TUPAIA WINS AWARD FOR BEST COVER DESIGN

Congratulations to Saskia Nichol

PANZ awards Tupaia designer best cover prize

 

2012 Winners

Click on cover images for further information and judges’ comments.

Gerard Reid Award for Best Book
Sponsored by Nielsen Book Services

HarperCollins Award for Best Cover

Mary Egan Award for Best Typography

Random House New Zealand Award for Best Illustrated Book

Hachette New Zealand Award for Best Non-Illustrated Book

Pearson Award for Best Educational Book

Scholastic New Zealand Award for Best Children’s Book

Film Censor retires with memorable quote

Quote of the Day

“When I was appointed, Ali G said it was the best job in the world as you got to watch porn all day.”

Sir Quentin Thomas (pictured) retires as president of the British Board of Film Classification

Prestigious African Writing Award

Nigeria's Rotimi Babatunde wins Caine writing prize

Rotimi Babatunde, who lives in Ibadan, also wins a month's writer-in-residence at a US university

Nigerian writer Rotimi Babatunde has won this year's prestigious Caine Prize for African Writing.

The £10,000 ($15,700) prize was given for his story Bombay's Republic about Nigerian soldiers who fought in the Burma campaign during World War II.

"It is about liberation and how a character can have his world widened," Mr Babatunde told the BBC.

He was among five writers short-listed for the prize, regarded as Africa's leading literary award.

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The World's First Crossword Puzzle

By Arthur Wynne, December 21, 1913
from The New York World
(Solution here)

2-3.	What bargain hunters enjoy.	6-22.	What we all should be.
4-5.	A written acknowledgment.	4-26.	A day dream.
6-7.	Such and nothing more.	2-11.	A talon.
10-11.	A bird.	19-28.	A pigeon.
14-15.	Opposed to less.	F-7.	Part of your head.
18-19.	What this puzzle is.	23-30.	A river in Russia.
22-23.	An animal of prey.	1-32.	To govern.
26-27.	The close of a day.	33-34.	An aromatic plant.
28-29.	To elude.	N-8.	A fist.
30-31.	The plural of is.	24-31.	To agree with.
8-9.	To cultivate.	3-12.	Part of a ship.
12-13.	A bar of wood or iron.	20-29.	One.
16-17.	What artists learn to do.	5-27.	Exchanging.
20-21.	Fastened.	9-25.	To sink in mud.
24-25.	Found on the seashore.	13-21.	A boy.
10-18.	The fibre of the gomuti palm.

Happy 150th birthday, Alice

On July 4, 1862, a 30-year-old mathematician named Charles Dodgson told three little children a story

And Alice in Wonderland was born.

The children were Lorina, Edith, and Alice, daughters of Henry Liddell, the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford.

Dodgson had become close friends with Liddell's wife (also named Lorina), and had adopted the habit of taking her children on rowing trips, and it was on one of these that the story was told.

Little Alice Liddell was so taken with the fanciful yarn that she begged Dodgson to write it down, which he did, presenting her with a handwritten, illustrated manuscript called "Alice's Adventures Under Ground."   Before he had finished it, however, he had shown it to a friend, George Macdonald, who had read it to his many children.  Because of the enthusiasm of his progeny, Macdonald persuaded Dodgson to submit a copy for publication.

The publisher was Macmillan, who liked it immensely.  In 1865 the book was launched with the title of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, under the "Lewis Carroll" penname, and with illustrations by Sir John Tenniel.

The rest, as they say, is history.

UK Children's Bookshops surviving the eAge

Children's bookshops are bucking a UK-wide decline, according to a new report by the Booksellers Association

Not a single children's bookshop closed in 2011, said the report, despite a steady drop in the number of independent stores, with 73 closing their doors for good.

The report added 36 new bookshops opened in the second half of the year.

The findings were revealed at the start of Independent Booksellers Week - which runs from 30 June until 7 July.

Continue reading the main story

One bookseller's experience

I am slightly surprised, but the last three months have been very good. There are signs that people are spending more money on books for their children. I think we're two years into a recession and now people are aware of how much they've got to spend. A book is the same price as two cups of coffee.
I think schools are also helping with highlighting literacy. We do a lot with schools, and we do author events and events during the holidays. People are definitely supporting their local communities more, too, not just in bookshops. It could be that there is a bit of an Amazon backlash at the moment, as they don't put any money back into the community. We have a lot of local customers, I think people are realising the importance of their local bookshops.

The whole thing about a local bookshop is that it's a theatrical experience, something that customers wouldn't get if they bought something online. We're doing crafts, stationery and a lot of Tintin products to go with the books. The parents can have tea and cake and sit with their children while they choose what book they want. It's an enjoyable experience.
Jeff Doak, Mr & Mrs Doak's Bumper Bookshop for Boys and Girls, Eastbourne, East Sussex

Children's book purchases rose slightly in 2011 by both volume and value, said the BA report, quoting research by Books And Consumer.

The increase was driven by the purchase of physical non-fiction titles, and one can't dismiss the enduring popularity of Enid Blyton et al.  And sales of the Hunger Games trilogy certainly didn't hurt. 

2012's bestselling children's books so far

• 1) The Hunger Games Trilogy: The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
• 2) The Hunger Games Trilogy: Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
• 3) The Hunger Games Trilogy: Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins
• 4) War Horse - Michael Morpurgo
• 5) Theodore Boone: The Abduction - John Grisham
• 6) Where's Wally Now? - Martin Handford
• 7) Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth - Jeff Kinney
• 8) The What the Ladybird Heard Song - Julia Donaldson
• 9) Roald Dahl's Fantabulous Facts (World Book Day) - Roald Dahl
• 10) Big Day Out - Jacqueline Wilson

Budget cuts forcing more UK museums and galleries to close

Galleries and museums across the UK are shutting down or reducing their opening hours because of ongoing budget cuts, according to a new survey.

