldReader expanded its program by launching a mobile application that will deliver e-books to millions of people around the world.
“Worldreader has this crazy vision that every child on the planet should have access to the books they need to improve their lives,” Risher said in an interview with VentureBeat. “Mobile phones are the way people in the developing world stay connected and learn about the world around them. This is an opportunity to have an enormous impact on education in these parts of the world.”
Fifty percent of schools in sub-Saharan Africa have few or no books, while the USAID found that nearly ever home in sub-Saharan Africa has access to at least one mobile phone. Worldreader Mobile is designed for low-end feature phones most commonly used by people in Africa and Asia. Users download the free app and have access to a library of 1,200 books, ranging from romance novels to health textbooks.
Feature phones don’t high processing capabilities and usually operate on slower 2G networks. Furthermore, users cannot afford to spend a large amount on data. The new mobile program takes all of this into account. Worldreader partnered with BiNu, a platform that improves Internet connectivity on mass-market phones, to develop the app. All the data processing happens in the cloud, rather than on the phone, and the data is compressed so people do not rack up high charges while reading.
After months of beta testing, Worldreader Mobile is already on five million feature phones around the world. The organization has over 500,000 active readers a month, and they spend 60,000 hours reading on their phones. In January alone, people consumed roughly 17,000 books on their mobile phones. Risher said the biggest mobile market is India, with 106,000 users, and that the app see use from teachers caregivers, siblings, parents, and children.
Risher formerly served Amazon’s senior vice president for retail and marketing. After leaving Amazon, he took a trip around the world with his wife, their two daughters, and two Kindles, which were just coming to market. Growing up, Risher spent hours at the library and went on to major in comparative literature at Princeton. Reading has always been his passion, he said, and many of the opportunities he had were a result of having books in his hands.
“We heard there were 200 million kids in sub-Saharan Africa with no books,” he said. That is a whole generation of children who are growing up in a world with no culture of reading. Publishing, printing, and shipping books is expensive and books are often out-of-date. But beaming books into kids hands over a cell network should be easy.”
The first Worldreader program began in Ghana in 2010, which distributed e-readers to 20 students. Worldreader works with publishers around the world including international companies and small local publishers alike, to distribute their content, and the digital library includes over 440,000 e-books. This mobile program is a significant step for the organization because it does not require procuring and delivering devices, but works with the technology people already own. It will greatly expand Worldreader’s reach and scale and make books of all kinds and subject in the hands of those who need them most.
“Worldreader is a combination of my pragmatic and romantic vision,” Risher said. “It was opportunity to take technology and put it to a higher use. As I look at my own background, loving books and working at Amazon, it was a way to tie it all together and find a way to change world that taps into my passion and skills.”
from: VentureBeat
While volunteering at an orphanage in Ecuador, former Amazon executive David Risher came across a padlocked library. When he asked the orphanage’s leader why it was locked, she said that the key was lost, the books were out of date, and the children were uninterested in reading. That’s when Risher decided to set out to make books more accessible to people in the developing world.
He founded Worldreader in 2009, a nonprofit organization that puts Kindles and electronic books (e-books) in the hands of children and their families. Today, WorldReader expanded its program by launching a mobile application that will deliver e-books to millions of people around the world.
“Worldreader has this crazy vision that every child on the planet should have access to the books they need to improve their lives,” Risher said in an interview with VentureBeat. “Mobile phones are the way people in the developing world stay connected and learn about the world around them. This is an opportunity to have an enormous impact on education in these parts of the world.”
Fifty percent of schools in sub-Saharan Africa have few or no books, while the USAID found that nearly ever home in sub-Saharan Africa has access to at least one mobile phone. Worldreader Mobile is designed for low-end feature phones most commonly used by people in Africa and Asia. Users download the free app and have access to a library of 1,200 books, ranging from romance novels to health textbooks.
Feature phones don’t high processing capabilities and usually operate on slower 2G networks. Furthermore, users cannot afford to spend a large amount on data. The new mobile program takes all of this into account. Worldreader partnered with BiNu, a platform that improves Internet connectivity on mass-market phones, to develop the app. All the data processing happens in the cloud, rather than on the phone, and the data is compressed so people do not rack up high charges while reading.
After months of beta testing, Worldreader Mobile is already on five million feature phones around the world. The organization has over 500,000 active readers a month, and they spend 60,000 hours reading on their phones. In January alone, people consumed roughly 17,000 books on their mobile phones. Risher said the biggest mobile market is India, with 106,000 users, and that the app see use from teachers caregivers, siblings, parents, and children.
Risher formerly served Amazon’s senior vice president for retail and marketing. After leaving Amazon, he took a trip around the world with his wife, their two daughters, and two Kindles, which were just coming to market. Growing up, Risher spent hours at the library and went on to major in comparative literature at Princeton. Reading has always been his passion, he said, and many of the opportunities he had were a result of having books in his hands.
“We heard there were 200 million kids in sub-Saharan Africa with no books,” he said. That is a whole generation of children who are growing up in a world with no culture of reading. Publishing, printing, and shipping books is expensive and books are often out-of-date. But beaming books into kids hands over a cell network should be easy.”
The first Worldreader program began in Ghana in 2010, which distributed e-readers to 20 students. Worldreader works with publishers around the world including international companies and small local publishers alike, to distribute their content, and the digital library includes over 440,000 e-books. This mobile program is a significant step for the organization because it does not require procuring and delivering devices, but works with the technology people already own. It will greatly expand Worldreader’s reach and scale and make books of all kinds and subject in the hands of those who need them most.
