JAMES BOND 23 BACK ON TRACK

Daniel Craig could return to work on the 23rd James Bond film as early as next summer, as MGM Studios are ready to move forward with production.
Daniel Craig is set to return to work on the 23rd James Bond movie.
The project has been on hold indefinitely because problems with studio MGM, but even Sam Mendes - who had pulled out of the project because of the difficulties - is believed to be back on board with production, taking himself out of the running to direct 'The Hunger Games'.

According to Deadline.com, shooting on the movie could begin as early as summer 2011.
Bond 23 - which has yet to be officially titled - was set to be filmed this year ahead of a 2011 release.
MGM announced earlier this week that it lenders had agreed to extend its debt repayment period until the end of October.
The studio said: "The lenders took this action in support of the company's ongoing efforts to evaluate long-term strategic alternatives to maximize value for its stakeholders. MGM appreciates the continued support of its lender group throughout this process."
Problems with MGM - which is rumoured to be in $3.7 billion of debt - has also halted production on 'The Hobbit' movie.
However, Sir Ian McKellen recently revealed the movie could begin shooting in January 2011

eBook piracy: Does it matter?

In genre publishing  the big, bad story of the last few years is the same story as it has been for 15 or 20 years, which is the gradual hollowing out of mass market as a viable publishing channel for good sf/fantasy/horror/westerns/whatever and the whole eThing actually offers many new optimistic channels for book selling.

Some would argue that the biggest threat to a writer is not piracy but obscurity - Personally I'm not overly concerned about eBook piracy - Don't get me wrong I do think writers should be paid for their work (I certainly want to get paid)  but I really can't believe piracy will effect anyone that much. And besides some of the prices charged for eBooks is a blatant rip off and whilst this continues it will make piracy attractive to some or many. This was the chief reason the music industry took a well deserved beating by MP3 piracy. If CD's were then more fairly priced, as they are now, then piracy would not have grown to the state it did. I do honestly believe that most people who actually bought music have continued to do so. I know I do.

There is no justification for the bigger publishers charging the same for a eBook as a brand new hardcover copy. If eBooks were fairly priced (maybe slightly lower than a paperback) then there would be no point of piracy. A perfect example of eBook pricing is when I bought Stephen King's, Under the Dome on eBook only last week. It cost me £2 more than the mass market paperback but I stuck with the eOption because - well, frankly I'm used to reading on my eReader now and enjoy it.  I actually prefer the eReader to physical books when I'm out and about. Another point is that the physical book was massive and carrying it around would have caused a hernia. But the point is I do believe I was overcharged for the eBook - but, whatever, I bought it anyway.

We tend to forget that paper books already have more than one reader. The best estimates  are that for every book sold there are four or five other readers at some point in its life span. And of course all those second-hand books sold everyday are, technically, pirated copies since books are not meant to be resold.

Publishers really do need to look at their pricing structure and change the DRM coding often used if they are not to drive readers to the pirates. For instance eBooks I've bought and paid for from Amazon will not work on my Sony eReader because of the DRM.  I can convert them to the ePub format but the DRM stays. So the only way I can read these books is on my computer screen or buy a Kindle. And I ain't buying a Kindle until the machine supports ePub. Now if someone were to offer me pirated copies of these eBooks that I have already paid for, in order than I can read them on my reader I wouldn't see anything wrong in that. Morally, I'd be squeaky clean.  Amazon on the other hand are hoping to monopolise ePublishing and tie everyone into their own device. Sure it's a great device but it is most certainly not healthy for one seller to dominate a market. I still use Amazon for physical books - I think they provide the best book buying experience it's possible to get, but the Kindle really should offer formats other the Kindle's own. The Kindle will handle PDF's but then PDF's whilst readable are often oddly formatted on many readers.


""We can change the price from one week to the next, from one day to the next in some cases, so we can see very quickly what impact a price change has on that title," he said. "In the print world when you decide to change the price, that price may come through into the marketplace a few months later, it may be another six to 12 months later before you actually see any impact on sales." Tim Holman, Orbit publishers.

Price is the key, more so than DRM which whilst a nuisance is bearable(just). For many years books sales have been dropping while fewer and fewer people read for pleasure. But these new eReaders are all the rage and by combining fair prices with the latest fad then maybe publishers can snare a few more readers and turn them into lifelong readers.

Tor Books look towards an eFuture

ARTICLE - Gary Kemble:

http://www.tor.com/

Science fiction writers have always been on the cutting edge, and now sf publishers are scrambling to stay ahead of the ebook curve.

