News

Amazon removes Macmillan titles

2010-01-31T04:51:00.000-08:00

Brad Stone and Motoko Rich report in the New York Times

Looks like this is the first casualty following the announcement of the iPad by Apple Computers: Amazon.com has withdrawn all Macmillan titles from its online bookstore in what looks like the beginnings of a long drawn out book war. This is a war that has been waiting to be declared for a long time, ever since the release of the Kindle a year ago and the subsequent pricing of Amazon's 'hardback' e-books at USD9.99. Publishers have been strongly objecting to this pricing by Amazon for a long time (although the online bookshop actually makes a loss on each sale and not the publishers) on grounds that such pricing devalues books. (Macmillan titles can still, however, be purchased from third-party sellers.)

Macmillan's imprints include Farrar, Straus & Giroux, St. Martins Press and Henry Holt. Books withdrawn include A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides and Finger Lickin' Fifteen by Janet Evanovich.

Macmillan are one of the publishers that have signed with Apple, as part of its new iBookstore on the iPad tablet. Apple will allow publishers to set their own prices for e-books, which is expected to be between USD12.99 and USD14.99 for most fiction and general non-fiction titles. The discount structure is also believed to be better, with Apple offering 70% to the publishers against 50% by Amazon.

It will be interesting to see how this one develops.

Latest: Amazon concedes this round with the following statement (though they have yet to restore the buy buttons):

"We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles ... We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books."

Exactly. All publishers have monopolies over their titles. That's why books are not like other commodities and they cannot be sold supermarket style. That's why a book is not a shoe.

New York Times

Dictionary banned in US schools

2010-01-31T04:45:00.000-08:00

Alison Flood writes in The Guardian that the Merriam Webster's 10th edition dictionary has been banned from classrooms in Menifee Union school district in southern California schools after a parent complained about a child reading the definition for 'oral sex' which it described as
"oral stimulation of the genitals". Aiyoh! Trauma habis!

It was considered too "sexually graphic" and "just not age appropriate" for 4th Grade students (who were between 9 and 10 years old). Consider the case of a parent who went into a Kuala Lumpur bookstore and saw -- horrors of horrors -- a whole row of books by Salman Rushdie, lodged a complaint and got it all removed by the management. How dare they corrupt the innocent minds of his children with ... with ...er ... actually I have no idea with what.

Some parents have praised the move, but others have raised concerns. "It is not such a bad thing for a kid to have the wherewithal to go and look up a word he may have even heard on the playground." But, "You have to draw the line somewhere. What are they going to do next, pull encyclopaedias because they list parts of the human anatomy like the penis and vagina?"

This is not the first book to be banned in schools in the US. Song of Solomon by Nobel prize winner Toni Morrison, was suspended last year from (and then reinstated to) the a Michigan school after complaints of graphic sex and violence, as have titles by Khaled Hosseini and Philip Pullman.

Making poetry pay

2010-01-31T04:24:00.000-08:00

Mark Garcia-Prats writes in Publishing Perpectives of PoetrySpeaks.com, a site that features poetry blogs, weekly highlighted poets, and a fully searchable archive of poems in both text and audio format. There is also a poetry bookstore, a forum and videos of poetry performances. In other words: poetry heaven. The websites' motto is "experience, discover, share".

The website was launched in November of 2009 by Sourcebooks, Chicago-based publisher. Says Sourcebooks CEO, "We wanted a site that helps connect poetry readers, potential poetry reader, and poets. And we wanted to begin developing a new business model for poetry." It took five years and USD250,000 (so far) to set up the site.

The vision behind creating the website is to allow readers more direct contact with their favourite poet and to participate in the same poetry community as their heroes. PoetrySpeaks.com hopes to create a large, active audience of poetry lovers who are willing to download individual poems in text and audio forms for USD 0.99 each, and buy poetry merchandise like books, e-books, DVDs, and CDS, and tickets for poetry performances.

From the website: "Poetry does not, in its essential nature, belong to literature. It comes before literature, when the place of books was occupied by voice and memory. It is meant not so much to be read as to be heard. And the artifice -- the rhyme, the rhythm, the language working to the limits of its capacity -- is what makes poetry stick in the mind like music. At the same time, a skilled interpreter can make a well-worn poem as fresh as if it had never been read before."

Be warned: not for the faint-hearted.

Publishing Perpectives

Dan Brown is not the most pirated ebook of 2009

2010-01-14T23:29:00.000-08:00

If you expected Dan Brown, James Patterson, JK Rowlings, or other airport bestsellers to be at the top of the list of most pirated ebooks, think again. The winner for the award of the most pirated ebook in 2009 was ... drum roll please ... Kama Sutra-aa. Yes! Originally compiled in Sanskrit by Vatsyayana in the second century of the Common Era, this ancient manual of practical advice on sex is still the one to beat. Eat my dust, Playboy. (We are assuming that not all the copies were downloaded in India.)

