Book links roundup: Aaron Sorkin to pen Steve Jobs biopic, Zuckerberg’s former assistant writes memoir, and more
- Aaron Sorkin to write screenplay for Steve Jobs biopic
- Mark Zuckerberg’s former assistant writes memoir
- Ellen DeGeneres wins Mark Twain Prize
- French culture minister Mitterrand warns about “predatory” ebook pricing
- The Outsiders released as ebook to celebrate 45th anniversary
- How to turn blog posts into publishable gold
- Which famous literary icons were roommates?
Email reveals Steve Jobs’ involvement in agency pricing negotiations
Seventeen more U.S. states, including New York, have joined the class action lawsuit against Apple, Macmillan, and Penguin, accused of allegedly colluding to raise the price of ebooks. Unlike the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation, the 31 states involved are seeking monetary compensation for consumers, who, according to the amended complaint, “paid over $100 million in overcharges.”
New information, previously redacted from the DoJ lawsuit, has also been revealed about Steve Jobs’ role in the negotiations with the five big publishers involved (Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster have already settled).
According to Paid Content, Jobs wrote to an unnamed publishing executive:
1. Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream ebooks market at $12.99 and $14.99.
2. Keep going with Amazon at $9.99. You will make a bit more money in the short term, but in the medium term Amazon will tell you they will be paying you 70 per cent of $9.99. They have shareholders too.
3. Hold back your books from Amazon. Without a way for customers to buy your ebooks, they will steal them. This will be the start of piracy and once started, there will be no stopping it. Trust me, I’ve seen this happen with my own eyes.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see any other alternatives. Do you?
Open Book puts literary events on the map with new app
Do you have a hard time keeping track of all the literary events taking place in Toronto and across Ontario? If you own an iPhone, Open Book: Toronto and Open Book: Ontario may have a solution.
The Open Book App, which launched last month in time for the busy spring book-launch season, ties in to the extensive events listings compiled by the pair of Web magazines. It also provides details on dozens of Ontario literary landmarks, including bookstores and literary plaques (known as “bookmarks”). Using geolocation technology, the app offers directions to events and other points of interest.
Book links roundup: Cohen donates to Canadian arts, Sookie Stackhouse series comes to an end, and more
- Leonard Cohen donates $50K Glenn Gould Prize to Canada Council for the Arts
- Charlaine Harris announces end of Sookie Stackhouse series
- Kirk Douglas, Capote make ebook debuts
- Russian writers lead protest march
- A Clockwork Orange turns 50
- Titan Books to publish Olly Moss’s Silhouettes from Popular Culture
- Study shows decline in influence of classic literature on writers
- In the e-reader era, writing a book a year is plenty
BookNet bestsellers: Canadian fiction
Women authors writing across a number of genres dominate this week’s bestsellers list of Canadian fiction.
For the two weeks ending May 6, 2012:
1. Alone in the Classroom, Elizabeth Hay
(McClelland & Stewart, $22 pa, 9780771037979)
2. The Headmaster’s Wager, Vincent Lam
(Doubleday Canada, $32.95 cl, 9780385661454)
3. The Accident, Linwood Barclay
(Seal Books, $11.99 mm, 9781400026395)
4. Why Men Lie, Linden MacIntyre
(Random House Canada, $32 cl, 9780307360861)
5. Irma Voth, Miriam Toews
(Vintage Canada, $22 pa, 9780307400697)
6. Daughters Who Walk This Path, Yejide Kilanko
(Penguin Canada, $24 pa, 9780143186113)
7. The Winter Palace, Eva Stachniak
(Doubleday Canada, $24.95 pa, 9780385666565)
8. Web of Angels, Lilian Nattel
(Knopf Canada, $22 pa, 9780307402097)
9. Half-Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan
(Thomas Allen Publishers, $24.95 pa, 9780887627415)
10. Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
(Seal Books, $5.99 mm, 9780770422059)
11. Forgotten, Catherine McKenzie
(HarperCollins Canada, $19.99 pa, 9781443409919)
12. Room, Emma Donoghue
(HarperCollins Canada, $19.99 pa, 9781554688326)
13. The Midwife of Venice, Roberta Rich
(Anchor Canada, $22.95 pa, 9780385668279)
14. The Book of Negroes, Lawrence Hill
(HarperCollins Canada, $10.99 mm, 9781443408981)
15. Kaleidoscope, Gail Bowen
(M&S, $29.99 cl, 9780771016899)
16. The Thirteen, Susie Moloney
(Vintage Canada, $14.95 pa, 9780307361585)
17. Everything Was Good-bye, Gurjinder Basran
(Penguin Canada, $18 pa, 9780143182573)
18. Wonder, Robert J. Sawyer
(Viking Canada, $13.50 mm, 9780143056324)
19. The Cat’s Table, Michael Ondaatje
(M&S, $32 cl, 9780771068645)
20. Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
(HarperCollins Canada, $16.50 pa, 9780006391555)
Canada Post introduces Franklin the Turtle stamps
Kids Can Press president Lisa Lyons, Franklin author Pauletter Bourgeois and illustrator Brenda Clark, and Canada Post's Alice Lafferty flank Franklin the Turtle at his stamp series launch in Toronto (Photo: Stephanie Lake, Canadian Press/courtesy of Kids Can Press)
Canada Post has cemented Franklin the Turtle’s status as a Canadian kidlit icon by unveiling a series of stamps featuring the hero in a half-shell.
The four stamps depicting scenes from Paulette Bourgeois and Brenda Clark’s books, published by Kids Can Press, are part of a series commemorating Canadian children’s literature. (Canada Post has yet to reveal any other children’s lit characters to get the postage stamp treatment.)
