Category Archives: Publishing

Bookselling, Publishing

New Catholic Literature Prize

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The new George W. Hunt Prize, sponsored by America magazine and Yale University’s Saint Thomas More Chapel, will recognize a variety of accomplished literature from Roman Catholics. The judges appear to be looking for good, expressly Catholic works by authors who lead moral lives.

“We’re trying to promote new creative thinking,” Beloin told The Washington Post’s Ron Charles. “Catholic theology is a very wide umbrella — or at least it’s supposed to be.” The Hunt Prize will be awarded to an author who is “trying to write things that are true — to bring a fresh language to theology, to bring real creativity to intellectual life and Catholic imagination.” (via Literary Saloon)

Authors, Bookselling, Publishing

Authors Union Seeks Investigation into Amazon.com

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The Authors Guild met with the Justice Department in August to request a federal investigation into Amazon.com’s actions against Hachette Book Group in their ongoing dispute over ebook prices and service fees. They say the earth’s largest bookdealer is using anti-trust tactics against publishers like Hachette. Authors United is also preparing to ask the DOJ to get involved. Does this make you want to find other bookseller options, or is this all so inside baseball you don’t care?

Bookselling, Publishing

Self-Publishing: Too Many Little Fish in a Huge Sea

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Ron Charles, editor of The Washington Post’s Book World, asked Roger Sutton, editor in chief of Horn Book magazine, about reviewing self-published books.

Charles asked, “What do you say to the indie writer who reminds you that Walt Whitman was self-published?”

“You are not Walt Whitman,” Sutton said. “The 21st century is different in so many ways from the 19th that the comparison is meaningless. No one is forbidding you from self-publishing, but neither is anyone required to pay attention.”

Charles reviewed Sutton’s recently expressed concerns over the glut of self-published books vying for place in our hands. Are there bound to be some great books out there? Yes, but there are too many bad one that look like it from a professional reviewer’s outpost. The school of the self-published will only grow, and perhaps a new system of reviewing and judging will be organized to help readers find good books. Sutton isn’t convinced it will matter. “People are more interested in writing self-published books than in reading them.”

Ouch.

Bookselling, Publishing, Reading

Possibly an Overreaction to Banning Books?

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simple thingsAlan Noble says that Springs Charter School story may be an overreaction. In fact, the school says, “We can and do provide educational books with religious perspectives, including Corrie ten Boom’s The Hiding Place.”

The school statement continues: “However, like every other public school in the State of California, we cannot legally maintain religious textbooks on our warehouse shelves for distribution to our families. Donated items are made available to our families at no cost. Any and all donated items are not incorporated onto the shelves of our Curriculum Warehouse. The only materials we maintain on the shelves of our Curriculum Warehouse are items we have purchased ourselves in accordance with the laws of our State.”

Noble asks, “Did the Superintendent make this clear in the letter she sent to PJI? That much is not clear, since PJI didn’t actually post her letter online.” But the Super does appear to be a practicing catholic, not a opponent of faith.

Bookselling, Publishing, Reading, Religion

So What If School Library Dumps Christian Books?

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Rejected paperbacksRiver Springs Charter Schools in California is reportedly removing all Christian books from its library shelves.

The Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), a legal defense organization, has been circulating the accusation that this network of California charter schools is culling its stock of Christian material, notably The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom.

The school says it receives state funds and so cannot allow “sectarian materials on our state-authorized lending shelves.” On their Facebook page, the school states, “No, we are not banning Christian novels at all. We are not allowed to provide sectarian textbooks however, so this is where the confusion comes in. So it’s yes to novels, no to textbooks as a public school.”

But attorneys with PJI say the Supreme Court has a “long-established precedent that strongly disapproves of school libraries removing books based on opposition to their content or message.”

Now I fully understand that “sectarian” could be defined in wild and nonsensical ways. I mean, this is California. But I have a hard time understanding how a library is supposed to operate if it can’t remove books over content issues. How did the books get in the library to begin with? If they had a volume of a decade of Playboy issues, would librarians be able to remove it based on the content?

I’m told Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v. Pico is in play here. Continue reading So What If School Library Dumps Christian Books? →

Bookselling, Publishing, Reading

Banned Books Week Fun Starts with “Persepolis”

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It’s Banned Books Week again, friends, that wonderful time of year when parents and teachers pull out their cardigans and gather to discuss serious complaints and differences of opinion over mugs of hot apple cider. When we drink cider in America, we think of censorship. Isn’t that right?

#12 IranThis year we have a delightful book about the Islamic Revolution in Iran called Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. It’s an autobiographical graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, based on her experience growing up in Iran. Oregon’s Department of Education recommends this book for high school students. It’s a disarming little tale of horrific events as seen through a child’s eyes. You can see a couple pages through the link.