“Worldreader is a combination of my pragmatic and romantic vision,” Risher said. “It was opportunity to take technology and put it to a higher use. As I look at my own background, loving books and working at Amazon, it was a way to tie it all together and find a way to change world that taps into my passion and skills.”
from: VentureBeat
Friday, April 12, 2013
10 Terms to Describe the Anatomy of a Book
by: Virginia C McGuire
What we think of as a book—a cover supporting a block of pages, backed up by a spine—is one the most successful technological innovations in the history of the world. After all, it was humankind's primary means of information storage and retrieval for over a thousand years.
Books have a lot of admirers. Many people love books not only because of what is written in them, but because they're works of art. And people who love things like to name them. Very thoroughly.
That's why books like John Carter's classic 1952 volume, ABC for Book Collectors, exist. It's a glossary of terms used to describe books. It's far from complete, but it's as delightful for book nerds as Strunk and White’s Elements of Style is for grammar nerds.
Let's look at some of the best terms in the book.
1. Leaves
No, no, they're not green. This is another name for the pages of a book.
2. Endpapers
The papers glued to the inside cover of a hardback book are called endpapers. The side of the page that is glued to the cover is a paste-down and the other side is a free endpaper.
3. Edges
This means the edges of the leaves. It's not a very exciting term in and of itself, but it opens the door for amazing things, like gilt edges and painted fore-edges. If you've never seen a book with a tiny painting on the edges of the pages, you're missing out.
4. Wire lines and chain lines
It used to be common practice in papermaking to lay the wet paper pulp in a frame criss-crossed with wire and shake the water out of it. Nowadays only fancy paper is made this way. The wide-spaced lines are called wire lines. The closer-together lines perpendicular to the wire lines are called chain lines. If you have an old book or a piece of high-end stationery handy, try holding one of the pages up to the light to see if you can see the wire lines and chain lines.
5. Signatures
Much could be said about the way books are assembled. Usually groups of sixteen pages, called signatures, are sewn together. Carter says this term comes from a small notation in the corner of each group of pages that was meant to help the bookbinder put them in the correct order.
6. Manuscript
A manuscript, in book-collecting circles, means a book that was written by hand, not printed.
7. Head-piece
This is an ornament (sometimes called a vignette) printed at the beginning of a chapter or to mark a new section of the book.
8. Half-title
Also called the bastard title, this is the name for the leaf in front of the title page. You probably didn't know there was a name for that.
9. Foxing
This is the word for the yellowish-brown discolorations you sometimes see on the pages of old books. The pages would be described as "foxed."
10. Diaper
Not that kind of diaper. This refers to a diamond or lozenge pattern on some bindings.
from: Mental Floss
What we think of as a book—a cover supporting a block of pages, backed up by a spine—is one the most successful technological innovations in the history of the world. After all, it was humankind's primary means of information storage and retrieval for over a thousand years.
Books have a lot of admirers. Many people love books not only because of what is written in them, but because they're works of art. And people who love things like to name them. Very thoroughly.
That's why books like John Carter's classic 1952 volume, ABC for Book Collectors, exist. It's a glossary of terms used to describe books. It's far from complete, but it's as delightful for book nerds as Strunk and White’s Elements of Style is for grammar nerds.
Let's look at some of the best terms in the book.
1. Leaves
No, no, they're not green. This is another name for the pages of a book.
2. Endpapers
The papers glued to the inside cover of a hardback book are called endpapers. The side of the page that is glued to the cover is a paste-down and the other side is a free endpaper.
3. Edges
This means the edges of the leaves. It's not a very exciting term in and of itself, but it opens the door for amazing things, like gilt edges and painted fore-edges. If you've never seen a book with a tiny painting on the edges of the pages, you're missing out.
4. Wire lines and chain lines
It used to be common practice in papermaking to lay the wet paper pulp in a frame criss-crossed with wire and shake the water out of it. Nowadays only fancy paper is made this way. The wide-spaced lines are called wire lines. The closer-together lines perpendicular to the wire lines are called chain lines. If you have an old book or a piece of high-end stationery handy, try holding one of the pages up to the light to see if you can see the wire lines and chain lines.
5. Signatures
Much could be said about the way books are assembled. Usually groups of sixteen pages, called signatures, are sewn together. Carter says this term comes from a small notation in the corner of each group of pages that was meant to help the bookbinder put them in the correct order.
6. Manuscript
A manuscript, in book-collecting circles, means a book that was written by hand, not printed.
7. Head-piece
This is an ornament (sometimes called a vignette) printed at the beginning of a chapter or to mark a new section of the book.
8. Half-title
Also called the bastard title, this is the name for the leaf in front of the title page. You probably didn't know there was a name for that.
9. Foxing
This is the word for the yellowish-brown discolorations you sometimes see on the pages of old books. The pages would be described as "foxed."
10. Diaper
Not that kind of diaper. This refers to a diamond or lozenge pattern on some bindings.
from: Mental Floss
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Amazon backs down over Cornish-language children's book
Kindle publisher reverses refusal to handle Cornish text, amid global battle to protect minority languages
by: Alison Flood
With more than 40% of the world's estimated 7,000 languages "endangered and at risk of extinction", an army of tiny publishers is fighting an unsung battle to save them. UK press Diglot Books is one of them, and this week took on the might of Amazon to get its Cornish children's story out to readers.
