The Daily Square – Jingle Bells Edition
More ways to waste time on the Internet: publishers battle over the classics market while ebook readers continue to tease consumers.
On Writing Through Your Life
In one way I’m just writing my way through my life, although I am playing a game of catch-up. Some writers do this but they are starting off younger. People are always saying how old I was when I wrote my first novel. But yes, some people who start writing in college have a longer trajectory — there is the college novel, the “I’ve just fallen in love” novel, the divorce novel, the “what life is like with children” novel. (Yes, we’re cheating this week with two quotes from the same piece. We like to keep you on your toes.
Quick Thoughts On Book Search
Gosh, it seems like a year since we sat in a room and listened as a representative of Microsoft outlined the company’s ambitious plans for its book search project. In reality, it’s been closer to nine months. Which would make it six months since the company wooed authors and publishers at BookExpo America. “Come to us, and let us scan your books,” they said. Before we get into the point of this post, we want to dwell for a moment on this concept of scanning books. Unless policy has changed very recently, scanning is indeed how Microsoft is getting published
When A Scandal Isn’t Really
What is plagiarism? We do not ask out of idle curiosity, we ask because, well, it seems that everyone is doing it. Or at least being accused of doing it. Or something. This week’s offender is reputedly Ian McEwan — though his actual crime seems to be mired in the magical world of “Huh?” McEwan is accused of plagiarizing from the memoirs of the recently deceased romance author (and former war-time nurse) Lucilla Andrews. He clearly acknowledges that he used her source material. But what he quotes are historical facts from an eyewitness — is the wholesale lifting and stealing
On Roses
My agent actually told me that One Good Turn wasn’t put on the longlist for the Booker because it was regarded as genre fiction, and I just thought, “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” It is so elitist! To me, it’s like Gertrude Stein’s “A rose is a rose is a rose” — well, I say a book is a book is a book. There are good books, bad books, mediocre books. Why is it necessary to say it’s not any good because it is a crime novel, a romance, or whatever? Jane Austen wrote romance for heaven’s sake. Dickens wrote crime
Google Book Search, Google Print, The Plot Comes Together
If you didn’t realize that Google was moving toward a paid content model with its various book initiatives, you haven’t been paying attention. Though the news has apparently just crossed the Atlantic Ocean, this goal was made clear at this year’s BEA (and, well, should have been obvious to everyone from the beginning). While publishers and authors continue to take the litigation route, Google is moving forward with plans to sell digitized content. This is great news for those publishers who are seeing increased interest in their products. This is also great news for consumers who can’t get access to
The Daily Square – See A Little Light Edition
Daily links from Medialoper: booksquare
Notes From The Inbox
We had a lovely rant about finding reviewers for your work planned for this morning, but due to technical difficulties (ie, lack of caffeine), it was lost in the ether. However, we remember enough of said tirade to reproduce the intent of the post, if not the actual words. Our intent was to explain, gently, that if you are seeking reviews, you must do your homework. Approaching the wrong people with requests to review your brilliant work is not a positive career move.
Castration By Drapery, Or, The Importance Of Good Editing
What with one thing and the other, we were seriously underbooked as we left town for the Thanksgiving holiday — luckily, we were able to borrow from the lending library run by the BS mother (as she doesn’t reread books, borrowing books from her is a kindness). We settled on a fairly recent J.D. Robb novel; it seemed appropriate. But as we settled down to read, things grew uncomfortable. A typo here, a typo there. Then things moved to downright frustrating: the wrong word here, the wrong word there. And out-and-out angering: sloppy scene changes, poor editing. Mistake after mistake,