Spanish Author Quits Writing, Claims More Copies Of Her Books Are Stolen Than Sold
Lucía Etxebarría. Photo: Xavier Thomas (http://photo75.online.fr)
Are things really so hopeless for writers? In Spain perhaps. Giles Tremlett reports for the Guardian (thanks to Mike for the tip):
An award-winning Spanish novelist claims that the illegal downloading of ebooks has forced her to give up writing and start looking for a new job.
“Given that I have today discovered that more illegal copies of my book have been downloaded than I have sold, I am announcing officially that I will not publish another book for a long time,” Lucía Etxebarria announced on her Facebook page.
Etxebarria told the Guardian that Spanish authors faced a difficult future as online piracy spreads from music and film to literature.
She pointed to Spain’s position at the top of the world rankings for per capita illegal downloads. “We come after China and Russia in the total number of illegal downloads but, obviously, there are a lot more of them so…
The Newest Kindle Has Mandatory Ads
Is this the free market at work – or a horrible preview of things to come?
Amazon just announced a new $114 Kindle Wireless Reading Device — $25 cheaper than any other model — but it comes with a big catch.
It’s the Kindle “with special offers,” showing sophisticated advertisements in the screensavers, along with shopping discounts which display at the bottom of the screen.
Author Offers Shares Of Himself On Stock Exchange
Photo Dennis Doyle
Alison Flood writing in the Guardian:
Publicity might be the lifeblood of the book trade these days but author Cathal Morrow is going public in more ways than one with plans to float himself on the London Stock Exchange. Having previously wangled sponsorship from a private equity company to fund a year without lying – he’s writing up his exploits as the book Yes We Kant – Morrow is hopeful that patrons looking for a more unusual investment will back this latest project, Me Me Me Plc.
“Rather than one company owning part of the intellectual property of a project, a lot of people will own a smaller part of me,” he says. Morrow is offering a total of 30,000 shares in himself at £10 a piece (he’s retaining 30%, “the vital organs and so forth”). Because he’s not legally allowed to sell shares in himself, what investors are actually buying is a signed photo…
Sarah Palin Weighs In On Fair Use
Andrew Sullivan makes note of a tweet which hints that a hypothetical Sarah Palin presidency would be a grim era for freedom of speech:
CIA Sues Former Agent
The book publishing world was thoroughly excited at the prospect of the Pentagon buying up entire print runs of books they wanted to suppress when it was revealed that Anthony Shaffer’s book Operation Dark Heart was the first of what the industry laughingly hoped was a trend. It seems the CIA wants to play things a little differently, however: the agency is suing Ishmael Jones for disclosures made in his book The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture, as reported by Bill Gertz for the Washington Times:
The CIA has filed a breach of contract lawsuit against a former deep-cover agent who published a book critical of the agency without allowing CIA censors to remove large portions of the manuscript before publication.
Ishmael Jones, pen name for the 20-year CIA veteran and Arabic speaker who said he sought to expose corruption in the agency, is facing a civil lawsuit over his 2008…
Pentagon Tries To Stop Book By Buying All Copies
Thanks to Isaac Hils for this. As publishers, this story definitely appeals to us at disinformation: Authors with books the Pentagon wants to stop, take note! From the Guardian:
It’s every author’s dream – to write a book that’s so sensationally popular it’s impossible to find a copy in the shops, even as it keeps climbing up the bestseller lists.
And so it is for Anthony Shaffer, thanks to the Pentagon’s desire to buy up all 10,000 copies of the first printing of his new book, Operation Dark Heart: Spycraft and Special Ops on the Frontlines of Afghanistan — and The Path to Victory. And then pulp them.
The US defence department is scrambling to dispose of what threatens to be a highly embarrassing expose by the former intelligence officer of secret operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and of how the US military top brass missed the opportunity to win the war against the Taliban.
The department of defence is in talks with St Martin’s Press to purchase the entire first print run on the grounds of national security…
The Highest Paid Authors of 2010
Dan who? James Patterson is king when it comes to making money from writing books (although I’m not sure he actually writes that much himself — a New York Times Magazine profile earlier this year says “with the help of his stable of co-authors, he published nine original hardcover books in 2009 and will publish at least nine more in 2010,” implying that most of the work is done by the co-authors). From Forbes:
Publishers are feeling the heat, with hardcover sales weak and the rise of e-books promising to upend their business models. But the world’s 10 top-earning authors are making out just fine, earning a combined $270 million over the 12 months to June 1.
James Patterson’s $70 million in earnings vaults him to No. 1 on our list, up from second place two years ago. The prolific thriller writer’s latest deal, signed last fall, involves penning a carpal tunnel-risking 17 books by the end of 2012 for an estimated $100 million.
Patterson’s literary empire includes television, comic book and gaming deals. His foreign sales alone bring in well over $10 million a year…
Will Amazon Push Ads into eBooks?
Kindle 2. Photo: Jon 'ShakataGaNai' Davis (CC)
A book editor at Houghton Mifflin argues ebook advertising is “coming soon to a book near you.” Report in the Wall Street Journal:
Amazon has filed a patent for advertisements on the Kindle, and the book editor joins with a business professor in today’s Wall Street Journal to make the case for advertisements in ebooks. Book sales haven’t increased over the last decade, and profits are being squeezed even lower by ebooks. According to another industry analyst, Amazon is being pressured to make ebook sales more profitable for publishers, party because Apple offers them more lucrative terms in Apple’s iBookstore. One technology site notes that Amazon’s preference seems to be keeping book prices low, and wonders whether consumers would accept advertising if it meant that new ebooks were then free?