Told by the internet giant that Matthew and the Wellington Boots (Matthew ha'n Eskisyow Glaw in Cornish, or Kernewek) would not be made available through Kindle Direct Publishing because it was in a language that is "not currently supported" by the platform, Diglot petitioned the retailer.
Director Alison O'Dornan said it did so "on the basis that our title was actually bilingual and that the Cornish translation had been checked by an examiner for the Cornish Language Board, and also that the alphabet was the same as English so there were no extra characters needed". When this had no effect, she turned to social media for support.
"The great news is that Amazon have indeed backed down after the support that we have generated, and have now agreed to publish the Cornish title," said O'Dornan, who hailed it as a testament to the power of social media in "allowing a minnow such as ourselves to change the minds of a big company".
O'Dornan added that KDP's official statement about the decision was: "The book is in a language that is not currently supported by Kindle Direct Publishing. At this time, you can upload and sell books in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Galician, and Basque to customers worldwide in the Kindle Store. We're working to add more languages to this list in the future."
"It is a surprisingly short list of languages and doesn't even include Welsh," said O'Dornan.
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment, but Matthew and the Wellington Boots is now for sale as an ebook via Amazon and Apple – where it has already received two five-star reviews, one in Cornish.
"When Matthew bounces down the stairs in a rush to play in the garden with his best friend Diglot, he discovers it is raining outside. Oh no! How can he play with his digger, ride his bicycle, or swing on his swing if everything is all wet?" runs the English text. In its Cornish translation from translator Stephen Gadd, this becomes: "Pan aslamm Matthew an grisyow war-nans yn uskis rag gwari y'n lowarth gans y goweth gwella, Diglot, ev a dhiskudh hy bos ow kul glaw. Ogh na! Fatel yll ev gwari gans y jynn-palas, diwrosa po leska war y lesk mars yw puptra glyb?"
Around 500 people cited Cornish as their main language in the 2011 census, which places the language as "endangered" on the Catalogue of Endangered Languages, a global collaborative project to preserve languages. Diglot believes it is vital to protect it.
"From a cultural perspective the existence of its own language adds considerable weight to the feeling of a cultural identity to Cornish people, and according to Cornwall councillor Bert Biscoe, a member of the Cornish Language Partnership, 'If you're looking at Cornwall's distinctiveness, its brand in the future world of trade and so forth, having something that distinguishes and defines our brand like a living language is very important'," said O'Dornan.
She feels the best way to breathe life into Cornish is through children. "The key to truly reviving the language is clearly with the younger generation and bilingual books are a fantastic way to achieve this as they are easily accessible to both parents and children alike," she said.
The importance of stepping in to preserve minority languages has been recognised by Unesco, which argues that that their disappearance "is neither inevitable nor irreversible". Its Endangered Languages Programme aims to demonstrate its belief that "well-planned and implemented language policies can bolster the ongoing efforts of speaker communities to maintain or revitalise their mother tongues and pass them on to younger generations".
The Alaskan language Tlingit is listed as being "critically endangered", with an ethnic population of only 400 people. But that didn't deter the small Alaskan publisher Hazy Island Books from publishing the first ever children's book in the language. "Clearly, if the language is to continue to live and breathe, it must find a way to take its nourishment from the here and now," said publisher Liz Dodd, releasing The Story of the Town Bear and the Forest Bear, or Aanka Xóodzi ka Aasgutu Xóodzi Shkalneegi, in 2011.
Dodd said this week that the book had been distributed to 700 students in South East Alaska, Yukon and British Columbia, and another 200 have been sold in bookstores and online. Hazy Island was hoping to extend its reach by making an iPad app of it. "A few years ago things looked very bad for Tlingit. All the elders were dying off, but I went to a clan conference about a year ago and there were all these young Tlingit speakers, who speak a half-and-half language," she said.
Back in the UK, independent press Francis Boutle is on a mission to protect the lesser used languages of Europe, releasing titles in everything from Manx to Occitan – and Cornish.
Publisher Clive Boutle said: "Although there is a surprising amount of interest in minority and regional languages – for some, like the Norman languages of the Channel Islands, the interest may be too little, too late. Even Welsh, which is widely spoken, may have reached a tipping point in its heartlands.
"In France the situation is perhaps worse than in the UK, with regional languages not recognised by the French government, the only one not to have signed the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages. Occitan, the language of the troubadours, is greatly endangered as it slips from everyday use in Provence, Gascony and the Languedoc. My aim is not just to record these languages as they pass, but to provide a platform for their revival."
He added: "While so much good work is being done by small publishers in the area of minority languages, it is disturbing that so much power over the distribution of books is concentrated in the hands of Amazon, who also own Abebooks, Kindle, and now, GoodReads.
"It is not surprising that they don't recognise or value languages like Cornish, which don't represent significant market opportunities – that's money! A small victory may have taken place with Amazon's change of heart over Matthew and the Wellington Boots, but in the long run Amazon are the mortal enemies of diversity. Publishers use them at your peril."
from: Guardian
by: Alison Flood
With more than 40% of the world's estimated 7,000 languages "endangered and at risk of extinction", an army of tiny publishers is fighting an unsung battle to save them. UK press Diglot Books is one of them, and this week took on the might of Amazon to get its Cornish children's story out to readers.