Interestingly, number two on the list was Adobe Photoshop Secrets and (you have to read this) Chris Matyszczyk reports in CNet News: "My own feeling, from deep beneath my T-shirt, is that the Kama Sutra and Adobe Photoshop Secrets have largely been downloaded by the same people for entirely related purposes." Obviously. What else does he use Photoshop for? Work? The original version did not have any pictures -- they just did it -- but the new ones are all illustrated with mostly fake pictures! Get it right: we are 21st century people, we don't have enough imagination, we need pictures to get us going, you know, visuals.

Number 3 on the most pirated book list was The Complete Idiot's Guide to Amazing Sex. --we are sick, man! -- before the list moves on to nerd territory. Number 4 was The Lost Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci and Solar House--A Guide for the Solar Designer came it Number 5.

Then just when you think that we should start getting worried, sanity returns, and there was at Number 6, Before Pornography--Erotic Writing In Early Modern England . We were back in form! At Number 7 was Twilight -- boring -- before we got back to more titilating stuff at Number 8: How To Get Anyone To Say YES--The Science Of Influence; Number 9: Nude Photography--The Art And The Craft (yeah, right), and finally, for those with no lives at Number 10: Fix It--How To Do All Those Little Repair Jobs Around The Home.

We are such a bunch of sick shits!

Cnet News

Middlemen in trouble

2010-01-14T23:25:00.000-08:00

The middleman has been the most reviled of species, and also the most indispensable -- they have a way of making themselves so. In the publishing industry, these are called literary agents. It seems as if we cannot live without them because a publisher will not deal with anyone without an agent. But they will not answer your emails or your phone calls, they won't even bother to tell you if they don't like your manuscript or (God forbid) read it. They will make you scrape and grovel, and spit you out like a sucked orange once you are no longer the flavour of the week. They are the self appointed Gods of the publishing world. Generally, they are inclined to treat you like the scum accumulated in your kitchen drainpipe.

But now they say they are in trouble. Should we care? According to a story in the Bookseller: "Literary agents have seen their profits tumble, with the recession, dwindling advances and publishers' focus on celebrity cited as contributing factors."

Yes, but how do middlemen lose money? It is one thing it you make less money or don't make money because there is no business, but how do you lose it? Publishers put up the capital for the printing, the (sometimes absurd) advances and have to pay for warehousing, shipping, and deal with returns. There is real risk here if a book doesn't sell. What risks do literary agents face?

There was a time when the publisher made all publishing decisions including talent scouting. Now they leave most of the latter to the "professionals", the literary agents, the self appointed arbiters of "good taste". Some are of the opinion that the industry will be better off without them. There are no literary agents in Malaysia, so we do all the work ourselves (as do the other publishers). Perhaps, we could use editors who provide good editing and critiquing services (paid for by authors) to make manuscripts publishable.

The Bookseller

Pulp fiction

2009-12-31T18:18:00.000-08:00

Dalya Alberge writes in The Daily Mail about How 77million books a year are turned into pulp fiction.

She says: "Publishers are quietly disposing of around 77million unsold books a year." And this is only in the UK. These unsold books returned by the bookshops "are being shredded, pulped or sold on market stalls at a fraction of their original price." (That would include BookXcess, I guess.)

Some interesting numbers:

Bookshops returned 61 million books to publishers in the UK, with another 16 million coming from overseas retailers.

Out of 86,000 new titles published in the UK in 2009, 59,000 sold an average of 18 copies (not sure how they get that number), less than the average of 41 copies for POD books.

Cherie Blair who received a GBP 1 million advance for her autobiography, has sold only 23,412 hardbacks and 10,240 paperbacks since 2008. (Wonder if they used the photo above for publicity.)

Electronic books outsold physical books for the first time on Amazon on Christmas Day.

Julian Barnes's Nothing To Be Frightened Of, published in March 2008 has sold only 8,849 copies. (His earlier book Arthur and George sold 500,000 copies.) Martin Amis's The Second Plane sold 4,493 paperbacks from January, and Will Self’s Butt sold 8,200 from May.

And other observations:

The whole industry is a lottery, with publishers risking large sums, always hoping for a bestseller.

Dan Franklin, publisher of Jonathan Cape, says the system is 'raving mad'.