Parents in Murphy, Oregon, have objected to the language and violent content in the book at their Three Rivers School Board meeting. When one parent was allowed to read from Persepolis, a board member stopped him because he didn’t think the language was appropriate for the meeting, which helped make the parent’s point.

Curiously enough, Chicago public schools pulled the book last year, which provoked parents and teachers to react in support of it. Copies of the book were reportedly taken from schools, and even Chicago’s mayor said he would investigate the reason. They have since rescinded its complete removal. The school CEO asks that it not be taught to seventh graders.

None of this is censorship, friends. I don’t know why Chicago wanted to yank this book, and I’m willing to believe the worst about their intentions, but that doesn’t mean the parents in Murphy don’t have good ones. Both of these things are beside the point. Objecting to a book’s placement on a reading list is not calling for it to be banned. Asking for more parental consent when assigning difficult or morally objectionable material is not a book burning party. It’s democracy and many other things as well.

Bookselling, Publishing

Many New Bestseller Lists

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For years, the New York Times has curated the most coveted bestseller lists of our day. Now they are building on that strength by adding such topics as Travel, Humor, Family, Relationships, Animals, Politics, Manga, and many more, each list bound to occupy literary banterers and book ballyhoo-ers for an hour or so. These won’t be published every week. Some will rotate through the month.

Melville House has dug up even more lists to be introduced by everyone’s friends at the New York Times Book Review. Here are some of the lists you will want to keep on eye on.

Most Fully Realized: Every week, The New York Times Book Review describes dozens of books as being “fully realized.” This lists ranks the top ten fully realized books from “Most Fully Realized” to “Least Most Fully Realized.”

Bestselling Young Adult (Cancer): The most successful books for teenagers that include cancer as a major or minor subplot.

James Patterson: The 10 bestselling James Patterson books released this month. (BTW, Patterson has outsold every other living author and holds a Guinness record for most books on the NY Times Bestseller List.)

Bestselling Non-Sellers: Amazon gives lots of books away for free. The “Best Non-Sellers List” will rank the top books downloaded by Amazon users for $0.00.

Literature: No genre fiction. Unless, of course, genre is employed ironically.

Non-fiction, Publishing

Are Books More Fact-Checked Than Other Media?

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Craig Silverman, the author of many words on media accuracy, said people generally believe books are more reliable than magazines or newspapers. “A lot of readers have the perception that when something arrives as a book, it’s gone through a more rigorous fact-checking process than a magazine or a newspaper or a website, and that’s simply not that case,” he said.

Why don’t publishing houses spend time and money making sure they aren’t publishing the next fabricated memoir? Kate Newman suggests they don’t pay enough in repercussions when an author slips them a phony victim story.

“Maybe there should be a warning, like on a pack of cigarettes,” said another author. “‘This book has not been fact-checked at all.’ Because when I realized that basically everything I had read until that point had not been verified, I felt a little bit lied to.”

Of course, I should warn you that I didn’t verify any facts stated in Newman’s article. No, I did verify one, but that’s it. Who knows if they rest is true?

Non-fiction, Publishing

No, the Vikings weren’t gender-neutral

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Had to post about this, before there’s further confusion.

This article from Tor. com has been making the rounds.

Researchers at the University of Western Australia decided to revamp the way they studied Viking remains. Previously, researchers had misidentified skeletons as male simply because they were buried with their swords and shields. (Female remains were identified by their oval brooches, and not much else.) By studying osteological signs of gender within the bones themselves, researchers discovered that approximately half of the remains were actually female warriors, given a proper burial with their weapons

It didn’t take long for a rebuttal to come from what looks like a somewhat more credible source, Stuff You Missed in History.

But, this paper essentially uses the presence of six female migrants and seven male as evidence that women and children most likely accompanied the Norse armies with the intent of settling the land once it was conquered, rather than migrating in a second wave once the fighting was over. It is, sadly, not at all about female Viking warriors, and not some Earth-shattering evidence that Norse armies were evenly split among women and men.

They’ll still have to prove to me that there were any female Viking warriors at all, but the point is made. The Tor article drew unwarranted and exaggerated conclusions from a study that examined a mere 13 graves.

Hey, Tor Books rejected my novel Wolf Time (soon to be re-released in e-book form) with disparaging comments, about 30 years ago. That should tell you all you need to know about them.

Fiction, Publishing

Death’s Doors

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Dateline: Minneapolis

My new novel, Death’s Doors, is now available for download for Amazon Kindle.

In the near future, suicide is a constitutional right. Tom Galloway is an ordinary single father, just trying to keep his rebellious and depressed daughter from going to the Happy Endings Clinic.

The last thing he needs is a ninth-century Viking time traveler dropping into his life.

But Tom is about to embark on the adventure of his life. One that will change the world.