The Independent reports:
For the first time since April, a new title has replaced Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo at the top of Amazon's list of best-selling Kindle e-books. For the week ending August 29, Suzanne Collins's Mockingjay, the final title in her trilogy The Hunger Games, is the top-selling e-book among Kindle users.
PW Launches Select - a listing of self-published titles
In launching its new listing service, Select, Publishers Weekly (US) writes:
The rise in self-publishing, DIY, subsidy or vanity publishing--whichever term you prefer--is probably one of the most significant changes in the publishing industry in recent years. Since Publishers Weekly was founded in 1872, the magazine has strived to cover the entire publishing industry and this new supplement is simply our latest effort to fulfill our historic mandate. Over the last 20 years, self-publishing has produced an explosion of new authors and new books. Nearly 800,000 books were produced in the U.S. last year and were characterized by Bowker as "nontraditional"; much of this was self-published and POD.
The fee to be included in the "inaugural listing" will be $149, with no guarantee of a review. The new supplement will be released quarterly, with the first one in PW's year-end issue in December.
In the meantime, new authors can suggest their titles for inclusion in ACHUKA's own self-published selection: http://www.achuka.co.uk/indie.php [currently for free!]
from a Guardian report:
Ahead of the massive spending cuts to be set out by the coalition government in October, McKearney is hopeful the scheme will survive. "This project is so important for children, and for libraries: the number of books issued as a result of the SRC now represents 20% of the total books issued every year.
"The scheme has built up really strong momentum. Although we're a tiny team - just one director and a few part-time staff - we have a huge impact on children. With all the talk of a 'big society', this is a very interesting model of how you can support local innovation through national charity co-ordination," she adds.
Miranda McKearney (director of the Reading Challenge) believes that schools and parents shouldn't be left alone to support children's reading. "It should be whole community effort. Through the SRC, libraries encourage children to become enthusiastic readers when schools aren't in action. They add value to a child's reading growth in a unique way that combines so beautifully with what schools are doing." And, McKearney adds with a nod to the fears of library cuts, "long may it continue."
Wall Street Journal / Speakeasy
Recommended link
extract:
But you're not anti-technology. You're constantly updating your Curious Pages blog, which highlights fun children's books you enjoy. Yes, that was an antidote of mine to all of those overly earnest "guardian" blogs out there that state what children should be reading. I thought, those weren't the books that I enjoyed reading when I was a kid, so I decided to just blog about odd books I loved. As for the other stuff, I don't Twitter and I'm not on Facebook, but I'm dying to get an iPad. And I love all my other stuff -- my iPod and iPhone. But i don't Twitter because there doesn't seem to be enough time in the day.
a study suggests that the savage portrayal of headteachers in children's literature possesses a grain of truth and may even be helpful when it comes to training teachers who aspire to lead schools...
In a study to be presented to the British Educational Research Association's annual conference at Warwick University today, Thomson says the books' willingness to encourage children to think about power may help to make the stories more truthful than many adult discussions about school leadership. The books encouraged children to take responsibility and overturn unreasonable social conventions. The stories also acted as cautionary tales, warning that children who made the wrong choices must learn to be responsible.
There are going to be two significant new sections on ACHUKA.
A selection of the most interesting new adult titles, focusing on Art, Photography and Poetry.
And a section in which we will be helping small independents and self-publishing authors and artists to promote their work.
I shall welcome suggestions and recommendations for both the new sections.
For a preview of the redesigned entrypage go to:
http://www.achuka.co.uk/index2new.php
http://nosycrow.com/blog/we-ve-sorted-sales-and-distribution
Nosy Cropw announced earlier this week that they have appointed Bounce! Sales and Marketing as their UK and export sales agency. Bounce! will start selling Nosy Crow books immediately, in time for the publication of the first batch of titles in January 2011.
Bounce! is a specialist children's agency who sell books for several children's book publishers, including Templar and Piccadilly Press.
