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Writers' magazine |
News review 2009 |
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News stories from the book world 2009You can check older stories in our archive. News archive 2008 Archive 07 Archive 06 Archive 05 Archive 04 Archive 03 Archive 02 Archive 01
So what about the book business in 2009?No-one could call 2008 an easy year. As well as an unprecedented worldwide credit crisis it has ended with an abrupt slide into a severe global recession, which will affect every country in the world and all aspects of life. Publishing will not be immune and already there are signs of cutbacks, particularly in US publishing, where one of the big bookselling chains also looks unsteady. Early hopes that books, traditionally thought to do well in a recession, would escape unscathed, have proved to be unfounded. At the time of writing it is not clear how the all-important Christmas selling season panned out for booksellers, but as we enter the New Year it doesn’t look as if it saved the day. The holiday fell in such a way that Christmas present buyers could postpone their purchasing to the very last moment – and they did. In the UK there was the appalling timing of Woolworths going down, taking in its wake the EUK distribution business, which supplies most of the big supermarkets, and also affecting the wholesaler Bertrams, the supplier of many independent bookshops. Across the globe people are being forced to focus on basic essentials and for many these essentials do not include books. But we should all take heart from the fact that the international book trade rests very largely on the purchases of heavy book buyers -and for them books are a necessity. Even for lighter buyers, as has often been pointed out, books make good gifts, not too expensive but showing thought and discrimination. There’s no doubt though that publishers are going to be even more cautious than usual in 2009. American publishers have already started cutting staff and it’s possible that publishers in other countries will follow. At the very best they will reduce their risks by taking on fewer books. This means that agents will struggle to sell new authors in particular, unless they are thought to be bestseller material. And that of course means that agents in their turn will be extremely careful about taking on new authors. Before we come to an utterly depressing conclusion however we shouldn’t forget that readers will still be buying books, and they may even devote more time to reading and other home pursuits as these are infinitely cheaper than going out. Reading sits well with the new austerity, being thought rather improving as well as inexpensive. Publishers still have to publish something and there will of course be an ongoing market for new books in bookshops everywhere. It may however be a year when it makes more sense for writers to concentrate on improving their writing and getting it into good shape, rather than a scattergun approach to submitting it to an indifferent market. The Internet and the possibility of self-publishing also offer new ways for writers to reach their audience which have never existed in previous recessions. So self-help is the order of the day and writers can make the most of the opportunities that offer themselves to draft and redraft their work; research and inform themselves online; join online writing communities; promote their writing on the web; and to try out the new opportunities that self-publishing and selling online present. A happy New Year to all our visitors and we hope you will find it a good year for developing your writing!
Access to booksOur Comment for this week is an extract from this year’s Nobel Laureate for Literature’s lecture, in which he extols the virtues of the book and urges everyone, publishers in particular, to do everything they can to extend its availability. In many countries books are scarce and often unaffordable as well, yet they are of the utmost importance in educational terms and in enabling people to move themselves out of poverty. The recent Penguin initiative in setting up the Penguin African Writers Series and two new prizes for African writing are an acknowledgement that publishers from the developed world should support publishing in developing countries. John Makinson, Chairman and CEO of Penguin says: ‘Emerging markets are complicated. We may face regulatory issues that constrain our freedom to publish, censorship barriers that compromise our freedom of expression or simply cultural challenges that may lead us to do the wrong thing. Customers don’t pay on time, you can’t always get your money out, and local partners may be reliable, or they may not. It’s really not easy. Yet our view here at Penguin is that we must persist, not just because of the potential for growth, and eventually profit, but also because we have a responsibility to share whatever knowledge and experience that we’ve gained with less developed publishing markets.’ Creative Commons, which we have written about a number of times on this site, seems to offer the best chance of moving things forward, as it opens up the possibility of licensing use of copyrighted work on a number of different bases, both commercial and non-commercial. As it becomes more widely used, it will open up the riches of the more mature publishing industries in the West for use by publishers and writers in developing countries. As recently announced, Bloomsbury Academic will make its books freely available to students on the web, and it is to the web itself, that enormous source of knowledge and discussion, that we can turn for answers on this issue. In spite of cheap computers developed for this use, there are however still millions of people for whom a computer is an impossible luxury. These people need books to help them work their way out of poverty. In this season it is worth remembering the work of the book charities. First there’s BookAid International, which supplies much-needed books to developing countries, raising funds from publishers and the general public. Its 'Reverse Book Club' is a masterly idea - for just £5 (currently only $7.50) a month you can provide 48 books a year to go to where they're most needed. Then there’s Bookpower, which supplies affordable, current tertiary-level textbooks for students and professionals in low-income countries, and EducationAid, which collects books in UK and sends them to schools and universities in countries which cannot afford them. Even in the age of the Internet, books still have a key role in spreading knowledge and opening up the world.
