PETRONA

Crime comes to the Hamptons

On Tuesday evening I spent a delightful hour at Hampton* Library, at a glamorous event organised by CrimeSquad, a website that, not coincidentally, turns out to be run from a location very near by. The event was an interview and discussion with authors Meg Gardiner and Peter Robinson: the fire and ice of the crime-fiction world? Both authors, with deceptive ease, spoke about their crime-writing careers, including the subgenre of which they would consider themselves to be part. Meg opted for thriller (in the USA, suspense, she said) and Peter police procedural (though he said he is not fond of the term).

The authors read a page of choice from their current books. Meg was the bravest, choosing the heady first chapter of The Dirty Secrets Club -- to the applause of many of us listeners (for whom twice times 21 is but a distant memory) at an appropriately breathless, exciting pace (no wonder Stephen King was spellbound); whereas Peter provided more of a slow burn in selecting a subliminally loaded exchange between Annie and Banks in All The Colours of Darkness, and reading it very slowly and meaningfully. I was in full sympathy with Peter when he said that his aversion to giving away anything about plot extended to his refusal even to read the blurb of books. It was a lovely contrast, showing in a snapshot the full breadth of "crime fiction". Meg and Peter were both wonderful to listen to, and kudos from me to Adrian Clark of CrimeSquad, interviewer and host for the evening, who asked pertinent questions that elicited some lovely anecdotes, as well as generously including the audience. A welcome, as well as extremely unusual, hiatus.

Here is Meg's post of the event, at her blog Lying for a Living (watch out for the terrorist nuns if you visit).

*Not to be confused with Hampton Wick or Hampton Court.

Crime-fiction news from R&J and Sweden

By public vote, the winner of the "Richard & Judy best summer read of 2008" is No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay. The results were gathered from viewer reaction on the Richard & Judy Channel 4 show. "Utterly riveting. It will grab you on page one and won't let you go until the final, stunning conclusion", says Tess Gerritsen. My review of this book is here. Although I enjoyed it, I did have a few caveats, in particular the fact that the solution depended on someone not looking at something properly, which in context was highly unlikely. The book is certainly an exciting, easy read, though: perfect for a summer holiday.

In other crime-fiction news, The Times today runs an article by Barry Forshaw about Stieg Larsson, author of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, who died before the book (the first of a trilogy) was translated into English, by Reg Keeland. The article hints that the early death of the author may have been related to his fearless journalism, before revealing that this actually was not the case. The second book in the trilogy, The Girl Who Played with Fire, is out in January 2009. You can see the cover and read a mini-extract at Euro Crime. (The commenters agree that the picture of the woman on the cover displays a highly unlikely "model-standard grooming".)

If you are a fan of Stieg Larsson and are finding it hard to wait until January, there are many other excellent Swedish (and other Scandinavian) crime novels that will keep you going until then. If you are keen on the investigative journalism theme, I would recommend in particular my adored Liza Marklund's Paradise, which covers very similar themes to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, or Mari Jungstedt's Unseen and Unspoken. Asa Larsson (no relation to Stieg)'s debut Sun Storm is along similar lines although featuring a lawyer rather than a journalist. There are so many fantastic Swedish (and other Scandinavian) novels being published at the moment that the reader is truly spoilt. Johan Theorin's debut Echoes from the Dead (translated by Marlaine Delargy, who also translates Asa Larsson) is being much talked about, and I've recently been indulging in Helene Tursten's three books so far translated into English (the first one also translated by Reg Keeland, using the name Steven T Murray).

If you've read everything published in translation from Scandinavia ;-), Karen has just put together an Amazon list for 2009, which I am sure will lengthen as more titles are announced.

By The Sea is available in print

I am alerted by my friend and colleague Henry Gee to an important new publishing event:

"Horrific bereavement has forced Detective Inspector Persephone Sheepwool to leave London and make a new life on the remote North Norfolk coast. But horror is never far behind, as she discovers when a body is found at a museum in a decaying clifftop mansion whose shadowy staff is dedicated to discovering the secrets of the sea. Investigating the death, Sheepwool finds that some secrets are probably best left submerged. Trouble is, even the most deeply submerged secrets have a nasty way of oozing to the surface."

Such is Henry's description of By The Sea, his mystery/crime novel, now available via Lulu for £6.99 as a print edition. (The book was previously published in online installments at LabLit, the forum for the culture of science in fiction and fact).

Henry blogs at Nature Network (The End of the Pier Show) and at Ernest Scribbler.

There's no place like home

Via Dave Lull, here is an extract from a post by Roy Peter Clark on his experiences of having his newspaper's copyediting outsourced to India:

" I need copy editors to know that Eva Longoria is not the wife of Tampa Bay Rays baseball phenom Evan Longoria.  I need them to know that a Florida cracker is not something you eat, and that it may or may not be offensive to some readers. I need a Rhode Island copy editor to know that you don't dig for clams; you dig for quahogs, a word of Indian origin -- American Indian. I need copy editors who know that Jim Morrison of The Doors went to St. Pete Junior College, that beat writer Jack Kerouac died in St. Petersburg, Fla., but is buried in Lowell, Mass. I want them to know that Lakewood High School is different from Lakewood Ranch High School. I want them to know that 54th Avenue North in St. Petersburg is 108 blocks north of 54th Avenue South."

My sympathies.  The fact that these copyeditors are apparently trained in "the Queen's English" does not mean that they'd have done any better with text for an English English publication, either.

Asking the tough questions

Via Books, Inq., I read a stimulating 'Outpost' by Timothy Egan in the celebratory 4 July New York Times, with the title Save the Press. It is a good, strong article, lamenting the recent cruel cutbacks in the US newspaper industry (made, as Frank Wilson in his Books, Inq. commentary says, to keep stock prices high rather than to cut waste or more efficiently allocate resources), paradoxically at a time when Internet readership of newspapers and other news media is rapidly increasing.

Of course, as Timothy Egan writes, it isn't a paradox, because nobody has learned to make money out of publishing on the Internet (yet?). Compared with print, online advertising revenues are small, despite increasingly infuriating attempts to force users to witness ever-more clever tricksy flashing, rolling objects obscuring what we are trying to read or even access. When will they learn that this kind of thing is expensive to produce and increasingly counterproductive as far as user uptake is concerned?  