The Daily Mail

Kafka manuscripts

2009-12-31T17:58:00.000-08:00

Many people know this story. When Kafka died in 1924, he made one last request to his friend Max Brod: "... everything I leave behind me [is] to be burned unread." But Brod did exactly the opposite. (Of course, according to reports, he agonised over it. We don't know if that is really is the truth, but it sounds more romantic that way.)

Brod devoted the rest of his life to preserving and "editing" his friend's work. He then fled the Nazis (again by catching "the last train" from Prague in 1939 -- I see a movie in it), with a suitcase of Kafka papers, including The Trial, and ended up in Tel Aviv. Kafka was a Czech Jew who wrote in German. (Even today, many claim Kafka as their own. Several years ago, the Austrian Ambassador came to Silverfish Books looking for books by Austrian writers. I told him that I didn't have many but that he was welcomed to look. Soon, he deposited some books on the counter, telling me that they were all Austrian. In the lot was Kafka. I said I thought Kafka was Czech. He assured me otherwise. I told the Czech Ambassador and his wife this the next time we met. They were both livid, and I could not disagree with them, and I don't know the outcome of the diplomatic exchanges that subsequently ensued. BTW, Wikipedia lists Kafka as a Czech, an Austrian and a German writer.)

Apart from the papers in Brod's suitcase, Kafka's legacy was also with his nieces, especially Marianna Steiner who arranged for the transfer of almost all his papers (including The Castle and Metamorphosis) to Oxford from 1961 to 2001, in a display of "rare nobility and generosity of spirit' of the Kafka family, holocaust survivors. Many Kafka scholars visit Oxford in order to study the large collection of Kafka manuscripts housed in the Bodleian Library. The author's handwriting is described as 'spidery, intense and completely legible, with barely a line blotted" by Robert Crum in his Guardian blog, accepting an invitation to inspect Bodleain's Kafka collection.

Robert Crum adds: 'One of the most moving manuscripts is Das Urteil (The Judgment), a story of some 30 pages written ... in a single sitting from 10 o'clock at night to six in the morning. Dated 23 September 1912, it is followed by a diary note expressing Kafka's joy at "the only way to write, only with such coherence, with such a complete opening out of the body and the soul".'

The Guardian Blog

It's a topsy-turvy book world

2009-12-15T22:28:00.000-08:00

Borders UK is under administration; rumours have it that Borders US have not paid their distributors for two months; Barnes and Noble is losing money, so is Waterstones in UK; and publishers are terrified of returns if any more of the big boys go bust. Then there is another story (currently denied) that Amazon wants to set up a brick-and-mortar shop!

In another story French President Nicolas Sarkozy says that he would not let his country's literary heritage be taken away by a "friendly" large American company, namely Google, and is looking to create its own national digital organisation. The project is expected to be financed by a national loan.

In yet another development, five of the biggest publishers of newspapers and magazines in the US (Time Inc., News Corp., Conde Nast, Hearst Corp., and Meredith Corp., whose magazines include Time, Cosmopolitan and Better Homes and Gardens) have announced a plan to challenge Amazon's Kindle with their own digital solution that would display in colour, and work on a variety of devices. Things get even more complicated with the announcement that Simon & Schuster is delaying its e-book editions of about 35 leading titles, taking a stand against the cut-rate US$9.99 pricing of e-books imposed by Amazon. A second publisher, the Hachette Book Group, said it has similar plans.

And then there is this potential 800 pound gorilla in the room (still in vapour form, but which no one dares to ignore), Apple's alleged Kindle-crusher, rumoured to be set for a spring of 2010 release -- okay, start the drum roll now -- the-e MacTablet ... or-rr the TabletMac ... or (is it) the iPad? Well, whatever. Apparently, Apple has been talking to several media companies about their phantom device (which has also been touted as a full-fledged computer, a gaming machine and a portable DVD player), which many think will redefine the rules of the game. Anyway, quite a few fingernails are being chewed in anticipation; there is much nervousness in the industry.

WSJ Online

Chicago Tribune

The Register

Cnet

Neruda, the shell collector

2009-12-15T22:26:00.000-08:00

Anita Brooks writes in The Independent about Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) who was a career diplomat, a member of the Communist party and was made a Nobel literary laureate in 1971. (The Chilean writer and politician was born Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto; Neruda was his pen name that he assumed as a teenager, partly to hide his poetry from his father who wanted his son to have a proper occupation. He took his pen name from Czech writer and poet Jan Neruda.)

Neruda wrote erotic love poems, surrealist poems, historical epics, and political manifestos. While he was not doing any of these, the author was a passionate collector of shells, which he acquired from markets and beaches around the world. He collected over 9000 shells (one from Mao Zedong) in a period of 20 years. 400 of these are now (for the first time) on exhibition in Madrid at the Instituto de Cervantes. (He donated his collection to the University of Chile in 1954.)

