Year: 2020

This author says that the way democracy works now is either “loudest message wins” or “confuse everything so much that truth and lie lose all meaning“. This is literally why I quit Bookninja back in 2011. All you have to do is yell louder, more often, longer, and in more confusing voices, than anyone else and the fatigue of others will propel your message to “truth”. And governments are on board. Democracy through truth confusion. Nice. I’m out.

People are fed an onslaught of information, misinformation and conspiracy theories until becomes almost impossible to separate fact from fiction, or trace an idea back to its source, he said. 

“Back in the Cold War, whether it was the Soviets or the [Ferdinand] Marcos regime in the Philippines, you know, it was pretty clear who were the agents of censorship and intimidation. It was the military police or the secret service,” he said.

“Now, it’s some sort of troll farm. You’ll never prove that it’s actually directly related to the government.”

America is a country built on several industrial complexes, of which “military” is the most famous. But the prison system down there is also a capitalist shitshow. And charging inmates to exist within the system is increasingly part of the monetization strategy, including accessing ereaders from the library. Can you still call it a library when people are charged (outside of taxes) to use it? (Please excuse USA Today link–I’ll try to not let it happen again lest we all get dumber. But it’s great that their readers are forced to pass their eyes over this as they turn the pages for Superbowl Halftime shots of JLo and Shakira.)

Last year, West Virginia contracted with a company, Global Tel Link (GTL), to provide free tablets to prisoners. These kinds of initiatives are rapidly becoming more popular, as states grapple with the legacy of four decades of tough-on-crime policies and renewed public calls for more rehabilitative prisons.

And it sounds great. Until inmates realize the company charges users every time they use the tablets, including 25 cents a page for emails and 3 cents a minute to read e-books. By that calculation, most inmates would end up paying about $15 for each novel or autobiography they attempt to read. To people who have little to no money, that’s not a benefit. That’s exploitation. The only beneficiary, aside from Global Tel Link, is West Virginia, which receives 5% of the profits.

GTL isn’t alone in profiting off of prisoners. Exploitation of prisoners for profit is cropping up more and more across the criminal justice landscape.

• RIP: George Steiner
• Regean Arthur (taking over at Knopf) interviewed
• Pamela Anderson, poetry (and selfie) aficionado
• Bestselling books that people don’t finish
• Patti Smith helps out small bookstore that got robbed of…. Patti Smith
• Marlon James to host podcast
• Orlando soul searches for its literary identity… Go ahead, make all the Mickey Mouse jokes you want, but in 2001, the Orlando newspaper published a poem of mine… THE NEWSPAPER

Tom Gauld on #publishing from The Guardian pic.twitter.com/ltSCzSDPyt

— Jim Fallone (@jfallone) February 4, 2020

The Toronto Star has cut its books section down to a single page. The books section was the only reason I ever looked at the Star. Sad. Can’t link to the Globe because it’s paywalled, can’t like to the Post because it’s nazi’d, can’t link to the Star now because there’s nothing there. Even Quill is mostly paywalled. There’s no winning when it comes to open coverage in Canada. I get the whole “we have to pay people money” thing, I just don’t see how cutting coverage makes that more possible. I guess I’m just lamenting the good old days. And I’ll keep linking to the Guardian for whatever Canadian news ends up there, I suppose.

It's true I'm afraid. The books pages have been cut back to one page every Saturday. I'll still be books editor and writing other stories throughout the paper. I would write a letter to the editor or contact our editor Irene Gentle

— Deborah Dundas (@debdundas) February 2, 2020

Is it just me, or does this feel like it’s going on forever? I suppose it’s all part of the great and necessary forced conversation white people never wanted to have but are now faced with being part of. Let’s hope things change based on this latesthahahahahhahahaha. Oh, that’s a good one. For an industry that fetishizes the new in its authors, designs, and markets, publishing isn’t known for its ready embrace of “change”.