Whether a newspaper, magazine or scientific journal, it costs a lot of money to produce quality content. That point may seem self-evident to you, as it does to me, but it is not self-evident to everyone. Newspapers are strange hybrids, but they are a heck of a lot better than a bland, auto-generated alternative that is not going to get anywhere near the true story. As Susan Sullivan says in her succinct comment to the New York Times piece, "Someone has to ask the tough questions and be paid to do it." There are lots of other comments at the New York Times site, some of them quite good -- perhaps this is an effect of publication on 4 July, or maybe it is always like that. But to return to the point, as Timothy Egan puts it:

"What’s the alternative — the National Public Radio model? It’s possible that some civic-minded nonprofits will end up owning one or two of the nation’s great papers, and operating them as trusts, hands off. But that’s a limited solution, fraught with problems of control and flexibility, and it won’t keep reporters at city hall in Sioux Falls or the statehouse in Santa Fe. Another response is goodbye, and so what. Look at the auto industry numbers from this week, with General Motors slouching toward bankruptcy. Besides, there’s plenty of gossip, political spin and original insight on sites like the Drudge Report or The Huffington Post — even though they are built on the backs of the wire services and other factories of honest fact-gathering. One day soon these Web info-slingers will find that you can’t produce journalism without journalists, and a search engine is no replacement for a curious reporter. And just how much do most contributors at the The Huffington Post make? Nothing! “Not our financial model,” as the co-founder, Ken Lerer famously said. From low pay to no pay — the New Journalism at a place that calls itself an Internet newspaper."

Jeff Marks on Anthony Boucher

It is a while since I read the Dorothy L mail list: I have not read it since I started this blog, in fact (there is only time for so much). But it was there that I first heard of "the Boucheron", the main US mystery convention, gradually discovering that it is named after a man called Anthony Boucher. At that time (2005), a DorothyL-er called Jeff Marks was writing a book, "the ultimate resource on Anthony Boucher, critic, editor, translator, writer, and scriptwriter. So many people know of Bouchercon today, but few know of the man behind the World Mystery Conference." So I got to read a bit about Jeff's progress -- I think we even exchanged a few emails about it. Well, I am delighted to say that the book is now out.

"Anthony Boucher: A Biobibliography is the first book to look at the life and career of the 20th century's most influential mystery and suspense critic. Along with his mystery criticism, Boucher was known for starting The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, writing seven novels, and writing the radio plays for Sherlock Holmes and Ellery Queen."

See more about the book at Jeff's website, and buy it (and others!) via his online bookstore.

The future of reading gets closer

As regular/longstanding readers will know, I have long thought that POD (print on demand) technology is the future for authors, readers and publishers - and I am not alone, though possibly in a minority. I've written about lots of examples, one post from December 2006 is here, for example, and a nasty attack on it discussed here. Various developments in the interim have bought closer the concept of a reader being able to search for a book and to buy it POD "on the spot", some of which I've written about, but this post at theBookseller.com is well worth noting. According to the Bookseller, the publisher Blackwell is installing the Espresso machine (EBM for short, and it does not make coffee) in its 60-store chain in the UK. From the Bookseller piece:

"The EBM is already installed in 11 sites worldwide. It can access around one million titles, of which more than 600,000 come through a partnership with Lightning Source; the rest are in the public domain. It is also in talks with publishers about adding their content, although On Demand c.e.o. Dane Neller stressed the model was not to own content but to act a facilitator. The machine, which On Demand describes as an "ATM for books", prints, binds and trims paperback books with four-colour covers, on demand and at point of sale. Version 1.5 prints around 40 pages a minute and is 9 ft long and 5 ft high and deep."

Although these are early days, and this pilot scheme is for academic books only, the technical systems are now pretty much there. How long will it be before you can go into a bookshop (or even a coffee shop) and get an "out of print" book printed up while you wait (or drink your coffee)?

The world of fiction reviewing

Philip Ball, an ex-Nature editor colleague who continues to write for the journal as well as many award-winning books about science, has just written his first work of fiction, The Sun and Moon Corrupted. He has been reading the reviews, a process which is either pleasurable tinged with pain or painful tinged with pleasure, I can't quite make out which. One thing is clear, though, it is different from having a scientific work mauled by the critics. Phil's experience is

"an interesting awakening to the world of fiction reviewing, where one unfortunately can’t say ‘this particular criticism was disproved in Physical Review Letters in 1991’. One person’s meat is another person’s demon-haunted brew from the foul swamps of Transylvania."

Here is a review of the book at The New Humanist. An excerpt: "Philip Ball has written several popular books on subjects as diverse as how water works, what molecules are and the world of Renaissance Magic and he brings his clarity of thought to this, his first novel. The title refers to a mystical alchemical experiment. Mercury is the Moon, a female element, whilst sulphur is the Sun, the fiery male element, and seeking their union is the goal of the philosopher. Their perfect marriage is called “The Red King”, and the properties of this alloy have to do with the philosopher’s stone, turning base metal into gold. This essentially futile quest is the backbone of the book – it is the search for a perpetual motion machine – a machine that gives out more energy than is put into it, which would violate the laws of thermodynamics."

Other reviews of the book can be read at FT.com (if you can stand it: ghastly website that spreads a tiny review over two pages so it can flash yet more rubbish at you) and at Popular Science, the blissfully quieter yet content-rich website of prolific science writer Brian Clegg. The book was also the subject of the Fiction Lab discussion group in London the other night, and you can check into Jennifer Rohn's blog Mind the Gap for a write up of that event.

 

Dissection of The Friday Project

Via Ian Hocking at This Writing Life.

Scott Pack, publisher of the Friday Project, writes in the Bookseller about the demise of the company.

"I could fill this column with a list of contributing factors, but the truth is that if we had sold more books and produced them more cost-effectively,­ then the business wouldn’t have gone under. Mistakes were made. These have proved extremely costly to both people within the business and, more importantly, to those outside it with a vested financial interest. When a company goes bust, creditors are often left out of pocket. That is certainly the case with TFP, but there is also the added weight of shareholders losing their investments and a number of authors now having no home for their books."

In the same issue, the Bookseller tells the fuller story of the Friday Project from an independent perspective.

