Book Marks: Fixing Goodreads, Jarhead Ban

Has Goodreads "poisoned literature", as this article in The Telegraph claims? Using the case of Elizabeth Gilbert's latest book as a springboard, the writer dives into the reliability of Goodreads' rating system, which has been weaponised by blackmailers and review-bombers, most of whom may have never read the books they target.

How can the website remedy this? The writer suggests that "Goodreads and other online review sites could surely vet more carefully the reviews they host, or at least nip in the bud campaigns launched against a book before it’s even been published – after all, few authors can afford simply to chuck a book in the bin as blithely as Elizabeth Gilbert has. As a gatekeeper, Goodreads, as it stands, hardly seems fit for purpose."

The New York Times highlights some cases of review-bombing, and while it argues that, "As a social platform, part of what Goodreads is offering is conversation and user engagement, and controversies and debate can drive more comments and time spent on the platform," there's room for improvement.

However, author Gretchen Felker-Martin, speaking to the NYT, does not think "Goodreads has an economic incentive to be any better. It would be just a gargantuan job to significantly monitor the kinds of abuse that’s being heaped onto people every single day, but there’s certainly some middle ground between breaking your back trying to deal with all of it, and dealing with none of it.”

Kara Alaimo, an associate professor of communication at Fairleigh Dickinson University who writes about issues affecting women and social media, is optimistic that Goodreads can fix itself, even as its reviews "are quickly becoming unreliable." Good for authors, "but it would be all the more so for readers, because it would ensure we keep some of the power to determine which books break out."

The Washington Post, however, wonders if Goodreads will be able to fix itself, calling it a site "built on outdated technological infrastructure" that isn't worth the money and effort to overhaul by its owner, online retail giant Amazon, which seems to have other priorities. "Former employees said Amazon seemed happy to mine Goodreads for its user-generated data and otherwise let it limp along with limited resources."

Nor does Amazon seem keen on radically revamping the site, to avoid driving away Goodreads diehards. "One former employee compared Goodreads to Reddit, an 18-year-old internet forum where users are revolting because of modifications to the site," goes the WaPo report.

The outlook is kind of bleak, and I'm reminded of what is happening to Twitter. Goodreads is a great resource for books and opinions on books and at this stage, a stable, functioning online portal gives many comfort. If it ain't broke...

---

In Ottawa County, Michigan, the Board of Education for Hudsonville Public Schools voted to ban Jarhead from a high school library. The 2003 memoir of a marine during the First Gulf War was branded an “extremely violent, vulgar, pornographic diatribe”.

Considering the types of books subjected to such scrutiny and restriction, the author never thought that his book would be targeted. And now that the U.S. is in a proxy war with Russia, "it seems like a good time to ensure student access to all points of view concerning warfare," the author writes in The Daily Beast.

His closing remarks is an echo of what critics of the bans have been trying to get across: "Make no mistake, they are banning books, but really they are restricting access to ideas. And when one small group of people ban a larger group of people access to ideas, we are in for a closing of the American mind."

---

ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, is launching a publishing company to take advantage of TikTok's ability to make books viral. But will 8th Note Press end up marginalising other authors, favouring only those it wants to promote? Some authors are enthusiastic about the new imprint, because #BookTok is one hell of a soapbox right now. However, as The New York Times notes: "...ByteDance will likely face the same challenges as traditional publishers: Readers are fickle, and ultimately, viral videos won’t automatically create a blockbuster if the books themselves aren’t appealing."

And should a video platform be publishing books just because it helps to sell books? There are few doubts about the latter, as in the case of Shawn M. Warner, whose poorly attended book-signing event was spotted and later posted onto the platform by a TikToker. The video went viral and sent Warner's novel, Leigh Howard and the Ghosts of Simmons-Pierce Manor, up the charts on Amazon.


Other news:

• Novelist Ken Liu responds to a short story by Jeff Hewitt about a court case involving publishers and an AI author. There's a fair bit to unpack: can AI reach a stage where a machine can out-write humans in terms of output AND quality? Are human writers and LLMs more similar than different?
• The Libri Group, home of Hungary’s largest publishing house and bookstore chain, have been taken over by a private foundation closely associated with the country’s far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán. The Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), "has been likened to a training ground for future cadres of Orbán’s hard-right, populist Fidesz party," the Guardian reports. As a result, some of the writers published under Libri have bailed, while others have voiced concerns that this move is another step in the government's bid to exert more control over speech in Hungary. Eszter Kováts, an assistant professor in the Institute of Political Science at the University of Vienna, looks into this in detail.
• ELLE profiles several women in publishing, from authors to literary agents, who are taking the industry "in new and compelling directions.
• Richard Charkin asks ChatGPT what are the principal megatrends affecting the publishing world, and then sets it straight.
• While a librarian was away from a school library in New Zealand, a couple of books by a controversial publisher said to contain racist propaganda found their way onto the shelves. According to Stuff, "The books in question were printed by ... a Kiwi company that has produced three books on New Zealand history in the past year. None of the authors appear to have relevant qualifications as historians."
• Here it comes: Bloomberg reports that ChatGPT creator OpenAI is being sued for violating privacy laws by scraping material from the Internet, including books, articles, websites and posts. Another suit against OpenAI by two authors, Mona Awad and Paul Tremblay, alleges that their books were used to train ChatGPT because of the chatbot's "very accurate summaries" of the works. Will more suits follow?
• Want to read reviews of a book? Do it after you've read the book: "Reviews are not recommendations (or anti-recommendations) so let’s stop treating them that way. Let’s take the pressure off and stop expecting to love or hate a book because of what someone else says about it."
• Book cover model Fabio dismissed the emergence of the "cinnamon roll" male lead in romance novels as a "trend" and called the idea of male characters showing their sensitive sides "hogwash." The Messenger shoots back: "The genre now better reflects the diverse range of men who exist in the real world — men who exceed traditional gender roles by broadening the behaviors that define masculinity. There's nothing hogwash about that."

Book Marks: More Book Ban News, And A Thriller Trial

While the state of Illinois in the United States has barred the banning of books, the Governor of Texas has signed a bill that bans "sexually explicit" books from schools and "mandates that book vendors rate the content of the books they sell and compile it into a document for review by the Texas Education Agency (TEA)."

The now-codified READER Act — Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources Act — the law means that school librarians have to follow new standards when it comes to purchasing materials for their library.

The writer of the article argues that this bill empowers the Texas governor to determine what gets read in schools, according to what he deems fit. "Let’s not mince words here: this is about Greg Abbott, Jared Patterson, Matt Krause, and other right-wing conservatives determining the lessons allowed in public education and pulling anything that does not align with their repressive, cishet, white male worldview."

And it seems such a worldview has no room for acceptance of diversity. For reading Australian author Scott Stuart's My Shadow is Purple to her class of elementary schoolchildren, schoolteacher Katie Rinderle was terminated by the Cobb County School District in Georgia. Someone complained about the book she had read and though the censorship laws passed last year in the state restricts material deemed harmful to children, nobody seems to be sure what's harmful about the book.

Meanwhile, the Dayton Metro Library is making itself a sanctuary for endangered books "joining more than 2,400 libraries across the United States that seek out books that have been subject to bans or attempted bans, making them available for patrons to check out," according to Dayton Daily News, which also reported that the library's Executive Director Jeffrey Trzeciak said, among other things, "If you don’t like a book, don't read it. It doesn't give you the right to tell others what to read."

---

I had opined on Richard North Patterson's problem getting New York publishers to take on his legal thriller The Trial. While an author's race or should not disqualify him from writing about certain topics, Laura Miller over at Slate, who has read the book, thinks race might be less of a factor than the possibility that the book ... might not be great.