Tor Books senior editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden, in Melbourne earlier this month for the World Science Fiction Convention, says 10 to 12 years ago ebooks were like the old joke about Brazil: "It's the country of the future and always will be".
"We had this unbelievably bad ratio of thousands of hours of meetings to hundreds of dollars worth of sales, so a lot of the industry got kind of accustomed to ebooks as an ever-receding future," he said.
But in the past couple of years he says ebook revenue has gone from 0.5 per cent of revenue to anywhere up to 10 per cent and now in domestic airports in the US he sees as many people reading ebooks as the old-fashioned printed variety.
Tim Holman, publisher with Orbit in the US and UK, reports similar growth, and says high-profile hardcover releases, urban fantasy and romance titles are doing particularly well.
"Romance readers tend to consume large numbers of books, they want the story, they don't necessarily want to have a big library of books on a bookshelf," he said. "If you read a lot of books, it's quite nice to be able to carry 10 around with you instead of just one."
Nielsen Hayden says the stratospheric rise of ebooks hasn't been without its problems.
"In the last year or two things have heated up so fast, we've had to get a lot of our backlist into ebook format at just ridiculous speeds, and of course there have been fiascos and books full of typos and so forth," he said.
He says Tor has been grappling with the challenges of dealing with ebooks, which aren't just a matter of scanning pages and putting them in ebook format.
"Another part of the challenge is streamlining our own internal procedures so we're producing something that's going to be worth the kind of money we want people to be paying, so that we don't have to lay off half of our staff, so that we don't have to let our more marginal writers go and so on," he said.
He says there's a misconception within the book-buying public that the biggest expense in publishing a book is paper and ink, whereas in fact a much bigger expense is paying retailers for favourable space, whether that's at the front of the bookshop, or in the big promotional sidebar online.

eBooks for free

There are scores of free eBooks out there - many of them are admittedly utter rubbish but there are just as many that offer great entertainment, often stories too daring for mainstream publishers. The trouble is where to look - writer Jennifer Claerr has a useful article that lists the best websites to obtain free eReading - check it out HERE

Superman is Jewish!!!

Got a problem with fascist dictators? Simple, send for Superman.

Superheroes have long been used for various propaganda reasons - in fact the likes of Superman and Batman were being used in the fight against Hitler before America had entered the war. In the Feb 27th 1940 issue of Look Weekly there was story which showed Superman ending the war. He grabs Hitler and Stalin and flies them to Geneva where they are found guilty of unprovoked aggression by the League of Nations. The story infuriated Goebbels so much that he famously proclaimed, 'Superman in a Jew!'

A year later Captain American was launched and the hero was pictured on the cover giving Hitler a jolly good sock on the jaw. This angered American Nazi sympathisers and people opposed to America entering the war. The artists and writers were swamped with hate mail and later they had to be given around the clock police protection. Captain America would continue to feature in stories where he was pitted against an evil axis force. This continued until the war was over and later in the 50's the character became a commie basher.

In the 60' and 70's, Stan Lee ignored the Comics Code's policy on not mentioning drugs, by having Spiderman spell out the dangers of illegal drugs. And Superman was used as part of an anti-smoking campaign during the mid to late 70's in which the man of steel faced off against the evil NickOteen. And the Green Arrow strip caused a sensation when it was revealed that his trusted sidekick was a drug addict - mind you the fact that he was called Speedy should have been a clue.


In more recent years many public service organisations have used the costumed heroes to get their message across. And there was one notorious issue of Spiderman that revealed that Peter Parker had been the victim of homosexual molestation when he was a child. This event though has been written out of the character's official biography.

And even today heroes continue to be used by everyone from government to health organisations. Back in 2005 Donald Rumsfeld appeared on stage with actors in Spiderman and Captain America costumes to support Marvel's Free Comic Books for Troops on the Front-Line Initiative.

Congratulations

Congratulations to Charles Whipple AKA Black Horse Western writer, Chuck Tyrell who has just won the 2010 OAXACA INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE COMPETITION - Charley will be accepting his award in Mexico later this year.

THE DEATH OF CHARACTERS IN POPULAR FICTION

Recorded at this year's Harrogate Crime Writers Festival this documentary looking at why writers decide to kill off their popular characters is well worth catching - it is currently available online HERE but only for the next six days so crime fans should get over there before it vanishes.

The death of fictional superstars by pen, pencil or type lies, quite literally, in the hands of their creators.
At the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival 2010 Fiona Lindsay conducts a forensic cross-examination of popular writers, put on trial to reveal their motives for killing off their leading characters. It's an age-old friction in fiction between creator and creation. And the assassination of an author's key character is often a result of a clash of egos.
Agatha Christie kept the death of her famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot secret for 30 years only to confess shortly before her own demise. She had no regrets and, as her biographer Laura Thompson reveals, was in no hurry to get Miss Marple on the case.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle detested Sherlock Holmes' public domination over his own life and murdered him merrily. Yet the firestorm of protest was so intense, resurrection was inevitable. Holmes expert David Stuart Davies and actor Roger Llewellyn incorporate the core of this controversy in their latest play.
Colin Dexter claims he didn't kill Morse: 'he died of natural causes'. A nation mourned, but the author is unrepentant, choosing kindly death over morose retirement.
Ian Rankin took the opposite view for the demise of Rebus, leaving the coffin lid open for a timely return. But since fictional characters are immortal, why kill them off at all?
Characters who become bigger than their authors, beware!! They may have all the best lines, but their creator has the last word.
Fiona Lindsay cross-examines the witnesses and interrogates the accused as they try to justify their acts of literal 'murder'.
Not so much a whodunnit as a 'why did they do it?'