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.

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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?

Knowing Myself (Again)

Though things have started changing career-wise, I seem to be stuck in the same existential rut I descended into when I started having sleeping troubles about six years ago. I can't muster the same energy and vibe for work. I've had to rely on dictionaries and thesauruses more. I look at my old work and it looks like someone else wrote it.

Nor do I feel the security and comfort of belonging to a certain tribe. I've ghosted almost all of the connections I made during my forays into writing and publishing while I sorted myself out, and I don't miss the vibe any more. I didn't feel a thing when people recounted their time at a recent literary festival I used to attend.

Divorcing the alienation from the world of letters and the lingering resentment from a failed relationship is hard. Perhaps it's because they're linked. Did I want to write because I wanted to or because I was dragged into it? Instead of a slow, gradual surgical removal, I abruptly ripped out that part of my life in rage. It hurt bad, healed ugly, and evoked phantom pains when I encountered certain triggers. Even now, those pains still lurk beneath the surface.

Whenever these feelings emerge, I remind myself that joy and despair take their turns in life and nothing is constant, so there's no point resenting others for having what I don't have. The things they have come with other things, which I am not yet prepared to shoulder or accommodate. I may not know what I want to be now, but I can distract myself with tiny side projects. Until then, I'll grit my teeth, bear it out and work on those projects, whatever they may be. Seen that way, my world shrinking may not be such a bad thing after all.

An epiphany while watching Accented Cinema's take on why China cared "so much" about Kung Fu Panda slapped me like the thrashing tail of a trout: "Kung Fu Panda loves China more than China loves itself." AC believes that the first KFP film is essentially an American love letter to Chinese culture; though some parts are not culturally accurate, it's an homage so heartfelt that Chinese started asking themselves why they couldn't make something similar.

Perhaps it's that outside-looking-in thing. We seldom recognise our own strengths and unique selling points because we internalise so much of ourselves that it's become second nature, only standing out when seen by others, under certain circumstances. That might be why many creators seek validation from others on social media. Over time, some eventually get addicted to the feedback and adulation – and are devastated when it all comes crashing down.

(Also, China takes itself way too seriously and has too much pride to ever do stuff like KFP, which also pokes fun at itself. They should really lighten up.)

Maybe I stopped writing because I (also) got tired of wondering whether my writing is worth this much or that price. And constantly asking "is it good enough" or "did I get this right" after hitting "Send" can be nerve-wracking. I don't think that will ever change.

I understand better now how self-love requires learning to accept your limits and recognising your strengths, then build upon the latter to mitigate your shortcomings. The process feels arduous because it is. Introspection involves scouring the familiar for the rare, like trying to spot the gem among rows of shops in the neighbourhood you barely glance at usually. Fine-tune your senses and what you'd notice afterwards might surprise you.

Once this becomes natural, you (probably) don't need anyone to boost your morale, but let your inner circle kick you in the butt should you start becoming an asshole. As AC pointed out, China's current animation boom is proof that the nation is learning to love itself Dreamworks-style, so you can, too. "There's no secret ingredient. It's just you."

So I'm starting to write again, and though listicles almost every week with an occasional post in between isn't what some call progress, it's a whole lot better than leaving massive, yawning gaps in the blog publishing schedule. What's important is to "show up", as dictated by the author of the book, Atomic Habits.

And showing up every week has borne fruit. Writing these days is much easier than it was for the past three to four years, even if there was no pandemic. For a long time, I wondered whether anything was worth writing about any more. No longer. So I'm keeping my listicles; reading up for them has helped me find things to write about, and several bullet points eventually became full-fledged posts.

To think, the answer to my writing block was the thing I used to do without too much thought, to keep the blog from stagnating.

Returning to reviews, albeit on a personal level, might take a little longer. But thanks to a few new books, I can start reading without being (too) critical again. It'll be an expensive hobby now that books cost more, and I can't cover the additional costs, but I'd like to think I'm investing in myself.

Man, I'd like things to stay this way for a while longer.

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.

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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.

Kindness At Work

In difficult times, recordings of Ajahn Brahm's talks have been a source of comfort. As he tends to repeat his stories, the trick is to not listen to too many a week, and block off other major distractions while tuning in. He was my drive-home listening for a spell.