• How are bookstores handling the controversy?
• Has publishing actually learned anything?
• What does McSweeney’s think of this? (said for the first time since 1999)

Here's our American Dirt display. pic.twitter.com/7XJCMDg4li

— Scuppernong Books (@ScupBooks) January 29, 2020

• Bookclub service connects authors with clubs
• RIP: Mary Higgins Clark
• Thom King’s first poetry book, at 77
• Stephen King quits Facebook with dire warning about false information (I was about to quit this morning for similarly urgent reasons: it wouldn’t autopost BN stories there… This is basically a human rights violation)
• Brideshead Revisited Revisited: Evelyn Waugh is rolling in his grave
• Happy Birthday, Gertrude Stein
• Harvard gets digital
• New Borealis Award for Yukon’s lit community
• Dave Matthews is “writing” a fantasy novel for middle grades… which is code for another author is writing a book and the publisher is using Dave Matthews to market it to Dave Matthews fan-parents

TIFA (new name, same poetry-hating event) announced in a stealth stunt (Globe got a behind-the-paywall exclusive story while all other books media only got the PR on Friday after that ran) they have hired a new artistic director. Not everyone is happy. Questions abound: why another white guy? why the secrecy? will he continue the IFOA tradition of being a snotty douchebag? will he wear pompous cravats? In fairness, I don’t know anything about this fellow and he might be the best. Let’s hope for it.

A guy has been squatting on Patrick deWitt’s website (author famous for often looking like he’s just leapt from one timeline to another and is in the process of figuring out what year it is), holding it for ransom. The price? He wants deWitt’s publishers to read his manuscript. As you can imagine, the response from deWitt has been definitive: meh.

I shit you not. I am almost dehydrated from cry-laughing.

There are traditional ways to get a book published—pitches, queries, agents, enduring months and years of soul-crushing work and silence—and then there’s blackmail.

A writer is currently squatting on Patrick deWitt’s website, which they’ll return to the award-winning author if he reads their “very unpublished novel.”

The squatter has not identified themselves (they call themselves a “bad boy” on the contact page), but their demands and motivations are clear:

“Mr deWitt, If you want the site back, just let me know. I’m not trying to blackmail you, your producers, the publishing house or your literary agent. I just want y’all to read my manuscript.

“Oh fuck, I just realized that’s the dictionary definition of blackmail. Sorry, I guess I just meant I don’t really give a fuck about money.”

Cartoonist Jim Zub on how D&D made him the storyteller he is (audio). I have an article that’s similar (about foundational values) over at The Walrus. Daily I am amazed at how popular the game has become. I walk the streets freely now wearing D&D tshirts that advertise my geekiness for the entire world to see and never once to I experience name calling, stomach punches, wedgies, or even the dreaded “Read Admiral”. At least, not about D&D.

Jim Zub is an award-winning Canadian comic book writer who says he learned a lot about life — and found his future career — by playing Dungeons and Dragons as a kid. Now, he’s writing guidebooks as well as hosting a podcast about the role-playing game. He joined guest host Laurie Brown live in the q studio to talk about the effect Dungeons and Dragons has had on his career and why the game is exploding in popularity again.

Should the writer be thinking about marketing while writing? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! Sorry, that was the poet in me laughing. This is me thinking about marketing after I’ve finished a poem: “I wonder if Mark will like it….”

Book marketing, generally speaking, falls on the shoulders of your publishing team. So while marketing shouldn’t be your primary focus, you do need to be mindful of it. In terms of your work’s “marketability,” I’ll explain it this way. An editor I knew would often speak of her desire to acquire books that hit a “sweet spot.” She meant that she was looking for books that checked off a number of desired categories. This could include hot trends and genres (think Fifty Shades of Grey and Gone Girl), as well as books that dealt with timely issues.

While that may be how she evaluated the books that crossed her desk, many writers don’t write thinking about sweet spots. That’s because the creative process is often messy and doesn’t always fit neatly into categories. Nor should it, IMHO.