'Books are still plenty'Newpapers’ book review sections are under pressure across the world. In the US the Los Angeles Times is just one of the papers which has cut its hugely respected book review section. The former editors of the section wrote: ‘The dismantling of the Sunday Book Review section and the migration of a few surviving reviews to the Sunday Calendar section represents a historic retreat from the large ambitions which accompanied the birth of the section.’ In the UK there’s been grim news of the redundancy of Sunday Times Literary Editor Michael Prodger’s two staff (how do you run a book section with no help to deal with the hundreds of books coming in for review?). Sam Leith at the Daily Telegraph has also lost his job and the work has been shifted to veteran journalist Brian MacArthur, who says that the number of pages dedicated to books will remain at eight, although clearly it could be a tough job for him to deliver them. The immediate reason for these cuts is the lack of advertising support from publishers, but the problem goes much deeper than that and is affecting newspapers as a whole. At its peak in the thirties America had no less than 2,600 daily newspapers, with at least half a dozen in each large city. New York alone once had 30 dailies. Television has cut into that, but it’s the Internet age and younger people’s increasing preference for getting their news online which are now undermining the newspapers’ print business. The Paper Cuts blog thinks there have been 15,153 newspaper layoffs in America so far this year and at least 30 daily newspapers are up for sale around the country, including famous names such as the Miami Herald. Rupert Murdoch, not a popular figure amongst journalists, is to be commended for his recent $5 billion (£3.360 billion) purchase of Dow Jones Co, owner of the Wall Street Journal, and his plans to move it forward into the Internet era. But it may be a very different world. Pasadena Now, a small news site in Pasadena, California, has shown how to work with a new kind of outsourcing which dramatically reduces costs. The site’s founder James Macpherson sends press releases and other material to journalists in India who are paid just $7.50 (£5) per 1,000 words for turning in articles. It looks like the newspapers which invest most heavily in putting their output on the web will be those that survive, although it’s still hard to discern how the business model will work. The highly impressive Guardian Online is a British favourite, but it reaches an international audience of 15 million, many more than read the print version, through its excellent website. This may be the future. So, how do books figure in all of this? It’s clear that the dramatic fall in advertising revenues accompanying the deepening recession may prove the final blow to many papers. They’re likely to cut their book sections still further. This will be painful for publishers and authors, who crave the recognition of print reviews. But does it really matter, or have the reviews simply shifted online? Teresa Budasi, literary editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, struck a positive note in her blog: ‘As a book editor who's been through the process of losing a section and being downsized in another, I sympathize with them. But wake up, people! The fiscal health of the newspaper business was in the toilet long before they decided to axe a section. Now is the time to take what you're left with and do what you can with it. Just as the newspaper business as a whole is trying to figure out ways to reinvent itself, book review editors must do the same, whether it be by running shorter reviews, beefing up online content or what have you. Stop complaining about loss of culture and glorifying the past and move into the 21st century -- where books are still plenty and people are still reading!’
