Cornwell wins $50m lawsuit

Crime writer Patricia Cornwell has won $50.9m (£33.2m) in a lawsuit against her former financial management company for negligence in the handling of her finances, and loss of earnings when she failed to meet a book deadline due to their actions.

According to US reports, Cornwell sued Anchin, Block & Anchin LLP and its former principal, Evan H Snapper, for negligence, arguing that Snapper and his colleagues cost her and her company tens of millions of dollars in losses or unaccounted revenue over four years.

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Publishers brace for authors to reclaim book rights in 2013

A copyright law that lets authors break contracts after 35 years will start taking effect in January. The law, which is meant to give authors like Stephen King and Judy Blume a “second bite at the apple,” could provide yet another disruption for traditional publishers.

By Jeff John Roberts

The book publishing industry, already facing disruption from Amazon and  e-books, will confront a new form of turbulence in 2013. Starting in January, publishers face the loss of their back lists as authors begin using the Copyright Act to reclaim works they assigned years ago.

These so-called “termination rights,” which let authors break contracts after 35 years, have already made the media thanks to a court squabble between the Village People and music studios. On the book front, publishers  and agents are staying mostly mum even though the bestseller lists from 1978 reveal some very big names eligible to reclaim their work  – Stephen King, Judy Blume, John LeCarre and so on. Here’s a plain English overview of how the law works and why (for now at least) we’re likely to see literary types negotiate rather than litigate.

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Books of the year 2012: authors choose their favourites

Books of the year: writers pick their favourites

From a meditation on walking Britain’s ancient paths to an epic American novel, from reportage on life in a Mumbai slum to a blockbuster biography of LBJ … writers choose their books of the year

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Storyville: Ten Awesome Authors You’ve Never Heard Of Before

By Richard Thomas

For this column, I thought I’d try something a little different as we get towards the end of the year. There will be all kinds of “top ten” lists coming out in November and December, so I’m going to cobble together some of my favorite authors, the ones that I’m betting most of you have never heard of before. If you were over at The Cult when we were busy with the workshop, and if you’ve taken any classes here, you’ve probably heard of Stephen Graham Jones, Craig Clevenger and Will Christopher Baer, so I won’t list them here. If somehow you haven’t heard of them, pick up All the Beautiful Sinners and The Ones That Got Away (SGJ), The Contortionist’s Handbook and Dermaphoria (CC), and the entire Baer trilogy, Kiss Me Judas, Penny Dreadful, and Hell’s Half Acre. These are mandatory titles. I’ll also assume you know who Paul Tremblay is, since he has also taught here, so pick up In the Mean Time if you haven’t yet. These are authors and titles that I assume you know.

My top ten list will certainly not surprise all of you, and I don’t expect that every name on this list will be new to you all, since you’re intelligent readers with an appetite for compelling fiction, but I do hope that I can turn you on to a few voices in this week’s column. Many of these authors are voices that I reviewed at The Nervous Breakdown, so be sure to head over there if you want more information.

In no particular order, here are ten voices that I think are some of the most powerful, unique and captivating storytellers out there. Enjoy.

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Granta looks for Best of Young British Novelists

 | By Charlotte Williams

Granta Magazine has opened submissions for the fourth edition of the Best of Young British Novelists list, which will be announced at the London Book Fair on 15th April 2013.

Authors who have made the list since its first edition in 1983 include Julian Barnes, Pat Barker, Alan Hollinghurst, Rose Tremain and Jeanette Winterson.

To be eligible for the 2013 list, candidates must be under 40 as of 18th April 2013, when the issue will be published. They must either have a book contract for a work of fiction, or already have a book-length work published. They must also have a British passport.

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What smaller publishers, agents, and authors need to know about ebook publishing

Posted by Mike Shatzkin

As the shift from a print-centric book world to a digital one accelerates, more and more digital publishers are creating themselves.