Edward Segal over at Forbes sees the controversy over Patterson's book as an opportunity to learn some crisis-management lessons. While I wouldn't call it a controversy, the tips Segal shares would be a good starting point for crafting one's own strategy to deal with being unfairly cancelled.


Elsewhere:

• Children's books featuring neurodiverse protagonists seem to be the latest publishing trend, the Guardian reports. "Publishers, which were previously reluctant to approach the subject, are increasingly seeking out realistic and explicitly neurodiverse protagonists, often by authors who are themselves neurodivergent." One such work might be Free Verse by Sarah Dooley, whose protagonist also has a penchant for poetry.
• Tracy Buchanan at The Bookseller tells people to stop being scared of AI and embrace it, saying that AI can, among other things, help free up time for writers, improve their writing, and aid in the fight against book piracy. Buchanan, like many who believe that the use of AI in writing and publishing is an eventuality, thinks all the negativity in the AI debate is keeping people from writing "bloody good books."
• Some might remember Judy Garland for her role in The Wizard of Oz, but that she published a book of her own poems? "It was 10 pages long and contained eight poems. It first published in 1940 with only a select few copies given out to close friends. Jack Chitgian Bookbinding Service in Beverly Hills, who manufactured the book, reprinted an unknown amount of copies in the early 1970s after Garland’s death."
• A curriculum rationalisation exercise, which also involved edits to school textbooks in India is stirring a pot because of deletions of chapters that make the current Indian government ... uncomfortable. "Among dropped topics are paragraphs on attempts by extreme Hindu nationalists to assassinate Mahatma Gandhi and chapters on federalism and diversity," the BBC reports. Some of the academics who helped develop the existing textbooks are objecting to the changes and want nothing to do with the new curriculum.
• My Kolkata speaks with publisher, poet, photographer and author Naveen Kishore about his book, Mother Muse Quintet, his photography exhibition, and more. "Writing is an independent exercise from publishing. I have been writing for the past 12 years — every day. So, it is a practice, like we do riyaz (systematic practice of an art form, usually under a teacher's guidance) for music."
• The translation of North Korean author Paek Nam Ryong's award-winning novel, Friend, was published in the United States in 2020 by Columbia University Press. But it seems the author was unaware of this, nor did he receive any royalties from sales of this edition.
• The Other Black Girl and the erasure of Black women in publishing: even as publishers ramp up the hiring of BIPOC personnel to boost diversity in the industry, this Electric Literature article argues that such initiatives don't mean that things will get better for BIPOC authors and employees in publishing, not when the same old prejudices persist.
• Out in Kampung Pulau Duyung in Terengganu is a small public library run by 80-year-old Frenchwoman Christine Rohani Longuet, converted from an abandoned village house. Seems running a library has been a dream "of having a cultural centre for young children and explorers". Sounds cool. Wonder if the state government might help out with maintenance and promotion.
• This glimpse into what's going on with the book culture in Uzbekistan suggests things are loooking up after a change of government. But can the momentum be sustained? Can the country shrug off the baggage of its past to allow its reading culture to blossom and thrive?
• A survey of about 2,200 adults in the United Kingdom by the Publishers Association, a UK trade association of publishers, "showed that a third (33%) of people think that books offer them the best form of escapism when they’re having a bad day, coming second only to watching television (54%)." The poll also found that "found that 41% of people keep books for themselves, while 34% pass them on to friends and family members."
• Here's a review of God the Bestseller by Stephen Prothero, a biography of Eugene Exman, an editor of a publishing company that would later be known as HarperCollins. The reviewer calls the book "engrossing", painting a picture of a man who knew that "the dual identities of religious books—as commodities in the market and conduits of the Spirit—are less oppositional than purists of either commerce or ministry might guess."

Book Marks: Hold That Ban, Cancelling Cancel Culture

As the book-banning movement marches on in the United States, the state of Illinois is putting a stop to such efforts. In a press release, Governor J.B. Pritzker said, "Young people shouldn’t be kept from learning about the realities of our world; I want them to become critical thinkers, exposed to ideas that they disagree with, proud of what our nation has overcome, and thoughtful about what comes next. Everyone deserves to see themselves reflected in the books they read, the art they see, the history they learn."

So far, it's only one state, but I hope more will follow suit. The movement to control what gets read in schools, libraries and everywhere else is dangerous overreaching by elements out to impose a "cruel, rigid, unforgiving and smugly self-righteous" (David Eddings was on the money about religious demagogues) doctrine everywhere, not just the US. If people stopped thinking for themselves, some smart alecks will step in and do our thinking for us, and that's the last thing we need.

---

Has cancel culture gone too far?

Elizabeth Gilbert was forced to shelve her new novel, set in Russia, after it was review-bombed by people protesting Russia's invasion of Ukraine. There has been some pushback to this, in favour of Gilbert; her book does not appear to be pro-Russian propaganda, and I personally deplore the tactic employed against it because most review-bombers never read the book they attack.

Some may feel the urge to strike back at an oppressor, but projecting all that is bad about a rogue nation onto a piece of literature and then smashing it is pointless. Have review-bombs ever stopped a war, ended oppression? The power and reach seemingly granted by social media has made us lose all sense of proportion. And equating writing about Russia to tacit support for its policies is a bit of a stretch.

Bestselling author Richard North Patterson, meanwhile, can't get New York publishers to take on Trial, a legal thriller focusing on racism, Black voter suppression, and an interracial love affair in America set in 2022. If I read correctly, he was told that as a white male author, the story was probably not his to write.

While there has been debate over whether white authors should even attempt writing the stuff Patterson did in Trial when BIPOC voices are being suppressed, is it fair to excessively gatekeep or pigeonhole authors by race and what they should and should not write about? And even if there have been white authors who fumbled when writing about other cultures and lives, surely some of them do get it (mostly) right.

If an author is found to have not treated their subjects well in their book, then let the piling-on begin. Otherwise, why kill a book before it even has a chance to be read and judged?

Book Marks: More Book Ban Absurdity, Etc.

In the rush to codify laws to win the culture wars, some lawmakers seemed to have overlooked how those laws could be turned on books they probably don't want to ban. CBS News reports that...

A suburban school district in Utah has banned the Bible in elementary and middle schools after a parent frustrated by efforts to ban materials from schools argued that some Bible verses were too vulgar or violent for younger children. And the Book of Mormon could be next.

Online, some have argued that the Bible would be ensnared by the book-blocking rules because of the "vulgar or violent" content. After all, according to CBS, "The Bible has long found itself on the American Library Association's list of most challenged books and was temporarily pulled off shelves last year in school districts in Texas and Missouri."

What's funny about this is laid out in the CBS report, which adds that "...the district doesn't differentiate between requests to review books and doesn't consider whether complaints may be submitted as satire."

It's probably safe to say that many of the rationales for banning the targeted titles rest on shaky ground. And what happens when stories about minorities, by minorities, are hushed up by book bans and possibly racist gatekeeping? Awful things written and said about them – by people from a newly anointed anti-government extremist organisation, for instance – invariably ooze into the gaps left behind.

"Books are windows into the ordinary," writes Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman in TIME. "We read them to see ourselves, to comprehend our lived reality, and sometimes to envision something better. But, as has always been the case, imagination is a privilege, popular narratives often only reflect the few, and any increase in representation is, more often than not, met with backlash."

Citing the targeting of The Hill We Climb by the book-ban horde and the backlash against this year's The Little Mermaid, Opoku-Agyeman's article is a rallying cry for those championing for more minority representation in publishing.

---

Never thought I'd read about books being classified as an "affordable diversion". Of course, this is happening in Britain, where Brexit continues to reap its toll on the economy, and only cites annual sales data from only one publisher, Bloomsbury. But "affordable" as compared to what? Streaming services, apparently. From Yahoo! Finance...