"Launched in June 2005, TFP began flying its colours as the first mainstream publisher to truly tackle the web. It aimed to produce books inspired by popular websites, and promised to thoroughly engage with the internet community. It was screw up rather than success. In March, TFP went under, prompting an unprecedented storm of online vitriol from the very community it had courted. “Self-deception when you are in a financial hole is as bad as when you are in the grip of an addiction,” wrote author and blogger Susan Hill. Vanessa Robertson at Fidra Books blogged: “As they disappear in a whirlwind of debt, The Friday Project has been shown to be no more than spin and self-promotion, masking the fact that although they had some great books on their list, they had no idea of how to run a business.” "

Of the titles published, losers included Out of the Tunnel by Rachel North, "a summer title it [TFP] had projected sales of more than 30,000 for, tanked, selling only 5,000 copies" and Caroline Smailes’s In Search of Adam (it has sold 1,333 copies since publication in March). These and other titles are compared with "blog-to-book" Anya Peters's Abandoned, selling over 150,000 copies, published by Michael Joseph. Various people are quoted as stating that TFP's problem was publishing "frozen blogs" between covers, rather than developing the "neverending story" of the blog into the "narrative arc" necessary for a book.

What now? From the Bookseller: "After much wrangling—and internet anguish—HarperCollins ended up acquiring, for a “nominal sum”, certain assets of TFP out of administration: 30 author contracts....; the website; the brand; the goodwill...; and the continued employment of [publishing director Clare Christian], Scott Pack and managing editor Heather Smith."

Misery for misery books; brighter days for POD

Via the Bookseller blog, I'm relieved to read that "retailers and publishers are struggling in a heavily oversaturated misery memoir market, as latest sales figures show a significant dip in the genre." It is pretty silly, every time one walks into a High Street bookstore, to be greeted with a whole wall of those white books with black-and-white picture of sad-looking child on front, usually wearing 1950s clothes and with fuzzy edges to the picture. Who reads this stuff? I often wonder. Now I know -- nobody, much. There is some sanity left in the world, then (as most of these sagas are made up, or at the best, embellished).

Better news for authors and readers of any stripe is that PSik has bought out a new model of its 1Book print-on-demand machine -- as Martyn Daniels puts it, to "change the print on demand model from print and distribute to distribute and print. Changing the wasteful trucking of books and making the books truly on demand at purchase." (Martyn Daniels is author of the UK Bookseller Association report 'Brave New World', on the impact of digitisation on publishing.)  The system claims to be able to print an average 250-page book in five to seven minutes, and not require a dedicated operator -- similar to the Espresso machine, previously discussed on this blog, but with a "smaller footprint". Times are, indeed, changing.

Quercus to increase its publishing programme

Via the Bookseller, "Quercus Publishing has set out to reach annual sales of £20m in three years, as it aims to grow from a small publisher to a medium-sized one. Results put out today showed that the company saw sales rise a massive 140% in 2007, with trade sales up by 194%, thanks to its two prize winning authors, Stef Penney and Peter Temple." The company's chief executive, Mark Smith, said: "This has been a transformational year for Quercus, with both our Contract and Trade Divsions contributing handsomely to revenue growth of 140% over the prior year. The board believes that Quercus is now well placed for further growth and over the next three years the group will continue to evolve, build the publishing programmes..." etc. That last part, about the publishing programmes, is very good news for us readers, as Quercus produces some jolly good books by authors including Michael Walters, Colin Cotterill, Adrian Hyland, Martin Walker and many others (see Euro Crime or Petrona for reviews).
I can, incidentally, exclusively reveal that Mr Smith is a very forward-thinking person, being kind enough recently to listen to a rhapsody by me on the subject of blogging, as a result of which he and his esteemed colleague Iain Miller are now in receipt of Petrona's List (for those not reading in RSS, see left-hand sidebar "great crime fiction blogs").

Britannica joins the blogosphere

You may have read or heard that the other day Encyclopaedia Britannica introduced WebShare, which it describes as a "special program for web publishers, including bloggers, webmasters, and anyone who writes for the Internet. You get complimentary access to the Encyclopaedia Britannica online and, if you like, an easy way to give your readers background of the topics you write about with links to complete Britannica articles." Apparently it should not take more than 24 hours to receive your free subscription, and WebShare offers you a range of widgets and twitter feeds of the encyclopaedia's content to add to your blog or site. If you are interested, there are various help, FAQ and other pages from the main page here.
The move has been met with muted approval on the blogs and sites I've read so far. (Thanks also to Dave Lull for sending me a link to the Britannica's article about the initiative.) Barry Graubert of Content Matters blog writes: "Britannica has clearly been on a path towards the dead pool since the birth of Wikipedia. Initially, they simply took the position that a wisdom of crowds approach could not compare to the expertise of their editors. That argument was put to rest in the comparison conducted by Nature a few years ago. Wikipedia today has nearly 4 billion monthly page views, while Britannica has only 21 million. In providing blogger access, Britannica has taken a baby step towards addressing the problem of whether they even exist on the Internet." Barry points out that the Internet is all about links, incoming and outgoing, and that Britannica does not get that. Even the WebShare blog, he writes, has no links at all in it, not even to the encyclopaedia's own twitter feed. That particular omission has now been rectified, but it is true that the blog seems to exist in its own insulated space apart from that one link. Barry has applied for a WebShare ID and will keep track, he writes.

Update: in a strange reverse-twist, I have just read that Random House is to publish Wikipedia as a book.

UK book publishers go for digital

Last week, Penguin announced that it plans to publish all new titles simultaneously in e-book and print format. This week, Pan Macmillan also revealed (at the London Book Fair) that it will publish new print and e-books simultaneously from January 2009. Back-lists are also being digitised: Penguin is already working on turning its 5,000 title backlist into e-books for publication this and next year, and Bloomsbury recently joined Microsoft's Live Search programme to enable the digitisation of its entire backlist, which it will then sell as e-books and print on demand. (There is a bit of an argument going on with Amazon over its recent insistence that US publishers use its own Booksurge for the purpose, and also over the rates it is planning to charge publishers for the service, but it will happen - either with Amazon as the 'preferred partner' or with other providers.)
E-readers and mobile devices are now at the point where many find them useable and some say they are even preferable to printed books. It looks as if publishers will be ready, after many years of speculation about when (rather than if) the tipping point will arrive for digital. Interestingly, it is the rapid increase of popularity of mobile devices that is helping to drive these latest developments - for which purpose the digitised back-content will be in smallish chunks of xml so that the text will be available in excerpts suited to the mobile format, as well as downloadable into a complete e- or printed book. I remember a nasty blog post a year or so ago (to which I am not going to link), in which someone picked up a post in which I discussed the possibility of some of these developments, and sneered at me in a most unfettered way. Not a wise move, on his part, in light of subsequent events.

