Fool's Gold

Tell me what would your reaction be if you opened The Bookseller and read this: Government Set to Curb Foreign Authors. Under the plan, bookstores would only be allowed to hold 10% of stock from overseas writers.

The Bookseller has learned Prime Minister David Cameron is set to give a speech today [1st April] outlining his latest iteration of the "Big Society". A DCMS spokesman said: "The publishing industry needs protecting from the Browns, Larssons and Meyers of this world. We think British literature should be celebrated, not swamped. Crime novels set in gloomy Scandinavian forests have an unfair advantage over our cosy domestic settings, so we have to level the playing field to protect this vital domestic industry."

I think the date in brackets gives it away. Even the trade press isn't above a good April Fools.

(... Right?) 

I Predict A Riot

It's been a bad year for your correspondent and riots. I enjoyed a Thai riot during my trip to the company sales conference and a Nepali Maoist riot in Kathmandu on May Day. There have even been riots in London over school fees, teacher strikes, and now the 2011 budget unveiled this week has incited someone to hang a large "STOP THE CUTS" banner on the road heading to my university.

So it was with a sigh that I heard a ruckus this afternoon floating through my bedroom window. Another protest, I figured, and dismissed it from my mind. Not that I wasn't distracted throughout the afternoon by the occasional loud cheer and bursts of chanting.

Eventually I got curious and wandered down to see what the fuss was really all about. To my surprise, I discovered: it wasn't a riot at all.

It was the Indian cricket team fan club. At the pub next door.

There's even someone wearing an Indian flag

No wonder I didn't know what it was. Not even Six Nations Rugby can get Brits to cheer that loudly. A trip to the World Cup Cricket Finals, tho, and the place was going wild. I even heard the sound of drums coming from inside.

Well this is much more fun than arguing over pensions. Good luck, India!

Amazonians

One of your correspondent's friends from her younger days is a raving Amazon brand advocate, and gleefully forwarded this link along to the old college circle. "Another reason to buy music from Amazon," he called it.

Just like the old days, your correspondent countered with a sigh and then a flying tackle. (We did, after all, go to a football school.) In the middle of my obligatory publishers-indignation-at-Amazon, I realized that this friend probably had no idea about the teeny tiny margins Amazon offers to publishers, the way the used book market has dissolved educational book sales, and the erosion of our preferred route to market, the chain bookstores. The punters just see Amazon as a great place to buy books.

That's kind of why I'm not sure if I would prefer to bury Amazon, or to be them. They do understand what makes customers tick.

I don't know, then. If a job opened at Amazon next year, would I apply? Would I accept? Seattle's not a bad place to live, and I can't exactly complain about the weather from where I'm sitting in England. The Kindle is doing great things for reading, and they're even starting to bridge cultures through their own translation imprint.

The real problem for me is the reliance of price on their marketing mix. Ebooks are great for consumers, especially if you price them at $0.99. I can buy loads of ebooks for that amount! But, really, is that good in the long run? What kind of book can you profitably produce for that amount of money? Should someone's Great American Novel cost as much as one song on iTunes?

It's pretty clear I will buy ebooks for higher prices than I would print books, for the convenience factor. As long as they're worth reading. If publishers stop making money and I have to slog through self-published novels--which I'm sure are great but are just overwhelming in their sheer volume--I will probably end up unhappy.

Something tells me the final answer to my internal debate over Amazon won't be settled until this trajectory is either changed or ... we hit a wall somewhere. Until then, I sure am glad I'm not employable for at least a few more months.

Interview Fail

The European CV is twice the size of an American resume. In the USA we're told to put all of our information on one page (which, as a standard 8.5" x 11" sheet, is smaller than the UK standard A4). In the UK you need two sides of A4, and, no, large font and flowery writing do not earn you any points.

After tossing on as much information as I could, and inwardly rebelling the entire time, my CV was still looking one line short. So, to balance all the line items about travel, books, more travel, and foreign things, I decided to put one mention of strictly American hobbies down at the very, very bottom.

Last Thursday, I had a half-hour interview with a Dutch company about a potential summer internship. At minute twenty-seven, the publisher looked at this final entry and started laughing to himself.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I couldn't help but notice that you like American football and ice hockey."