One of his tales was about a monk(?) who was "kind" to an automated teller machine, wishing it "good day", and such. Apparently, the ATM "repaid" the kindness by spitting out a twenty-euro bill when the monk passed by.

Of course machines can't reciprocate human gestures. The monk's daily exercises in kindness were more of a reminder to himself to be kind, that even if one's day had been heck, there are things to be grateful for and be kind about.

But stories like this feed into the myth of Buddhism being more than just a philosophy about suffering and the end of suffering, fodder for adherents of the law of attraction and all that.

Nevertheless, I started practising that form of kindness with the car. Nothing special, just a few pats on a headlight when arriving at work or arriving home. On occasion, I do talk to it when nobody's looking, so don't call a shrink on me. I'm already seeing one.

I've been "kind" to the car for a few months and didn't expect anything to happen. But something did, yesterday evening, when I stopped to pump petrol and inflate my tyres. One of them had been repeatedly punctured over a few months and the others weren't looking well either, even though the treads seemed okay.

The problem tyre, located on the driver side up front, sported a cavity that wouldn't look out of place in a bad tooth. Something seemed to have punctured it (again) and a crack had expanded from the entry point.

Going to sleep that night was a little harder than usual. Imagine the catastrophe if that cavity had widened, weakening the tyre till breaking point. I've seen a tyre blow out of a lorry and it was terrifying.

So I have a lot to be grateful for today, even though it kind of sucked: more work poured in, and I already have a near-full plate. For one, the errant tyre, plus its friends, held out until I reached a nearby tyre shop this morning.

"Ye g*ds, how long has it been since you changed your tyres?" the tyre shop foreman exclaimed. "These guys are way past their expiry dates."

So it seems the date of expiry or manufacture was stamped on each tyre, though I couldn't read where. The foreman said something about "2014", so I assumed it was the manufacture date. Going by that, my last tyre change should have been in 2019, yet here I was.

I had been driving up and down highways with potentially explosive tyres for about four years.

I had all the tyres replaced, as the foreman recommended. I went for the cheaper ones they had but if they were substandard the shop wouldn't stock them – not when lives and property are on the line, right? They offered to do the tyre alignment next time, as I was in a bit of a hurry. The bill felt hot and heavy in my wallet but they were nice, so I agreed.

Tyre problems can remain hidden, especially parts that touch the ground where you can't see. What were the chances of that errant tyre showing off that cavity on that day, at that time, when I wanted to pump air into it?

So, yes, for the law-of-attraction crowd and Ajahn Brahm listeners, maybe the car was trying to warn me. PROBLEM. FIX. NOW.

What it's really about is not stressing (too much) about things that have already happened and work on the issue at hand when you can. Worrying about the hole in my tyre wasn't going to help, so I chilled and waited till morning when the tyre shops opened. Be grateful things got fixed.

I've heard many stories from the British-born Buddhist abbot, some of which were told to him, but never have I imagined I'd be living an episode of his tales.

Ugly

Reading about book vandalism at Tsutaya Books at Pavilion Bukit Jalil is saddening – and enraging. Since opening, the outlet has had to set aside "mountains of books have been damaged, intentionally - with pages ripped out, covers torn, children’s pop-up books that no longer 'pop-up'." This is beyond the occasional paper cup, plastic bottle or, worse, left on bookshelves.

As a result, the outlet has begun shrink-wrapping its books, and rightly so. Books displayed on the shelves belong to the store and they have the right to protect them for the sake of its customers who'd prefer getting their hands on pristine goods.

When in bookstores and libraries, we should strive to ensure unwrapped copies we browse or flip through are returned to their original places on a shelf in good condition. We don't do as we please in other people's homes, even if invited to do so, so why this callous treatment of a shop's merchandise?

What compels a right-minded person to damage covers and rip out pages from books, especially new ones? In Kuala Lumpur, a World Book Capital some more. Where does this impunity come from? And why do such behaviours persist?

One is tempted to link this behaviour to the example shown by certain figures in recent years, that it's fine to flout a few rules if you have connections, or if you don't get caught. If the higher-ups can get away with it, some might argue, why can't they? "Ah-lah, it's JUST a BOOK. They have insurance wat."