A torrid week in the book tradeIt’s been a torrid week in the US and UK book trades, as destabilising staff cuts underline the poor situation in retail. In the most crucial two weeks of the trading year, the book trade is on tenterhooks about the outcome of Christmas. Will consumers spend their scarce resources on books? Will books escape a widely heralded massacre in the shops because they represent good value in a recession? Nobody knows the answer to this question but the tension is mounting. Friday brought a respite for UK publishers affected by Entertainment UK, the owner of Woolworths, going into receivership. The Publishers’ Association has successfully negotiated a formula whereby the distribution arm, EUK, can resume supply to UK supermarkets. The wholesaler Bertrams, second biggest in the country and also owned by EUK, is reported to be close to a sale, which may well mean further consolidation in the already highly consolidated wholesale sector. In the US publisher Simon and Schuster cut 35 positions in the company this week, Random House probably two as a part of a restructure and Thomas Nelson 54, an astonishing 10% of its workforce. The American book chains are suffering, with Borders unstable and the management ‘no longer contemplating a transaction to sell the entire company’ but still thinking of selling Paperchase. Although Amazon projected that its own sales in this quarter would fall between $6 and $7 billion, this looks very much like a Christmas when online will do relatively well, with much use of online price comparison sites. Recent research from Deloitte in the UK showed that consumers spending online were planning to spend 15% more there than last year. It suggested that the number of consumers using the Internet was stable but that those who already use it are using it more. Bloomsbury has already shown that it’s an ill wind and that this is a good time to have money to spend on corporate acquisitions. Still working on spending its £50 million Harry Potter war chest, it has just announced the acquisition of Wisden, publisher of the world-renowned Wisden Cricketers’ Almanac. This venerable institution, now in its 145th edition, bestrides the cricket world like a colossus, an apt simile since it’s a £40 book with nearly 2,000 pages - and sells 40,000 copies annually. Bloomsbury no doubt has its eye on the huge Asian market, particularly India, where the sport is a national obsession. Although it has a permanent staff of only four, Wisden employs 128 contributors to update its vast compendium of information, making it an attractively lean operation. Richard Charkin, Executive Director of Bloomsbury, said: ‘We are buying the tradition and we would be mad not to respect it. This is the bible for cricket or, as someone once said, the Bible is the Wisden of God.’ Possible Asian or Indian editions and the opportunity to put Wisden online make this an even more attractive acquisition for the company. So it’s not all gloom and doom, but for companies with weak balance sheets and insufficient cash in hand a poor Christmas season may well herald a dismal New Year and more bankruptcies, cuts and redundancies.
Dragons and 'a sense of awe and wonder'Christopher Paolini is a publishing sensation to rival J K Rowling. In these difficult times his is an inspiring story of raw talent with a large dose of hard work and a dash of luck. Paolini was home-schooled by his mother, a trained Montessori teacher, and from an early age became fascinated by fantasy, particularly stories involving dragons. He has cited Tolkien and Anne McCaffrey as formative influences. When he came to make his first attempt at writing a novel, as he himself explained in ‘Dragon Tales’, he tried to imbue his story with the same elements he found most compelling in books: ‘an intelligent hero; lavish descriptions; exotic locations; dragons; elves; dwarves; magic; and above all else, a sense of awe and wonder’. At fifteen, he was writing the book he wanted to read himself: ‘When I started Eragon. I was really trying to please myself as a fantasy reader and I thought maybe my parents would read the book and maybe my sister if I was lucky.’ The book that resulted, Eragon, was about a fifteen-year-old boy who finds a dragon's egg, and when the egg hatches and a magnificent blue dragon emerges, the boy names her Saphira and the two become inseparable. It is fairly remarkable for a fifteen-year-old boy to write a full-length children’s novel, but what happened next was in some ways even more extraordinary. Paolini’s parents read and edited the manuscript and decided that the whole family should work to self-publish it. The author said: ‘We wanted to retain financial and creative control over the book. Also, we were excited by the prospect of working on this project as a family.’ It’s hard to make a self-published book work in such a way as to support a whole family. In due course, after a major promotion campaign and in spite of doing pretty well, they were close to admitting defeat when they had a stroke of luck. The stepson of the writer Carl Hiassen read and enjoyed Eragon and Hiassen recommended it to his own editor at Knopf. A six-figure deal for the three books in the series followed, and Paolini’s future as a writer was assured. His sales have built rapidly since then and by the time Brisingr, the third book in the Inheritance Cycle, was published in summer 2008, over 15 million copies of the first two books, Eragon and Eldest, had been sold worldwide. The US hardback sold 550,000 on its first day on sale and in the UK it has been the fastest-selling children’s book of the year. The series has been translated into 50 languages and Eragon has been turned into a major Hollywood film. Paolini says that he has allowed himself one extravagance, a replica Viking sword, which he carries with him around the house. At 25 he still lives at home and is working on the concluding book in the Inheritance Cycle.