Clive James, ebooks, freedom and crime

Via James Long at The Digitalist, I read that Clive James’s ‘intellectual autobiography’, Cultural Amnesia, is simultaneously being published in paperback and as the first in Pan Macmillan's series of ‘special edition’ eBooks, featuring extra material not available in the print version and including a specially written foreword by the author. James (Long) provides a widget of the beautiful cover of the book at his Digitalist post: you can click on it to start reading, listen to an audio excerpt, or add to your own website or blog. Both author and publisher have decided to make the ebook "DRM free", which means (I think) that you can read it in any e-reader not only in one company's.
At the Picador blog (publisher of the paperback), Clive James himself writes: "In hardback the book has done at least as well as any of my autobiographies, so I have high hopes for the paperback, which should be more in range of the student budget. The paperback will also be slightly less massive, which might mean that older people can read it with a smaller risk of being flattened. A complete unknown to me is how the eBook will do. I’m not entirely certain yet what an eBook is, but I prepared some special extra material for it just out of faith." Describing the huge programme of writing on which he's embarked, made possible by his "retirement from mainstream television", he says that his problem now is how to retire from his retirement while he can still walk.
One of his recent literary activities was recently sent to me by Dave Lull: an excellent essay in The New Yorker on crime fiction called Blood on the borders. I read this with great interest a month ago when Dave sent it to me and wanted to write a post on the thoughts it engendered. Time has passed and memory has failed, so I'll provide a simple link here in case you missed it and might also enjoy reading it.
And while on the topic of ebooks and freedom of reading, there's a post here at The Long Tail by Chris Anderson about Scott Sigler's book, Infected, and the publisher's strategy in making it free online for a limited time before its print publication. It's a great analysis of how publishers are thinking about and adapting to the Internet.

That Amazon decision

There are lots of posts, comments and discussion everywhere about Amazon's recent decision only to sell print-on-demand books if the printer used is Amazon's own Booksurge. Perhaps the best analysis I've read so far is this one on O'Reilly Radar, a post which has the added benefit of, at the end, a set of links to other coverage at Publishers Weekly, Library Thing, Booksquare et al. Whatever one might think of the business decision, it seems to signal the end of Amazon as a collaborative network of partners (buyers as well as sellers), and the start of Amazon as a traditional business, competing with publishers and competing for readers. As a consumer, I preferred the old "we can join them we don't need to beat them" approach. Now I have to go to more sites to find what's available and hence I want, instead of being able to compare everything on Amazon. (Maybe everything wasn't in fact on Amazon before, but I thought it pretty much was, apart from the odd obscure out-of-print book. That "user faith" is something the site has now lost, in my mind.)

Legs, pygmy love queen and cheese

Via the Bookseller.com news:

If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs was crowned the winner of the Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year, after a record-breaking 8,500 votes (33%) online.....The runner-up is I Was Tortured By the Pygmy Love Queen (20%) and in 3rd place is Cheese Problems Solved (19%).

If this kind of thing is your cup of tea, you'll be pleased to know (via the same link) that Aurum Press is to publish a book celebrating 30 years of The Bookseller's Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year, a small-format hardback gift book, How to Avoid Huge Ships and Other Implausibly Titled Books, out in September." It will feature the original jackets of the best winners and runners-up since the prize was launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1978". All for a mere £9.99.

Digital and online book-publishing news

Via Martyn Daniels of Brave New World (the UK Bookseller Association blog), the Bookseller reports that the literary agency PFD "is entering a print on demand relationship with Lightning Source which will enable it to bring back out of print works from its authors and estates and makes these available through Amazon and the two wholesaler channels of Gardners and Bertrams. This clearly throws the gauntlet down on rights reversals and opens up all sorts of potential opportunities for both authors and agents. By bringing these works back they effectively block publishers wakening up and doing it themselves and also are one step away from securing the full digital control of these works."

Mark Thwaite of The Book Depository, my other much-appreciated source of news about what's in the Bookseller when I haven't seen a print copy for weeks, links to an informative post "Ignore rejection slips, DIY is the route to go" at journalist Danuta Kean's blog, and adds: "If the expectation from any new author is that their publisher will have much time or energy to really get behind their book and push it for all they are worth they are, in most cases, likely to be very disappointed. Taking the DIY route means taking on to your own shoulders the responsibility for getting other people thinking and talking about your book: it means getting a website up and running, and a blog, and a presence on the social networking sites, and touring the bookshops, and padding the streets."

And finally, for this post, John Reed at Publishing Talk highlights the spring edition of The Deal, the official magazine of the upcoming London book fair (edited by the same Danuta Kean cited above) recommending "Steve Hatch’s article “Communication Breakdown” for a few frightening statistics on the mismatch between publishers’ online spending and their customers’ behaviour", and providing an extract from his own article about social media.

Snaring readers on the hop

In response to the news that a large British regional newspaper owner is to replace its subeditors, Roy Greenslade writes on the Guardian blog that, much as he respects subs, he thinks "they will be the first journalistic victims of the digital revolution." Why? He goes on to write that "In the traditional newsprint environment, subs have three roles: subbing copy (a mixture of fact-checking, correcting grammar, cutting to length), writing headlines and designing pages. Yet there is no earthly reason why reporters cannot carry out the first task themselves. It is always good for copy to be passed before another pair of eyes before publication, but that need not involve the maintenance of a whole subs' desk. Headline-writing is an art, supposedly. But, in truth, it can be learned. As for designing, that has never been a journalists-only job anyway. Lots of the men and women who lay out pages on national papers have had no journalistic experience at all. I think the savings Archant is planning to achieve are relatively minor [£170K] , given that it made profits of £30.5m last year. But is this really about money? Isn't it about a future on screen, a future with many fewer journalists?"

There are inevitably some pithy comments to this post, including this good one: "If reporters could carry out their own spell checking, fact checking and libel checking, however, subs would have vanished long ago. But they can't. Still, if Archant think an £18500-a-year ad designer will pick up libels in copy, and write headlines about Super Caley go Ballistic, good luck to them." Or this one: "Any writer needs somebody willing to say, "what do you mean by this?" Those stumbling words that told you what my heart meant are all very well for a loved one but not something to snare a reader on the hop." Quite a few of the commenters liked the title of the Guardian article: "Subs? Do we really them any longer?" Wonder how that one got past the sub? ;-)

One role of a sub is in selecting links -- and I am not talking about those often unintentionally hilarious automatically generated links. (One of my colleagues told me his favourite auto-generated link was in a story about Lewis Hamilton's chances of getting a seat in the 2007 McLaren F1 team  -- ‘seat’ was linked to Parker-Knoll.) Online reading of magazines (as opposed to blogs) suffers in comparison from the lack of instant ability for the reader to go to the article or report being discussed -- I have lost track of the number of times I've had to find a site via Google, then get mired in some Internet distraction and lose the thread, or never return. Blogs, of course, don't have subs, or any independent editing: unimpeded personal opinion being considered the main aim. So there's one little niche for an online magazine sub.