Grantham Book Services (GBS) has been selected as Nosy Crow's distributor.
Laure Atkins writes:
Children's literature has always courted controversy, from eighteenth-century
debates concerning the dangers of fairy tales to publications of the last fifty
years--such as Falling (1995) by Anne Provoost or Doing It
(2003) by Melvin Burgess--that further challenge notions of what is suitable
reading material for young readers. Nor can children's authors stand aside from
the conflicts and political debates of their age, since these will resonate at
some level in all writing for the next generation. This conference will address
controversial subject matter in children's fiction; the fictional coverage of
national and international conflicts, and question any lingering assumptions
that children's literature is, or should be, apolitical.
The conference will include keynote presentations by well-known writers,
publishers and academics. Proposals are welcomed for workshop sessions (lasting
about 20 minutes) on the following or other relevant issues/areas from any
period in the history of international children's literature:
We welcome contributions from interested academics and others researchers in
any of these areas. Brief accounts of the papers that are presented at the
conference will be published in the Spring 2011 issue of IBBYLink, the
journal of British IBBY.
The deadline for proposals is 31st August 2010. Please email a
200-word abstract (for a 20-minute paper), along with a short biography and
affiliation to Laura Atkins: L.Atkins@roehampton.ac.uk
Beijing International Book Fair - Digitization
Sales of ebooks and digital products flew dramatically last year, hitting some 80 billion RMB ($11.8 billion) in 2009 - up from 50 billion RMB ($7.35 billion USD) in 2008. It still represents less than 10% of the overall book market, which is valued at just over a trillion RMB ($150 billion USD).
E-readers in particular have become a hot product. As reported here last month, Shanda Literature Group -- the country's largest digital publisher -- released heir first dedicated e-reader, the Bambook.
In May, China Mobile -- the world's largest cell phone carrier -- announced that it was building China's largest online digital bookstore. The company plans to offer its subscribers 3G wireless access to online publications including digital books, comics, newspapers and magazines -- some 60,000 titles in all -- and hopes to attract some 200 million users over the next five years.
Earlier, in April, China Publishing Group -- the country's largest traditional publisher -- and Shanghai Century Publishing Group also released their own e-readers.
To get a sense of the pace of growth, consider just one ereader manufacturer: Hanwang. In 2009, Hanwang reported total sales of 270,000 e-readers; this year, the company nearly matched the number in sales in the first quarter alone and expects total units to surpass a million by the end of the year.
Digitization is pushing publishing into "a new historical period" and offering "unprecedented opportunities, according to Sun Shoushan, deputy director of China's General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), who made the remarks earlier this year
Orchard Books has announced the acquisition of INTERFACE, described as "a high-octane, high-concept series that pulls readers into a virtual world with its own rules." The concept has been created by former Chorion Senior Vice President, Jeff Norton and will be written under the pseudonym Ryan Hunter.
Sarah Levison, Senior Commissioning Editor for Orchard Books, has brokered a four-book deal for World English Language rights with Nancy Miles at the Miles Stott Children's Literary Agency.
Book one in the series will be launched in spring 2012.
The parent trap: art after children
Is the pram in the hallway the enemy of good art? Frank Cottrell Boyce, novelist, screenwriter and father of seven, makes the case for chaos...
Real creativity should feel like a game, not a career. Having to hang out the washing or get up and make breakfast helps you remember that your "work" is actually fun. And for it to stay fun, you have to be unafraid of failure. It's very powerful to be surrounded by people who love you for something other than your work, who are unaware of the daily, painful fluctations of your reputation. I discovered recently that my youngest child thought I spent my days typing out more and more copies of my book Millions, so that everyone could have one.Isn't that priceless?
White Crow by Marcus Sedgwick
Most notable picture books of the year so far...
One for Eoin Colfer fans... This was broadcast online as live webcast last Tuesday, but for the moment at least has been archived for fans who missed it...
