A Day for Readers at Book Expo America

A brilliant idea

Not set in stone, but hopefully it will come off

From Publishers Lunch

BEA Looks To Open Show To Public For A Day in 2013

After years of resisting suggestions to incorporate the reading public into Book Expo America, fair organizers "are looking at 2013 to shift" the show to straddle the weekend, running from Thursday through Saturday, with that third day open to public. The Saturday consumer focus would be "built around author events, but [will] also allow them onto the show floor to look behind the curtain, see what new works from their favorite writers will be coming out like ComicCon does." BEA show director Steve Rosato argues in a blog post that maintaining a third day of regular exhibits outside of the regular work week, by itself still controversial among exhibitors, "will also give a day of exhibits on the weekend that small but vocal portion of librarians and booksellers miss."

Facebook to go public

Any spare cash to invest?

Facebook will begin the process of becoming a publicly-listed company this week, valuing the social networking site at between $75bn (£48bn) and $100bn, reports suggest.

The company plans to file papers with the US financial watchdog on Wednesday, according to the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal.

The flotation later this year would raise about $10bn, they reported.

This would be one of the biggest share sales seen on Wall Street.

It would dwarf the $1.9bn raised by Google when it went public in 2004.

It would still, however, be some way short of the $20bn raised by carmaker General Motors in November 2010.

ISLAND OF THE LOST

It's in production

Or, at least, at South Pacific Pix they tell me that the script is being written ...

Yes, I am talking about Island of the Lost, the castaway story that has brought me a lot of fans.


Today I received one of those neat letters, this one from Queensland, Australia.

Hi Joan,

I am writing to tell you how much I thoroughly enjoyed reading "Island of the lost"

It was inspiring and I couldn't put it down. I was so enthralled by the imagery and the language you employed so seamlessly, that I was able to conjure up in my minds eye, the most vivid of images. Have you ever thought about having this masterpiece made into a motion picture? Couldn't you just imagine someone like Peter Jackson directing such an offering? With todays wonderful technology, it is possible to create almost any scene imaginable and I can imagine that your telling of this amazing story would be treated with great respect. Nothing needs to be changed and I think it is capable of being turned into a cinematic masterpiece.

Just had to say that, and would help in any way possible to make it happen.

Fantstic stuff Joan, and I would love to see this story told on the big screen.

Nick Gane

 

Thanks, Nick, and many thanks for the permission to publish your great letter on my blog

2011 Fantastic Year for Self-Published Freethy

One million titles sold in just one year

As usual, I had a scan through the NYT bestsellers list (print and eBooks) looking for self-published successes on the level of Chan and Hocking, but found only two, today.  One was Darcie Chan's Mill River Recluse, which I am pleased to see still doing so well.  The other was a new name to me.

Barbara Freethy

A writer who has published with Simon & Schuster (she is still on their website) and other major houses, she has taken her backlist titles after reversion of rights, and published them herself, with dramatic success.

Unlike most independently published authors, who kick off sales by asking just  $0.99, Freethy priced her books between $2.99 and $5.99.  Nonetheless, they sold extremely well, to the tune of 1,000,000 in just one year.

Over the past twelve months, eight of Freethy's seventeen self-published titles have hit the New York Times and/or USA Today Bestseller List.

In a word, she made gold in books that had been taking up space in her closet.  Having a following already would have helped a lot, but still it is amazing.

According to Theresa Horner, VP Content B&N Digital Products, "Barbara Freethy's self-publishing success proves that digitizing books can boost readership and breathe new life into older titles. Her backlist titles through PubIt!, Barnes & Noble's fast and free digital self-publishing platform, have consistently landed her at the top of the BN.com eBook list. We're thrilled for Barbara and we look forward to helping her sell the next million!"

She is traditionally published, too, currently being with Pocket.  However, Freethy is planning to self-publish e-book originals in the future. "I am excited about the opportunity to not only make all of my books available again, but also to publish new works more frequently, allowing me to better respond to the demands of my readers."

Freethy's books are sold through online retailers Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Apple, Sony and Kobo. They are also distributed through Smashwords and Overdrive to libraries and other online retailers.

You can read about her on her WEBSITE

Dolly Parton turned down Elvis

And justifiably so

He just wanted her publishing rights.

Country icon Dolly Parton refused to let Elvis Presley record her hit song I Will Always Love You because she didn't want to give up the publishing rights to the track.

The 9 to 5 singer reveals The King was a big fan of her 1970s tune and was set to head into the studio to lay down his vocals when his formidable manager, 'Colonel' Tom Parker, demanded Parton surrender her entitlement to the single's royalties.

But Parton tells US journalist Anderson Cooper she knew the financial sacrifice was too much just to have one of her tracks covered by Presley.

"Elvis was gonna record that song, he had it ready and 'Colonel' Tom Parker says, 'We have to have the publishing, or we won't record anything.' I said, 'I can't do that!' He wanted half the publishing (rights)! ...It wasn't Elvis' fault, it was Colonel Parker."

Parton admits she "cried about it" after rejecting the deal, but she struck gold in 1992 when Whitney Houston's version of the track topped charts around the world.

"Then when Whitney did it, I got all the money for the publishing and for the writing and I bought a lot of cheap wigs... with that!"

Haunted by her own book

Some books haunt the reader. Others haunt the writer. The Handmaid's Tale has done both.