“A paperback is much cheaper than even a one-month subscription to many services,” Bloomsbury CEO Nigel Newton said, the Financial Times reported Wednesday, comparing the price of a book to a Netflix Premium subscription worth $19.99 a month.

Sounds like good news for book publishing, but over here, thanks to a weak ringgit and hikes in prices all along the book supply chain, books are becoming less affordable. The price range for some new trade paperbacks are now in the RM80s and RM90s. And prices might still go up. In other news:

• After reading this article on award-winning Bangladeshi-Irish YA author Adiba Jaigirdar, I'm a) at a loss for words for a preamble, and b) very curious about her books. To think, her writing career apparently started with a henna tube.
• What's bad? Plagiarising an award-winning cookbook. Even worse? When the author is a lawyer. "Rachael Issy", or whoever they really are, had better buckle up for a bumpy ride.
• Another day, another example of why it's a bad idea for authors to go after book reviewers. I mean, grief over a four-star review because they said the ending was "kind of predictable"? Maybe the word rubbed them a bit raw because the book was based on their life story, but still.
• The war in Ukraine is arguably affecting shipping, food prices, etc., but demand for "escapist literature"? English-language authors of crime, romance and fantasy novels are getting offers from Russia to translate and distribute their works there, but the issue is a bit more complicated than simply not making Russian money. Not all Russians support the war and they need to make a living. But in Russia, apart from "foreign-authored escapism", the Guardian also reports "there was also a big appetite for self-help books and for historical works about fascist Germany." Hmm.
• "We all know the feeling of reading a book that touches us at our core. A book that somehow knows us intimately and takes us on a journey to understand ourselves more deeply. Especially for queer people, books can not only show us what’s possible, but they can also lead to revelations." At Literary Hub, Samantha Paige Rosen asks ten queer debut authors "to highlight a book that enhanced their understanding of their queerness, writing craft, or both."
• The Edge Media Group chairman, Tan Sri Tong Kooi Ong, defamed by the author of Daim Zainuddin: Malaysia’s Revolutionary and Troubleshooter? No mention of what the defamatory statements were, but the High Court has ordered the author, Michael Backman, to pay a total of RM1.2 million in damages.
• "Publishing a book is often a cathartic experience for writers. It allows them to share their deepest and most heartfelt thoughts with the world. It's a chance to prove their critics wrong and create something meaningful too. ... However, for some writers, that initial euphoria can sour." Here are ten books that were written and later renounced by their authors.
• A profile of Richard Scarry, children’s book author and illustrator. Reminded of my old, old copy of his Busy, Busy World, which I defaced in my childish ignorance and is now lost to time.

Book Marks: AI Lore Series, Hay Festival Bits

So there's this guy who used AI tools to publish nearly 100 books, each between 2,000 to 5,000 words long, all part of a series of "unique, captivating ebooks merging dystopian pulp sci-fi with compelling AI world-building".

He has sold 574 books between (last?) August and (this?) May, grossing nearly US$2,000, and he seems pretty chuffed about that: "To those critics who think a 2,000 to 5,000-word written work is 'just' a short story and not a real book, I'd say that these 'not real books' have shown impressive returns for a small, extremely niche indie publisher with very little promotion and basically no overhead."

Naturally, some have heaped scorn on this approach to writing. When this guy wrote the article, he was about to publish his 97th book. Who the heck can produce this level of output, even if each book is between 2,000 and 5,000 words long?

Though books under 10,000 words are no longer unusual these days, I wonder if the series' success has more to do with how the books "all cross-reference each other, creating a web of interconnected narratives that constantly draw readers in and encourage them to explore further." If so, readers would be compelled to buy more titles just to see where the story goes. Doesn't that work like a paywalled website?

What drew the most ire was probably the use of AI tools such as ChatGPT4 and Midjourney in the production. Detractors of AI-derived works argue that AI "borrows" from the data used to train it, and AI art tools outright steal from other artists. And how can one call it "writing" when one mostly prompts AI to generate text and images?

How involved was the guy in the process? Are they stories even good, given the speed each volume is produced? Are they re-readable or only good enough for one-time consumption? Many readers move on after reading one story or a series, but if I'm paying money I'd prefer to keep my copies for a while.

Perhaps the intriguing thing about this "AI lore" series would be how "the web of interconnected narratives" are constructed. It could be a new or reimagined way of storytelling that might be worth studying. These books aren't the first to be created using AI and we'll be seeing more of these as more people dip their toes into AI-assisted writing and publishing.

---

At the Hay Festival, author Rebecca F. Kuang had thoughts about sensitivity readers, the number of BIPOC voices in publishing, and whether authors should not write about races other than their own.

Also at the festival was Joanne Harris, who said that boys should be encouraged to read books about girls because "a boy who is afraid to read a book with a girl protagonist will grow up into a man who feels that it’s inappropriate for him to listen to a woman’s voice”.

---

Excerpts from a report on children's literature in India look interesting and sobering. The challenges faced by authors, illustrators, publishers and booksellers are daunting, and one quote from a children's book illustrator stands out: “No Indian illustrator survives only by doing children’s books. They’re also doing other stuff, like illustrations for corporate websites and projects.”

---

"Growing up, I didn’t have much access to children’s fiction that featured Filipino-Americans, let alone Filipino main characters, so that’s who I wanted to put front and center in my own work. There’s something so wonderful about seeing someone like you in popular media, and readers have reached out to me to let me know how much they connect with my characters."

The story of Filipino-American writer Tracy Badua, and how a lack of Pinoy representation inspired her to publish abroad.

---

It's been a long while since I heard about author Luis Alberto Urrea, so it's nice to read about him again. He has a new novel out, inspired by his mother who served in the Red Cross Clubmobile Service during World War II. I had read Queen of America, arguably part of a duology that retells the story of his great-aunt, Teresita Urrea, the folk hero known as the Saint of Cabora. Good Night, Irene is going into the TBR pile.

---

How scary is this: a hacker stole a million e-books from Korean online bookstore Aladin and threatened to leak them unless paid a hefty sum. But around 5,000 of those e-books were apparently leaked already. The Korean Publishers Association is understandably upset. "Those ebooks will wander around like ghosts for several decades and practically lose all of their value as goods," it told Korea JoongAng Daily.

Book Marks: Age-Appropriateness, New Leaf Crumples

Young adult titles have become a target for book bans but the genre has another problem, according to Rachel Ulatowski at Book Riot. As more adults read YA, publishers start marketing YA titles to grown-ups, leading to the ageing-up of books in the genre to appeal to the adult market. Books written specifically for young adults may not necessarily appeal to grown-ups, and isn't aged-up YA just, well, adult fiction?

Publishers may have their eye on the bottom line, but the blurring of lines between YA and adult genres would be bad news for the former. "YA literature was created specifically to help young readers to transition from children’s to adult books, and to give them resources that tackle topics that they may be dealing with in real life," Ulatowski wrote. "Making YA literature more appealing to adults undermines the very reason why this group became its own market in the first place."

Speaking of YA and age-appropriate genres...

Writer Kaia Alexander reported to The Daily Beast with incredulity that a teacher in her son's school objected to a book the kid brought to class: a copy of Stephen King's Cujo. The teacher cited a Goodreads write-up of the book that stated it was "intended for adults" and recommended The Hunger Games instead. "How is this more appropriate?" Alexander said. "This is a book about children murdering children.”

Nevertheless, they gave the book a try. The verdict: “He’s looking at me like, ‘This is a very dark book.'" And: "He says he likes Stephen King’s writing style better.” Owch.

---

New Leaf Literary Agency has dropped a bunch of authors from representation, some of whome were in the middle of contract negotiations with publishers. "Reports indicate that this was a result of New Leaf letting one of its agents go, and rather than finding new representation for this agent’s clients, the agency dropped all the clients entirely," The Mary Sue reported, adding that this wasn't first time the agency had done this.