Meanwhile, Ralph Lauren has confused the issue even more by publishing a “shoppable” children’s storybook online – narrated…
We Sold You The Secret – Now Buy The Power
Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, originally released as a film, became a book publishing phenomenon in 2006, with 19 million copies printed in 46 languages, not to mention disinformation’s own Beyond The Secret, in which Alexandra Bruce dissected the teachings of Byrne and her fellow “life coaches” that comprised the so-called “Secret.”
For reasons unknown (to us and the rest of the general public, anyway), Rhonda won’t be promoting the sequel, The Power. Could it be that she really can’t think of a way to tell interviewers what’s different in this book from the fluff in the previous one? Her publishers have resorted to advertising on TV with the promo below — it goes on sale at midnight tonight…
America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution
This 12,000-word essay by Angelo Codevilla, “The Ruling Class–And the Perils of Revolution,” published in the conservative magazine American Spectator, has been so popular that Al Regnery is getting back into publishing to turn it into a full-length book (Regnery founded but no longer runs his eponymous and very successful right wing political imprint).
As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors’ “toxic assets” was the only alternative to the U.S. economy’s “systemic collapse.” In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual…
Mom Claims Her Son Is In ‘Extensive Therapy’ After Viewing Manga in the Library
Brian Hughes writes in the Northwest Florida Daily News:
A Japanese serial graphic novel genre popular with young teens has raised the ire of a Crestview mother whose teenage son got hold of an adult version of the genre from the Crestview Public Library. “Manga” depicts highly stylized adventure and, occasionally, violence in fantasy settings.
Margaret Barbaree, founder of a citizens’ group called Protect Our Children, presented examples from a manga book to the Crestview City Council last week that she described as “graphic” and “shocking,” taken from material she said is “available to children” at the Crestview Public Library.
“My son lost his mind when he found this,” Barbaree said of the manga book from which her examples were taken. She said her son had removed the book unsupervised from the library’s general stacks last summer and put it in his backpack. She has kept it ever since.
“Now he’s in a home…
Pasta Recipe Containing ‘Salt And Freshly Ground Black People’
As book publishers, the gang at disinformation® understand typos happen to everyone, but this one wins a prize for Penguin Australia: their Pasta Bible contains a recipe calling for “salt and freshly ground black people.” What clinches the prize for Penguin is it’s executive’s statement that “why anyone would be offended, we don’t know” (via the Sydney Morning Herald):
Penguin Group Australia turns over $120 million a year from printing words but a one-word misprint has cost it dearly.
The publishing company was forced to pulp and reprint 7000 copies of Pasta Bible last week after a recipe called for ‘’salt and freshly ground black people” – instead of pepper – to be added to the spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto.
The exercise will cost Penguin $20,000, the head of publishing, Bob Sessions, said. At $3300 a letter, it’s a pricey typo.
Stock will not be recalled from bookshops because it would be ”extremely…
Doug Rushkoff on the Book Business (Video)
A glimpse of what Douglas Rushkoff had to say about the future of publishing at Mediabistro’s eBook Summit.
Sarah Palin Spent $63,000 In Donations On Copies Of Her Book
Here’s one way to get your book on the bestseller list — money laundering:
Sarah Palin has been using her political action committee to buy up thousands of copies of her book, “Going Rogue.”
The former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate had her political organization spend more than $63,000 on what her reports describe as “books for fundraising donor fulfillment.” The payments went to Harper Collins, her publisher.
On the web site of her PAC, Palin posted a special letter to supporters upon the release of her book. “My book, ‘Going Rogue,’ is dedicated to you — to Patriots — who fight for freedom!” she wrote in the note, which concludes with the opportunity to donate.
“Living Book Cover” Updates Dynamically
When photographed by your web cam, a book’s image appears to update in a real-time, as rotating its cover toggles between the company’s feeds on Flickr, Twitter, Vimeo, and their blog. (Tilting and left-right motions provide scrolling.)
The trick is performed using embedded Flash content. and it’s an example of both “fluid interfaces” and augmented reality. (This article provides video of the cover in action, along with other examples of augmented reality…)
Augmented Reality. from Moving Brands on Vimeo.
Will Novels Be Read By A Minority ‘Cult’ in 25 Years?
Alison Flood writes in the Guardian:
Philip Roth’s late run of productivity has long been a source of wonder in the literary world, with his latest novel coming out this week less than a year after the last, and another already complete. But the 76-year-old’s own energy is not, according to him at any rate, any reflection of vibrant life in fiction itself. Roth has long been pessimistic about the survival of the novel in a gaudy, short-attention-span culture, but his latest prophesy is one of his bleakest yet, predicting that the form will dwindle to a “cultic” minority enthusiasm within 25 years.
The author believes that the concentration and focus required to read a novel is becoming less and less prevalent, as potential readers turn instead to computers or to television. “I was being optimistic about 25 years really. I think it’s going to be cultic. I think always people will…
So, There Are 237 Reasons Why Women Have Sex…
Tanya Gold writes in the Guardian:
Do you want to know why women have sex with men with tiny little feet? I am stroking a book called Why Women Have Sex. It is by Cindy Meston, a clinical psychologist, and David Buss, an evolutionary psychologist. It is a very thick, bulging book. I’ve never really wondered Why Women Have Sex. But after years of not asking the question, the answer is splayed before me.
Meston and Buss have interviewed 1,006 women from all over the world about their sexual motivation, and in doing so they have identified 237 different reasons why women have sex. Not 235. Not 236. But 237. And what are they? From the reams of confessions, it emerges that women have sex for physical, emotional and material reasons; to boost their self-esteem, to keep their lovers, or because they are raped or coerced. Love? That’s just a song. We…