Anyway, if you want to run a website without a sub or any human content expertise, and still get it right on your homepage, you can read this Economist article, "how to replace the editor with a computer". Let me know how you get on.

Harnessing the web, Nature's way

LOGOS, the "journal of the world book community" has just published an article by me. It's called Harnessing the Web — Nature's way: New tools and resources to help researchers communicate and innovate.

The LOGOS blurb states: "How does one of the world's oldest and most successful scientific journals harness the Web? Maxine Clarke, publishing executive editor of Nature, spells it all out for LOGOS readers. This is an excellent example of a brilliant specialist reaching out to the general reader, a recurrent theme in LOGOS's eighteen-year history."

LOGOS is a subscription-only publication, so only the first page of the article is available at the link above. If you are interested in seeing the whole thing, drop me a line in the comments.

For more about LOGOS and what it's all about, the journal's home page is here.

Welcome to The Digitalist

A relatively new blog at the company where I work is called The Digitalist. This blog was an internal forum for Pan Macmillan to think about a range of digital-publishing issues, that is, how technology meets books, reading, publishing, and how they are all changing each other. It still has that function, but now it's open for everyone to "join the debate about books, publishing, the web, and the future".

Amid quite technical posts about e-publishing and how to build Facebook applications, I enjoy reading articles such as this one, by James Long, about his thoughts on reading the printed version of Jeff Gomez's "book of the blog", Print is Dead. ( ;-) ) James discusses memory, forgetting and reading:

"Sometimes, to help ourselves remember what we liked most in a book, or what was most relevant in it, we make notes in the margin or write short references in the back cover or underline words and lines. This makes the book searchable, enabling you to return to it when your memory of its content has faded a bit and still find what was important to you. If you no longer had the book, you’d lose that memory.So the perception is: print persists; digital disappears. At least, digital remains less tangible - both during reading and after. Therefore, for some, books in print on shelves are paramount; books in digital formats and online are not totemic enough to support our labouring organic memory systems.The truth, though, is that digital books are (potentially) more efficient repositories of our memory of the book than the print version: the metadata that you can create, store and report on as to what books you read, when you read them, etc. is a more reliable form of recall; also, books that are indexed (in the search engine sense) are more immediately and effectively searchable than ones that have been annotated in print. The irony is that, once you are outside of the reading experience, the more you have annotated a book the less readable it becomes...."

A thought-provoking post, and I think this is a blog worth following.

Shaken, stirred or on the rocks

Linda L. Richards at January Magazine reports on the Bookseller talking-up a publishing war this Autumn, as it turns out that both Sean Connery and Roger Moore are publishing their memoirs simultaneously. Already, the billing is "battle of the Bonds".

Can it really be a "battle", though? Not that I'm going anywhere near either book, but if I were the sort of person who liked celebrity memoirs, there is absolutely no difficulty in making a decision between whether I'd prefer to read the words of the darkly fascinating, ruggedly handsome, dangerous Sean Connery or those of the, er, suavely eyebrowed Roger Moore.

Nights on the town with Euro Crime

We have a rule where I work that if you attend a conference or visit a lab, you have to write up a report afterwards. Earlier this week I went to not just one, but two social events with a crime-fiction theme, yet I am spared the ordeal of "writing up" by Karen of Euro Crime (my delightful companion to both events), who has encapsulated the evenings beautifully in this post.

Briefly, the first event was the launch party for MacLehose press, the new imprint of Quercus. The first book to be published is Stieg Larsson's haunting The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which I reviewed here. Today, the Times ran a review of the book, and enthusiastic accounts have appeared in several other publications, not least Ali Karim's rave at The Rap Sheet. Ali was very much in evidence at the MacLehose launch, which he has written about in characteristically lively fashion, taking lots of photographs -- including the one above, of Karen (Euro Crime, on the left) and me (on the right). It's quite a nice picture but omits two unusual sightings, one of my lovely green silk skirt by Phase Eight, and the other of my "proper" black shoes with a heel (only an inch, but a heel nonetheless). I put them on just before going into the building, and took them off again on the way out, but for the party, they were definitely on my feet.

The second event, again as described at Euro Crime by Karen, was to celebrate the launch of Crimini, a book of short stories signifying the modern coming-of-age of Italian crime, collected by author Giancarlo De Cataldo (a short paragraph about the book is at the Times link above). De Cataldo had asked all his friends to contribute a chapter, he said, but none of them is a woman and none of them is the masterly Gianrico Carofiglio. Never mind, the book sounds good. I was there as the representative of Crime Scraps, as Norman (Italophile supremo) could not attend and so very kindly passed on to me his invitation. It was a most interesting and instructive evening, as Karen so well describes. As well as writing the short stories, Crimini's authors also worked with Italian TV to present a series based on the book, which looked great from the clip we were shown -- unfortunately it does not seem that there is much chance of seeing the whole thing in the UK.

A sad theme of both evenings concerned the publishing economics leading to very little translation of European crime fiction into English. Both Christopher MacLehose and Giancarlo De Cataldo spoke eloquently on this topic at the two events. The arts councils of some European countries do fund translations into English, but I understand that the just-announced cutbacks to the UK Arts Council will particularly affect translations. This is such a pity, as the books I am currently reading that are translated from their original Italian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Spanish and so on are just superb. Many of these books have not been translated for about 10 years since original publication, while they have gained a reputation, and perhaps prizes or awards, in their native countries. One example of a book for which there is no sign of a translation deal because of its 600-page length, is De Cataldo's own novel Romanzo Criminali - a best seller in Italy and made into a film there, but unknown outside unless you can read the language. We were treated to clip of this film as well, which (although without subtitles) looks fantastic.

Simultaneous games of pairs

   

Reading Karen's post about the importance of being consistent brought to mind an experience of earlier today. While on a necessary but unpleasant journey, I popped into a bookstore to kill ten minutes, and browsed the "new in paperback" table. On it: "Die for me" by Karen Rose and "Die with me" by Elena Forbes. Also, "The Ressurectionist" by James McGee near to "The Reincarnationist" by M. J. Rose. Finally, "Silent at the Grave" by Deanna Raybourn, which reminded me of a fairly recent (very good, by the way) book not on this display, "Silence of the Grave" by Arnaldur Indridason.

