Random House have introduced a clause into it's contracts for Children's writers which sets out what it calls acceptable behaviour for anyone wanting to write for children. The clause has been called paranoid and threatening and received criticism from agents and writers.
Online bookselling giant Amazon are in talks to buy Shelfari, the Seattle based online social networking site for readers. And Pan books are also embracing the net by launching it Love Letters FACEBOOK application which it hopes will attract new readers to its online store.
Book sales at UK airports are at an all time high - sales have increased year by year since 2000 by almost 30%.
TOP FIVE UK BOOKS
1 No time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay
2 The Sleeping Doll by JeffreyDeaver
3 East of the sun by Julia Gregson
4 The pirate's daughter by Thompson M Cezair
5 My Booky Wooky by Russel Brand
Total UK sales for No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay are now 362,172 as of August 2008. (Data from The Bookseller)
thebookseller.com/news
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4 comments:
Book sales at UK Airports - is supposed to cover all genres in fiction and factual books.
If that's the case then when was the last time a person was able to buy a western at a UK airport?
As for clauses about what people can write about in books for children. Sounds like a moral crusade to pander to that minority that spent the fifties and sixties burning books.
British publishers are still trying to make an arguement for the clasification of children's books.
I had given up on children's books by the age of ten and had devoured the likes of The Colditz Story and The Dambusters and getting into westerns.
Age appropriateness did not come into question then - though there is a case for it in todays climate.
I had read 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' by fifteen years of age (I got a pre-trial copy). Mind you when my dad discovered it I got a telling off.
In those days paperbacks were pocket money and does not equate with the cost of a book today. Two shillings (10p) and the likes of Grace Metalleous's 'Peyton Place' was yours (and a lot of boys read that book).
To age restrict books or to tell writers what they can or can't put into a book is tantamount to censorship and reduces the freedom to read.
Nice update. I enjoyed reading this post.
I tried using Shelfari on my blog, but I haven't read enough yet. My idea was to have a visual "catalog" of all the L'Amour I've reviewed up to the present. Since that's only two full books up to this point, I thought I'd wait awhile.
Another idea I had was to take a picture of the spine of each book I finished and use it as a banner at the top of the blog. It would look a bit rustic, but could be cool. That way, there would still be enough space for the title. What do you think of that idea?
Will you use Shelfari?
Had a look at Shelfari - pretty useless when it comes to BHW authors. Though there are some westerns.
iRead (on Facebook) is a lot better for westerns - BHWs in abundance as well as all American writers.
Yeah I think I'd use Iread as well simply because I am a black horse author.
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