Told by the internet giant that Matthew and the Wellington Boots (Matthew ha'n Eskisyow Glaw in Cornish, or Kernewek) would not be made available through Kindle Direct Publishing because it was in a language that is "not currently supported" by the platform, Diglot petitioned the retailer.
Director Alison O'Dornan said it did so "on the basis that our title was actually bilingual and that the Cornish translation had been checked by an examiner for the Cornish Language Board, and also that the alphabet was the same as English so there were no extra characters needed". When this had no effect, she turned to social media for support.
"The great news is that Amazon have indeed backed down after the support that we have generated, and have now agreed to publish the Cornish title," said O'Dornan, who hailed it as a testament to the power of social media in "allowing a minnow such as ourselves to change the minds of a big company".
O'Dornan added that KDP's official statement about the decision was: "The book is in a language that is not currently supported by Kindle Direct Publishing. At this time, you can upload and sell books in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Galician, and Basque to customers worldwide in the Kindle Store. We're working to add more languages to this list in the future."
"It is a surprisingly short list of languages and doesn't even include Welsh," said O'Dornan.
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment, but Matthew and the Wellington Boots is now for sale as an ebook via Amazon and Apple – where it has already received two five-star reviews, one in Cornish.
"When Matthew bounces down the stairs in a rush to play in the garden with his best friend Diglot, he discovers it is raining outside. Oh no! How can he play with his digger, ride his bicycle, or swing on his swing if everything is all wet?" runs the English text. In its Cornish translation from translator Stephen Gadd, this becomes: "Pan aslamm Matthew an grisyow war-nans yn uskis rag gwari y'n lowarth gans y goweth gwella, Diglot, ev a dhiskudh hy bos ow kul glaw. Ogh na! Fatel yll ev gwari gans y jynn-palas, diwrosa po leska war y lesk mars yw puptra glyb?"
Around 500 people cited Cornish as their main language in the 2011 census, which places the language as "endangered" on the Catalogue of Endangered Languages, a global collaborative project to preserve languages. Diglot believes it is vital to protect it.
"From a cultural perspective the existence of its own language adds considerable weight to the feeling of a cultural identity to Cornish people, and according to Cornwall councillor Bert Biscoe, a member of the Cornish Language Partnership, 'If you're looking at Cornwall's distinctiveness, its brand in the future world of trade and so forth, having something that distinguishes and defines our brand like a living language is very important'," said O'Dornan.
She feels the best way to breathe life into Cornish is through children. "The key to truly reviving the language is clearly with the younger generation and bilingual books are a fantastic way to achieve this as they are easily accessible to both parents and children alike," she said.
The importance of stepping in to preserve minority languages has been recognised by Unesco, which argues that that their disappearance "is neither inevitable nor irreversible". Its Endangered Languages Programme aims to demonstrate its belief that "well-planned and implemented language policies can bolster the ongoing efforts of speaker communities to maintain or revitalise their mother tongues and pass them on to younger generations".
The Alaskan language Tlingit is listed as being "critically endangered", with an ethnic population of only 400 people. But that didn't deter the small Alaskan publisher Hazy Island Books from publishing the first ever children's book in the language. "Clearly, if the language is to continue to live and breathe, it must find a way to take its nourishment from the here and now," said publisher Liz Dodd, releasing The Story of the Town Bear and the Forest Bear, or Aanka Xóodzi ka Aasgutu Xóodzi Shkalneegi, in 2011.
Dodd said this week that the book had been distributed to 700 students in South East Alaska, Yukon and British Columbia, and another 200 have been sold in bookstores and online. Hazy Island was hoping to extend its reach by making an iPad app of it. "A few years ago things looked very bad for Tlingit. All the elders were dying off, but I went to a clan conference about a year ago and there were all these young Tlingit speakers, who speak a half-and-half language," she said.
Back in the UK, independent press Francis Boutle is on a mission to protect the lesser used languages of Europe, releasing titles in everything from Manx to Occitan – and Cornish.
Publisher Clive Boutle said: "Although there is a surprising amount of interest in minority and regional languages – for some, like the Norman languages of the Channel Islands, the interest may be too little, too late. Even Welsh, which is widely spoken, may have reached a tipping point in its heartlands.
"In France the situation is perhaps worse than in the UK, with regional languages not recognised by the French government, the only one not to have signed the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages. Occitan, the language of the troubadours, is greatly endangered as it slips from everyday use in Provence, Gascony and the Languedoc. My aim is not just to record these languages as they pass, but to provide a platform for their revival."
He added: "While so much good work is being done by small publishers in the area of minority languages, it is disturbing that so much power over the distribution of books is concentrated in the hands of Amazon, who also own Abebooks, Kindle, and now, GoodReads.
"It is not surprising that they don't recognise or value languages like Cornish, which don't represent significant market opportunities – that's money! A small victory may have taken place with Amazon's change of heart over Matthew and the Wellington Boots, but in the long run Amazon are the mortal enemies of diversity. Publishers use them at your peril."
from: Guardian
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
In digital age, library finds difficulty attaching numbers to its value
Traditional methods don't work across modern platforms
by: Samantha Foster
Librarians at the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library have a problem unique to the modern age — attaching numbers to the myriad services the library provides across varied platforms.
While library CEO Gina Millsap estimates that for every tax dollar provided to the library for operation, $4 in value is returned to the community in such terms as literacy and school achievement, she says that value is difficult to prove without numbers to back up those claims.
