Currently celebrating its 80th anniversary, Faber & Faber has always been associated with strong cover designs, surveyed in a new book by Joseph Connelly. Have a look at some of the artwork that has adorned its titles down the decades
Posts Tagged ‘Publishing’
Faber & Faber’s bold cover designs
July 13th, 2009 |
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Currently celebrating its 80th anniversary, Faber & Faber has always been associated with strong cover designs, surveyed in a new book by Joseph Connelly. Have a look at some of the artwork that has adorned its titles down the decades
Playboy to preview unpublished Nabokov novel
July 8th, 2009 |
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Magazine acquires first serial rights to The Original of Laura, the unfinished novel Nabokov wanted to be destroyed
He came 22nd in Playboy’s list of the most important people in sex – ahead of Erica Jong, behind Hugh Hefner – earlier this year, so perhaps it makes sense that the magazine fought tooth and nail to acquire first serial rights in Vladimir Nabokov’s final, unfinished novel, The Original of Laura.
The book, which Nabokov had left instructions for his heirs to burn, tells the story of a man, unhappily infatuated with his promiscuous wife, who had when younger been obsessively in love with a young girl. Nabokov’s only surviving heir, Dmitri, decided to publish it last year, and it is lined up to be released this November.
A first glimpse, however, will be available in Playboy, according to the New York Observer, which reported on literary editor Amy Grace Loyd’s quest to win serial rights. “I did it with orchids, mostly,” Loyd said, sending them to Nabokov’s literary agent Andrew Wylie in a reference to Nabokov’s novel Ada, which was extracted in Playboy in 1969. The Russian novelist had a long relationship with the magazine, also granting it a lengthy interview in 1964 in which he said that he would “never regret Lolita … there is a queer, tender charm about that mythical nymphet.”
“It was part of my pitch to Andrew that Nabokov really liked publishing with Playboy, and how devoted Hef is to Nabokov and his legacy,” Loyd told the New York Observer. “I would get nice notes back from him, but he really wouldn’t give me anything. He said he wasn’t sure that Playboy was the place to launch the novel in the United States. But I was very persistent, as I often am, and I try forcibly to remind people of our literary history because it is very easy for people to dismiss us.”
She eventually triumphed, paying the most that Playboy has ever paid for a 5,000 word extract from the novel. “There are parts of it that are much more cohesive than others. But I found it fascinating in that way,” she said. “I’m so glad all those orchids did not die in vain.”
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Three jailed for Muhammad novel arson
July 7th, 2009 |
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Muslim trio who attacked publisher’s home days before release of The Jewel of Medina each get four and a half years in prison
Three Muslim men were jailed today for an arson attack on the home of the publisher of a novel about Aisha, the child bride of the prophet Muhammad.
The trio poured diesel on the front door of the house in Islington, north London, and set it on fire. The attack in September last year took place days before Martin Rynja’s company, Gibson Square, was scheduled to publish The Jewel of Medina, by the American author Sherry Jones.
Ali Beheshti, 41, and Abrar Mirza, 23, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit arson, while 30-year-old Abbas Taj was convicted of the same offence at Croydon crown court in May. Today, Mrs Justice Rafferty, sitting at London’s Royal Courts of Justice, sentenced each of them to four and a half years in jail.
Andrew Hall QC, representing Beheshti, said in mitigation that it was “an act of protest born of the publication of a book felt by him and other Muslims to be disrespectful, provocative and offensive”.
The judge said: “If you chose to live in this country, you live by its rules. There is no such thing as a la carte citizenship and, in your case, there is no such thing as a la carte obedience to the law.”
The UK publication of the book was delayed after the attack. The novel, which received mixed reviews – the LA Times called it “a second-rate bodice ripper” – struggled to find release in the US due to fears of a backlash by Muslim militants. It is now on sale in both countries, as well as seven other European countries, including Germany, Italy and Denmark.
The judge rejected arguments that Beheshti, from Ilford, east London, Mirza, from Walthamstow, north London, and Taj, from Forest Gate, east London, had intended only to set fire to the door, saying they had planned to “punish” Rynja.
“He, principled man that he is, had done two things: exercised critical judgement on a literary work, and stood up to be counted, knowing that publishing it put him at risk,” she said. “As he said, in an open society there has to be open access to literary works, regardless of fear.”
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Free for all?
July 1st, 2009 |
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The debate about media revenue models is certainly creating revenue for some content – the thoughts of pop culture theorists
If you want to deepen your confusion over the future revenue models for media content, then look no further than the staging of the paradoxical debate between pop culture theorists Chris Anderson and Malcolm Gladwell.
Gladwell’s review, commissioned and published in a magazine you have to buy, is freely available online. Its subject, Anderson’s book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, could equally have been titled $26.99: The Price of Hardback Hyperbole. There’s nothing “free” about it, except perhaps its composition. Anderson has already had to apologise for lifting unattributed chunks of Free from Wikipedia including, irony upon irony, the entry on “free lunch”.
But the battlefield for this looking-glass war is the pricing of information, or what everyone is now obliged to call content. Information wants to be free, says Anderson, who elevates it to a principle, and says that free will be the business model of the 21st century.
Gladwell says information doesn’t know what it wants, but digital corporations do, and they want information to be free (from publishers and content creators) in order to make more money.