Were errant children involved? Because I can't wrap my head around the thought of an adult knowingly vandalising new books in this manner, then putting the item back on the shelf and pretend nothing ever happened. If parents are covering for their kids, congrats, they've just taught their children to hush up misdemeanours instead of owning up to them.

And insurance claims, if any, for damaged merchandise is a net loss to the outlet and customers who want it. I doubt any insurance company would accommodate a business plagued by vandals for too long.

A reading culture goes beyond buying and reading lots of books. It's also about being aware of what goes into the production of one, knowledge of the publishing ecosystem, attitudes towards book publishing and bookselling institutions, and how each printed tome is treated.

Such acts have further tarnished our reputation. When did we start becoming such asses? It's not the first time a bookstore was subjected to average Malaysian whims. And we're also known for other examples of awful behaviour.

Tsutaya is Japan's largest bookstore chain, and its opening at Pavilion Bukit Jalil was so hyped. People were lining up to get in on opening day. And yet, this happened. Will other overseas firms have to consider "the ugly Malaysian" a risk of doing business in Malaysia?

If a business's trust in its customers is betrayed, then the business has the right to limit what patrons can do within its premises until that trust is earned again. Tsutaya Bukit Jalil expressed hope that the cling film will come off their books someday. That day might be a long way off.

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.

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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”.

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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.”

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"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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.)

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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.

Taking Offence

Actor and author Tom Hanks has weighed in on the recent trend of editing classics and other long-published works for newer, more sensitive audiences.

"Well, I'm of the opinion that we're all grown-ups here," Hanks was quoted as saying. "And we understand the time and the place and when these things were written. And it's not very hard at all to say: that doesn't quite fly right now, does it?

Many, I'm sure. share Hanks' opinion. As adults we should know how to control ourselves whenever we encounter something that offends our sensibilities. Sexist portrayals of women, racist depictions of minorities and such in art and literature should be read within the context of their eras. Content that might be triggering to readers ... that should be discussed separately.

"Let's have faith in our own sensibilities here, instead of having somebody decide what we may or may not be offended by," he added. "Let me decide what I am offended by and not offended by."

Trouble comes when someone decides they are offended by something in a book and are upset when others don't feel the same, so they set out to change that. This is partly behind the movement to ban books – that's what it is – in the US and the horsepower on that bandwagon has been so impressive, others have hitched their carriages to it.

Even with all the details emerging from reports on the issue, the findings of The Washington Post still astounds. The Post analysed a set of challenges to books filed in "the 2021-2022 school year with the 153 school districts that Tasslyn Magnusson, a researcher employed by free expression advocacy group PEN America, tracked as receiving formal requests to remove books last school year." They found that...

Nearly half of filings — 43 percent — targeted titles with LGBTQ characters or themes, while 36 percent targeted titles featuring characters of color or dealing with issues of race and racism. The top reason people challenged books was “sexual” content; 61 percent of challenges referenced this concern.

The paper also revealed that "The majority of the 1,000-plus book challenges analyzed by The Post were filed by just 11 people."

Each of these people brought 10 or more challenges against books in their school district; one man filed 92 challenges. Together, these serial filers constituted 6 percent of all book challengers — but were responsible for 60 percent of all filings.

Ye g*ds. Ninety-two challenges by one person?

The rationale for many of the objections are the usual: they don't want young people reading about sex or LGBTQ lives and issues, these books normalise LGBTQ, and so on. Better to learn about all that from the likes of Fox and Moms for Liberty, right?

Also mind-blowing is the objection filed by a parent over The Hill We Climb, an edition of the poem by American National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman, which was read aloud at the inauguration of President Joe Biden. Why? "Cause confusion and indoctrinate students," the complainant wrote. On two pages of the book: "Is not educational and have indirectly [sic] hate messages."

C'mon now, a poem from a National Youth Poet Laureate is "not educational" and has "hate messages"? Also, the complainant seemed to have mistakenly attributed authorship of the opem to Oprah Winfrey. That the complainant has links to groups like the Proud Boys and Moms for Liberty (HA!) and is a Ron DeSantis supporter is probably no coincidence.

Taking offence has become a pastime of sorts with certain people. Armed with the outsized influence and reach granted by social media, they set chatrooms and threads on fire, infecting the susceptible with their outrage and indignation, dampening voices trying to cool things down. So many fall for this incendiary rhetoric and BS.