Publishers go for print on demandRandom House UK has just announced that it is to launch its print on demand list, Random Collection, in January. It has been producing print on demand titles for a year and a half, but now has sufficient critical mass to see this as a separate list to be marketed as such. POD is also driving Faber Finds, but the difference here is that this is a backlist publishing programme for which most of the titles are from other publishers. It launched in May with 100 titles and will have around 300 by the end of the year. The break-even on each title is just 50 copies, so, says Faber MD Stephen Page, the top 100 titles are ‘racing past the finishing post’. With titles like Philip Ziegler’s The Black Death and Richard Hoggart’s classic The Uses of Literacy, perhaps this is not surprising, but all credit to the publisher for this enterprising initiative. Faber editor John Seaton says: ‘The point of the list is that it enables us to publish deep backlist which would have been stocked in some bookshops, but which has now become vulnerable to the shift towards frontlist … These books did sell, but not in sufficient numbers to make them viable. Now, thanks to new technology, we can make them work.’ In some ways trade (general) publishers are way behind the trend. Specialist, professional and academic publishers with higher-priced books have been using POD for some time. Cambridge University Press has been working on a massive print on demand programme for several years. It has systematically brought its backlist back into print, at low cost to the company but contributing a substantial and growing amount to the bottom line. From a publisher’s point of view, reprinting books from their archives is highly economic. If they still have the rights, it enables them to keep a book in print and go on selling it at minimal cost, as efficient digitisation of texts that they already own is a relatively minor cost compared to the expense of originating new books. For the author it is very gratifying to have their book back in print. As Seaton suggests, it is becoming harder and harder to persuade bookshops to stock a wide range of backlist. Worryingly, American publishers and bookstore chains have commented recently on the difficulty of selling anything other than heavily promoted front-of-shop bestsellers or big-name authors. Amazon has played a big part in the renaissance of the backlist, with its very wide range of titles. Books which could not make their way through bookshop outlets can now be sold to an informed book-buying market, which knows what it wants, through online bookshops. For authors who have already published a number of books, just as much as for as yet unpublished writers considering self-publishing, this channel is going to become increasingly important as the book trade is ravaged by what increasingly looks like a retail slump. The Advantages of Print on Demand Print on demand and the Long Tail in Changes in Publishing. WritersPrintShop, our self-publishing service
'The storm clouds are gathering'‘More Armageddon or Christmas is coming?’ The book trade was anxious but not yet showing signs of the downturn. That was what we reported just a month ago in News Review 13 October. Now the storm clouds are gathering faster as the big western economies slip into recession. There are still big hopes for Christmas, but everyone seems agreed that next year is going to be very difficult. The American book trade may be suffering especially badly. Publisher and CEO of Simon & Schuster Carolyn Reidy says all major accounts have reported that in-store: ‘Traffic is down, and what traffic is in there seems to by buying the tried and true.... They're not buying the second book. The brands and name authors that are landing are selling.’ She notes: ‘Backlist is where we are seeing the drop-off and that is worrisome, obviously, because it is a very profitable part of our list.’ S & S is having its own problems, as it is part of CBS, whose biggest shareholder Sumner Redstone needs to raise a lot of cash. Chairman of giant book chain Barnes & Noble, Len Riggio, said recently: ‘Never in all of the years I've been in business have I seen a worse outlook for the economy. And never in all my years as a bookseller have I seen a retail climate as poor as the one we are in. Nothing even close. We are bracing for a terrible holiday season, and expect the trend to continue well into 2009, and perhaps beyond.’ He noted however that Barnes & Noble had a solid balance sheet and was debt-free, which means that it is strongly placed to sit out the recession. Big international romance publisher Harlequin/Mills and Boon says that their sales are holding steady. However health publisher Rodale has just announced that it is cutting 10% of staff, citing its difficulties in finding a strategic partner to help it expand because of weakness in the credit markets. HarperCollins’s worldwide sales for the quarter are 4.5% lower than a year ago. In the UK things don’t look so bad, although nervousness is gripping the trade. W H Smith has said it has seen a 4% drop in sales in its high street stores in the last 10 weeks. Nielsen, looking at the market as a whole, says that sales are down on last year. Simon Juden, CEO of the UK Publishers’ Association, says: ‘Historically, we have always done all right in tough times. I don’t think anyone is expecting major growth – but equally I don’t think we will see anything catastrophic. The fundamentals are strong and the sector will do well.’ As regards Christmas, his view is supported by the latest report from Deloitte, which has struck an optimistic note in noting that books are growing in popularity on consumers’ must-have Christmas lists. Its annual Christmas Retail Survey reported that 59% of UK consumers said they intended to spend the same amount of money as last year. 63% of those surveyed said they would buy books this Christmas, up from 55% last year. Another 65% said they were hoping to receive something to read this year. These are very positive numbers, so Christmas sales might be fairly good. So, it could be worse, but that may be exactly what it will be in the New
Year, when book-buyers face an almighty hangover, not just from Christmas but
from many years of a boom fuelled by rises in the property market and credit
card spending. 2009 doesn’t look a pretty picture.
Great price and great serviceAmazon’s latest figures don’t look all that good, as they too have been hit by the recession. They are projected to fall between $6 billion and $7 billion in the final quarter and their operating income could be down as much as 46%. This sounds alarming but it will probably just be a blip in the onward march of the giant Internet retailer. Amazon was set up by former investment banker Jeff Bezos in 1994, going public in 1997, and it focused on books right from the start. As the stock market rose, shareholders were able to take a relaxed approach to the company, in spite of the fact that by 2001 it was losing $1.5 billion annually and only managed to hit profitability in 2004. This autumn marks the internet retailer’s tenth anniversary in the UK. Amazon had already been operating for three years in the US when it bought Bookpages in the UK in 1998. The company relaunched the site with aggressive discounts of 40%, just three years after the end of the Net Book Agreement in the UK. Earlier this year there was a dispute over terms with Hachette, the UK’s biggest trade (general) publisher, and Amazon showed its teeth by removing the ‘buy’ button from Hachette titles. It’s been a bumpy ride in other ways. In the US the company was condemned when it insisted that publishers should use its print on demand facility, Booksurge, for POD books to be sold on Amazon.com. It has not built this insistence into its recent UK and German POD launches. It does not currently offer this service to self-publishers but it might do so in the future. American owners of Amazon’s Kindle are now able to pick from 185,000 titles. The wireless facility which enables them to get the e-books downloaded directly onto the device has indeed proved to be a killer application. It is a bit of a puzzle why Amazon has not yet released the Kindle outside the US, but no doubt there is some improvement in store which the company thinks will give it the edge internationally. Of course for many years Amazon had competitors, but these all dropped away and it is only recently that the bookshop chains have reinstated their websites, with a huge loss of competitive advantage. Amazon has successfully used books as a starting-point to build itself into a giant Internet retailer, selling a large range of goods, and for several years no-one has had any chance of catching them. Recently the company has taken the acquisition trail and just this year it bought Audible, giving it a dominant position in the audiobook market, Abebooks, the giant second-hand book site, and social networking site Shelfari. Perhaps it’s too late to talk about the danger of one company dominating the market so completely. As regards the book business there is nothing to stop Amazon flexing its muscle more and more. Will Atkinson of Faber says that Amazon has been a boon to some smaller, independent publishers: ‘because it offers something like a level playing field’. But an independent publisher says: ‘Every monopoly is detrimental to the market and if they are too powerful imbalance occurs’. Alan Giles, the former CEO of HMV Group, which owns Waterstone’s, says of Amazon: ‘Instead of opting for just great price or great service they opted for both and they had first-mover advantage and enormous support from the capital markets.’ The rest is history.