Also at the May 12 event in Toronto, Canada Post launched its Stamps Alive app, which allows users to play a Franklin game by scanning the stamp package with their Apple or Android mobile devices.
Edugyan, Gill, Davis win B.C. Book Prizes
Victoria author Esi Edugyan can add one more honour to her long list of achievements. Edugyan’s 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning novel, Half-Blood Blues (Thomas Allen Publishers), was awarded the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize at the B.C. Book Prizes, which were handed out at a gala in Vancouver on May 12.
Charlotte Gill’s tree-planting memoir, Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe (Greystone Books), which received the 2012 British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-fiction in February, won the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize.
The late Chuck Davis posthumously won the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize and the Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award for The Chuck Davis History of Metropolitan Vancouver (Harbour Publishing). The historian and broadcaster died on Nov. 20, 2010, but his 592-page tome, which he referred to as the “capstone” of his writing career, was completed by friends and colleagues. It was published in November 2011 to coincide with what would have been Davis’s 76th birthday.
Other B.C. Book Prize winners include:
- Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize: John Pass, crawlspace (Harbour)
- Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize: Sara O’Leary; Julie Morstad, illus., When I Was Small (Simply Read Books)
- Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize: Moira Young, Blood Red Road (Doubleday Canada)
Each of the winners received $2,000, with the exception of Brian Brett, who was presented with a $5,000 prize for the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence.
John Updike Society to purchase author’s childhood home
The John Updike Society announced last week that it has entered into an agreement to purchase the Shillington, Pennsylvania, home the Pulitzer Prize–winning author lived in as a child. The house, which resides at 117 Philadelphia Avenue, was purchased with money donated by a foundation that wishes to remain anonymous until after the deal is fully closed. The sale is contingent upon the house being designated an historic site.
“I’m tickled pink with the agreement,” said the owner of the house, Tracy Hoffmann, president of Niemczyk-Hoffmann, an advertising and marketing firm, which has already relocated to Spring Township.
Hoffmann owned the building with his former partner, Ted Niemczyk.
“I feel really good about the John Updike Society eventually taking over the home and property and preserving it, because I believe it can be a crown jewel for the community,” Hoffmann said.
The John Updike Society was formed in 2009, the year the author died. The mission statement on its website reads:
The John Updike Society will be operated exclusively for the purposes of awakening and sustaining reader interest in the literature and life of John Updike, promoting literature written by Updike, and fostering and encouraging critical responses to Updike’s literary works.
Book links roundup: 20th Century Fox options self-published novel, attempt to ban Tintin fails, and more
- 20th Century Fox options film rights to self-published science fiction novel
- Effort to ban Tintin comic books in Belgium fails
- Stephenie Meyer buys film rights to horror novel
- The future of publishing, according to an Amazon executive
- A guide to the Nebula Awards
- Author websites: the digital business card
Q&A: David Balzer on the digital launch of his fiction debut
Tonight, David Balzer launches his short fiction ebook Contrivances (Joyland) with “MELODRAMZ: A Night of Contrivances,” featuring an art show, drag performers, and dancing at the White House Studio Project in Toronto. (Admission is $8 and includes a copy of the ebook, downloadable through a QR-coded postcard.)
Q&Q spoke to Balzer, a well-known visual art critic, about his fiction debut, which he says is inspired by “Old Hollywood, Gothic novels, art-world gossip, and maybe a Lifetime movie or two.”
What is the connection between the paintings that appear in your book and your stories?
I’ve always been really interested in painting and portraiture. When I started writing stories they seemed like exercises to me. I wasn’t sure where they were going, but then it became clear to me that there was a strong element of whatever I was seeing in historical portraiture happening somehow within the psychology of the characters I was writing about. Around the time my confidence in fiction writing began to solidify, about six or seven years ago, I saw a show by the painter Janet Werner, whose painting is now on the front of the book. I wouldn’t say it inspired the book, but it confirmed a bunch of things for me, like the literary sensibility around portraiture.
It also dawned on me that a lot of the literature that I was into from the 19th century was illustrated in that Victorian tradition. Adding illustrations was a way to ground the collection within the art world because that’s where my audience is.
Did you always know who you wanted to get to illustrate the book?
A lot of the artists I had in mind, like Janet Werner. Many of the artists are my friends, like Marcel Dzama and Alison Fleming. In some cases, I worked with the artist to find a match for the story. It was a fun process.
How has your work as an art critic impacted your fiction?
I’m interested in characters who look at life the way I would look at a work of art: always asking questions around significance, and analyzing surfaces and aesthetics in terms of their philosophical and moral implications. I like the rigour of working your mind through strange situations like you would when you see a work of art and you don’t know what it means.
Why did you decide to publish Contrivances as an ebook?
Short fiction is incredibly hard to publish, and the illustrations didn’t seem to be a selling point – after about two years of queries I didn’t have any bites. You always dream that your first book is going to be a physical entity, but what Joyland is doing is so interesting. There’s so much momentum around their imprint as a champion of new short fiction.
What do you have planned for the launch party?
I thought it was really important to have a counterpoint to the fact that the book is virtual and to make it come alive. The obvious way to do that was to have an art show of the works in the book. My friend Rea McNamara has curated a bunch of projected .gif art – it’s a way to bring weird online culture into an event space.
In terms of the readings, it struck me that because there are so many women in the book – I’m gay but there are no gay characters, but I feel like the book has a strong queer sensibility, anyway – it would be good to have a cast of drag performers doing short readings. And because I’ve been working on this book for five years, the DJ part is just me wanting to dance.
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