"The best thing I have collected in my life are my shells," the poet once wrote. "They gave me the pleasure of their prodigious structure, the lunar purity of their mysterious porcelain."

The Independent

Borders UK under administration

2009-11-29T22:21:00.000-08:00

Going, going, gone. The drama has been unfolding for months, and finally it has been confirmed: Borders UK has gone belly-up; even that, not without more drama though. After acquiring it in a management buyout four month ago, Valco Capital has been trying to hawk Borders, to the extent of advertising its sale. But when deals with WH Smith and HMV didn't come through, administration remained the only option.

Borders is the first major chain to go under in UK after Woolworths, and the first bookshop chain. With 45 stores at prime locations on high streets and as anchor tenants in malls closing down, besides leaving plenty of empty retail space like Woolworths, there is a real fear of the domino effect with several publishers, wholesalers and distributors in UK being put under immense pressure. (Malaysia will not be exempt either: imagine only a tiny portion of the books from 45 mega-stores, being remaindered and sold off cheap at the next big warehouse sale in Klang Valley, and the resulting strain on the local industry.) The first store of Borders UK was opened in 1998 and now the chain has been shuttered, after being directly or indirectly responsible for the demise of hundreds of independents over the last decade. (The French must really be having a good laugh -- no remaindered sales there and, remember, they treat their independents like wine!)

Still, Mr Robert Clark, the senior partner at Retail Knowledge Bank, "...firmly believes that if a bookseller has knowledgeable staff and tailors its services to the local community ... there is still a place in Britain's high streets for physical booksellers." Even chains.

BTW, according to the BBC website, the 45 stores under Borders have started closing down sales.

The Independent

Salman Rushdie to write sequel to 'Haroun and the Sea of Stories'

2009-11-29T22:14:00.001-08:00

According to TheBookseller.com, Salman Rushdie is writing a sequel to his 1990s children's book Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Luka and the Fire of Life is expected to be published by Jonathan Cape in late 2010, according to the website.

Salman Rushdie wrote Haroun and the Sea of Stories in 1990 for his oldest son Zafar. It was Rushdie's first book afer The Satanic Verses, the first book after Ayatollah Khomeini called for his execution. The book tells the story of a 12-year-old boy who goes on a quest to help his father recover his lost gift of storytelling. It is probably the most readable of Rushdie's books, for those who find his other works a little intimidating.

Rushdie is writing Luka and the Fire of Life for his youngest son, Milan, who was born in 1999. Luka is the younger brother of Haroun, who must also help his ailing father in a quest to find the fire of life.

I remember the time when Silverfish first opened in Desa Seri Hartamas. Walking into the Times warehouse (they were distributing Penguin books then), I saw a stack of hardbound Harouns with full colour illustrations priced at RM56.00. I asked them what they were doing there, and they told me that nobody wanted them. Shocked, I told them that I'd take the lot (although they refused to give me a better discount). I knew my customers would love the book and I sold them all out in a month. Then I ordered 60 more, which too sold out. I couldn't even save a copy for myself. (I later bought a copy from India.)

It was a beautiful book. Let's hope some brain-dead pen-pusher does not decide to ban it.

The Bookseller.com

In France, indie bookshops are like fine wine

2009-11-15T23:13:00.000-08:00

Olivia Snaije writes in Publishing Perspectives. France will soon be a warding labels to indie bookshops in the country, like it does for wine. The former culture minister Christine Albanel launched the Librairie Independante de Reference (Recommended Independent Bookshop) label in 2007. As of September 2009, 406 of France's 3,000 independent bookstores have qualified for the designation -- denoting high quality.

Olivia Snaije reports: "In order to qualify for the LIR label, which is valid for three years, bookshops must fulfill six conditions, among which are that the bookshop play an important cultural role in the community, organizing readings and cultural events; that it have employees who contribute to the quality of the service and that the bookstore's owner be responsible for buying stock; that the store maintain a large selection of books -- typically at least 6,000 titles, the majority of which have been in print for a year or more."

"Bookshops that win LIR designation receive tax breaks from the government and special subsidies administered by the Centre National du Livre (CNL), including interest-free loans for store improvements and money to support readings and events. Some 500,000 euros are designated for the LIR-related projects, while the government estimates the tax breaks offered will exceed 3 million euros in value."

In 1981 the Lang law, which was initially criticised for obstructing free competition, established fixed book prices in France. It limited discounts to 5%. Now, 28 years later, it is considered a success, and a boost to the industry. Today, France has a network of 3,500 independent bookshops and some 6,000 publishers.

Talk of taking culture seriously.