I've been seeing authors and others take to Twitter to speak about this in the past few days. What's more, all the dropped authors are not big names. Leaving authors without representation during contract negotiations is bad enough, but new ones need that representation, and this move is irresponsible, to say the least.

---

I don't believe in review-bombing, but some books are itching to become targets. Like Josh Hawley's Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs. Hawley, a Republican senator, was notorious for raising his fist in support of the January 6 insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol – and filmed running away from them afterwards.

Considering his conduct of late, many aren't sure if he's the right spokesman for the values the book espouses, nor are they sure of the wisdom behind the book's title. Headline writers critical of Hawley and his book, like this one, seem to be having a ball.

---

Malaysians are now reading more, according to initial data from a government survey. The Star reports that we are now reading an average of 20 books a year, compared with 15 in 2014, with fiction being the most popular genre.

If you think that's not much of an improvement, the report adds that "...similar studies on reading habits were carried out in 1996 and 2005; each study showed that Malaysians aged 10 and above only read an average of two books a year."

The survey, however, seems to only focus on borrowings from the National Library of Malaysia, and the 2014 study being referred to may be outdated. Still, good news, right?

---

While the debate over the use of AI and large-language models in literature is vigourous in the West, it's all quiet over here in Malaysia. This article on the Penang Art District portal features thoughts from some local authors, publishers, and professionals on AI, and how the authors and publishers are incorporating its output in their works.

Perhaps this piece will encourage take-up of AI among Malaysian creatives and spur debate on its entry into our work and our lives. AI is here to stay and we have to learn how to deal with it.

(Oh, yes, I was among those interviewed for the article.)

---

An interview with Mia Tsai, author of Bitter Medicine, a xianxia-inspired fantasy novel about a French elf and a Chinese immortal. The rest of the blog is worth exploring for more reviews and interviews, mainly revolving around titles by authors of Asian descent.

Book Marks: War On Books Continues, Aye To Sensitivity Readers

The book-banning brigade marches on. Laws are being passed in the United States that targets publishers deemed to have provided "sexually explicit" material to schools or educational agencies.

Summer Lopez, Chief Program Officer, Free Expression at PEN America, writes about this new tactic to ban books in TIME and that it's not about shielding young people from "obscene" material...

Let's be clear. These bills are not about protecting children. They are about using the power of the state to intimidate private companies and ban ideas and stories that some people find offensive or uncomfortable. By going after private publishing houses, these bills represent an appalling and undemocratic attempt at government overreach, and yet another escalation in the war against the freedom to read.

In Tunisia, authorities seized two books at the Tunis International Book Fair and temporarily shut down a publisher's pavilion. Perhaps what's egregious about this is that it happened after Tunisian president Kais Saied said at the event's opening: "It is important to liberate thinking because we cannot accomplish anything with rigid thoughts.” And it's no surprise that the seized books appear to be critical of the president.

And in Hong Kong, a "war on libraries" is being waged, leading to books being pulled off shelves. The public are encouraged to snitch on anyone whose words "threaten national security" in Hong Kong and this has taken the wind out of the sails of anyone who wishes to publish or write books. "Much as mainland Chinese writers used to get their banned books published in Hong Kong, authors who write about Hong Kong issues are now choosing to publish in Taiwan, where the publishing industry is much freer," states Radio Free Asia.

On World Press Freedom Day, Kuwaiti author Mai Al-Nakib explained why writing means so much to her, in the context of censorship in Kuwait. Her situation sounds familiar, particularly where she says that books written in English but not translated to Arabic would "fly under the radar" of censors, and how draconian laws that restrict freedom of expression intimidate authors and booksellers to self-censor, just to be safe. Echoes of growing sentiments by writers and publishers everywhere.

---

An argument for sensitivity readers, and why seeking one during the editing process might be a good idea:

In the UK, if you are a writer from an underrepresented background, it is statistically very likely that your in-house editor won’t be. Given this low ethnic and class diversity (the industry does a bit better on gender, sexual orientation and disability) a sensitivity reader’s feedback can crucially round out that of an in-house editor’s.

Furthermore, the writer adds, is not censorship because a sensitivity reader is there to advise and that the publisher (and maybe the author) has the final say.


Other news:

• The belief that writing children's books is child's play is flawed. The job requires another set of skills and more thought because these materials are moulding malleable young minds. So it's sad to read of children's book authors not liking children's books. Some are discouraged by poor reception to their work, some are pigeonholed as children's authors even though they want to explore other genres. What would it take to forever bury the idea that literature for children is lesser than that of adults?
• As African countries gained independence from colonial rule, African women writers played a key role in the decolonisation of children's literature as they produced works with local themes. "They wrote for children of all ages, creating fiction, folk tales, and works used in school textbooks," writes Anna Adima, Post-Doctoral Research Associate in History at the University of Edinburgh. "With their words, the women imparted lessons they believed were important for the post-independence generation to learn in order to undo colonialism’s 'cultural bomb'."
• Author Lisa Harding revisits her debut novel a few years after publication and sees it in a new light. "To have the opportunity to revisit the same novel through the lens of distance and time was an extraordinary experience, a rare chance for me to address any lingering concerns. I remember at the time of its initial publication, some of my friends saying, but it is unrelentingly bleak, and my response was, well, of course it is. Now, I feel differently."
• Is ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, going into book publishing and distribution? A trademark application filed by a ByteDance subsidiary seems to signal that, and with #BookTok all the rage at the moment, this seems like a logical step. And, as TechCrunch notes, the company isn't new to e-book, citing dealings with e-book reader Yuewen, web novel app Tomato Novel, and a web fiction app called Mytopia.
• Sara Anjum Bari, editor of Daily Star Books, sits down with literary agent Kanishka Gupta for a chat about what agents do and what they look for, the people he's worked with, plagiarism in South Asia, and how his work with books changed him as a writer and a reader.
• "To keep three-dimensional book publishing alive, you do have to push the form a little bit and delight people and make something new," author Dave Eggers tells Fast Company. But will his new book, The Eyes & The Impossible, with its gilded edges, foiled-stamped spine, and bamboo hardcover, get more publishers to do that? The book is a work of art that calls to mind well-crafted tomes such as The Book of Kells, created when books were luxuries. They still are, but Eggers' project could inspire the creation of limited editions for certain bibliophiles.
• Here's a round-up of what was discussed during the annual general meeting of the Association of American Publishers (AAP). The topics included the Internet Archive case, AI in publishing, and the bills restricting access to books by several US states.
• Somebody has been thinking about copyright and fair use in the advent of AI in art and literature, and has penned their musings in Freethink. "The inevitable raft of copyright lawsuits raises one key legal question that threatens to stop these AI models in their tracks: Do the creators of these tools need permission from the copyright holders of the works they use to 'train' their AI models?"
• When talking about AI, people tend to think of online book recommendation features or services. These use a lot of data, much of it user-generated content. Book Riot explores why these services may not do the job right and not to rely on AI (as of now) for what to read next.

Book Marks: Author Debut Stress, Digital Lending Concerns

A survey by The Bookseller is causing a few ripples. For 54 per cent of debut authors, publishing their books negatively affected their mental health. This group reported "anxiety, stress, depression and lowered self-esteem, caused by lack of support, guidance or clear and professional communication from their publisher." Only 22 per cent had a positive experience as debut authors.

The Mary Sue picked up on this and tries to get to the bottom of it. Reality checks lurk at every step towards publishing and beyond, but they seem to have singled out the lack of communication from publishers as a major factor for authors who engaged them. However, they conclude that: "The issues facing debut authors, then, seem to be more systemic in nature than a problem with any one individual editor or publishing executive."