Google settles copyright suitA ground-breaking agreement was reached in New York this week in the case of the Authors’ Guild and the Association of American Publishers v Google. Google will make payments totalling $125m. Whilst recognising the entitlement of rights holders, the agreement will allow for the expansion of online access to millions of in-copyright books from the libraries taking part in Google Book Search. This issue has been controversial for some time. Google’s plans to make in copyright books available was challenged because of suspicions about the company’s ultimate aims and anxiety about protecting copyright and the right of authors to license their work. Mark le Fanu, General Secretary of the Society of Authors in the UK, said: ‘The decision recognises that authors and publishers must have control… It’s a compromise for Google but a major breakthrough for authors.’ This has been an issue for two years, ever since Google announced its intention of scanning in copyright books, as well as those out of copyright, from the libraries it has been working with. The Authors’ Guild described their plans at the time as ‘a massive copyright infringement’ and sued Google, with five publishers doing the same in a separate suit. The case has now been settled out of court, with Google in effect recognising that it cannot ride roughshod over authors’ copyright. The compensation Google has agreed to pay includes $45m to authors and publishers whose books have already been digitised without approval and $34.5m to establish a new copyright registry, to which it will pay 63% of revenue derived from an author’s work. The new Book Rights Registry in the US will locate rights holders and collect the money, rather as ALCS and CLA already do in the UK. Google will now be able to provide access to out of print books, whilst the authors of these books will benefit from them being made available. For the Internet giant it is a good outcome and will enable it to pursue its aim: ‘to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.’ With 60% of worldwide Internet searches and 86% of total UK searches, Google had a market value of $140 billion (a September figure). The company already makes about $20 billion a year from online advertising. This deal may seem expensive, but for Google it’s a drop in the ocean compared to the opportunities it unlocks. And for writers? They can all breath a sigh of relief that a solution has been found which acknowledges and protects their rights.
The Booker goes global tooThe spectacle of meltdown in world banks and stock markets has meant that the Booker Prize has passed us by, but it’s worth backtracking a little to look at this most international of prizes. It’s odd that it should have such a global effect, as it’s by no means the biggest or even the most prestigious of literary prizes. The IMPAC’s 100,000 euros (£79,859 or $127,000) outguns it and the Nobel is worth much more and also has far more prestige but generally, in the UK and US at least, it doesn’t sell books. The proliferation of literary prizes, News Review 21 July, looks at the enormous number of literary prizes which dominate the literary fiction scene. Many of these have a major impact, but the Booker, now in its 40th year, soldiers on as the biggest of them all. Last year’s not particularly popular winner, Anne Enright’s The Gathering, sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide and each of the 2007 shortlisted titles sold over 100,000 copies. These are astonishing figures for literary novels, so the Prize is certainly successful at getting a lot of people to buy literary fiction. Partly this is because of the controversy the Booker seems to engender. Year after year the judges are reckoned to have chosen the wrong winner, which generally means not the most readable, nor the most salesworthy, nor even from the most well-known author. It’s almost a cliché that major authors often do not make it on to the shortlist. This year even the New York Times blared on its front page: ‘Rushdie snubbed by Booker’. Tibor Fischer, a previous judge, says: ‘If you go for established names, you are criticised for playing safe, if you go for unknowns, people ask "Who they?" There will always be a big stick to beat the judges with.’ Alex Clark, editor of Granta, and one of this year’s judges, wrote in the Observer: ‘The problem with literary culture is not that there bad novels and good novels, but that there are so many that can be described as average, or good enough. But good enough for what?’ The question of who defines the ‘what’ is also relevant. Judges for big prizes will generally choose what they individually think is best, so the outcome depends a lot on who the judges are. Victoria Glendinning, a previous judge, also pinpoints the effect of compromise in the final discussions: ‘Novels with strong support can quickly cancel each other out.’ This year there was controversy, not altogether unwelcome to the Prize’s administrators, when Jamie Byng of Canongate posted a note on the Booker website to say that he could not respect a judging committee that had overlooked Helen Garner’s The Spare Room, which he had published, for a book like Tom Rob Smith’s crime novel Child 44. Byng might be considered a little partis pris, but his posting demonstrated the way in which everyone feels they are entitled to a view on the winner. The Booker’s global reach and importance in stimulating sales of literary novels is growing. The publisher Morgan Entrekin of Grove/Atlantic Inc shouted ‘Three years in a row!’ on hearing of Aravind Adiga’s win this year with his debut novel The White Tiger. Grove published previous winners Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss and Anne Enright’s The Gathering in the US, whilst Atlantic Books, a British publisher co-founded by Entrekin and in which Grove has a majority stake, released The White Tiger in Britain. The world of book prizes is becoming more global.