Of the 114 institutions questioned by the Museums Association, 22% have closed all or part of their sites in the last 12 months.

Services to schools have also been dramatically reduced.

Mark Taylor, director of the Museums Association, said there was "no prospect of an upturn any time soon".

"Funding isn't getting any better and in many cases it's getting worse," he explained.

"Of most concern is that public access is down and this is of particular concern to smaller, community museums. They are affected most by the cuts and if they start to die, it's unlikely they'll ever come back.

"It is sad because these museums are the soul of the towns and villages they are in."

Recent closures include the the Malton Museum in Ryedale, which shut in February, and the Museum of Nottingham Life.

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100% Royalty Offer

What's the catch?

There isn't one, apparently

— Booktango(TM), the DIY free e-book publishing platform from Author Solutions, Inc., today announced authors who publish by July 4, 2012 will receive the maximum possible royalties from their e-book sales. Titles already published with Booktango will be grandfathered into the program, guaranteeing existing Booktango authors will earn maximum royalties for the life of their books.

“For the first time, e-book authors can now publish for free and keep the entire sale price of their e-book. That means if an e-book is sold for $4.99 through the Booktango bookstore, the author gets the full $4.99,” said Chris Bass, Director of Marketing for Booktango. “If it’s sold through another outlet, the e-books retailer takes their standard fee, and the author gets the rest. Booktango takes nothing — no other publishing company is offering anything this beneficial to authors.”

With Booktango, DIY e-book authors now have a universal publishing solution to create, edit, format, publish, promote and distribute their e-books all from a single platform. And with features like a free cover designer and an ever-increasing gallery of stock images, it’s never been easier to create an attractive, marketable e-book.

“There’s now a whole new sense of freedom in the publishing world because of Booktango. Authors finally have the choice to publish on their own terms, knowing they are earning the highest dollar amount per e-book sold. It’s truly the best time in history to be an author,” continued Bass.

Titles published through Booktango are available through the Booktango Bookstore and leading book retailers including Amazon(R), Barnes and Noble(R), Kobo(R), Apple(R) iBooks, Google(R) and more.

For more information about free and easy e-book publishing and distribution through Booktango, visit www.booktango.com .

Alan Villiers Memorial Lecture

Third Memorial Lecture to be held in Oxford, UK

Alan Villiers

Under the auspices of the Society for Nautical Research, The Naval Review and the Britannia Naval Research Association, with the support of the Hudson Trust, the 3rd Alan Villiers Memorial Lecture will be given at St.Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, on Wednesday 26th September.

The main speaker will be Professor John B.Hattendorf, United States Naval War College, on the subject "The Naval War of 1812 in International Perspective."

The event will begin with a short talk "Preserving HMS Victory" given by Andrew Baines, Keeper and Curator, HMS Victory, and the screening of "The Voyage of the Mayflower II," a film made by Alan Villiers.

Registration from 12.30 pm.Lunch at 1.00pm. Lectures begin promptly at 2.00pm. Ticket to include lunch and refreshments £25. If you are only interested in the lectures, and don't intend to eat, there is no charge, but entrance is on application.

For more information contact the AVML event organisers at: avmlpurser@ntlworld.com

Should readers play a part in publishing choices?

What you read and how you read on eReaders is being noted.

According to a lengthy report in The Wall Street Journal, Amazon, Nook, Kobo and other e-readers observe reader habits through their devices and reading apps and are beginning to organize the data and learn from it.

Fiction and nonfiction are read differently, for instance.  Barnes & Noble learned that while novels are generally read all the way through, non-fiction is read in parts and readers often quit non-fiction books before finishing.

It makes a big difference if you are already hooked into a series.  Kobo found that George R.R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons (the fifth book in his popular Game of Thrones series, Random House) was a particularly engaging book: Most readers read it from start to finish at an average speed of about 50-pages an hour.

Will the development and release of more e-reading data by retailers to publishers help publishers develop better and better-selling books?

Farrar, Straus & Giroux publisher Jonathan Galassi defended the sanctity of books as creative works that “the reader shouldn’t have anything to do with.”

 As WSJ points out, others in the publishing industry embrace the idea of input from readers.

After all, readers are their market.

One firm that is going in actively for reader-sourced data in making publishing decisions is Sourcebooks, which calls the process "agile publishing."

Indie authors are adopting an even more innovative approach. If your readers aren't happy with your book, it's easy enough to withdraw it, rewrite, and republish.  Elle Lothlorien, a self-published author, wrote an alternate ending to her book Sleeping Beauty in response to author demand. 

As USA Today wrote: Elle Lothlorien knows how to keep her readers happy. If some don’t like the ending of her book Sleeping Beauty, then there’s another option: Sleeping Beauty with a different ending. How cool is that?

And then there is Coliloquy, a new start-up that creates books that allow readers to customize characters and plot lines.  In their promo, they call is "active fiction": their digital platform links authors and readers, allowing the novelist to invite reader engagement, and shape his or her story line accordingly.  The result? Innovative digital fiction that moves beyond traditional publishing.

As Digital Book World comments, while this is certainly a fringe experiment in new modes of publishing for now, Coliloquy might have something to teach other publishers: Most readers finish the books and about two-thirds re-read them.