Authorship isn't a smooth, straight path for most. Stories like this one highlight just how much of a slog it can be. Even for those who penned what would become bestsellers or classics, hurdles along the way can be too much to handle. Perseverance, hard work, and luck continue to play a role long after a book hits the shelves, with or without a publisher. If the process is too much, perhaps some time out is needed, or one should just quit.

---

The Internet Archive case may have been a victory for the publishers involved but someone at The Walrus believes that the implications...

... extend beyond the case to touch the digital rights of all libraries—and, by extension, those of authors and readers. It has a bearing on which books (and which writers) libraries deem worthy of the expense to stock in digital formats and, ultimately, how much digital information will be freely accessible.

---

A Taiwan-based bookseller has been detained and placed under investigation in China. Li Yanhe, also known by his pen name Fucha, "is known for publishing books that are critical of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) or are politically sensitive, including about the Tiananmen Square massacre, human rights abuses of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and corruption within the CCP," the Guardian reported.

Previously, several Hong Kong booksellers were also detained by Beijing. One of them, Gui Minhai, was apparently taken while holidaying in Thailand, raising concerns that those wanted by Beijing weren't safe even when they're overseas. Li, however, was in China when he was detained.

---

If "an anthology of gender-bent, queered, race-bent, and inclusive retellings from the enchanting and eternally popular world of Greek myth" does not feature Greek authors, is it truly inclusive? On Twitter, writer and historian Ioanna Papadopoulou lamented the lack of Greek voices in Tor's Fit for the Gods and, as it tends to go on Twitter, discussions got ugly.

Papadopoulou responded to a bad take on this issue but the gist of it is, "Greeks are just tired of seeing Anglo writers hog all the oxygen in the room". Someone on Twitter claimed that apparently, many Greek authors wanted in but, from the list of contributors, (diverse, yes, but I don't see any Greeks in there) didn't make it. East Asians and Southeast Asians, for instance, are retelling and adapting their folklore for modern audiences – surely Greeks can do the same.

---

Writers! Can't resist reading reviews of your work, even if bad ones are lurking within the pile of feedback? Here are some tips on how to do it without ruining your life. One reason some don't spread new stuff they write like butter on warm toast is the anxiety over the reception. Often, no news is good news, but what if you need to know, especially when your work performance hinges on how engaged audiences are with your output?

When all else fails to lift you out of the hole a negative review puts you in, remember the Lit Reactor writer's advice: "Your book [or article] doesn't need to do everything. Stop torturing yourself when your book [or article] isn't all things to all people."


Also:

• Book bans aren't new in the United States; National Geographic traces the history of such bans from way back when parts of the country were British colonies. One can argue the current scale and ferocity of the campaign to ban certain books in the States is perhaps unprecedented.
• Changes to Indian school textbooks have sparked discussions on the teaching of history to schoolkids. A chapter on Mughal rulers has been removed, as were references to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and the 2002 Gujarat riots. The issue is contentious and not just because sectarian divides are being used by certain quarters to gain and retain power and influence.
• Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming, Agatha Christie ... now they've taken the scalpel to PG Wodehouse's books. Penguin Random House also placed disclaimers in the edited new releases of the novels notifying readers of the "unacceptable" language in them and that changes were made to fix that without affecting the stories.
• Somebody went through Moms for Liberty's guidelines for books and it's kind of bonkers. MFL is one of the biggest names in the drive to challenge books in the States and is tagged by some as another right-wing outrage factory. The MFL guidelines are supposed to help parents decide which books are right for their kids but it seems the guidelines talk more about why the books in the list are bad for young people.
• Mystery surrounds the TikTok poet Aliza Grace, who has been accused of multiple instances of plagiarism. But who is she? Is she even a real person or merely an online persona?

Book Marks: Typewritten Tales, Obama's Reads

An independent bookseller in Ann Arbor, Michigan, left a typewriter – yes, the clack-clack variety – as a sort of social experiment where one person would type a few words that would be continued by another, and another, until a story developed. Instead, what came out of it were dozens of stories, and while not all the output was usable, there was enough that ended up in a book. In a way, the book wrote itself.

---

Those curious about former US president Barack Obama's book picks are likely to wonder: does he pick them himself? Sceptics would say no, he has people do that for him. And while this article doesn't seem to be a clear yes/no to that question, perhaps it's not important because his lists of favourites are so eclectic, no one but himself could have made them...

Of the 13 titles included in Obama’s Favorite Books of 2022, there are nine works of fiction and four works of nonfiction, including books by eight women and eight BIPOC authors. There’s a novel about a dystopian school for mothers; a graphic novel about labor and survival in Canada; a journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South; and a beautifully crafted short-story collection.

---

Zeenat Book Supply, perhaps one of the oldest bookstores in Dhaka, is closing down. Besides the COVID-19 pandemic changing habits in reading and studying, the owner cites piracy as one main reason for the decision to close; for some, the original prices are too high. Long-running, family-owned bookstores like Zeenat used to be a familiar sight in Malaysian neighbourhoods, and they also face the same pressures.

And piracy is a problem, especially for e-books, which can be hard to detect. One article sums up the issue with e-book piracy and its impact. Digital rights management technology is no barrier to determined pirates with the tools to "crack" DRM-protected books.

---

Good news about self-published authors arrived in a survey commissioned by the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), a UK-based professional association for self-published authors: Out of 2,200 respondents, nearly 60% said their income had gone up in 2022 over 2021. Is it a good time for aspiring authors to take the self-published route? With so much tech at one's disposal, why not? But one still needs to put in the work, and Ren Lowe, an author and self-publishing coach in Atlanta, shows us how she did it.


In other news:

• Anybody who still remembers right-wing commentator Glenn Beck's tirades describing the Obama years as if it's the Third Reich would probably look back with some incredulity when seeing what's happening in the US right now. However, even with book bans all the rage, driven by right-wing populism, it's still jarring to hear or read about Americans saying things like, “It looks like there needs to be some book burning.”
• A discussion at a Bologna Book Plus event mulled the concept of translators as scouts for publishers, sourcing work that publishers might want. As works go global and networks expand and ignore borders, publishers would naturally want to explore farther. In this frontier, translators are more than interpreter of works; they are bridges connecting local authors and publishers looking for the next big thing.
• Publisher Scholastic was going to license author Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s latest work, Love in the Library, but with one condition: the removal of a paragraph in the author's note and elsewhere in the book that mentions racism. The illustrated book is based on the story of the author's grandparents and is set in a Japanese internment camp during the Second World War, and the censorship looks like another instance of a publisher cowed by the growing movement in the US to whitewash unpalatable truths about US history.
• The Kathmandu Post provides a snapshot of the state of academic publishing in Nepal, the ecosystem of which comprises "state-supported, commercial and non-profit academic publishing". While there are encouraging signs, more can be – and needs to be – done. Main issues include money and transparency in the editing and peer review process.
• “For the foreseeable future, Russia will be associated not with Russian music and literature, but with bombs dropping on children.” The English edition of Mikhail Shishkin's new book, My Russia: War or Peace?, is featured in The Japan Times. As the war in Ukraine rages on more than a year later, perhaps one should look at how Russia ended up here. Shishkin delves into Russia's history to answer that question, plus many more.
• "I love talking about books," Laura Sackton writes in BookRiot. "I’m guessing you do, too. But there are some words we’ve been using that we should not be using. There are some phrases ingrained in our book vocabularies that it is time to excise." She then makes the case for why some book terms need to be kicked out of the lexicon. As a reviewer, using certain terms is a hard habit to kick when one is groping for words, but it's worth thinking about.

Book Marks: Book Bans, Women In US Publishing

As they say these days, "how the turn tables". Months after taking effect, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's signature law to censor books in Florida schools, Florida House Bill 1467, might be used against DeSantis's own book.