I understand that publishers cannot coordinate their titles in advance, but perhaps a little more originality is called for, somewhere along the line. I am glad that the table top wasn't any bigger, as I was confused enough already.

On first becoming a published author

Via Macmillan New Writers' blog, a post from one of their number, Michael Stephen Fuchs, on his blog Dispatch from the Razor's Edge, about the lack of happiness, riches and sex arising from publishing your first novel. Or, as Michael writes in his post header: "The following piece was sorta kinda commissioned by someone at Salon.com, which subsequently decided they had much more important things to run in December. No other organ has rushed to publish it – no one wants to hear the truth, man! – so here it is (in the usual place). "

Here's an excerpt:

"I have friends who think I must be rich after being published on a recognizable imprint. Bwahahaha! With the arrival of my first royalty check, I learned that ten years of writing had netted me the same amount as two weeks of doing computer shit for an investment bank. (And, yes, my book actually did pretty well – by the modest standards of first novels.) The fact of the matter is that the world is drowning in fiction (most of it awful, admittedly). And it is a very vain thing indeed to think the world needs your book – much less that they'll pay you gazillions for it.

As far as I’m aware, I have not, up until this very moment, gone out on a date with one single woman as a result of being a published author. Not one."

Euro Crime's Scandinavian lists

The title of Karen's recent post at Euro Crime blog speaks for itself: Scandinavian Crime/Mystery novels coming out in 2008. In her post, Karen provides links to two Amazon lists, one UK and one US, as some of the books are coming out at different times in the two regions -- lists that I have eagerly checked out.

As well as the first novel of the "millennium" trilogy by Stieg Larrson, noted by Karen as having already generated quite a buzz before its January release by the new MacLehose Press, there are some tremendously exciting delights in store: new books by Asa Larsson (whose Sun Storm was wonderful - my review is awaiting publication); Karin Fossum (I've read two excellent books by her in 2007, Calling Out For You and Black Seconds, review awaiting publication); Jo Nesbo (author of Redbreast - not yet read -- and The Devil's Star - read but apparently not reviewed); Harkan Nessar (this year I have read his excellent Borkmann's Point and his not quite so good follow-up, The Return (review not yet published); Henning Mankell (stories); and almost Arnaldur Indridason -- his next title has been put back to 2009 as his translator, Bernard Scudder, has sadly died recently. I adored Voices and The Draining Lake (review not yet published) in 2007.

There are a few other authors new to me on the list: if their novels are up to the standards of the other authors Karen has included, then 2008 is definitely looking very good indeed. And that's just a few of the excellent Scandinavians. No doubt there are similar delights in store from the Italians, French, and all points East and West.

Holiday non-reading

Some perennial themes of book blogs clash and implode over at the Guardian. Jean Hannah Edelstein wrote an apt piece called "Frank nonsense and gold: the mystery of the Christmas bestseller", in which she took a book with the ghastly title of "Do Ants Have Arseholes" [no link will be provided by me], currently number 1 on the Amazon bestseller list, as an example of the mindless, derivative rubbish that is published at this time of year. She also discusses the motives of those who buy this sort of book as a gift, and concludes: "My fellow dedicated readers, now is the time for us to rise up against the tyranny of the derivative Christmas book!" Good for her, say I.

In an extraordinary countermove, Nicola Barr, the agent who sold this title to the publisher, and who is now therefore raking it in, herself was given space on the Guardian book blog to write a shamelessly self-interested, complaining piece called "If you're going to rubbish a book, read it", in which she attacks Jean Hannah Edelstein's article as if it had been a review of the book, plugs (and links to) two allegedly good reviews in the UK national press, and continues with her onion well to the fore to provide a detailed account of the saintly work of literature and all connected with it.

There are many comments to Nicola Barr's article, several of them incoherent and several more from people who don't seem to have read the earlier article (which is clearly not a book review but an article about this type of book and its marketing -- complete with an off-putting quote from the blurb as evidence) but are not short of an opinion on it. That apart, I was relieved to see that Nicola Barr did not get any sympathy: her article is mainly characterised as a disingenuous piece of marketing, her claims that the book is a "word of mouth" bestseller being received cynically. The book isn't one that many commenters (if any) feel inclined to buy even after reading Nicola Barr's fervent pitch for it. At time of writing, the comment thread ends with a gracious paragraph from Jean Hannah Edelstein herself, who demonstrates a good nature as well as excellent conflict-resolution skills.

Sunday salon: Picador blog

I've been following with interest the relatively new Picador blog, which rapidly distinguished itself in my eyes from all the very many litblogs, and indeed the very many publishers' litblogs, by being a lively, conversational place about the wider world of books, bookselling, commuterdom and above all, reading, from an eclectic mix of contributors. I fell into conversation, as one does, with Jenny Geras, who runs the blog, and she very kindly agreed to consider a submission from me on the subject of our Sunday Salon. I hope that the post might encourage a few new members to join this stimulating yet leisurely (if that isn't a contradiction in terms) discussion group.

I do recommend checking out the Picador blog: the posts are varied yet pertinent. Here is Jenny Geras of Picador on books that made her cry (one of her list had that effect on me, but so did many others -- I cry very easily when I read). Here's Ed Woods of Waterstone's Books Quarterly asking where all the good contemporary war novels have gone. A post I particularly like is one by Jonathan Ruppin (who works at Foyles and writes the "paperback preview" report for the Bookseller) on the best books to read while travelling on the Underground (or any form of public transport, I guess). There are lots of comments to these posts, and to others, creating a real conversation on topics both highbrow and lowbrow (their definitions!). This blog really has a bit of a knack for what we book fans like to chat about, it is nicely designed and a friendly air. Oh, and it also features great publishing questions of today, such as what we all think of the widely reported decision by Picador to forego the hardback format for some of its books.

(Disclaimer: Picador books is a division of Macmillan. In my day job, I work for Nature Publishing Group, which is also owned by Macmillan.)

Bloggers' brunch at Profile books

Have you ever heard of a bloggers' brunch? I hadn't, until I went to one today, courtesy of Benjamin Usher of Profile books (the hosts) and Karen Meek of Euro Crime (the putative guest, who could not attend, so I was very generously allowed to attend in her place, as Euro Crime's roving reporter).

