Publisher, Faber have reported a fall of 17% in UK sales, according to the Bookseller. The company's chief executive blamed Christmas lists that just didn't cut it. The company are going to build their popular fiction lists as well as retaining their usual literary identity. There are no plans for redundancies and the company will not be looking at job cuts or wages freezes until, at least, March.
The British Library service is close to breaking point - Unison, who have launched a save the libraries campaign, claimed recently. The main reason for the problem in under funding and failure to buy in new titles. We all need to support the various campaigns up and down the country.
Harpercollins have launched two e-commerce web sites offering readers exclusive editions of work by Tolkein as well as natural history titles. www.tolkein.co.uk
TOP 5 MASS MARKET SELLERS OVER CHRISTMAS
1-BEEDLE THE BARD BY J K ROWLING
2-DEAR FATTY BY DAWN FRENCH
3-GUINESS WORLD RECORDS
4-AT MY MOTHER'S KNEES BY PAUL O'GRADY
5-THAT'S ANOTHER STORY BY JULIE WATERS
Daniel P Depp, the half brother of actor Johnny Depp, is to publish a debut novel set in Hollywood.
The novel, Loser's Town, is set to attract far more attention than the average crime thriller from a first-time author.
The revelation of the writer's connection to the world famous actor prompted a bidding war for the book in the US.
The British rights have been bought by Simon and Schuster, with publishers in Canada, Hungary and France also acquiring the title.
Loser's Town is to be published in spring 2009, with sequels already planned. The novel is said to involve a blackmail plot by a fictitious gangster who seeks to coerce a famous actor to appear in the film he wants to make.
The writer's inside knowledge of Hollywood and its underworld has enhanced interest in the content of the book.
His agent Meg Davis of MBA literary agents was initially unimpressed by the email she received from a writer who mentioned that he had a famous brother.
"I thought he was a nutcase but I wrote back saying our website says we'll read scripts, and I didn't care who his brother was," said Davis.
Like his brother, Daniel Depp was born in Kentucky.
He read classics at university and, after various jobs, he set up a production company called Scaramanga in Hollywood with Johnny.
The pair worked on the film The Brave in 1997, in which Johnny starred with Marlon Brando.
Daniel drew on his experiences making the film to create Loser's Town.
On the digital fiction count - The latest issue of the excellent Thrilling Detective is now online
And at the movies:
Jim Carrey is to play Scrooge for a new big budget version of Dickens favourite from Robert Zemeckis
It is rumoured that the movie Spider-man 4 will see Spidey battling Morbius the living vampire.
Watchmen is set for a MARCH 6th opening. The movie, based on the legendery graphic novel is highly anticipated and is bound to do a good opening. After that it's down to the quality of the film.
And not media related in any way but bloody amazing -
CHICAGO - U.S. scientists have found a way to levitate the very smallest objects using the strange forces of quantum mechanics, and said on Wednesday they might use it to help make tiny nanotechnology machines.
They said they had detected and measur
ed a force that comes into play at the molecular level using certain combinations of molecules that repel one another.
The repulsion can be used to hold molecules aloft, in essence levitating them, creating virtually friction-free parts for tiny devices, the researchers said.
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Federico Capasso, an applied physicist at Harvard University in Massachusetts, whose study appears in the journal Nature, said he believed that detection of this force opened the possibility of a whole new class of tiny gadgets.
Improving tiny machinery
The team, including researchers at the National Institutes of Health, has not yet levitated an object, but Capasso said he now knows how to do it. "This is an experiment we are sure will work," he said. His team has already filed for patents.
"By reducing the friction that hinders motion and contributes to wear and tear, the new technique provides a theoretical means for improving machinery at the microscopic and even molecular level," Dr. Duane Alexander of the NIH's National Institute of Child Health and Human Development said.
"The emerging technology of nanomechanics has the potential to improve medicine and other fields," he said in a statement.
The discovery involves quantum mechanics, the principles that govern nature's smallest particles.
By altering and combining molecules, tiny machines could be devised which could have applications in surgery, manufacturing food and fuel and boosting computer speed.
Quantum mechanical forces
The discovery arose from Capasso's prior work as vice president of physical research at Bell Labs, the research arm of telecoms gear marker Lucent Technologies, now Alcatel-Lucent.