In a clever bit of trolling, Florida Democrats are subjecting DeSantis’ new tome—“The Courage To Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival”—to the rules that he and GOP lawmakers established to weed out books with allegedly inappropriate content on race, sexuality, and gender from school libraries.

The Democrats highlighted 17 instances in the book that might violate the state's law, including uses of the terms "woke" and "gender ideology", outdated claims of countergenocide from a proposed ethnic studies curriculum, and several depictions of violence.

DeSantis, who seems to be aiming for the top job in the US in 2024, has been running Florida like his little kingdom, shaking things up with gestures in line with the GOP's war on "wokeness" and such. This blueprint for banning books is but a ripple in the current wave of censorship fever gripping the country.

On the subject: Claudia Johnson, author and free speech advocate, talks to Publishers Weekly about the newest book-banning wave and the need to speak up.

...80% of Americans are opposed to book banning, according to a 2022 CNN poll. But there’s a disheartening gap between the 80% of us wanting book banning to stop and the stark reality that it’s raging across our country, worse than it’s ever been. We 80 percenters clearly have the conviction that book banning should end ... but we need to convert our conviction into effective action.

---

A study by Joel Waldfogel, an economist at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, suggest that in the US, women are dominating the book industry but lag behind men in other creative sectors. The report highlighting this research offers some insight as to why female authorship of books "began to explode" around 1970, citing factors such as the use of time-saving technologies and birth control among women, giving them more time and freedom to pursue careers beyond homemaking.

Another factor is the nature of book-writing, which Waldfogel typifies as a "solo endeavor" where the author has more control. "Maybe the fact that book writing is done mostly alone means there is less discrimination and fewer female-disadvantaging biases and social dynamics in the industry," the report, written by Greg Rosalsky for NPR News, adds.

It also mentions surveys where "about 78 percent of staffers at all levels and 59 percent of executives in the publishing industry identified as women" and that "American women are more likely to read books than American men, especially when it comes to fiction".

Even some of the more famous channels that popularise books are run by women, such as Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon. Speaking to Rosalsky, Jessie Gaynor, senior editor at online lit portal Literary Hub and debut novelist, bring up BookTok, also a driver of sales and a channel that tends to be populated by, yes, women.

This bit of heartening information is probably not new for those who have always known. However, given the ferocity of calls for books being banned or contested in places like the US, with some resorting to threats, harassment and even violence, the safety of women in the industry must be looked into – as if they haven't endured enough already outside their jobs.

Juno Dawson, author of This Book Is Gay, sat down with Rolling Stone for a chat. Her book "went under a formal review as part of investigations into bomb threats sent to several public schools. And much of the fervor against the book in recent months has been stoked by popular right-wing accounts on Twitter and Reddit."

And hurdles keep getting in the way of women authors, particularly those of colour. Nigerian-Swedish author and award-winning travel photographer Lola Akinmade Åkerström, for one, had trouble translating her novel, In Every Mirror She’s Black, "about Black women and Swedes set in Sweden", into Swedish because of concerns over how Swedes would handle its subject matter.

Progress doesn't happen overnight, but the most important thing is to make small steps incrementally towards it. Ultimately, all sectors must become places where women can compete and thrive based on merit and not merely a refuge from sectors hostile or outright detrimental to them. We need to keep pushing for this.


In other news:

• Singapore’s Asian Festival of Children’s Content is expected to be an all-physical event, running from 25 to 28 May at the National Library. Among the confirmed speakers is Xiran Jay Zhao and our own Hanna Alkaf. Events running throughout the festival include include workshops, lectures, masterclasses, and panel discussions.
• Empty chairs at author signings? Janet Manley at the Literary Hub explores the phenomenon, citing factors such as "a flagging economy, the death of local media, Amazon controlling market share, and the arms race of the attention economy", plus the drop in the number of bookstores in the US.
  
  Will in-person events no longer be a thing in the age of Zoom, Meet, and BookTok? I think as long as some readers feel invested in a author and their works, author appearances will remain a thing for some time, especially when the urge to peel one's eyes off the screen to go out and touch grass becomes overwhelming.
• The fallout from the recent Nashville school shooting continues: a children's book illustrator was dropped by his publisher and faces legal charges after he spread notes with anti-trans messages across Juneau, Alaska. Sadly he's not the only one using this incident to hate on the trans community after it came out that the Nashville shooter was trans.

Book Marks: No Jail For 'Script Thief, Plus Annoying Things About Books

Either someone was listening to the Literary Hub or perhaps the crime wasn't severe enough: Infamous manuscript thief Filippo Bernardini won't be jailed for his little scam where he tricked people into sending him unpublished 'scripts so that he could read them before anyone else. According to the Guardian:

The former publishing employee, who worked for Simon & Schuster in the UK – the company has not been implicated in any of Bernardini’s crimes – had said in court documents that he had a “burning desire” to feel like he was a publishing professional. He added that he had no desire to leak the manuscripts he acquired.

Instead, Bernardini has been sentenced to three years of supervised release, after which he will be deported.

---

The Internet Archive has been operating on an open library concept where people can sign up and borrow digital copies of books. I was pointed to this place when I asked about books I can read for reviews or at least cross-check details such as ISBNs. Publishers aren't happy about this, citing copyright infringement, and recently a US court ruled in their favour:

“The publishers have established a prima facie case of copyright infringement,” writes Judge John G. Koeltl of the United States district court in the Southern District of New York in his 47-page decision, which includes a firm rebuke to the controversial concept of “controlled digital lending.”

IA isn't shutting down yet and of course I'll be tracking this.

---

Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming, and now Agatha Christie? Yes, sensitivity readers are taking their scalpels to the works of the doyenne of crime fiction "in new editions of Poirot and Miss Marple mysteries published by HarperCollins."

I'm not a fan of this move and I might talk about this in more detail later. This risks putting new generations of readers in the dark of what these works read like originally and the kind of environment that shaped the minds of the authors involved. Whitewashing the past, that's what this is.

---

Claire Handscombe at Book Riot talks about things readers find annoying about books. And she has quite a bit to say, having been...

...a writer, a bookish podcaster, a blogger, a Book Riot contributor, a bookstagrammer, a bookseller, and a marketing exec in publishing. So this is my world, and I love it.

But I love it the way we love our families. We know they’re not perfect. Sometimes we fondly or exasperatedly laugh at how not perfect they are. There are things that drive me round the bend about this whole word and its absurdities.

In other news:

• Here's a story of a widower's quest to keep his late wife's book alive, captured in his son's documentary, The Book Keepers. This looks like something many of us should watch: a dad's labour of love, told through his son's – at least, I hope so regarding the latter.
• This year's shortlist for the Stella prize, which celebrates “original, excellent, and engaging” writing by Australian women and non-binary writers, is dominated by books from small and independent publishers.
• For writers and authors at various stages and of all stripes, Electric Literature introduces seven newsletters that "offer the best insights and advice from abstract aspects of publishing to the smallest details, including market analysis, writing query emails and proposals, navigating contracts, marketing your work—and don’t forget much-needed emotional support and a laugh or two."
• Not one mention of chatGPT or AI in an op-ed titled, "Take That, ChatGPT!". Genius? I'm not sure. But how it just goes on.

Book Marks: BookTokers, Marketing, Stories Out of Time

BookTokers have been a hit for a while, especially those with ton of followers. Vox speaks with several BookTokers and dives into the trend to see why it's so popular.

One BookToker, Satoria Ray, says one main reason for BookTok's apparent persuasiveness is that "the average person on BookTok isn’t getting paid to give their reviews...

"There aren’t these big influencers with huge followings and all these brand deals and sponsorships flying all over the place. It’s usually a person in their car who just got out of work and is like, ‘I was reading this audiobook and I really enjoyed it.’ It’s moms who are cleaning the kitchen and just put the kids to bed and are like, ‘Hey, I just read this really cool book.’