It has never been out of print.  It has been made into a film, and adapted for opera.  For some, it has become a synonym for the repression of women.  It has been admired and reviled.  And it's a book that haunts the writer.

Using the diary she kept at the time, Margaret Atwood reflects on the extraordinary effect The Handmaid's Tale  has had on the world and herself.

It's a strange and yes, a haunting story.  Read it in The Guardian.

Words they wish they'd never said

"Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances."

-- Dr. Lee DeForest, "Father of Radio & Grandfather of Television."

"The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives."

- - Admiral William Leahy , US Atomic Bomb Project

"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."

-- Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923

"Computers in the future may weigh more than 1.5 tons."

-- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

-- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year."

--The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

"But what is it good for?"

-- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."

-- Bill Gates, 1981

This 'telephone'has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us"

-- Western Union internal memo, 1876.

 

 

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"

-- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

 

 

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible"

-- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper"

--Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With The Wind."

"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make"

-- Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies.

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out,"

-- Decca Recording Co. Rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible"

-- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this"

- - Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads.

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy"

-- Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."

- - Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University , 1929.

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value"

-- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre , France

"Everything that can be invented has been invented,"

-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899.

"The super computer is technologically impossible. It would take all of the water that flows over Niagara Falls to cool the heat generated by the number of vacuum tubes required."

-- Professor of Electrical Engineering, New York University

"I don't know what use any one could find for a machine that would make copies of documents. It certainly couldn't be a feasible business by itself."

-- the head of IBM, refusing to back the idea, forcing the inventor to found Xerox.

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."

-- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse , 1872

"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon"

-- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.

"Who the hell would want to read a book about a bunch of crazy Swedes on a raft?"

-- editor, turning down The Kon Tiki Expedition

Simon's Cat and Kitten Chaos

Simon's Cat has a new book

It's called Kitten Chaos

Can you imagine the self-absorbed feline having kitten-competition in the home?

Well, it happened, and it has been turned into a book, to follow a rash of great new Simon's Cat cartoons on YouTube.

And the book had its launch in a cinema

The great event took place at the Prince Charles cinema in Leicester Square, London. Special invitations were sent out to competition winners from the Simon's Cat website, as well as winners from the Daily Mirror newspaper.

Predictably, the entertainment was firstclass, with a "Double Trouble" cartoon shown on the big screem, and lots of input from the cartoonist (and cat owner) himself.  

And naturally, a video of the book launch was produced.  You can view it HERE

Downton Abbey controversy heats up

"Why have Americans fallen for a show that serves up snobbery by the bucketful?"

So demands historian Simon Schama in Newsweek's Daily Beast   

"Yes, I know it’s perfect in its way," he writes. "Nothing beats British television drama for servicing the instincts of cultural necrophilia. So the series is fabulously frocked, and acted, and overacted, and hyper-overacted by all the Usual Suspects in keeping with their allotted roles. There’s Carson, the beetle-browed butler. (My favorite in the endless parade of butlerian clichés was Rabbits, the butler in H. G. Wells’s hymn of hate to the lordly house, Tono-Bungay.) Maggie Smith does her tungsten-corseted, eye-rolling, nostril-curling, glottal-gurgle as only she can—half Lady Bracknell, half Queen Mary (the unfailingly erect consort of King George V). Julian Fellowes has gotten this stuff down pat since writing Gosford Park, though all the main plot lines were anticipated a long time ago by Upstairs, Downstairs."

Well, you get the drift by now.  But for some marvellously passionate, well crafted prose, read the rest HERE.

In the past, Julian Fellowes has neglected the golden rule of writers -- never, ever respond to an unfavorable review -- and snapped right back. 

Responding to people who accused the show of using anachronistic language and etiquette, he declared,  "The real problem is with people who are insecure socially, and they think to show how smart they are by picking holes in the programme to promote their own poshness and to show that their knowledge is greater than your knowledge."

Oh my.  One can only wait for his reaction to this latest scathing commentary.

He should relax.  Let's face it, for all its shortcomings, its lack of originality, and its stereotyped themes, Downton Abbey is incredibly addictive.
                

Another interactive cookbook

It seems just yesterday that the Kung Fu Panda 2 Cookbook came out

Now there is another.

CEO Gili Abramovich (pictured) is bubbling over with the news.

"I wanted to share with you a link to our newest cookbook which is officially being launched today for the iPad – the Hello Kitty Cookbook," he wrote.

And of course there is a video.  It's at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBOIStbOQIA

From the press release:

The world most celebrated and beloved kitty, Hello Kitty, brings her delightful charm and culinary ideas straight into the kitchen on the iPad with the new Hello Kitty Digital Cookbook for children. This app is the 2nd digital cookbook released by Castle Builders as part of its unique lineup of digital books for children.

Gili says the next step is interactive eBooks for adults.  As a life-long booklover, this has given me a great deal to mull over, and friends have also contributed their thoughts and doubts on facebook (http://www.facebook.com/#!/druettjo).  I can envisage the magic of having videos and sound effects attached to travel books, for instance.  But, somehow, the thought of reading a novel on iPad or iPhone doesn't seem natural.  What would be the advantages? 

I suspect that before the year is out we will be getting interactive prospectuses from all kinds of forward-looking business people.

Now, there's a scary thought.  Interactive advertising!