"I started to think how can I use these exotic quantum mechanical forces for technology," he said in a telephone interview.
Bell had been working on new devices known as Micro Electromechanical Systems or MEMS, the technology used in air bag sensors to measure deceleration of cars. "We started to play with nanomechanics or micromechanics," Capasso said.
He knew that as devices became smaller and smaller, they would fall prey to what is known as the Casimir force, an attractive force that comes into play when two very tiny metallic surfaces make very close contact.
In very small objects, this force can cause moving parts to stick together, an effect known as stiction.
7 comments:
Jim Carrey as Scrooge? No thanks I'll give that one a miss.
Agree that the library system needs to be saved. It is the one free service that has a good borrowing base. It is also a need that should have better funding. We, the tax payer, pay for this service - so we should have the bigger say. Maybe, there is something in this that could be used in the Wild West Monday.
I felt that the Christmas releases were a bit non-descript.
Faber were, once upon a time, quite a big name in publishing but it seems to have gone down the slide - but it's not rock bottom. Maybe, if it tightens it's list a bit and restructures it's core values it can climb up again.
It is interesting that when looking at old paperback books the number of publishing houses that just do not seem as prominent today - some may not even exist anymore. Heinnemann seem to be the only one that has made some astute purchases over the last few years that has enhanced the strength of their position.
Ray - I would love to incorporate libraries problems into Wild West Monday - after all a lot of people get their westerns there
Think Fabar have P D James but can't think of any other big seller on the fiction front. I miss the old day when NEL was king of the paperbacks
This week Dave Zeltserman has been posting some valid comment on kindred topics at darkpartyreview.blogspot.com See his entries for Jan 05 and Jan 07, including an essay "The Twilight of Reading".
A sample: "Everyone who's been paying attention knows that many, if not all, of the large publishing houses are struggling badly right now.... Major seismic event: The Cheap PC....Writing a book in longhand or pecking away with a typewriter takes work and serious commitment. Using a PC makes it ridiculously easier, and really makes it so that anyone can write 300 pages, and a lot of people were doing exactly that....Then you had new technologies and businesses that needed to be developed to sop up the demand that these new writers had to be published. Publishing on Demand (POD) technology and quick, easy self-publishing businesses came out of this. iUniverse alone has more than 20,000 mystery novels that have been self-published. Let me repeat that. 20,000 mystery novels from just one of these self-publishing outfits."
And: "Keep in mind that this decline is mostly voluntary. The United States has already reached the point where people don’t want to read for pleasure anymore. Video games have replaced comic books. Movies have replaced novels. The Internet has replaced reference books."
Cahp - interesting points.
Whilst I think you are correct in saying the intenet has replaced reference books. I would agree with this but the net is so much easier to use in the respect - irt's like having the biggest reference book in the world in your reach.
But I don't think books will ever go entirely. I think the fact that so many kids prefer video games and films to book is that books are seen as boring. I thinkl this is the publishers fault with so many brick like tomes with boring coveres. When I was a kid I read what was considered adult fiction - westerns, crime but I think if I'd been presented with massive tomes with bland covers I'd have been put off. What's there to excite people? Which is why I think books like those from Hard Case Crime and Black Horse to name but two are so important.
And self publishing - I'm dubious about that. I know its warrented for specialist titles that serve only a small market - Butterfly Breeding for Beginners or something. And there must be some good self published fiction books but what quality control is there here? I suspect the publishers take the money regardless of the manuscript's quality.
Thanks for the link on The Twilight of reading - very sobering thoughts.
Gary, Those were not my comments -- just apposite stuff from darkpartyreview Like you, I agree on the reference books side. The Net has made life so much easier, but I still refer to my copy of the Reader's Encyclopedia of the American West and other trusty favourites.
I do find the resistance to reading for pleasure among younger people dispiriting. And again, I agree some the blame can be laid on the doorkeepers, who include publishers and parents.
Self-publishing is a thorny subject. The Grumpy Old Bookman blog (which I miss) took a similar to yourself -- fine for non-fiction in limited, specialist areas. The company or parish history, for example. In fiction, the "vanity press" stigma remains. The book trade generally and the public libraries won't stock self-published fiction. Take a look at most of it and you can see why.
CHAP - I guess that means we're grumpy old bookmen
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