That’s unique to BookTok.”

Even if some BookTokers could be paid to promote books on the platform? I guess that segment probably graduated to another level after making videos for some time, and who am I to say it's not "authentic" enough, as long as viewers are buying the pitches and the books being pitched? Well, let's hope for the best for these content creators, especially those in the United States as the spectre of a TikTok ban looms.

---

Developmental editor Laura Portwood-Stacer, author of a guide to crafting a compelling scholarly book proposal, speaks with Princeton University Press's Assistant Promotions Director Maria Whelan about aspects of book promotion and how authors can collaborate with publishers on marketing and PR. Books don't sell themselves, and many authors are either oblivious to the need to market their books and themselves, or can't afford to put much into marketing.

Speaking of which, here are some tips on self-publishing and marketing your children's book, courtesy of author Karen Inglis. Or, if one prefers, given the advent of technology, an AI-powered book marketing tool – say hello to Ida, folks.

---

Samira Azzam was a Palestinian writer, broadcaster and translator whose collections of short stories were acclaimed during her lifetime, only to fall into obscurity after her unexpected passing in 1967. A selection of her stories, translated from Arabic, has been published in a new collection titled Out of Time.

“When I first started reading her work, I found them strong and compelling,” translator Ranya Abdelrahman tells The National. “They are on the surface about people's everyday lives but her characters are so vivid. They make you think. These are stories that were written more than 50 years ago, and yet, I found them so relatable and relevant. That's the mark of really good literature. It stands the test of time.”

---

Sarawak-born Nadia Mikail's debut novel The Cats We Meet Along the Way, about a teen's road trip through Malaysia set against the backdrop of a looming apocalypse, won this year's Waterstones Children's Book Prize in the older readers category and was named the overall winner. Nadia's anxieties over her family during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic gave rise to the book: "In the midst of trying to kind of work out those anxieties through writing, I realised the only thing we can do is care for the people we love every day and hope for a better future for them even when things seem hopeless.”

---

In a candid video, Xiran Jay Zhao answers why the sequel to her bestselling Iron Widow, a sci-fi/alternate history mash-up of Pacific Rim and The Great Wall with miscellaneous hitsorical Chinese figures, is delayed. She claims the way and how much royalties are paid in the publishing industry left her with months of no money, forcing her to take gigs that paid sooner and thus delaying the release of Heavenly Tyrant. Considering the glacial agility of traditional publishers, Zhao's situation won't change soon, but one can hope.

---

One sees notices on the copyright page of a book, but a prohibition to share the book and "if you want a copy, buy it"? Such a notice was found within the Zodiac Academy fantasy series, which has predictably drawn public ire and ridicule because, well, libraries? BookXcess-type stores? And friends share books with friends, too. It would be no surprise if this case was in the United States, arguably the most litigious country on the planet where even grapes have an end user licence agreement. Almost everyone involved with the book washed their hands off that "Do Not Share" notice, which is still inside one volume of the series on Amazon.

---

Beijing-based OpenBook, an industry-data research firm, released charts of bestselling titles for February 2023, which I presume is for the Chinese market. Looking at lists from outside the West can be illuminating, but some common threads remain in reading trends, like the sellability of movie tie-ins. Headlining the article is how such a novel, based on a most-watched crime drama series, pushed Liu Cixin's title from the number one spot.

---

Discussions over the use of AI in writing point include loosening one's writing gears but one author who doesn't appear to need such help is Amy Daws, whose book, Wait with Me, is about to be made into a movie. The inspiration for that book came to her while she was waiting to get her car serviced. If only more of us were visited by the muse in such convenient times...

Book Marks: The 'Script Thief, Awards, Regrets, Etc.

I used to do these "book marks" a lot when I was more active in monitoring goings-on in the industry that interest me, but seeing potentially multiple-figure counts of such posts tagged in the sidebar made me reconsider a few times. Then I hit a slump and stopped writing here for a while.

However, this habit helped to keep my toes in book- and publishing-related waters, so i'm getting back to it. And I have a lot to catch up on.

Let's start with the strange case of Filippo Bernardini, who stole hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, made ripples in the publishing sphere sometime back. Why would anyone want to pilfer 'scripts that would be kind of hard to monetise?

Recently, in a letter to a US federal judge, Bernardini claimed he stole the 'scripts because he wanted to read them. After failing to get hired at a literary agency where he had interned, he schemed to get people to send him manuscripts and it snowballed into a scam of sorts. But apparently his aim was not for profit:

“I wanted to keep [the manuscripts] closely to my chest and be one of the fewest to cherish them before anyone else, before they ended up in bookshops. There were times where I read the manuscripts and I felt a special and unique connection with the author, almost like I was the editor of that book.”

Kind of puts things in perspective for a certain segment of the publishing industry, doesn't it? And I speak as an editor of many books for a little over a decade. I've seen my share of 'scripts, some of it bad, and on certain days I wished I was doing something other than reading or editing them.

While some undoubtedly are calling for harsh penalties – theft of any kind in the book world is heavily frowned upon – someone at the Literary Hub thinks otherwise, because:

There are crimes and there are crimes, and this ... isn’t really a crime. Right? A lonely fantasist tricking a handful of agents into leaking manuscripts so that he can feel the illicit thrill of reading them a few months early is as close to a victimless offense as I can imagine. We didn’t send any bankers to jail after the financial collapse. No Sacklers will serve time for their part in the American opioid epidemic. Surely we can’t condemn this meek Italian bookworm to the depravity of the US prison system?

Not sure how much of this is tongue-in-cheek, but I think quite a few will get in line to vehemently disagree.

---

Author Viji Krishnamoorthy's debut novel, 912 Batu Road, published by Clarity Publishing, has been longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award. The novel is about two Malayan families' ordeal through World War II and the early 2000s when their descendants' forbidden love affair threatens to tear both families apart. Yes, the longlist was apparently announced on 30 January this year so I'm late to the party.

Speaking of awards, Tom Benn has won the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer Award for his novel, Oxblood, about an intergenerational family in a council house in the 1980s. The Jersey Evening Post adds that "Previous winners of the award – which comes with a £10,000 prize – include Normal People author Sally Rooney, Surge poet Jay Bernard and White Teeth novelist Zadie Smith."

---

Writing in Book Riot, Alice Nuttall notes that...

Sometimes, authors deeply regret the books that they have published, even if – and sometimes because – those books made their names or brought them wild success. Arthur Conan Doyle famously hated Sherlock Holmes so much that he tried to kill the character off permanently, only to be forced to bring him back after public outcry. Agatha Christie resented the public demand for more Poirot novels; she found her creation irritating and hated all the idiosyncrasies she had given him, something she wryly references when writing crime author Ariadne Oliver’s hatred of her own fictional detective character.

But Nuttall adds that "nearly all of the authors who went on to regret their books are white and most are men", probably because "it’s likely that there are simply not enough books being published by authors of colour for those authors to have those same feelings of regret about the work they have struggled to get out there in the first place."

What stands out for me on the list is Peter Benchley, who of course wrote Jaws. The witch hunt against sharks that the novel and the film adaptation allegedly triggered appalled Benchley, who would spend the rest of his life championing sharks and their right to live unmolested in the oceans. I found his participation in a National Geographic special on sharks, with photographer David Doubilet and notable shark attack survivor Rodney Fox, quite exceptional.

---

An unlikely path to publication for a Middle Eastern author spotlights "some of the setbacks facing regional authors in getting their work read globally." Simply put: the lack of bookshops and slow adoption of e-commerce in the Middle East and North Africa means publishers struggle to just stay afloat, missing opportunities that could be had if they networked with international firms interested in their output. Can networking at international book fairs be the answer?