Publishing Perspectives

An agent for agents

2009-11-15T23:08:00.000-08:00

From Publishers Weekly: First there were writers and publishers, then there were agents inbetween the writers and the publishers; now there is an agent inbetween the writer and the agent!

WEbook was launched 18 months ago as a site for writers. It has now added a new service, AgentInbox, that links authors and agents. With a link on the WEbook home page. According to their site, they will pre-screen submissions from authors before sending them on to appropriate agents. "AgentInbox will focus in particular on query letters while also ensuring the manuscripts adhere to basic editorial standards and readiness," says Ardy Khazaei, president of WEbook.

Publishers Weekly says, "WEbook's team of in-house and freelance publishing professionals will review pitch letters, make sure that the letters match the actual manuscript and that the manuscript is properly formatted, but the company will not make any recommendations about the quality of the content."

"We think we've created a fast and easy way for agents to manage the slush pile," says Khazaei.

The report says that, to date, about eight literary agencies have signed on and, in the short term AgentInbox is free to authors. But there could be a fee in future. There will be no charge to agents and WEbook will take no cut of any future deals.

Somehow it doesn't quite add up, does it? Maybe, I am too cynical.

WEbook

So who says reading is dead?

2009-11-15T23:07:00.000-08:00

For the whole of the first year, from August 2008 to August 2009, games were the number one category of downloads on the iPhone every month according to analytics firm, Flurry. But in September, games apps were overtaken by book apps for the first time. And, in the last four months, book apps have exceeded the popularity of games apps. In October one in five apps produced for the iPhone have been books.

Flurry predicts that Apple could take over the market from the Amazon Kindle, as more and more book publishers continue to produce books for the AppStore, even though the iPhone display is two inch smaller than the Kindle's. It could be even more worrying for Amazon if rumours of the Apple tablet turn out to be true.

Flurry's research, entitled the Pulse Report, also found that iPhone 'addicts' utilised their apps more than three times a day and in excess of 100 times a month,over ten times more than the average. Flurry's sample size was over 2,500 applications and 40 million consumers. The survey looked at usage patterns across Apple (iPhone and iPod Touch), Blackberry, JavaME and Google Android.

Flurry

Second Great Library of Alexandria

2009-10-29T02:06:00.000-07:00

The Royal Library of Alexandria, Egypt, was the largest and the most famous of the libraries of the ancient world. It flourished under the Ptolemaic dynasty and functioned as a major centre of scholarship for many centuries after Rome's conquest of Egypt.

Built at the beginning of the third century BCE, the library was conceived and opened during the reign of Ptolemy I (or his son Ptolemy II). Plutarch (CE 46–120) wrote that during his visit to Alexandria in 48 BCE, Julius Caesar accidentally burned the library down. According to Plutarch's account, this fire spread to the docks and then to the library. But the library remained a major centre of learning until the sacking of Alexandria in 642 by the Arab army led by Amr ibn al 'Aas.

Now, The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is officially open in an attempt to recreate the Royal Library of Alexandria. The library sits facing the Mediterranean Sea, not far from the site of the original one. Besides the library itself, which has shelf space for roughly 8 million books, there are three museums (Antiquities, Manuscripts and the History of Science), a planetarium, a conference centre, gallery space for art exhibitions, and a number of academic research centres.

The project was initially conceived in 1974 by scholars at Alexandria University. The Egyptian government and UNESCO jumped at it. A Norwegian architectural firm won the commission to design the complex. The project cost US$220 million to complete, with most of the funding coming from the Arab world.

The original Royal Library of Alexandria was envisaged by Ptolemy I as a gathering place for the world’s great scientists, scholars and thinkers. Like the modern complex, theRoyal Library of Alexandria housed not only a library (containing an estimated 700,000 scrolls), but science laboratories and research facilities as well.

Wired.com

Tweeting to shape future of publishing

2009-10-29T02:04:00.000-07:00

If you always wanted to know about the publishing industry but were afraid to ask, there is a lively conversation taking place on Twitter about where the publishing industry is headed. The tweets are about how the industry should cope with the downturn, the price wars, the rising digital media, publishers struggling to figure out pricing, digital rights issues and how to market digital content.

Maria Schneider who covers writing, publishing and social media has compiled a list of 15 Twitter users she turns to for news and insight about how old school publishing is meeting the digital future. You may simply follow the tweets, or participate in the discussions about the industry. Below is a sample.

@R_Nash is Richard Nash, an Indie publisher, formerly of Soft Skull Press who is launching an innovative new social publishing startup called Cursor. Nash consistently offers a contrarian point-of-view and doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to challenging traditional publishing.