As well as Andrew and his colleagues at Profile books, we also met the impressive Rebecca of Short Books, which is entering the fiction sphere for the first time, and the phenomenally experienced Peter of Serpent's Tail (a firm mainly known to me as publisher of Jenny Davidson's book Heredity, but a quick glimpse of the catalogue showed me that Adrian McKinty is one of their current authors, which allowed me to knowledgeably throw in to the mix the name of Declan Burke). These publishers were keen to hear from the bloggers about their experiences of books and reading on the Internet. I was delighted to learn from Clare and Irene about bookgroup.info, an independent aggregate site for book groups in the UK, and to meet Mary Beard, who as well as being a classics professor at Cambridge, writes for the TLS and blogs for them (A Don's Life, a regular source of interest to Jenny concerning matters Latin, Greek and otherwise ancient). Other guests included the rushed, on-deadline editor from Pulp.net, "the home of new fiction", whose name I failed to catch, and Stephen of This Space, whose blog I know well and with whom I've had several pleasant online interactions.

We all spoke about our own sites and experiences as book publishers, readers and reviewers. Several of us either wore or came away with T shirts for White Bicycles, an autobiography of a music person called Joe Boyd, of whom I'd previously never heard. (As usual, I was by far the uncoolest person there, but this is a role in which I am very comfortable).

When it was my turn to speak, I spoke about the wonderful Euro Crime resource, for which I am privileged to review; and about Petrona, which receives orders of magnitudes less traffic than everyone else present but that isn't why I like her. People were impressed that not only do I know Frank Wilson, evidently a highly respected and popular figure, but that I've reviewed books for his publication, the Philadelphia Inquirer. I had a pleasant talk with Pete of Serpent's Tail about Euro Crime (upper and lower case) and as a result came away with a pile of books for the bus journey back to Kings Cross and ultimately to Petrona Towers, including several by Manuel Vazquez Montalaban, whom Pete tells me was the inspiration for the name of Andrea Camilleri's main character. (Thank you to Norm of Crime Scraps for introducing me to Camilleri and enabling me to maintain a little bit of street cred at this illustrious gathering.)

I could write on, but time is, as ever, short. I am now proud owner of three catalogues of wonderful-looking books, an Alan Bennett tea towel, a white bicycles T shirt, and some very tempting additions to my reading pile, as well as two new-to-me websites to explore. The brunch was a lovely initiative and I enjoyed it tremendously. I am horribly conscious now of how little I know about crime and literary fiction compared with everyone else, and how much there remains to read.

Inventing your book

Via Joe Wikert's blog, here is an article on how to "invent" your book, by Tamara Monosoff, who writes for a website called Entrepreneur.com. The author has written and published two books herself (the second of which has the title "Secrets of Millionaire Moms"), and in her article she compares the self-publish with the external publisher options for authors. I can't say I was as impressed with the article as Joe Wikert, whose post about it has the title "Great summary of publishing and authoring". (But he is a vice president of Wiley, so he should know.) I thought that much of it is self-evident, and says nothing about the challenges of marketing your book (extremely difficult, as pointed out in a comment here the other day by James Aach). And even I could write an article stating "get a literary agent" and "here's a good guidance website for self-publishing".

Despite the disappointing article, I did have a chuckle at the Amazon entry for Tamara's book (love the trademarks), so why not read this instead?

"What's the difference between the most successful mom entrepreneurs and you? They believed in their ideas enough to commit to them and even in the face of adversity rarely accepted “no” for an answer. In Secrets of Millionaire Moms, mom entrepreneur Tamara Monosoff interviewed some of the most successful “Millionaire Moms” of our time including the founders of Lulu's Desserts®, Baby Einstein®, Shabby Chic®, and Airborne Health®. What she learned will help you make that leap from great idea to booming business, including

• Priceless advice about business management, finances, and growth
• Tips on balancing the business with family
• What inspired the Millionaire Moms to take action-and what keeps them going

About the Author
Tamara Monosoff is founder and chief executive of Mom Inventors, Inc., a business she launched from her own kitchen table. She is the bestselling author of The Mom Inventors Handbook. For more information, visit her Web site at mominventors.com/millionairemoms."

Ghost in the machine

Link: Chark Blog - Putting on the agony.

Some gremlins at Macmillans have transiently revived the Chark Blog (see link above).

"So he’s had a stylish journey through the publishing terrain
And now his time is over, it is really quite a shame.
But Harry’s waved his wand and Bloomsbury’s balance sheet beguiles,
He’ll spend a lot of money, but he’ll do it all in style."

Marketing strategy of the year

If you have any interest at all in marketing your (or a) book, please read this: View From The Pundy House: Squeaky Bottom Time. There is absolutely no more to be said on the topic of how to make a million from your novel.

You can purchase this book hot from the blog or, er, via the "helpful" Amazon link provided there.

My copy arrived today, and I'm so much looking forward to reading it that it is going to leap over the other 347 books in my patiently waiting pile, and be read next. Move over Anne Enright, a publishing revolution has been not only born, but has hit the mean streets of the electronic superhighway. What more can I say, apart from queue up for your copy? These first editions are going to be worth their weight in something, in a few years' time.

A Hodmandod's retreat

From Keeper of the Snails blog, on attending a talk by Oliver James, author of Affluenza:

...."Materialism, attaching too much value to celebrity and social and physical appearance, causes us to suffer from depression and anxiety. Selfish capitalism, as propounded with such vigour by Margaret Thatcher and her successors has caused our society to become ill.

This, I believe, can be applied to the book industry too; the abolition of the net book agreement must have originally been inspired by greed. The result is that books are valued mainly as commodities and are sold like groceries...."

Read on and weep.

A Half Life of One is (nearly) born

Link: View From The Pundy House: On becoming a publisher.

Petrona's favourite one-man publishing revolution, Bill Liversidge, is seeking advice (above) about marketing his about-to-be-published book, A Half Life of One. I am going to buy and read this book when it comes out (my copy is reserved). I am sure it will be good, based on following View from the Pundy House for the past year or two. If any of Petrona's readers have experience of self-publishing and author marketing (and I think one or two of you do), please do head on over to the Pundy House at the link above, and drop Bill a comment. While you are there, take a look around his blog, and you'll see what I mean about the signs being propitious. (Don't get sidetracked into too many wild parties in the comments while you are there. You have been warned.)