The Frankfurt Book Fair goes globalIn the midst of all the gloom and doom, the Frankfurt Book Fair has been pretty much business as usual. Writing on the last day of the Fair, visitor figures are so far up 8.1% on last year, although there has been a slight drop in exhibitor numbers. The Fair’s success is partly a sign of the increasingly global nature of publishing, and the fact that publishers need this huge international marketplace to buy and sell rights across the world. This year Turkey was the guest of honour and had a record 165 publisher stands, showing the impact of this special status. Nobel prize-winner Orhan Pamuk used his opening addresss to decry the ‘oppression’ of Turkey’s writers, describing ‘a century of banning and burning books, of throwing writers into prison, killing them or branding them as traitors’. Some intriguing new initiatives were announced, many of them tending towards a more international view of the world. The publisher Bloomsbury has set up a joint venture with educational organisation the Qatar Foundation to launch a new publishing house which will publish books in both English and Arabic for readers in the Middle East. The plan is to publish across a wide range of adult, children’s and academic titles. Bloomsbury’s CEO Nigel Newton said: ‘Our brief is to identify literary talent and develop a knowledge transfer. It will be very much working in two directions, into and out of the region.’ Interestingly, the publisher also aims to organise creative writing classes for developing writers and to help develop translation skills into and out of Arabic. Also from the Middle East, a plan has been announced to translate thousands of books and build a new Arabic language library for 21st century readers. The UK’s Society of Young Publishers, a lively group of not-always-so-young publishers, has announced plans to set up a web portal for young publishing professionals across the globe. Next year’s Fair will have China as guest of honour and that country has already surprised observers by asking Taiwan to participate. The increasing globalisation of the world economy is reflected in the way the book world is becoming ever more international. This is good news for writers, as it opens up new markets for them, and those fortunate enough to write in English have an added advantage in reaching a huge global audience.
More Armageddon or Christmas is coming?Since News Review last looked at the global financial crisis three weeks ago (A week of Armageddon 22 September) the situation has deteriorated markedly and seems poised on a knife-edge. The financial crisis has tipped over into the rest of the economy and the interbank credit crunch has created such a panic that global recession is staring us in the face. So how is the book world faring now? The UK autumn lists look strong and book sales are holding up, at the moment at least. The usual caveats about books doing well in recession have been applied, but the truth is that the possible effects of the turndown have still to make themselves felt. The latest Nielsen Bookscan figures show that overall sales are currently up marginally on a year ago, but it could be another story if there is a sharp retail turndown. Tim Hely-Hutchinson, CEO of Hachette UK, the UK’s biggest publisher, says: ‘Sales are remarkably buoyant given the current economic doom and gloom… Traditionally in times of tough economic conditions, books are perceived as very good value. To date, we have had a very good year across the board. Next year, of course, things may get tougher.’ UK publishers are anxious about big wholesaler Bertrams, which has been affected by questions about the financial health of parent company Woolworths. Bankruptcies are what businesses fear in a recession, exposing any company which is not financially secure, but there’s also the question of the companies’ share prices. In general the picture looks worse in the US, although it’s notable that debt-free bookselling chain Barnes & Noble has been in a strong position. Random House worldwide reported that its results for the first half of the year were 8% down on the same period last year, although the UK part of the company is doing well. Borders’ share price is down 44% since September 11. Books-a-Million has fallen even further, losing 49% since September 11, shedding 25% in the past 6 days. Amongst international publishers Hachette parent Lagardere’s share price is down 31.5% since 12 September and News International, parent company of HarperCollins, is down 36% since the same date. Bloomsbury bucks the trend and its shares have gone down just 3.5% in the last month. In the bookshops books are still selling and nobody knows whether the
global crisis will be resolved, or will lead to a major recession. In the
meantime Christmas is coming up, the gift-buying frenzy which deliver the most
important few weeks of the whole bookselling year in those countries which
celebrate it. The UK has already had ‘Super Thursday’, 2 October, when no less
than 800 new titles were released to great excitement. And this week publishers
are winging their way to the Frankfurt Book Fair, the biggest annual jamboree of
the international book trade, to buy and sell their wares. So life goes on as
usual, we hope.