"Yes, sir," I replied.

He shook his head another moment, and then giggled, "How violent."

D'oh.

"It's funny," he explains, "because I don't even know girls who like European football, let alone American football. I suppose it's because you went to Notre Dame."

Yes! Of course it's because of my prestigious university, sir. That must be it.

Anyways, I can't see how my sport of choice could be any worse than rugby. I can, however, see the merit of changing my favorite sport to something like, um, baseball. Batter up.

You're Telling Me, They're Hunger Games

There's a new debate of the day in book publishing circles. Now that we're pretty clearly in the realm of e-publishing and the proportion of book sales has tipped in favor of electronic copies in the US, no one is questioning whether customers will read books onscreen. Now the question is, how much can we get them to pay?

It's sort of a shame when you hear that authors are selling their books in the Kindle bookstore for as little as $0.99, or even giving it away for free. I loved this post from Roxane Gay for a lot of reasons, but mostly for this paragraph right here:

If we as writers don’t value our craft enough to price our work appropriately, how can we expect readers to want to pay appropriate prices? If you have to basically give your writing away, what does that tell you? [. . .] I could see myself selling a short story for a buck or two but a book, a whole book? My work is worth more than that. Your work is worth more than that.  If I cannot sell my books at a ore reasonable $8-$10 price point, perhaps the market is telling me something about my writing. Humbling? Perhaps.

On the other hand, this weekend I downloaded the first volume of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins to my Kindle. Big mistake. I loved it. When, ten hours later, I finished the first book, the first thing I did before going to bed (at an ungodly hour, of course), was download the second book. I read that one in its entirety the next day. The third book was started before breakfast on day 3 and, just because I wanted to draw it out, I finished after class on day 4.

When was the last time I bought three print books in a row? Especially new? Amazon just made loads of money off of me. So did the publisher. More than I would have spent otherwise. But, my goodness, now I appreciate why it would be nice if ebooks could cost less. That's even though I know exactly how much goes into each book, and the giant commission Amazon gets per sale.

I suppose the trick is, convince publishers to drop the prices while I'm a student, so I can still eat. As soon as I go back to work for a publisher, move the prices back to normal, so I can keep eating. Doesn't that sound like the best solution?

Studious

Your correspondent has no control over the selection of her uni's film society, but when they advertised a showing of the Bollywood hit 3 Idiots . . . Well, I'd be an idiot not to attend!



The film's message is the importance of life lessons over school lessons. Real learning over school memorization. The dangers of too much pressure on students for a few meaningless grades on a paper. Sounds good to me! So I guess it's OK to spend the rest of my afternoon studying whether I should prefer Shah Rukh or Aamir Khan.

Black Sheep

My favorite complaint about Oxford is its teeny tiny size. I'm training for yet another marathon, which means sixteen- to eighteen-mile runs at least once a week, which last time resulted in a few rather unfortunate run-ins with cows.

This time, I've gotten to know the area a bit better and found a lovely path following the Thames for miles and miles, which, technically, could take me all the way to London. It won't, however, because I run in the opposite direction, north through the Thames river valley, and into wide open fields where soon there's not a building in sight. Just miles and miles of fields, and, of course, new dangers.

Mile eight of yesterday's run found me blissfully trotting along in one of these fields, enjoying the peace and quiet of the river, when suddenly, I rounded a bend and saw them coming at me: sheep! Not just one or two sheep. A herd of sheep. Maybe a hundred, maybe more.

Worse, they were being herded. There was the sheepdog barking them forward, there was the farmer driving them from behind, and now here comes me, sprinting right for them, which was no less surprising for me than for the sheep.

"Baaaaaaaaaah!" they called.

"BAAAAAH!" I cried back.

Now, of course, the sheep saw themselves as being herded from all sides, so they reacted as sheep usually do: blind panic. Sheep everywhere! I considered jumping off the narrow path, but then I'd be running through some random field and did it belong to the farmer? Would the farmer like that? I couldn't cut through the herd without dispersing sheep everywhere, and the farmer was giving me a look that, if I wasn't already running, would have set me off at a sprint immediately.

So, I turned tail and was chased for the next mile or so. By sheep. What can I say? At least it was good training: I can't remember the last time I've run so fast.