So, the library tries to provide statistics that show an accurate picture of how city and county residents are using its services. But the desired accuracy seems impossible to attain. The library’s recently released 2012 annual report, for example, shows a decrease in the number of cardholders that looks startling — an 8.6 percent decrease from 2011, to about 88,000 — but reflects a much more complex reality.
Millsap on Tuesday said the drop reflects a purge of inactive library cards. Of the 7,000 eliminated, about 3,000 were those of young students who used the Adventuremobile. Cards issued for its use are seasonal and therefore temporary. The other 4,000 users whose cards were removed from the system showed as inactive in the library’s system for the three years before their deletion.
Many users with inactive cards have moved away or died — but others simply weren’t checking out materials.
That is where the library encountered a problem.
While traditional methods of counting the number of people who check out tangible items, such as books or films, provides a circulation count, the library doesn’t receive statistics about how many cardholders use their cards to access data from vendors.
“I could be an exclusive ebook user, and it’s like I don’t use the library at all,” Millsap said.
Some cardholders whose cards were canceled for inactivity have contacted the library claiming they do use its services, Millsap said. She said she hopes the problem will be corrected when ebook vendor Overdrive finally starts allowing the library access to the barcodes of its cardholders who use the service.
The vendor previously wasn’t willing to share that information with the library despite the fact the library had issued the cards for access, Millsap said, claiming a confidentiality issue. She said she now hopes to have access to the data by the end of the summer.
The library will in coming months add more vendors — for magazines, film streaming, e-audio books and music — to its platforms, further increasing the number of services it provides. But even if those vendors also agreed to provide information to the library, many other services don’t require the use of a card.
It is possible, Millsap said, that in the future the library will need to find a way to require library cards in some way for the full library experience — including accessing the Alice C. Sabatini Art Gallery, interacting with librarians, taking computer classes, attending programs — something she said they have resisted through fear of creating a hassle for library patrons.
“We have to find a way to do this without creating barriers for people,” Millsap said, “because if it creates barriers, we’re not going to do it.”
The goal is to make it easy to use the library, she said, “because it will make your life better.”
Although the library issues between 1,000 and 1,200 new cards each month, only 50 percent of cards are still active after three years, Millsap said. The library’s goal is to increase that retention rate to 75 percent. If that happens, she said, the library would easily have more than 100,000 cardholders — high membership for a county with an estimated population of 178,991 as of July 2012.
Millsap said the library is one of just a few nationwide developing a marketing plan to increase cardholder retention rates.
from: Topeka-Capital Journal
by: Samantha Foster
Librarians at the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library have a problem unique to the modern age — attaching numbers to the myriad services the library provides across varied platforms.
While library CEO Gina Millsap estimates that for every tax dollar provided to the library for operation, $4 in value is returned to the community in such terms as literacy and school achievement, she says that value is difficult to prove without numbers to back up those claims.
So, the library tries to provide statistics that show an accurate picture of how city and county residents are using its services. But the desired accuracy seems impossible to attain. The library’s recently released 2012 annual report, for example, shows a decrease in the number of cardholders that looks startling — an 8.6 percent decrease from 2011, to about 88,000 — but reflects a much more complex reality.
Millsap on Tuesday said the drop reflects a purge of inactive library cards. Of the 7,000 eliminated, about 3,000 were those of young students who used the Adventuremobile. Cards issued for its use are seasonal and therefore temporary. The other 4,000 users whose cards were removed from the system showed as inactive in the library’s system for the three years before their deletion.
Many users with inactive cards have moved away or died — but others simply weren’t checking out materials.
That is where the library encountered a problem.
While traditional methods of counting the number of people who check out tangible items, such as books or films, provides a circulation count, the library doesn’t receive statistics about how many cardholders use their cards to access data from vendors.
“I could be an exclusive ebook user, and it’s like I don’t use the library at all,” Millsap said.
Some cardholders whose cards were canceled for inactivity have contacted the library claiming they do use its services, Millsap said. She said she hopes the problem will be corrected when ebook vendor Overdrive finally starts allowing the library access to the barcodes of its cardholders who use the service.
The vendor previously wasn’t willing to share that information with the library despite the fact the library had issued the cards for access, Millsap said, claiming a confidentiality issue. She said she now hopes to have access to the data by the end of the summer.
The library will in coming months add more vendors — for magazines, film streaming, e-audio books and music — to its platforms, further increasing the number of services it provides. But even if those vendors also agreed to provide information to the library, many other services don’t require the use of a card.
It is possible, Millsap said, that in the future the library will need to find a way to require library cards in some way for the full library experience — including accessing the Alice C. Sabatini Art Gallery, interacting with librarians, taking computer classes, attending programs — something she said they have resisted through fear of creating a hassle for library patrons.
“We have to find a way to do this without creating barriers for people,” Millsap said, “because if it creates barriers, we’re not going to do it.”
The goal is to make it easy to use the library, she said, “because it will make your life better.”
Although the library issues between 1,000 and 1,200 new cards each month, only 50 percent of cards are still active after three years, Millsap said. The library’s goal is to increase that retention rate to 75 percent. If that happens, she said, the library would easily have more than 100,000 cardholders — high membership for a county with an estimated population of 178,991 as of July 2012.
Millsap said the library is one of just a few nationwide developing a marketing plan to increase cardholder retention rates.
from: Topeka-Capital Journal
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Are social enterprises the future for libraries?