@NathanBransford is Nathan Bransford,a Literary agent with Curtis Brown. He writes a popular blog and tackles tough subjects such as: "Will writers of the future even need publishers?" Bransford may be the most popular literary agent on Twitter for his straight-up personable advice about where book publishing is headed.

Get the full list from Mashable.

Mashable

Complete works of Shakespeare on your iPhone

2009-10-15T02:07:00.001-07:00

Philip Michaels from Macworld.com reports that Readdle.com, in association with PlayShakespeare.com is providing the text for all plays, sonnets, and poems of the bard as a free download for the iPhone and the iPod touch. Also thrown in are Edward III and Sir Thomas More, two plays no one can definitively state that Shakespeare wrote, and the poem, To the Queen (ditto). Readdle's Shakespeare is all of 28.8MB; tons of disk space left for music and videos.

But Michaels says that "thumbing through Much Ado About Nothing or Richard III on a 3.5-inch screen involves a few sacrifices" and advises that the plays read best in landscape mode. But, given the limited screen real estate on the iPhone, there appear to be quibbles about lines running into one another, abbreviated names, lack of notes and reference guides.

As can be expected, the search functions are reported to be excellent. So there you go. Whether you want to impress chicks, or you are curious about the origins of a particular phrase, Readdle's Shakespeare is for you. What's more, it is free.

MacWorld.com

iPod MBAs

2009-10-15T01:21:00.001-07:00

How I wish they had it forty years ago. Even now I have nightmares about getting up at 7.00 in the morning for the first lecture at 8.00am every day, head still heavy with sleep. But I will have to settle for simply being envious of the spoiled youth of today.

In a story called Turn on your iPod and learn, Matthew Symonds of the Independent writes, "If you ask a college student about the current favourites on their iPod, you might expect to hear of artists such as Lady Gaga, British Sea Power, or maybe even Michael Jackson for the newly nostalgic. Ask the same question on the campus of the Warwick Business School and you might be surprised when students remove their earphones to tell you that they are catching up on macroeconomics and analysis of the credit crisis, or that they are reviewing the latest thinking on creative management."

Disgusting. They don't even have to attend lectures!

Warwick, Stanford, MIT, Oxford and University College London are among those providing mobile learning with educational audio and video files, or podcasts, so students can study at their own pace, wherever and whenever they want. The courses and research material are provided by the universities professors and can be downloaded from the iTunes University, a free education area within the Apple iTunes.

You want to know what is worse? "... new research suggests that university students who learn by downloading a podcast lecture achieve significantly higher exam results than those who attend the lecture in person ..." and the results are even better for those who listen to the podcasts more than once. And you can still listen to your favourite U2 album when you are bored, and one will be wiser, or care.

The Independent

The book is dead, long live the book

2009-09-30T03:25:00.001-07:00

For several years now, the tech world has been predicting the eventual death of the book, what with the Google digitising campaign, the Kindle, the Sony reader and even the iPhone. Now, all of a sudden, Wired.com and Cnet.com are both heralding a new age of the book! Over the last seven years, Google has scanned millions of tomes from leading libraries around the world, and turned them into searchable documents available on the internet. Now, Google Book Search, in partnership with On Demand Books -- the makers of Espresso Book Machines -- are expected to announce a project in early October that will allow readers to buy paper copies of those, individually printed by bookstores around the world. The catch, the Espresso Machines cost USD100,000.00 a pop. (But I am not unduly worried, others will get into the business and soon we will see cheap book Machines from China.)

Still, this is good news. Google has scanned some 2 million books that are currently in public domain, and they will now be made available almost immediately from some 90 bookshops around the world that have these machines, so smelling paper and turning pages will last for a while longer. The books are expected to cost USD8.00 each. Not bad. Now, Penguin will have to re-examine their absurd pricing of some of their classics. (Of course, they will have to come up with better cover designs, but that should be in the pipeline.)

What this can do, if it does take off, is completely change the book retail industry, and give Amazon.com something to worry about. Imagine hundreds of bookstores around the world with access to millions of titles, which they can print, bind and deliver within minutes. This is, of course, currently, mostly about the long tail of books. But that can change. Many authors will not even mind letting Google handle the distribution of even their new books using this technology if it breaks the Amazon hegemony (and their absurd discount demands).

Yes, I love it. This is a revolution in book distribution and retail.

The other issue that needs to be addressed now is copyright. Copyright in the US now extends to the life of an author plus 70 years for newly created works -- but copyright laws vary from country to country. Life plus seventy years: now how absurd is that? It guarantees the death of most books. Few books in copyright have enough demand to warrant a reprint. (No publisher is going to publish 1000 copies when there is a demand for only fifty.) Yet they will have an undeniable cultural and historical value, and need to be read by people who matter.