Mr Charkin has left the building

Mr Richard Charkin, Macmillan's Chief Executive, has a new job. From 1 October, he takes over as Executive Director of Bloomsbury plc (publisher of Harry Potter). A sad side effect of this move is that he's closing up the Charkin Blog: see Chark Blog - Pip Pip for details. This blog is, in my view, the most stimulating, literate, punchy and downright readable of all the book publishers' blogs I've come across. So I shall be mourning Charkin Blog now that its lights have been switched off, but hoping also that some form of it will re-emerge post-October to brighten up our RSS readers.

Books online and in digital format

Two pieces of news in eBook and digital book publishing, via paidcontent.org and reported by the New York Times: Amazon.com is launching an eBook device called The Kindle, in October, which will wirelessly connect to Amazon’s site. And Google plans to start charging users for full online access to the digital copies of some books in its Google Books database. Publishers will set the prices for their own books and share the revenue with Google. So far, Google has made only limited excerpts of copyrighted books available.

As the NYT states: "Two new offerings this fall are set to test whether consumers really want to replace a technology that has reliably served humankind for hundreds of years: the paper book." This consumer doesn't want to replace her current book-reading technology, but the NYT article is interesting in a theoretical kind of way, and will update you (sort of) on how Sony is doing with its e-reader.

Publishing news of the decade

Amazon has launched CreateSpace Books on Demand, which allows authors to upload content and publish direct. CreateSpace is Amazon's new name for CustomFlix Labs, Inc., which it acquired in 2005. Until 2006, Amazon used a company called Lightning Source for its print on demand service: now, Lightning Source, along with plenty of other print-on-demand services, is a competitor. 
CreateSpace has been offering customers single CDs and DVDs on demand since 2002, and it is envisaged that its new service will provide books in just the same way, aiming to ship titles within 24 hours from when they are ordered. Customers pay the standard paperback price for a book, set by the author, with no setup fees or minimum orders. For authors, books must be uploaded to CreateSpace as PDFs; an author must then purchase and approve a proof copy of the book before titles can be produced on demand.
Amazon's share of each sale is calculated by taking a fixed charge of $3.15 per copy, plus a charge per page ($0.02 or $0.12 per black and white or colour page, respectively), plus a percentage of the list price (30% for sales through Amazon.com). So a 100-page black and white book sold on Amazon with a list price of $25.00 would earn an author a royalty of $12.35 per sale.
Is this "the publishing news of the decade"? Or is it some way off reality? As Timo Hannay (see link) puts it: "For books, of course, Amazon is the owner of that precious data set. They know more than any other organisation about my reading habits — heck, they probably know more than I do about my reading habits. In contrast, Waterstones knows nothing at all about my preferences even though I must have bought at least as many books there over the years as I have at Amazon. The other players in the current publishing chain know even less.........Amazon becomes the ultimate clearing house for books of all kinds (and much else besides), with none of the traditional middlemen getting a look in. Genius."

Print on demand edges forwards

The Espresso machine, currently on loan to the New York public library system where users can print free copies of about 200,000 public-domain books and a few others, costs about £25,000 to buy (and measures 8 by 5 feet), but its makers are in talks with several bookstores and libraries about leasing it -- and making it faster and smaller (4 by 5), about the size of a photocopier. According to a recent Bookseller, Matthew Crockatt, a London independent bookseller, would love one. "We are a small shop and having a self-service print-on-demand machine on site would mean we could potentially have every book in print...It's now just down to the publishers to come on board." Bill Samuel, vice-chairman of Foyle's bookshop, said "The hardware seems to be there. The software needs to be sorted. But there is a definite market...."

The future is on its way: slowly maybe, but it will arrive.

Blogging heroes?

Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog: Which Cover Do You Prefer?

At the link above, Joe Wikert of Wiley shows two alternatives of the cover of a book called Blogging Heroes, and asks his readers which they prefer. I didn't like either. Well, the one with the man on it would have been OK if he'd had a better pair of knickers.

Do take a look. I think Joe needs some good advice if he wants the book to sell on the basis of its looks. He says it "features wisdom and wit from some of the world's most successful bloggers, how they got to the top of the rankings and recommendations they have for the rest of us."

The end of a competition

Link: Susan Hill's blog :: NO LONG BARN BOOKS FIRST NOVEL COMPETITION IN FUTURE.

I was very sorry to read Susan Hill's post above announcing the end of her "first novel" competition. She explains the reasons in the post; Scott Pack, a fellow judge and Long Barn Books board member, provides some more explanation for the decision here.

Two apparently talented authors (the previous two winners) have had the good fortune to have their books published thanks to this competition and the support of Long Barn Books, not only in the UK but in the USA also. After this year, becuase of some whinging by the current applicants who did not like the implication that their entries were of an insufficient standard, the judges have decided the effort isn't worth it and are packing it in, and who can blame them? I think this is very sad, but I would not like my hand being bitten as I fed people in this way, either, and I can readily understand the decision to end it now. I am sure Susan Hill and colleagues can find books to publish easily enough, and good luck to them. It is just a pity that yet another avenue has been closed to a previously unpublished author, because of the lack of good manners of a minority (I am sure) of entrants.

Death and life in literature

Link: The Long, Slow Death of Literature - The End Of The Pier Show - Henry Gee's blog on Nature Network

The above post by my friend Henry Gee is about whether it is best to write to please oneself, or to please others. Henry writes about an author who has published many books and stories, all in print, but who cannot now find a publisher for his new work. What hope for the rest of us, wonders Henry? "I think that with very few exceptions, the only people who can get their books published have to fulfil at least two of the following criteria:

1. They are well-known for something other than authorship, especially if that activity is ephemeral (sports ‘personality’, pop star, politician);
2. They have appeared on TV in any capacity whatsoever (TV presenter, contestant on reality show, pundit);
3. They are very good-looking;
4. They are under 25.

One can only check off these boxes to see what happens. For me, the results look like this;

1. Does being an editor at Nature count?
2. I’ve been a guest on Newsnight with Jeremy Paxman, so that’s probably far too worthwhile;
3. My daughters think I’m terribly handsome, but they are only small and to them I’m a superstar. To the rest of the world I look like the results of a collision between a number-nine bus and a stegosaurus, especially if compared with Myleene Klass, or even Alan Titchmarsh;
4. I am indeed approaching 25, although from the wrong direction."

Read the rest of Henry's post for reader statistics, some publishing initiatives and for his views on POD (print on demand). As Henry points out, POD is becoming "less sneered at" and, via his back of envelope calculation, perhaps even not so bad financially either.

An update on the much-discussed Espresso machine is here, on O'Reilly Radar, together with various comments on its practical usefulness for printing and, crucially, distribution.