One of the examples of Anderson’s “free” thesis is YouTube:
All those random videos on YouTube are just dandelion seeds in search of fertile ground on which to land. In a sense, we’re ‘wasting video’ in search of better video, exploring the potential space of what the moving picture can be.
Still, as Anderson admits and Gladwell takes pleasure in ramming home, YouTube doesn’t seem to make money from the new “free” business model.
Anderson’s book began cooking before the credit crunch took hold. For a new media dispute this one doesn’t just founder on irony. It also plays out in the past. Anderson’s Free has all the limitations of a timely book which was dated almost before publication. Gladwell’s review was commissioned on the New Yorker’s print lead time.
This is clear when both Anderson and Gladwell ignore the latest analyses of YouTube and its role in its parent company Google’s grander strategy. YouTube’s losses are likely nowhere near as severe as Gladwell portrays. Google can well afford them.
Price-cutting, and giveaways have long been a favoured, and rather unradical, business strategy, as Rupert Murdoch deftly demonstrated in building up the Times in the 1990s. Murdoch, too, knows the power that comes from owning apparently loss-making businesses.
There is a big change coming, and for businesses it isn’t one of the “free” business models that Anderson cheerleads. Content aggregation and distribution is in the process of becoming a global digital utility. The social and political consequences go far beyond pricing and the tech utopianism of Anderson. The point Gladwell makes in passing is in fact the most important – in whose interest will that distribution process work?
There is nothing free about server farms. Google’s digital factories may be hidden in Iowa and Finland but their management lies at the heart of its success. And in the meantime that success is having an impact on content creation at the micro-level. Yes, the writer. There is something very old-fashioned about a literary dispute.
Anderson makes – reportedly – a couple of million dollars a year in speaking fees. Gladwell has re-invented the book promotional tour as a paid-for event. A ticket to see Malcolm Gladwell Live! costs more than the book that the show notionally promotes.
So if the Anderson/Gladwell debate has a future, it’s one in which you’ll pay for ringside tickets to see them engaging in the intellectual equivalent of the Worldwide Wrestling Federation or, to be kinder, heavyweight boxing.
And perhaps a little feuding might add to the showmanship. Don King could probably advise. Still, live performance is once again a business model for writers. There might even be a book in it.
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When A Newspaper Stops Publishing In Print, What Happens To The Print Advertising Dollars?
December 17th, 2008 |
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With all the debate over the future of newspapers, here’s a question I haven’t heard anybody ask (much less answer): If a metropolitan newspaper suddenly ceased to publish, leaving the city with no newspaper, what would happen to all of that newspaper’s ad dollars?
Most newspaper companies’ strategy right now is based on the assumption that [...]
Sex sells to women too
Black Lace had a reputation for producing edgy, well-written erotica for women. The demand is there, so why is it closing?
The suspension of Black Lace, the UK erotica imprint “by women, for women”, brings to an end 16 years of female-penned smut due to “declining sales”. Sex sells – but apparently not to women.
As authors, we’re dismayed. In erotic fiction, you’ll probably find truer expressions of female desire than in the popular memoirs from strippers and sex workers, whose job it is to please men. But we’re also unsurprised. Women’s erotic fiction authors are often regarded as randy Barbara Cartlands writing purple porn for the sex-starved, their prose replete with throbbing manhoods, dungeon dynamics and swoon-inducing bastards: “Mills and Bonk”.
But in the last 16 years, Black Lace has acquired a strong reputation for producing edgy, well-written erotica. When readers get past their prejudices, they’re often very pleased to see us.
The internet has also transformed erotica. Women who felt uncomfortable purchasing dirty books in person can now buy at their blush-free leisure. But the wide availability of free content online has led many to conclude books can’t compete. Many authors have felt, in the face of this, the imprint’s marketing and brand-identity have been neglected, that the line has released too many reprints, or that its women-only author policy is outmoded.
With every industry feeling the pinch, many will view Black Lace’s fall as inevitable. But it has recently felt as if the genre was on the cusp of mainstream acceptance. Magazines such as Scarlet and Filament are targeting women with sexy words and pictures. The high sales of Kathy Lette’s In Bed With… collection of anonymous erotica, suggests woman are eager to read clit-lit. Sex memoirs are popular in the US; erotica, in particular, erotic romance, sells massively, with ebooks flying off the digital shelves. Why not over here? Are we just too British? Are the books not reaching the consumer? Is there something unseemly about our fiction? When it comes to genre credibilty, it often feels we’re in the gutter, looking up at the sci-fi writers.
Rival UK erotica publisher, Xcite, look set to gain new ground in the space vacated by Black Lace. Alas for BL authors, Xcite is short story led and novel-length manuscripts may struggle to find a home. Several popular BL authors already writing erotic romance are likely to flourish with American publishers instead. However, some fear they won’t fit in. Is there still a problem of double standards? After all, when Black Lace began many commentators refused to believe the authors of these books could be women.
With more investment the Black Lace story could have ended happily. For a line of groundbreaking women’s fiction to vanish – after that broken ground was so hard won – is a tragedy. When Random House bought Virgin Books, owners of Black Lace, they declared erotica “the jewel in the crown” – a tiny, insignificant jewel, it seems, which can be picked off their conglomerate crown and flicked away.