Public sector cuts have led to a rise in the number of social enterprises running library services, but sustainability is a problem
by: Tim Smedley
The local library, along with schools and hospitals, used to form part of an unbreakable bond between citizen and state. Since austerity measures were enacted in 2010, however, that bond became much more fragile. Many local authorities have been quick to divest of library services, and their reasons for doing so are understandable. As Pete Gascoigne, executive director at Wigan Leisure and Culture Trust (WLCT) says, "No public libraries make a profit."
Much less understandable then, has been the subsequent eagerness of social enterprises to take them on.
Wigan Council were ahead of the curve when it outsourced its entire leisure and culture services in 2003. WLCT was created as a social enterprise spin-out to run everything from libraries to crematoria. But the money maker was always the leisure services, and Gascoigne informs that cross-subsidising is needed to support its library services. After ten years of experience, he says the Trust would be interested in bidding for library contracts in other boroughs, but primarily because "libraries may be part of a wider package... which would be our preference."
So if libraries are loss makers, how are some social enterprises able to make them self-sufficient?
The small computer recycling social enterprise Eco Computers for example won the contract to run three libraries in the borough of Lewisham in early 2011. Having never run a library before, it was a bold move. "We gave an expression of interest initially," explains Gavin Dunn, director of Eco Computers, "and went through a tendering process whereby we put our business case forward and Lewisham council looked at the range of applications... As far as I know, it was only local community projects that bid for it. I'm not sure it was a very attractive proposition for a private company, because there were no obvious ways to monetise the spaces."
It was attractive to Eco Computers, says Dunn, because, "It offered us a portal to expand our community projects, and at the same time we knew how well used the libraries were... we were already trying to address digital exclusion across the community, so it just seemed like a natural thing to do."
After re-branding the libraries as community hubs, and the company name to Eco Communities, the business plan mirrors that of all social enterprise-run libraries since – it diversified. "Obviously you don't generate money out of loaning books, or the use of computers – they are all free", says Dunn. "But we are installing cafés in all the libraries and the local housing associations are funding us to provide work experience and training for long-term unemployed residents, and we have a pot of funding from Defra... We also have the contract with the council to sell old library books... on Amazon, and at book fairs." And, of course, it continues to sell recycled electrical equipment, with the library buildings providing effective showrooms and depots.
Wigan understands the need to diversify too, Gascoigne says: "We've run everything from an emerging business working with adults with learning disabilities, to community cafés, to the citizens advice bureau."
In the borough of Kirklees, where Huddersfield-based social enterprise Fresh Horizons has taken on a single library contact, its managing director Mike McCusker explains, "The advantage we have over mainstream local authority services is our ability to embrace innovation and deliver a wide range of services." His library has even added a small cinema. However McCusker admits that "in the longer term we will need to be able to identify other income streams". An experiment to charge for internet access was short-lived, he says, because "we are serving a community which has little disposable income."
Even some of the biggest social enterprises are yet to crack the revenue model. London-based GLL took on its first library contract with Greenwich council in April last year, and has just been awarded the Wandsworth Libraries contract. Mark Sesnan, MD of GLL, says that it's still "early days. What we've got to decide is what we want the library service to look like for the next 30 years, and how that should be delivered... But in Greenwich we've made sure no libraries have closed, we've kept the opening hours the same, we've kept staff pay and conditions, and our guarantee is that things will be as good as they were before if not better."
There remains an element of experimentation around the social enterprise library model, but also an element of urgency. GLL has recently found itself competing against the private sector giant John Laing Intergrated Services (JLIS), which proudly boasts on its website to be "the first private sector company to specialise in the outsourcing of unique areas of public sector services that include libraries". Some fear that social enterprises may be unable to compete. McCusker talks of social benefits being "jettisoned in favour of imaginary cost effectiveness of the multi-nationals – here for short term gain and leaving the expensive complex issues to local providers who are committed for the long term." Indeed there was a messy fallout when a recent library contract in Croydon was said to have been awarded to JLIS – defeating GLL – only to fall through when pensions agreements were allegedly reneged on.
However, not all social enterprises are able to keep up local authority staffing structures either. In Lewisham, "we have one paid manager per library supported by a team of volunteers and some work placements – it's similar to a charity shop model," says Dunn. He says these are people who are already "very active in the local community and want to see their community prosper". But as an argument it is unlikely to hold much sway with trade unions. Meanwhile McCusker's experience is that a volunteers-based approach, "just won't work in deprived communities. Even in affluent areas I have heard examples where it takes 60 volunteers to keep a rural library open 21 hours a week. Volunteers are not free, they need support and co-ordination and many councils have found that the savings they imagined when taking this route have been far smaller than expected."
Social enterprises are, however, offering much more than books and computer access – the mixed-use community hub, argues Dunn, is the library model for the next 30 years: "We're open longer now than when the local council ran the libraries. I really believe that there's a wider range of services that we offer from our libraries now... There are things that the local council do well, no question. But they are unable to move quickly and introduce new services quickly when the community asks for it." The reason why social enterprises can, he says, "is that we are the local community – there is no them and us."
from: Guardian
by: Tim Smedley
The local library, along with schools and hospitals, used to form part of an unbreakable bond between citizen and state. Since austerity measures were enacted in 2010, however, that bond became much more fragile. Many local authorities have been quick to divest of library services, and their reasons for doing so are understandable. As Pete Gascoigne, executive director at Wigan Leisure and Culture Trust (WLCT) says, "No public libraries make a profit."