The biggest publishers, with the resources of sophisticated IT departments to guide them, have been in the game for years now and paying serious attention since the Kindle was launched by Amazon late in 2007. But as the market has grown, so has the ecosystem. And while three years ago it was possible to reach the lion’s share of the ebook market through one retailer, Amazon, on a device that really could only handle books of straight narrative text, we now have a dizzying array of options to reach the consumer on a variety of devices and with product packages that are as complicated as you want to make them.

Free or very inexpensive service offerings through web interfaces suggest to every publisher of any size, every literary agent, and every aspiring author “you can do this” and, the implication is, “effectively and without too much help”. Indeed, services like Amazon’s KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) service, Barnes & Noble’s PubIt!, and service providers Smashwords and BookBaby, offer the possibility of creating an ebook from your document and distributing it through most ebook retailers, enabled for almost all devices, for almost no cash commitment.

Is it really that simple?

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Author Blogging: You’re Doing it Wrong

By Livia Blackburne

Now, I realize this is weird because I .. uh… blog. But let me explain. I think blogging is a great way to meet other writers, to network, and improve your craft. But I don’t think blogging, as it’s usually done by fiction writers, sells novels.

As far as I can tell, the idea of “author platform” started as a nonfiction concept. An author with an effective platform was an acknowledged expert in a certain subject — say underwater basket weaving. This author often had an established speaking circuit, giving talks at all the important basket weaving conventions. Maybe she also ran The Wet Weaver, a helpful blog with a large following. She had access to her target audience, and when she finally wrote the Basket Weaving Manual to end all Basket Weaving Manuals, she had the means to sell it.

The key to this scenario is target audience. People with nonfiction platforms had access to people who were interested in their topic and likely to buy their book.

At some point, unpublished fiction authors started feeling the pressure to build platforms. The problem is, they forgot all about target audience. Rather than being a means to reach the right readers, blogging became an end in itself – a box to tick off self promotional checklist. Fiction writers, being somewhat one-track minded, overwhelmingly decided to blog about writing. And thus, the writing blogosphere was born, with articles, contests, and promotions all aimed at fellow writers.

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Great expectations for Dickens’ bicentenary

15.07.11 | Charlotte Williams

Publishers are gearing up to celebrate the bicentenary of Charles Dickens’ birth on 7th February 2012‚ and it is a tale of more than two books as titles on the Victorian author and his life jostle for attention.

Biographies penned by actor Simon Callow and Whitbread-winner Claire Tomalin will be going head-to-head in October, with Carlton Books also bringing out an illustrated biography, Charles Dickens, by Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, Dickens’ great-great-great-grandaughter. The title includes never-before-seen memorabilia from the Dickens Museum archives‚ including letters from Dickens to friends describing key events in his life, and photos of the writer and his family.

Viking will be publishing Tomalin’s biography of the author, who was born in Hampshire in 1812, Charles Dickens: A Life, as a £30 hardback released on 6th October.

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Even more bushes to beat – PR in a digital world

By Vicky Hartley

I spent some time with Penguin’s stunning On The Road app this week, it’s a treasure trove of engaging content, illuminating back-story and to top it all off it’s a book I love.  However what really caught my eye was the pre-publication letter from Patricia McManus, the Publicity Director of Viking, to Jack Kerouac.

It may have been written 54 years ago but it highlights just how little has changed between then and now in terms of a traditional publicity campaign. She discusses the pitches she wants to put forward to the key magazines, asks him for his personal contacts within the press, suggests the regional contacts she thinks will support him as a local author, and explains the difficulties of getting coverage – ‘it takes a lot of beating and many bushes to flush out a few worthwhile birds’.

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Master Georgie wins Booker’s Best of Beryl

19.04.11 | Katie Allen

Beryl Bainbridge’s Crimean War novel Master Georgie has been voted the Man Booker Best of Beryl. Shortlisted in 1998, when it lost out to Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam, the novel was voted for via the Man Booker website, just pipping Bainbridge’s 1996 title Every Man for Himself.

The Man Booker Best of Beryl was set up to celebrate the late author, who was shortlisted for the prize five times.

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