Deathless insults

 They said it ... very unkindly

 

 

 
 
A member of Parliament to Disraeli: "Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease."·
"That depends, Sir," said Disraeli, "whether I embrace your policies or your mistress."·
 
 
 "He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr·
 
 
"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." -Winston Churchill· "
 
 
I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." Clarence Darrow·
 
 
"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." - William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway).·

 "Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it." - Moses Hadas·
 
 "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." - Mark Twain·
 
  "He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.." - Oscar Wilde·
 
         "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one." - George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill·
         "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second ... if there is one." - Winston Churchill, in response.·
 
 "I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here." -Stephen Bishop·
 
  "He is a self-made man and worships his creator." - John Bright·
 
  "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." -Irvin S. Cobb·
 
  "He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others." -Samuel Johnson·
 
  "He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up." - Paul Keating·
 
  "In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily." -Charles, Count Talleyrand·
 
  "He loves nature in spite of what it did to him." - Forrest Tucker·
 
   "Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?" - Mark Twain·
 
  "His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." - Mae West·
 
  "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go." -Oscar Wilde·
 
   "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)·
 
   "He has Van Gogh's ear for music." - Billy Wilder·
 
  "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." – Groucho

  With thanks to Judith Smith

 

Sacramento's First Newspaper

The Placer Times



The Placer Times was first published on April 28, 1849./ Valley Community Newspapers photo, Lance Armstrong

 

 

Sacramento City's first newspaper, the Placer Times was established 164 years ago in an adobe-like structure near the modern day corner of 28th and K streets, just outside the walls of Sutter’s Fort.

 

Originally a weekly publication, the Times, which was initially published by E.C. Kemble & Co., began the distribution of its first issue on April 28, 1849.

 

At the time that Edward Cleveland Kemble established this pioneer newspaper, the Times was one of only two newspapers being published in California.

 

The other newspaper was Yerba Buena’s (San Francisco’s) Alta California, which began through a mergence of California’s first two newspapers, the Californian and The California Star.

 

The Californian, which included news in English and Spanish, was first published in Monterey on Aug. 15, 1846. The paper was relocated to San Francisco about a year later.

 

Predating the Californian’s arrival in San Francisco, the Star, which was founded by Samuel Brannan, became San Francisco’s first newspaper, as it was published for the first time in Yerba Buena on Jan. 9, 1847.

 

Like Brannan, Kemble came to California on the Brooklyn, which dropped anchor at Yerba Buena (in San Francisco harbor) on July 31, 1846.  Soon, he acquired both the Californian and the Star, merging them as the Alta California. And then he made his historic decision to establish a paper at Sutter's Fort, the gateway to the "diggings."

 

According to the 1880 book, “History of Sacramento County,” type was acquired from the old Alta office, a Ramage press (the same one used by California's first printer, Augustin V. Zamorano) was repaired and old Spanish printing paper was obtained. Then the items were shipped to Sacramento City (originally known as simply "the Embarcadero") on a small schooner, Dice Me Nana, and carted up to the walls of Sutter's Fort.

 

The Times, which was originally printed on 13-inch by 18-inch paper and had its title cut from wood with a pocketknife, also served as a bullhorn for news of the Gold Rush.

 

The original price of the newspaper, which originally featured three columns of text per page, was $10 per year, $6 for six months, $4 for three months and 25 cents for single copies. Although the first issue of the Times was not rich with advertisements, it nonetheless included notable advertisements such as a notice that Captain John A. Sutter was offering a $200 reward for the return of two horses that went missing from Sutter’s Fort.

 

Kemble’s time with Sacramento’s first newspaper was short lived, as is evident by the following words that were printed in the June 23, 1849 edition of the Times: “The ill health of Mr. E.C. Kemble has obliged him to retire from his post as editor of this paper. He has been succeeded in the duties as such by (T.R. Per Lee).”

 

Under this new editorship, the Times was relocated to Front Street during the following month.

Four months later, however, the Times was being printed on 2nd Street, between K and L streets.

In only a short period of time, the Times would experience many other changes, including an enlargement in its size and cost, its evolution to a tri-weekly publication on April 22, 1850 and its emergence as Sacramento’s first daily newspaper on June 5, 1850.