Much less understandable then, has been the subsequent eagerness of social enterprises to take them on.
Wigan Council were ahead of the curve when it outsourced its entire leisure and culture services in 2003. WLCT was created as a social enterprise spin-out to run everything from libraries to crematoria. But the money maker was always the leisure services, and Gascoigne informs that cross-subsidising is needed to support its library services. After ten years of experience, he says the Trust would be interested in bidding for library contracts in other boroughs, but primarily because "libraries may be part of a wider package... which would be our preference."
So if libraries are loss makers, how are some social enterprises able to make them self-sufficient?
The small computer recycling social enterprise Eco Computers for example won the contract to run three libraries in the borough of Lewisham in early 2011. Having never run a library before, it was a bold move. "We gave an expression of interest initially," explains Gavin Dunn, director of Eco Computers, "and went through a tendering process whereby we put our business case forward and Lewisham council looked at the range of applications... As far as I know, it was only local community projects that bid for it. I'm not sure it was a very attractive proposition for a private company, because there were no obvious ways to monetise the spaces."
It was attractive to Eco Computers, says Dunn, because, "It offered us a portal to expand our community projects, and at the same time we knew how well used the libraries were... we were already trying to address digital exclusion across the community, so it just seemed like a natural thing to do."
After re-branding the libraries as community hubs, and the company name to Eco Communities, the business plan mirrors that of all social enterprise-run libraries since – it diversified. "Obviously you don't generate money out of loaning books, or the use of computers – they are all free", says Dunn. "But we are installing cafés in all the libraries and the local housing associations are funding us to provide work experience and training for long-term unemployed residents, and we have a pot of funding from Defra... We also have the contract with the council to sell old library books... on Amazon, and at book fairs." And, of course, it continues to sell recycled electrical equipment, with the library buildings providing effective showrooms and depots.
Wigan understands the need to diversify too, Gascoigne says: "We've run everything from an emerging business working with adults with learning disabilities, to community cafés, to the citizens advice bureau."
In the borough of Kirklees, where Huddersfield-based social enterprise Fresh Horizons has taken on a single library contact, its managing director Mike McCusker explains, "The advantage we have over mainstream local authority services is our ability to embrace innovation and deliver a wide range of services." His library has even added a small cinema. However McCusker admits that "in the longer term we will need to be able to identify other income streams". An experiment to charge for internet access was short-lived, he says, because "we are serving a community which has little disposable income."
Even some of the biggest social enterprises are yet to crack the revenue model. London-based GLL took on its first library contract with Greenwich council in April last year, and has just been awarded the Wandsworth Libraries contract. Mark Sesnan, MD of GLL, says that it's still "early days. What we've got to decide is what we want the library service to look like for the next 30 years, and how that should be delivered... But in Greenwich we've made sure no libraries have closed, we've kept the opening hours the same, we've kept staff pay and conditions, and our guarantee is that things will be as good as they were before if not better."
There remains an element of experimentation around the social enterprise library model, but also an element of urgency. GLL has recently found itself competing against the private sector giant John Laing Intergrated Services (JLIS), which proudly boasts on its website to be "the first private sector company to specialise in the outsourcing of unique areas of public sector services that include libraries". Some fear that social enterprises may be unable to compete. McCusker talks of social benefits being "jettisoned in favour of imaginary cost effectiveness of the multi-nationals – here for short term gain and leaving the expensive complex issues to local providers who are committed for the long term." Indeed there was a messy fallout when a recent library contract in Croydon was said to have been awarded to JLIS – defeating GLL – only to fall through when pensions agreements were allegedly reneged on.
However, not all social enterprises are able to keep up local authority staffing structures either. In Lewisham, "we have one paid manager per library supported by a team of volunteers and some work placements – it's similar to a charity shop model," says Dunn. He says these are people who are already "very active in the local community and want to see their community prosper". But as an argument it is unlikely to hold much sway with trade unions. Meanwhile McCusker's experience is that a volunteers-based approach, "just won't work in deprived communities. Even in affluent areas I have heard examples where it takes 60 volunteers to keep a rural library open 21 hours a week. Volunteers are not free, they need support and co-ordination and many councils have found that the savings they imagined when taking this route have been far smaller than expected."
Social enterprises are, however, offering much more than books and computer access – the mixed-use community hub, argues Dunn, is the library model for the next 30 years: "We're open longer now than when the local council ran the libraries. I really believe that there's a wider range of services that we offer from our libraries now... There are things that the local council do well, no question. But they are unable to move quickly and introduce new services quickly when the community asks for it." The reason why social enterprises can, he says, "is that we are the local community – there is no them and us."
from: Guardian
Monday, April 8, 2013
The Simple Reason Why Goodreads Is So Valuable to Amazon
A small fraction of Americans buy the vast majority of books in this country. Goodreads gives Jeff Bezos & Co. a direct line into their thoughts and habits.
by: Jordan Weissmann
Amazon is the king of online booksellers and, by most accounts, the most feared player in publishing. Yet last week it shelled out a reported $150 million to buy up Goodreads, a social network for book nerds with a devoted but far from enormous 16 million members. So why is most of the media convinced this is a brilliant deal?
You've probably heard a few of the answers already. Namely, Amazon gets to keep a potential competitor out of the hands of rivals like Apple or Barnes and Noble, while snapping up a vast trove of data on Goodreads' members.