Nick Harkaway writes in the Guardian Blog: "We lose stories every day because they drift out of use and into the vast limbo of in-copyright, out-of-print books whose ownership is unclear. At the same time, existing copyright law is woefully unable to get to grips with digital copying and display, and with the international quality of the internet ..."

and

"... we need, for example, a system where copyright must be re-registered every ten years to retain exclusivity, possibly with a safety net allowing someone who slips up to regain copyright."

I see where he is coming from, but not necessarily agree with his methods. Firstly, we have to add to the first category important books by living authors that, maybe, only researchers and specialists will want. The Print on Demand project by Google could address that if there is a path for authors to participate directly. As for the 10-year renewal system, it is cumbersome and does not address the absurd issues like the recent blocking of The Catcher in the Rye "sequel" by JD Salinger. Once a book is published it enters the public consciousness. It becomes part of the culture and, in many cases, a relevant version of history. The current copyright laws only address the commercial aspects. But, I agree, we need a new system.

In the meantime, Wired.com has it that President Obama has appointed scholar, Victoria A. Espinel, as USA's first copyright czar. Good luck.

Free to Read (by The Dram Project and SIS)

2009-09-30T03:07:00.001-07:00

Twenty-sixth September saw the start of Banned Books Week in the the US. Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

Here in Malaysia, more than 1500 books have been banned between 1971 and 2009. In terms of children's literature, these include books in the Spongebob Squarepants series, Dora’s Fiesta Adventure ActivePoint Book, Poems & Prayers for Children and Read-Aloud Children’s Classics.

The Dram Projects believes in the freedom to read. We also believe in the right to make informed choices when selecting reading material.

TDP will be participating in the Right to Read Festival, presented by Sisters in Islam and The Centre for Independent Journalism.

Artist/photographer Wei Meng Foo and Daphne Lee (of TDP) will conduct Free2READ, a workshop that introduces children (9-12) to their rights as readers; celebrates the joy and thrill of discovering the different worlds and experiences that lie between the covers of books; and examines the problems and challenges children might encounter in their reading journeys.

The workshop participants will be encouraged to discuss and debate the concept of book-banning; invited to question book-banning and challenging policies; and explore their own feelings and thoughts regarding the practice of restricting children's reading material.

This will be followed by a bookcover art session with artist/photographer Wei Meng Foo. During this session participants will be invited to exercise their imaginations and creatiivity to produce book covers that celebrate their rights as readers.

Date: 10th October, 2009. Time: 10am-1pm. Venue: The Annexe, Central Market, Kuala Lumpur. Admission: Free.

Registration: Call Nazreen at 03-7785 6121

"Middle way" in literature

2009-09-16T01:14:00.001-07:00

Report from Phayul.com: The Kalon Tripa, Prof Samdhong Rinpoche, the Prime Minister of Tibetan exile government, speaking as the chief guest at a literary conference recently organised by the Tibetan PEN in Dharamsala, advised Tibetan writers, poets and editors to adopt a middle way in their writing practices. Huh? That's a new one. Don't we have enough 'middle road' in literature, what with all the self-censorship, selling out and commercial interests? I, for one, would be grateful for a little less 'air bandung', and a little more truth. Or, was he talking about a balance between tradition and creativity in literature. Still does not make sense. Anyway, that's what happens when you get a politician to speak at a literary conference.

Anyway, for the record, several writers, poets, editors and readers met at this annual affair by Tibetan PEN. The main topic of debate was the usual one: can writings in non-Tibetan languages be considered Tibetan? To many of us, we have debated that one to death already in this country. But, many others argue that the issue is still very much alive. According to the sole Tibetan writer in English at the conference, Tenzin Tsundue, "if a writer is Tibetan and if the content is also Tibetan then it must be considered as Tibetan literature ..."

(Picture: Tibetan writer Woeser)

Phayul.com

Did the plot ever really die?

2009-09-16T01:12:00.001-07:00

Reading Lev Grossman's story Good Books Don't Have to Be Hard in the Wall Street Journal, one will be entitles to be afraid. Be very afraid. The plot is coming back to the novel! Of course, many will go ... er ... did it ever die ... when? According to Grossman it was with Ulysses and Lady Chatterley's Lover, amongst other's. (So that's why they wanted to ban the books, they couldn't understand them!)

He writes: "A good story is a dirty secret that we all share. It's what makes guilty pleasures so pleasurable, but it's also what makes them so guilty. A juicy tale reeks of crass commercialism and cheap thrills. We crave such entertainments, but we despise them. Plot makes perverts of us all."