Do-it-yourself word definitionsThe launch of a new website which encourages everyone to upload videos of themselves delivering their own definitions of their favourite words could offer freedom from the dead hand of the past or be the last straw for pedants, depending on your point of view. Wordia.com is powered by YouTube and borrows many of its techniques of using personally recorded video to reach a wide audience. But this new site is supported by the publisher HarperCollins UK, perhaps with an eye to the advantages of publicising its own reference books (although the underlying message appears to be that you don’t need their definitions, as you’re better off making up your own). Such august bodies as the UK’s National Literacy Trust and the Open University also support the initiative. Samuel Johnson will not be the only one to turn in his grave. Generations of scholars and editors have laboured to produce towering scholarly edifices like the Oxford English Dictionary with its carefully vetted annual addition of new words. How can people who know nothing at all about it think they are qualified to make up definitions, and then not even write them down but just produce a video of themselves defining them? Many who respect and seek to preserve the English language from the depredations of email and texting, not to mention YouTube and poor spelling, will be horrified by this. The two young Americans who have just been fined $3,035 (£1,640) for correcting a sign in the Grand Canyon National Park which had a misplaced apostrophe and a missing comma, would surely take this view. The two founded Teal, the Typo Eradication Advancement League, which seems now to have been eradicated itself online. So, what’s the positive angle on Wordia.com? The people running the site say: ‘We’re a team of language enthusiasts and general word nuts who have joined forces to create a new kind of dictionary – a democratic ‘visual dictionary’. A place where anyone with a video, webcam or mobile phone can define the words that matter to them in their life. We believe that everyone wants to express themselves more clearly, whether to win debates, spark conversations or simply make people laugh with a well-chosen word.’ So should words be democratically defined, or is there a right definition which everyone should use? Well, it really depends on your point of view. This debate could run and run. The Chicago Tribune on the Typo Eradication Advancement League
A week of ArmageddonAfter what many are calling the most extraordinary week on the stock market since the Great Crash, how is publishing faring? Can we even begin to guess what the terrifying events dominating the world’s financial stage might mean for the international book trade? The answer is that it’s too soon to tell yet but the private equity buyout of Informa, which calls itself ‘the leading provider of specialist information to the global academic & scientific, professional and commercial communities’ has been stopped in its tracks by the credit crunch. The consortium of private equity groups led by Providence Equity have found that they just can’t raise the cash. In China there has been a rather subdued 15th Beijing Book Fair, relocated to Tianjin, as required by the authorities, to avoid the Olympics. Fair attendees covered the 75 miles in a 200 mile an hour bullet train, so it was easy to commute from Beijing. A quieter fair still meant a great deal of solid business was done. The 21st Moscow Book Fair ironically had Ukraine as the country of honour, a decision presumably made before the current tensions were exacerbated by events in Georgia. The Fair was well-attended by the public, but was overshadowed by a slump in the Russian stock market which required the Russian Central Bank to step in to shore up the rouble. As for the rest of the financial carnage, it’s too soon to tell yet what effect the upheavals will have, but publishers without solid balance sheets and with too little liquidity may well find that they too are in trouble. Let’s hope that people will still be buying books (see News Review 25 August, Are books recession-proof?) but expect cutbacks in publishers’ output. And that, unfortunately, means that it could be even harder for new writers to find a publisher until the market improves.
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