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

Amazon to remove short shorts?

Jason Boog on GalleyCat reports that Amazon may be planning to remove books that are under 2,500 words

This was after a KDP writer reported receiving a letter from Amazon stating that books that are under that length should be augmented with additional relevant material, as otherwise they would be removed.

Here is the letter:

Hello,

During a quality assurance review of your KDP catalog we have found that the following book(s) are extremely short and may create a poor reading experience and do not meet our content quality expectations:

[Name of Short]

In the best interest of Kindle customers, we remove titles from sale that may create a poor customer experience. Content that is less than 2,500 words is often disappointing to our customers and does not provide an enjoyable reading experience.

We ask that you fix the above book(s), as well as all of your catalog’s affected books, with additional content that is both unique and related to your book. Once you have ensured your book(s) would create a good customer experience, re-submit them for publishing within 5 business days. If your books have not been corrected by that time, they will be removed from sale in the Kindle Store. If the updates require more time, please unpublish your books.

The author in question reported this on the KBoards forum, and received some interesting replies -- including the observation that the new ruling would eliminate a lot of erotica!

My personal view is that 2,500 words makes a very short story.  If I bought a story that length, it would be part of a collection, or in a magazine that is willing to publish short shorts.  (My latest story in the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, "The Bengal Tiger," is 4,800 words, which is the usual kind of length.)

And anything that Amazon does to improve the quality of the reading experience is fine by me.

Banknote to picture Churchill

Churchill banknote to be issued

Sir Winston Churchill will feature on the new design of a banknote which will enter circulation in 2016, the Bank of England has announced.

The wartime leader's image is planned to feature on the reverse of the new £5 note, together with one of his most celebrated quotations.

Churchill was chosen owing to his place as "a hero of the entire free world", said Bank governor Sir Mervyn King.

The current face of the £5 note is social reformer Elizabeth Fry.
'Truly great leader'
A wide range of historical characters appears on the reverse of Bank of England banknotes, with Elizabeth Fry the only woman among the current crop.

The Bank of England governor has the final say about who appears on a banknote, although the public can make suggestions. The latest addition has been announced by Sir Mervyn at Churchill's former home of Chartwell, in Westerham, Kent.

eBook bestsellers

Digital Book World has published its list of digital best sellers for the first quarter of 2013

And there is a big surprise

The big story so far this year is Hachette. Driven by the success of series like Beautiful Creatures, some 27% of all books on the list so far this year have been titles from Hachette.

Random House and Penguin are not far behind with 87 titles and 42 titles, respectively. Combined, Penguin Random House has published roughly 40% of all ebook best-sellers this year.

Just behind Random-Penguin is the big surprise: self-published titles. In the first 13 weeks of the year, 22 self-published titles have hit the best-seller list (7% of all titles), including two No. 1 spots.

Rank	Publisher	Appearances	Points
1	Hachette	88	1301
2	Random House	87	823
3	Penguin	42	421
4	Self-published	22	393
5	Macmillan	18	213
6	Scholastic	17	259
7	HarperCollins	15	151
8	Amazon	11	130
9	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt	7	57
10	Simon & Schuster	7	69

The James Patterson ad blitz

Publishers Weekly and the Patterson ad

"The New York Times needs to wake the fuck up."
-- James Patterson

The great James Patterson machine has swung into action -- in defense of traditional publishers.

This past weekend, James Patterson took out ads on the cover of PW, in The New York Times Book Review, and in Kirkus asking the questions "Who will save our books? Our bookstores? Our libraries?" and listing a number of classic books like The Sound and the Fury and A Wrinkle in Time.

His rationale? 

Without traditional publishers, along with all the traditional editing and so forth, there will be no more great books.

"This is hopefully starting a dialogue," Patterson said to PW. "I hate sitting around and talking; I like to do things."

Specifically, Patterson expressed frustration at the lack of advancement of the future of books discussion. The discussion, Patterson said, is stuck in a rut and there are ways everyone can chip in to fix it. "Publishers are sitting around saying: 'Woe is me.' Get in attack mode," Patterson said. The problem continues with media coverage, as Patterson said the same article about the book business being in trouble--with little information beyond that and little mention of possible solutions--is being written over and over. "That article is not worth running," he said. "The New York Times needs to wake the fuck up."