It feels like more and more are giving up the ability to question, research and think critically and leaving all that to certain authority figures who would turn out to be less than authoritative than they'd like to think.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

Musings On This World Book Day

For work, I dived into the origins of World Book Day and I was pretty surprised. The first Day of the Book in the Spanish region of Catalonia was the brainchild of a publisher and big fan of Miguel de Cervantes, who wrote what is considered to be the first modern novel.


Books, roses, and charities
What happened during the early World Book Days? Bookselling, I presume – specifically, outdoor bookselling, pasar pagi style, plus maybe some writer meet-and-greet sessions. The sources I searched don't say what happened during those early Book Days. But the original date was 7 October, to mark Cervantes's birthday.

The Day of the Book was moved to 23 April because fall weather can be a bit nippy for outdoor book-browsing, and book lovers can browse. This date coincided with the long-running St George's Day, and since then, the Day of Books and Roses became an annual Catalonian affair. Besides book stalls and author signings, roses are also sold on the day, in honour of St George.

UNESCO adopted the date as World Book Day, using it to commemorate several other authors besides Cervantes but there's some debate as to what the date signifies for each author. Some say Cervantes and William Shakespeare died on 23 April but no, no, others say, because the countries adopted different calendars, so Shakespeare died on some other date.

Rather than split hairs over this detail, UNESCO stuck with 23 April. But unlike the UNESCO event, World Book Day in the UK and Ireland is more of a charity do that kicks off on the first Thursday in March. Starting from 1998 in the UK, children in full-time education are given book vouchers. There's even a World Book Night, run by a charity organisation.

Besides World Book Day, Spain also gave us the World Book Capital initiative. Madrid once held a string of book-related events throughout a year, and some thought this practice should go global. Madrid became the first WBC in 2001 and, in case anyone has forgotten, Kuala Lumpur was designated WBC in 2020.


A gloom descends
How inspirational. Some of us would perhaps feel wistful at the thought of sparking something similar. Did Vicente Clavel envision that his idea would become a world event? And isn't the story of Don Quixote about the power of a dream?

Looking around though, being sanguine about books and publishing right now is kind of, well, quixotic. And following dreams didn't quite work out for Don Quixote.

Just as Michelle Yeoh's Oscar win has gotten folks asking questions, many in the book industry probably wondered what would our reading and publishing landscape look like "if things were different". Having ideals is well and fine, but they tend to wither in the face of realities.

In Afghanistan, women and girls are being denied an education, and a private library was forced to close by the Taliban (women "have no right to read books"?). The authorities appear unmoved by the support Afghan women are getting from some of their menfolk. Back home, our Indigenous languages and local dialects are in danger of dying out; some have gone extinct. And the theme for this year's World Book Day is Indigenous languages.

Books and copyright, the two things World Book Day celebrates, are being contended in the case of the Internet Archive vs Hachette. The Internet Acrhive, an American digital library, scanned and distributed books via its National Emergency Library during the start COVID-19 pandemic. Several publishers led by Hachette filed a lawsuit against IA, crying copyright infringement. A judge sided with the publishers, but a final judgement is still pending.


Books on fire
But perhaps the biggest pall cast over this year's World Book Day, besides what's happening in Afghanistan, is the stepping up of book bans in parts of the world. In the US, more books have become targets of censorship, particularly those that deal with racism and prejudices against ethnic, religious and sexual minorities. Right-wing and Christian nationalist groups are involved, and some state officials have enacted laws that prohibit certain titles from being taught in schools or made available in school libraries. And they are thinking of going after publishers too.

Book-ban proponents say they want to shield children from "obscene" material but what's obscene is how minorities in America are (still) treated and how ingrained prejudices against them are. Another obscenity is the rampant fetishisation of LGBTQ+ individuals that reduces them to what they do in bed, when that is just a tiny part of their identity.

Literary advocacy group PEN America's report on the growing censorship in US schools and libraries paints a gloomy picture. Its Index of School Book Bans lists 2,532 instances of individual books being banned, affecting 1,648 titles by 1,261 authors, from July 2021 to June 2022. Authors of targeted books are fighting back, and libraries, institutions and other advocacy groups are joining in.