---

More bites from the Literary Hub: despite being labelled the most wired demographic, Gen-Z still prefer print to e-books, apparently. In the same tone as the plea to spare the manuscript thief Bernardini, the writer goes on: "Citing reasons like eye-strain, digital detoxification, BookTok, and new book smell (seriously, right?), an overwhelming percentage of readers born between 1997 and 2015 prefer old fashioned paper books."

And it seems the FBI made notes about Pilsen Community Books, a Chicago-based bookstore, which is said to be "a meeting place for 'anarchist violent extremists, or ‘AVEs,’ environmental violent extremists, or ‘EVEs’ and pro-abortion extremists.” Bookstores through the ages have cultivated certain reputations based on what they sell, who they platform, and who runs them but wow. And this news surfacing around this period in American history...

Book Marks: Celebrity Blurbs, And The "New" Booker

In the wake of the twin hurricanes Harvey and Irma, booksellers are pitching in any way they can. Some bookstores are raising money and donating books. Third House Books in Gainesville, Florida, offered free coffee at its premises. Seeing bookstores step up to help in times like this makes me fuzzy.

Also:

• Has the mystery of the Voynich Manuscript been solved? Is it really just a medieval women's health manual? Hold your horses.
• "One of things to be said about being Mrs. Lim was that during Cheng Beng, she received many, many presents. These many lush things from her children helped her keep abreast with the living world, to a certain extent. It was unusual for anyone to keep receiving Cheng Beng gifts so long after dying, but then, Mrs. Lim was of a family with unusually high expectations." From io9's Lightspeed Magazine, "The Last Cheng Beng Gift" by Jaymee Goh.
• British author and travel writer Colin Thubron has criticised the "gushing" blurbs of books by authors, saying that some of these might make readers feel bad about not liking the books. But who really believes the blurbs nowadays? Especially those that glow so bright they can help you see in the dark?
• "Americans didn’t ruin the Man Booker Prize. Book publishers did." Specifically, the several behemoths of publishing currently dominating the scene. However, the article alludes to a shrinking pool of Booker-worthy works and that book prizes are becoming indistinguishable from others, Could it be that the criteria for what wins prizes are becoming similar?
• Stealing Indians has similarly received some glowing reviews, but for years, [John] Smelcer's been an object of suspicion within Native circles, where authors including Sherman Alexie and Terese Mailhot, as well as scholar Debbie Reese, have raised questions about his Native heritage and his credentials, and critiqued his books as misrepresentations of history and Native cultures. Stealing Indians, indeed.
• This curious case of an alleged plagiarising poet laureate sounds familiar. Taking works from other poets, then translating and publishing them as originals ... has that happened before?
• Was a photo of Brock Turner used to illustrate a textbook entry on rape? Apparently, yes. The former Stanford University student who avoided a longer jail sentence for the sexual assault of an unconscious woman briefly became the face of rape in Introduction to Criminal Justice, published by SAGE Publications. "Briefly", because SAGE has announced it will be issuing a revised edition of the book, because it seems what Turner did does not fall under the FBI's definition of rape.
• "Here's a pro tip if you want to attract Asian women: Don't read e-books on the subject written by white dudes."

Book Marks: Books In Greece, Tweets Of Trump

"Independent publishing house Opera has been in business on Koletti Street in the downtown Athens district of Exarchia since 1996. Over the past seven years, proprietor Giorgos Myresiotis has seen 13 small publishers and book stores along this side street either relocate or go out of business." The Greek economic crisis has, unsurprisingly, hit bookshops hard. But it might not just be the economy.

Meanwhile, refugees stuck in Greece are getting some relief in the form of books:

...at least two separate initiatives have emerged to help refugees fill the long hours of their day.

One of them is Echo Refugee Library — a minivan fitted with shelves carrying over 1,000 books that does a weekly round of refugee camps in the greater Athens area, plus poorer districts of the capital where many refugees live in UN-rented flats.

...In another part of the city centre, a similar initiative draws Syrian and Afghan refugees to the offices of We Need Books, a volunteer group formed last year that also gives language classes in Arabic and French.

---

"Shannon Wheeler has spent much of this year poring over thousands of President Trump's tweets, and just when he believes he's lost the ability to be shocked, @realDonaldTrump hits a fresh nerve. 'I keep thinking I've been inoculated,' says Wheeler, an Oregon-based cartoonist, 'but then I read something new that [hits] like an adrenaline shot to the hypothalamus.'

"The fruits of Wheeler's creative endurance will go on display Tuesday, when the publisher Top Shelf releases his book 'Sh*t My President Says: The Illustrated Tweets of Donald J. Trump.'"

---

"Launched at [the Malaysian Book Publishing Association Fair], [Muhammad] Fatrim’s sequel Asrama 2 sold faster than the chicken burger from the food trucks downstairs. Unable to put a figure on it, Fatrim was jubilant." This piece on the Mabopa book fair quickly became a piece about Fixi and its outing at the Mapoba book fair, because.

But someone else feels different. This article is in Malay, but it highlights the sad state of Malaysia's book industry. The writer's focus appears to be on the "narcissism" of writers and agencies in writing and publishing what they want, not caring about the market or exploring avenues beyond what they find comfortable. She also seems to be issuing a call for the industry players to unite and free the country's increasingly ailing book industry. Will it be heeded?


Plus:

• "Giving someone a book is like giving someone a piece of your soul. You may not have written it, but in reading it and experiencing it, a book has become a part of you. Passing it onto someone else is, in a way, like passing on that piece of yourself, too. Whether it be your interests, your dreams, your fears, your opinions, or your inspirations, you are giving someone so much more than paper and ink when you give them a book." That's one way to reorganise and declutter one's bookshelf.
• The Russian publisher for American fantasy writer Victoria Schwab's Shades of Magic trilogy censored a romantic LGBT scene in the second book and, of course, people are not happy, including the author.
• Still missing Michiko Kakutani? here's a New York Magazine article to snack on while you digest the fact tat she won't be limning any book plots any time soon. Also: "This week she signed a multiple-book deal with Crown's Tim Duggan Books. The first book, published next year, will be a controversial political book of her own, a cultural history of 'alternative facts' titled The Death of Truth." OMG, this is ... hold on, do I hear knives being sharpened?
• A book that's coming out will reveal the alleged face of Banksy, the mysterious artist whose identity may have already been revealed, but people will not be allowed to share those images. How will they enforce that?
• "...a Delhi court issued an injunction restraining the sale of a book on yoga guru Ramdev, after he alleged that its contents were defamatory. Written by Priyanka Pathak-Narain and published by Juggernaut, the book traces the early days and rapid rise of Ramdev, now the brand ambassador of the Rs 10,000 crore Patanjali group. The court passed the order ex-parte, that is, without hearing the publisher."
• The errors in a book about a South African media personality is stirring a teacup storm in the country. What I found a little puzzling is how most of the online articles I'd read - all apparently from South Africa - just mention her name, as if expecting audiences to know who she is and what she does for a living.
• "Increasingly, book publicists are working to get new hardcovers into celebrities' hands — not in hopes of a film option but a simple tweet, Instagram photo or Facebook post. These little endorsements can reach a much larger audience than an interview with the author on a popular television show or a rave review in a major newspaper. 'In previous times, you would have the Oprah or Daily Show bump,” says Todd Doughty, the director of publicity at Doubleday. “Now you have the Reese Witherspoon bump from Instagram.'" Y'know, this ain't so far-fetched. #Bookstagram is a thing.
• "Amazon has rejected a Kiwi author's advertisement for her debut novel, stating the cover and content is too provocative. The strange thing is, one of web giant's own companies designed it." So what was offensive about the cover? "The cover features a woman's bare chin, neck and upper chest, with a hint of visible cleavage." O~kay.
• This ad might have more than 600 words, but I wouldn't call it an article. But what it apparently sells: an app that reads some text and tells you who wrote it?