Predictably, Joe Konruth, the great supporter and promoter of the digital revolution has seen red.

"I'm not finding much to agree with here," he writes.

Along with lots of argument, he produces an evocative story.

"I'm reminded of the story behind the publication of The Confederacy of Dunces," he writes. "The author, John Kennedy Toole, was rejected by publishers, was supposedly very upset about it, and eventually killed himself. His mother took up the cause to publish the book posthumously, and eventually it was -- by the Louisiana State University. And then it won the Pulitzer."

Would the result have been different if Toole had published with KDP? Who knows?

The point is that the traditional publishing machine passed on a classic book. 

Personally, I think that the James Patterson machine could do a great deal more to help publishing and newbie writers than take out expensive adverts that lead to a lot of inconclusive debate.  After all, he has ninety-eight million dollars a year to play with.

Digital denial

Joe Konruth's blog is essential, addictive reading

It is also controversial

Why?

Because it lays out the lines between traditional and Indie publishing ... from the point of view of the author

On Sunday, he posted the nitty-gritty of a talk given by Barry Eisler at the Pike's Peak Writers' Convention which upset a number of trad publishers, who took to twitter to vent their unhappiness.

So what led to the twitter war with Eisler?  What points did he make?

First, that trad publishers are basically paper pushers. "The primary value-add offered by legacy publishers has traditionally been paper distribution," he said. "Certainly legacy publishers offer many other services (much of which is outsourced) -- editorial, copyediting, proofreading, book packaging, and marketing, to name the most obvious -- but the primary service, the one the others are built on, has always been paper distribution."  In order to succeed -- or get noticed at all -- an author needed a publisher to get his offering out on paper.

Obviously, this has changed.

As Eisler said, "The advent of digital book distribution means that today, not all authors need a paper distribution partner. Authors can reach (and thousands of authors are reaching) a mass audience in digital by self-publishing instead (a third option, Amazon publishing, combines elements of both systems)." 

As many of us know, it's wonderful to have an editor who is in love with your manuscript, and positively desperate to get it published. It would be even more wonderful if it was a bestseller, but -- publishing being a lottery -- the chances were that it would not make that NYT list.  Indie publishing is just a big a gamble, as very few Indie authors make it to the Amazon top 100, but at least authors now have a choice.

And, he argues, the digital revolution means that the author should have much more power, too.  Once the huge costs of paper distribution are taken away, the profit to the publisher is much greater -- and the author should be getting a much bigger royalty than the 17.5% for digital rights that are typically offered.

Perhaps that is why the trad publishing fraternity got so upset. Konruth's comments might upset them even further.  Read on.

Agent-assisted self publication

The Argo Navis Grab

"Lazy literary agents in self-publishing money grab via Argo Navis," runs the title line in an apparently very well-researched and definitely timely post on David Gaughran's blog, LET'S GET DIGITAL.

It was written in response to the news that David Mamet is going to self-publish his next book.

"While I think it’s great that someone as high-profile as David Mamet is self-publishing," writes Gaughran, "I was very disappointed to find out the way he’s doing it."

That is because Mamet is self-publishing through an outfit with a nautical name, Argo Navis.

And Gaughran follows up with a list of well-thought-out reasons, all backed up with logic.  It's a post that anyone who is thinking of self-publishing and is signed up with any of the following agents should read without delay:

Writers House

ICM Partners

Carol Mann Agency

Cynthia Cannell Literary Agency

The Hartnett Agency

Paul Bresnick Literary Agency

Pinder Lane & Garon-Brooke Associates

Curtis Brown (US)

April Eberhardt Literary

David Black Agency

Elizabeth Kaplan Literary Agency

Folio Literary Management

Levine Greenberg Literary Agency

Liza Royce Literary Agency

Melanie Jackson Agency

Janklow & Nesbit Associates

Joëlle Delbourgo Associates

Arcadia Literary Agency

Harvey Klinger

APA Talent and Literary Agency

Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency

Irene Skolnick Literary Agency

FinePrint Literary Management

Donald Maass Literary Agency

There are some big, reputable names there ... but they are all agents who have signed up with Argo Navis ... which has not got a very good record.