Really?! Hmm. I have to confess, I have always liked some plot in my novels, but not at the expense of good writing and good characters. I guess there was a time when I would plough through a hard book because it was supposed to be good. Strangely, this appears to be an affectation of 20th century Anglophone literature. The Europeans and the South Americans appear to have gotten over it after Kafka, that is, and seem to know how to combine good story-telling with good writing. (They are really not mutually exclusive, you know.)

Lev Grossman says, "All of this is changing. The revolution is under way. The novel is getting entertaining again. Writers like Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Donna Tartt, Kelly Link, Audrey Niffenegger, Richard Price, Kate Atkinson, Neil Gaiman, and Susanna Clarke, to name just a few, are busily grafting the sophisticated, intensely aware literary language of Modernism onto the sturdy narrative roots of genre fiction ..." Or, you could read Carlos Ruis Zafon, Saramago, Arturo Perez-Reverte, or any of the South Americans -- they still have the plot.

Wall Street Journal

Reading in class

2009-09-16T01:10:00.000-07:00

A Yorkshire Post posting says that, "One-in-eight teachers has never read a book to their class ..." according to a research. (From some of the horror stories I hear of Malaysian schools, a local research might indicate that only one-in-eight teacher actually read.) The gripe is that "almost 600,000 children could be missing out on great stories and failing to develop a love of reading because of the use of 'extracts' in the classroom ..." highlighting fears amongst teachers and parents that this is affecting pupil's academic performance. I guess we have no such worries -- most of our parents and teachers will be quite happy if their children didn't read anything as long as they score 21 As.

Not surprisingly, this has spawned a major debate. One favourite view is: "If computers/playstations/DS etc, etc, didn't exist, children would spend more time reading. This generation has much more distractions than we had as kids - there was nothing much on the tv when I was little ..." Of course, it is fashionable to blame it all on the techno distractions of the day. When I was a kid, we had none of those either -- we did all our gaming outdoors. But that didn't stop teachers from reading to us, or for us to read on our own.

Basically, what we are looking at is the failure of the education system (despite, or because of, new fangled ideas) and teachers. (Actually, we had very few good teachers in those days either -- however much we like to romanticise the past. So, basically, nothing much has changed.)

The study was commissioned Heinemann.

Yorkshire Post

The end of an era?

2009-08-28T22:58:00.000-07:00

So far, with the global crisis and the prognosis of a meltdown, we have not really seen much end of an era scenarios. Okay, Woolworth went down and stayed down, GM went bust but soon bounced back. Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy have died. Reader's Digest has filed for bankruptcy but news is that they will still be around. So the aftermath of the global financial crisis appears to be 'more of the same'.

But there is one era that is about to end for sure. Archie Andrews is marrying Veronica Lodge. Yes, you read that right. Looks like he is going to ditch Betty Cooper, and she is not the only one who is heart-broken.

I have been reading Archie comics for over 50 years, since I discovered comics. We used to read it surreptitiously because comics were considered to be 'yellow culture' corrupting the youth. I never found out what that meant, but they did make Socrates drink hemlock for 'corrupting the youth of Athens', so it has existed for a long time, and it still does. (In those days, Singaporeans would flock to JB to watch Chubby Checker's Rock Around the Clock because it was banned over there.)

Anyway, I have always also rooted for the underdog, and Betty was it. She was pretty and intelligent, as opposed to the merely extravagantly rich Veronica. Okay, she is beautiful, too. Still, she is the wrong girl. The report has it that this (the marriage proposal) happens when they graduate. What! They are not supposed to graduate, they are meant to be in High School forever. This is a comic, for Gods sake. It's like Superman suddenly becoming the bad guy. (Remember Superman 3, and how lame Richard Lester's effort was?)

So whatever comes next, this is the end of an era.

Atlantic.com

Video gaming is the reason teenagers don't read, right? Wrong.

2009-08-28T22:57:00.000-07:00

"My son always spends too much time on video games. How do I get him to read, ah?"

I have heard this question from dozens of parents. I am sure the authorities will tell you the same. Ask a Minister. But a news report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US appears to say that the average gamer is actually "a 35-year-old man who is overweight, aggressive, introverted and often depressed."

The study further shows that children and teenagers who are addicted tend toward physical inactivity and corresponding health problems.

"... there is growing concern and uncertainty about the health consequences of video game playing,” the CDC reports. “Given the ubiquity of video games -- industry
estimates suggest that they are played in 65% of American households -- these concerns may be justified.”

According to the CDC, both male and female gamers were more likely to be overweight, had more poor-mental-health days and were less socially outgoing than non-gamers. Women gamers were more likely to say that they experienced depression and other general health issues than women who aren’t gamers.

Jim McGregor, an analyst says, "It gives Americans just another reason to be fat, dumb and lazy.”

Wired.com