Filipino author and journalist Miguel Syjuco warned about creeping censorship in his opening keynote for the Cooler Lumpur Festival of ideas back in 2014, saying that "the house is on fire". Didn't take too long for the flames to grow fiercer and spread wider, and not just because of climate change.

I'm keeping an eye on this, as is Book Riot, though standing in solidarity with besieged writers, librarians, educators and students in affected places feels like a hollow gesture when considering our own censorship issues. Fighting a state can be financially and emotionally taxing if one is not prepared, so kudos to those taking a stand.


A quixotic undertaking?
World Book Day 2023 looks set to be dismal. But should it be? Books and other literary materials are a soft target for censorship hounds during shaky sociopolitical situations. That such materials are targeted this way can be a testament to the power of the written word, validating the Catalonian reverence for books that led to the creation of their own day.

Banning books to "arrest social change" is "irresistible to short-termist authorities" despite its tendency to fail, wrote book critic John Self last year for Banned Books Week, but he also noted that it is a miracle "that marks on a page or screen can enable communication from one brain to another on the far side of the globe, or the other end of the century."

And that miracle comprises works of all genres under the sky, from the lone nom de plume on Wattpad chiselling out chapter after chapter to blockbusters by marquee authors under publishing titans. All of whom deserve a place in the sun, in an e-reader, or on a bookshelf. It must be preserved, even as others try to erase it.

Also, everyone in the book industry plays a role in the development of minds and the progress of a people and a nation, so we must demonstrate that we can be entrusted with that role and carry it out responsibly. That would include fighting unwarranted censorship, even though it would mean working within the framework of a country's laws and norms.

The struggle doesn't have to be violent or law-breaking, nor should it. Someone at Tor.com spoke out against book bans and suggested ways to help the fight against them. And here are some stories about how some parents, teachers and librarians are pushing back against challenges to books.

We've all come a long way since language and writing were invented, and the road ahead is longer still. But I believe we're well on the way towards an ideal book-loving society that nurtures and defends the craft and industry of words.

Getting there will feel like tilting at windmills, but the day of the book will come.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

The Salt In A Publishing Star

If you're a bestselling author who has sold tens of millions of copies of more than 260 titles, and whose titles often feature in the New York Times bestsellers lists, would you be salty if your latest title ends up at a lower ranking on an NYT list than you thought?

If you're James Patterson, you probably would be.

At Slate, Laura Miller drops her two cents about this, pointing out that the NYT bestsellers lists are not reliable yardsticks for a book's popularity because they "are the product of a lot of math, but also a good deal of art." And there are ways of getting onto those lists that can be considered unethical.

However, Miller suggests that the "disdain" heaped upon Patterson's oeuvre has made him thin-skinned. She also notes that...

Publishers Weekly magazine has declared Patterson the best-selling author of the preceding 17 years. Yet in the same magazine’s list of the 150 bestselling books since 2004, not a single title out of Patterson’s hundreds of books appears. Patterson sells boatloads of books; he just hasn’t sold boatloads of any particular book. He makes up for the difference in volume.

So she suspects that "Patterson can’t help but be nettled by the fact that for all his dozens of bestsellers, no single one of them has had the iconic staying power of, say, The Stand or The Hunger Games."

I get that some authors want to be remembered for certain things, and a pile of negative reviews on the likes of Goodreads is not one of them. By now I would think someone like Patterson has outgrown the need for bestsellers lists. At least he's still in the news, and doing better than Dan Brown, John Grisham and, uh ... EL James?

As a publishing titan, he can contribute by nurturing more writers. Doesn't he have an online masterclass in writing? He could also provide something of a boost to other writers, particularly the lesser-known co-authors of some of his works. "I wrote this with James Patterson" might elicit a raised eyebrow or a snooty snort, but at least it gets one's attention. That is a vital first step in the publishing world.

And considering how competitive the book industry is, being able to strike gold as an author is a huge deal. I think Patterson should come to terms with the fact that he's making big bank churning out "boilerplate thrillers that snoots love to look down on" and he's doing well out of that, compared to many others.

The guy's pushing eighty. He should just roll with it and ignore the snobs. Too much sodium is bad for one's health.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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...