How did it happen? As Gaughran says, "Argo Navis don’t (and won’t) deal with authors directly, and will only accept titles for distribution submitted by literary agents."  And it appears that the people who benefit most (after Argo Navis, of course) are the agents.  Not the authors.

So, what does Argo Navis offer to these agents?  "Essentially," he says, "Argo Navis are a distributor. They offer a portal through which authors’ work can be distributed to all the various retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, and Kobo.

"In exchange for this relatively trivial service, Argo Navis take a 30% cut. You read that right. After the retailer takes their standard cut (usually also 30%), Argo Navis take another 30% before passing on payments."

And on top of that, the agency takes their 15% commission.  I leave it to you to read the rest.

With thanks to Rick Spilman.

Hybrid author elite

When the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and author David Mamet released his last book, “The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture,” with the Sentinel publishing house in 2011, it sold well enough to make the New York Times best-seller list.       

So runs the first sentence of an interesting New York Times front-page story by Leslie Kaufman.

This year, Mr. Mamet is taking a different route. He is taking advantage of a new service being offered by his literary agency, ICM Partners, as a way to assume more control over the way his book is promoted.   He is publishing his next work himself.

As Kaufman observes, the digital revolution is reshaping the whole publishing business. As self-publishing takes on momentum, it offers an increasing array of options for anyone with an idea and a keyboard.

Most of the attention so far has focused on unknown and unsigned authors who storm onto the best-seller lists through their own ingenuity.  But now we see the so-called hybrid author, the writer who has been traditionally published, and may still have strong connections with a traditional publisher, but is also publishing work him- or herself.

Bringing out a backlist after regaining the rights is an option that many authors are taking, often with lucrative results.  Because the percentage the author gets is much greater than a traditional publisher can offer (as much as 70%), self-publishing can be a money-spinner.

 ICM, which will announce its new self-publishing service on Wednesday, is one of the biggest and most powerful agencies to offer the option. But others are doing the same as they seek to provide additional value to their writers while also extending their reach in the industry.

One is Trident Media Group.  Another is Inkwell Management.

Read the full story

       

Paranoia and the Constitution

Editorial, Dominion Post, 22 April 2013

How -- and why -- Obama's attempt to control out-of-control sales of guns has been stalled.

A thought-provoking editorial from Wellington's newspaper

Every culture has its dark side, its lunatic obsessions. America's is guns.

Political attempts at rational gun control founder on this madness. The Senate's disgraceful rejection last week of President Barack Obama's mild initiative on background checks for gun owners is just such a case. The world watches, and gapes. How can Americans behave like this?

The usual answer is to point at the power of the gun lobby. Of the 45 senators who voted down the measure, 42 had received money from firearms lobbyists. The aptly-named Senator Jeff Flake, who switched his vote at the last moment, had been given $5000 by a pro- gun outfit. Mr Obama was right when he accused the Senate of caving in to the National Rifle Association and its tawdry mates.

But in a sense this explanation just shifts the mystery back a step. The gun lobby buys some politicians and frightens others into submission. Some of the Democratic senators who killed Mr Obama's measure last week say president Bill Clinton's 1994 ban on assault weapons cost many of their party their seats. But how is it that the voters are so influenced by the lunatics of the gun lobby?
Surveys show, after all, that 90 per cent of voters support moderate gun control. Last week the senators did their dirty work while survivors of the latest mass shooting, in Tucson, looked on. One, Patricia Maisch, shouted "Shame on you" and left. If shame and the voters' presence could force a politician to behave decently, this would have been the time.

So the madness lies deeper than lobby power and the shadow of money. Many Americans think guns are a necessary part of their lives. Survivalists who think Washington is out to get them keep a pistol in the drawer. Guns symbolise freedom, a great American taonga (national treasure).

Besides, the right to bear arms is enshrined in the second amendment. This is a genuinely outmoded bit of late 18th-century treaty-making. Guns were needed to arm a "well-regulated militia" - in other words, to fend off the Redcoats fighting to keep America British. But it's in the constitution, and for many Americans the constitution is Holy Writ.

Read the rest