They interrupt narrative and disrupt plot – no wonder novelists have been slow to warm to mobile phones. But a new generation is putting technology at the heart of their workWhat do you call a phone when it rings in a fictional world? “Mobile” and “cell” are old, “smartphone” is almost a tautology and “phone” is so intrusive that the word seems to ring out shrilly from the page the instant you type it. This may be because we read fiction partly to escape our phones, or it may be that phones, even fictional ones, seem to demand too much of our attention. Telephones, of the kind we all keep handy, are so much a part of daily life we touch them as often as our faces. But phones in fiction require a sleight of hand: if characters use them as realism dictates, they will feel as interruptive on the page as they do at the dinner table. How can authors navigate this challenge?Like bathrooms and paid employment, it is amazing how often phones are dispensed with by many otherwise realist fiction writers. JM Coetzee famously wrote to Paul Auster (in Here and Now, the 2013 selection of their letters) that he was not prepared “to write novels in which people go around with personal electronic devices”. Because, if “everyone has access to more or less everyone else, what becomes of all that plotting?” He also lamented the impact of mobile technology on the “novel of adultery”, though surely Sally Rooney has proved there was nothing to fear. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2023-07-22 10:00:09 UTC ]
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Haymarket Books, the book publishing arm of Chicago’s progressive Center for Economic Research and Social Change, has enjoyed a 43% spike in sales this year, driven by a hot title and the Occupy movement. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-04-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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LONDON (Dow Jones)--Pearson PLC (PSON.LN), the publisher of the Financial Times newspaper and Penguin books, Friday produced a healthy rise in first-quarter revenue, but warned profit will be down in the first half of 2012 due to seasonal effects an ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2012-04-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The late Manning Marable won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for history, honored for a Malcolm X book. But no Pulitzer Prize was awarded for fiction. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2012-04-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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An unconventional collection of novels failed to generate a consensus among the Pulitzer board members. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2012-04-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Two new reports released in the past 10 days document the ebook market’s rapid growth in the U.S. and the U.K., and suggest that a significant global spike is close at hand. Among the major takeaways from the “Bowker Market Research Global eBook Monitor” or GeM, study, ebooks are beginning to... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-04-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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About a fifth of American adults have read an ebook in the past year, a figure likely helped along by the recent holiday surge in the sale of tablet and e-reader devices, according to a report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Continue reading at Baltimore Sun
[ Baltimore Sun | 2012-04-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Although worldwide sales at Random House fell 4.3% in 2011, the company posted its highest earnings and operating margins in at least five years. EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) rose 6.9%, to 185 million euros, with an operating margin of 10.6%, a full percentage point higher than... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-03-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The literary genre is white-hot in Hollywood, with filmmakers bidding on unpublished books and paying as much as $1 million for the rights to relatively modest sellers.The back-to-back blockbuster successes of "Harry Potter," "Twilight" and now "The Hunger Games" have turned the hunt for fresh... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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By encouraging readers to tackle longer, more sophisticated novels, the queen of daytime TV may have hurt overall fiction sales. Continue reading at The Atlantic
[ The Atlantic | 2012-03-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Other National Book Critics Circle honorees include writer John Lewis Gaddis for 'George F. Kennan: An American Life' and Maya Jasanoff for 'Liberty's Exiles.' Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2012-03-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The under-the-radar author won for her collection "Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories."Reporting from New York -- The National Book Critics Circle gave its 2011 fiction prize to Edith Pearlman, an under-the-radar writer of short stories, at its annual awards ceremony Thursday evening at... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A novel banned by the Chinese government has made the longlist for the Independent Foreign... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-03-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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French booksellers are cautiously optimistic that their margins will not be squeezed when VAT on... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-03-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Educational publisher and FT owner, Pearson reports a rise in profits thanks to improved digital sales and growth in emerging markets. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2012-02-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Jeremy Lin has inspired a lot of rabid fans, magazine features, and six-figure book deal offers. But he's also fueled a new breed of lightning-fast ebook authors. Alan Goldsher, author of "Linsanity: The Improbable Rise of Jeremy Lin," is one of the fastest (and slickest). In the days before... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2012-02-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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'The Lifespan of a Fact' lays out a thought-provoking debate of the issue between authors John D'Agata and Jim Fingal.The key passage in John D'Agata and Jim Fingal's "The Lifespan of a Fact" (W.W. Norton: 124 pp., $17.95 paper) comes late in the book, during an exchange on the role of fact in... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-02-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Since ebooks first became a meaningful part of a publisher’s business in 2009, results at Simon & Schuster have followed a familiar pattern—a decline in revenue but an increase in earnings. Between 2009 and 2011, total sales at S&S dipped 0.7%, but adjusted operating income has jumped... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-02-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Transworld titles earn pride of place in both the Mass-market and Original Fiction charts this... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-02-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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W H Smith is to promote cross- over young adult (YA) titles more directly to adults via a new... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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For a company which business depends on collecting data, Google sure was slow tabulating its report on smartphone usage. The study is available today, but the data is already outdated given strong holiday ebook reader and tablet sales and global impact of 37 million iPhones sold during fourth... Continue reading at Betanews
[ Betanews | 2012-01-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
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