Ghostwriter In The Machine: Much Closer Than We Think

Just days after my piece on ChatGPT's use in writing books went live, more developments in that field emerged. The AI interface is now cited as an author of more than 200 books on Amazon, and that number is set to grow. But over at Inside Hook, they aren't too concerned about AI overtaking humans in writing books:

As long as these books are properly labeled and part of Amazon’s self-publishing milieu, this might be more of a novelty at the moment. And we still approve of ChatGPT as a tool, even in publishing — but given that the program is still riddled with mistakes and odd errors, skilled human writers and editors are still 100% necessary, even for the most mundane of guides (or bad space erotica).

I'd have agreed with this a couple of weeks ago, except that OpenAI has announced the arrival of GPT4, said to be the advanced version of the AI model behind ChatGPT. Now some, like Kenneth Whyte at The Whig, are predicting the impending end of the human author in several sectors, including journalism where pithy, punchy machine-made copy will do for readers struggling against a tsunami of automated output...

...all of it optimized to outperform human product in algorithmic searches. The machine story will be good enough for most people and for most purposes. The content churned out by today’s media companies will be somewhere between worth less and worthless, making it difficult for those companies to afford original, high-value human journalism.

This avalanche will extend to book publishing, according to Whyte's projections, as the internet facilitates the (self-)publishing of AI-assisted books in genres where literary flair isn't a prerequisite, such as "guidebooks, basic biographies, basic histories, basic personal finance, basic personal advice, basic diet and health books, puzzle collections, and how-to series." There's even an AI-powered book-marketing service now.

Similar bells are also tolling for audiobook narrators as firms offer libraries of AI voices for various uses beyond Waze direction prompts, smart appliances and virtual assistants.

Against this wave of intelligent automation, The Writers Guild of America, a labour union of writers in numerous media sectors, seeks to ban AI work from being used as source material and introduce measures to protect their writers from being made redundant by AI. The guild also claimed that "AI software does not create anything. It generates a regurgitation of what it’s fed" and that "plagiarism is a feature of the AI process".

All these aside, the AI tsunami is all but inevitable as technology becomes even more essential to our lives. Over time, as the trend takes off, more will use AI to create content under shrinking time constraints. As quantity grows, quality will matter less and less, up to a point where writing is no longer art or "artsy" but a mass-consumed commodity. "In a nutshell," Whyte states, "generative AI has the potential to destroy a lot of value in the literary world without producing a single great work of literature."

But just as one out of a million monkeys at typewriters will somehow create a masterpiece, trained AI models can make art if given enough chances. An acquaintance playing around with ChatGPT Plus is startled (as am I) but pleased with the results, albeit with a little tweaking, and is planning a volume (or several) of AI-aided short fiction and poetry.

Yes, writers can finally write more and write often with AI and some seem fine with that, like romance authors. As more embrace AI as a writing tool, more books will be produced and, presumably, more gems and new voices will emerge and get read, and publishers will have to take notice as genres that were once considered niche enter the mainstream through sheer volume of work and readership. Though I don't think AI can crank out a romance novel because the writing for that genre is "formulaic".

Perhaps what fogeys like me will miss about publishing once AI assistance becomes the norm are the variety in our editing-room war tales, the joy of discovering the elusive sparkle in the mire, and the cataloguing of writer snafus for memoirs that may never see the light of day. Where's the allure in sifting through the slush pile when everything looks immaculately machine-manufactured? And AIs don't make hilarious typos, do they? Nor are they likely to engage in witty repartee. Y'know, human things.

Well, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

When the Gutenberg press was invented, it was a matter of time before books no longer belonged solely to the privileged. Then the internet happened and everyone can now be a writer, publisher, journalist, and opinion-shaper, for better or worse.

As treasure hunters of the literary kind, editors, publishers and agents now have a burgeoning galaxy of stars to search for the next supernova hit. The vastness of the infinite is daunting but I believe we're up to the challenge.

And it's not as if AI is infallible. There are cases where AI made mistakes and even amplified misinformation. Gatekeepers will not be out of a job, far from it. If the post-truth situation is projected to be as dire as this post says, we have our work cut out for us. Hiccups in these early AI assistants only mean we have more time to adapt.