But there's a more fundamental issue at play here, too. Today, the publishing industry survives on super fans -- book worms who read far more than most Americans, and who tell their friends what to read as well. By picking up Goodreads, Amazon gets to tap into those super fans. Simple.
The United States is not, sadly, a country of lit buffs. In 2008, a little more than half of all American adults reported reading a book that was not required for work or school* during the past year, according to the National Endowment of the Arts. And as shown in the graph below, which like the other charts in this piece come courtesy of the industry researchers at Codex Group, and updates the sample data to match the 2010 Census, just 19 percent read a dozen or more titles.
Or, to put it another way, according to Codex just 19 percent of Americans do 79 percent of all our (non-required) book readin'.**
And the way those avid readers find their books is changing. According to Codex's quarterly survey (in 2012, the company interviewed some 30,000 readers total), far fewer people are finding their reading material at brick and mortar bookstores than two years ago. Instead, they're relying more on online media (including social networks and author websites) and personal recommendations from people they know (which tend to happen in person, but can also include some social network chatting). What they're not relying on much more heavily are recommendation engines from online booksellers, like Amazon.
The sorts of lit lovers who like to evangelize their favorite new novel are the same sorts of folks who tend to show up on Goodreads. And so, perhaps unsurprisingly, the site is a great platform for convincing people to buy books. Roughly 29 percent of Goodreads users told Codex they'd learned about the last book they bought either on the site, or at another book-focused social network.*** At traditional social networks, the number is 2.4 percent. When all is said and done, in the world of books, Goodreads is just about as influential as Facebook.
So Amazon has just bought the ecosystem where many of America's most influential readers choose their books. How exactly they'll use it isn't entirely clear yet. Some have suggested they'll integrate Goodreads into the Kindle experience. Others think that, given the problems Amazon has had with writers buying friendly reviews, they might use the site as an a big cache of trustworthy opinions. As David Vinjamuri put it at Forbes, "Goodreads offers Amazon the ability to transmit the recommendations of prolific readers to the average reader." In any event, there's plenty of value for Amazon to unlock. Assuming, of course, they don't do anything to muck up their new purchase,
___________________________
*Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that only 54 percent of American adults had reported reading any book in the survey. The NEA-Census questionnaire, however, specifically asks whether adults have read any book not required for work or school.
**Correction: An earlier version of this story did not clearly state that the figure comes from Codex's calculations, based on the NEA data.
***Goodreads is by far the largest site in this field.
from: The Atlantic
by: Jordan Weissmann
Amazon is the king of online booksellers and, by most accounts, the most feared player in publishing. Yet last week it shelled out a reported $150 million to buy up Goodreads, a social network for book nerds with a devoted but far from enormous 16 million members. So why is most of the media convinced this is a brilliant deal?
You've probably heard a few of the answers already. Namely, Amazon gets to keep a potential competitor out of the hands of rivals like Apple or Barnes and Noble, while snapping up a vast trove of data on Goodreads' members.
But there's a more fundamental issue at play here, too. Today, the publishing industry survives on super fans -- book worms who read far more than most Americans, and who tell their friends what to read as well. By picking up Goodreads, Amazon gets to tap into those super fans. Simple.
The United States is not, sadly, a country of lit buffs. In 2008, a little more than half of all American adults reported reading a book that was not required for work or school* during the past year, according to the National Endowment of the Arts. And as shown in the graph below, which like the other charts in this piece come courtesy of the industry researchers at Codex Group, and updates the sample data to match the 2010 Census, just 19 percent read a dozen or more titles.
Or, to put it another way, according to Codex just 19 percent of Americans do 79 percent of all our (non-required) book readin'.**
And the way those avid readers find their books is changing. According to Codex's quarterly survey (in 2012, the company interviewed some 30,000 readers total), far fewer people are finding their reading material at brick and mortar bookstores than two years ago. Instead, they're relying more on online media (including social networks and author websites) and personal recommendations from people they know (which tend to happen in person, but can also include some social network chatting). What they're not relying on much more heavily are recommendation engines from online booksellers, like Amazon.
In short, Barnes and Noble's in-store displays don't rule the book business like they used to, but they haven't been usurped by Amazon's algorithms either. Instead, the business model is moving further towards word of mouth. And, much as a very small portion of Americans do most of the book reading in this country, so too are they responsible for a vast majority of book recommending. Codex estimates that 11 percent of book buyers make about 46 percent of recommendations.
So Amazon has just bought the ecosystem where many of America's most influential readers choose their books. How exactly they'll use it isn't entirely clear yet. Some have suggested they'll integrate Goodreads into the Kindle experience. Others think that, given the problems Amazon has had with writers buying friendly reviews, they might use the site as an a big cache of trustworthy opinions. As David Vinjamuri put it at Forbes, "Goodreads offers Amazon the ability to transmit the recommendations of prolific readers to the average reader." In any event, there's plenty of value for Amazon to unlock. Assuming, of course, they don't do anything to muck up their new purchase,
___________________________
*Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that only 54 percent of American adults had reported reading any book in the survey. The NEA-Census questionnaire, however, specifically asks whether adults have read any book not required for work or school.
**Correction: An earlier version of this story did not clearly state that the figure comes from Codex's calculations, based on the NEA data.
***Goodreads is by far the largest site in this field.
from: The Atlantic
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