BOOK NEWS: Libraries will rely on volunteers to survive, says report

More and more books will be distributed from shops, churches and village halls, predict local government and library bodies

Options for ensuring libraries' survival in the 21st century include running them in partnership with the private sector, charities and other councils.
Libraries will increasingly rely on volunteers and community groups, with more books distributed from shops and village halls, according to a report released on Friday from the Local Government Association (LGA) and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA).
The report monitors the progress of 10 pilot projects established by the year-old Future Libraries Programme, including Bradford's book borrowing points in shops across the city; Hertfordshire's plans to expand in co-operation with adult social care and children's centres; and the money-saving combined libraries service proposed by several London councils. Suffolk plans to recruit members of the public on to boards of governors running its libraries, and Northumberland and Durham are trialling ebooks for older people and children.
Options for ensuring libraries' survival in the 21st century include running them in partnership with the private sector, charities and other councils; integrating with community facilities including churches, shops and village halls; or providing services including health centres and police surgeries in existing libraries. Culture minister Ed Vaizey said the report shone a spotlight on innovation and creative partnerships. "It will be a hugely useful resource, inspiring local authorities to emulate the best ideas to provide a first rate library service."
Chris White, chairman of the LGA culture, tourism and sport board, said libraries were among the most valued services provided by councils. "We know that people of all ages and from all backgrounds are quite rightly very protective over their local library."
The report is bullish about the future of libraries, suggesting that innovations can "increase numbers using libraries while delivering millions of pounds of savings". But council cuts threaten hundreds of libraries across the country.
Authors including Zadie Smith, Philip Pullman and children's laureate Julia Donaldson have joined the campaign to save local libraries. To read more of this article please click guardian.co.uk

BOOK NEWS: British Library prepares £9 million book bid

The British Library is attempting to raise the money to buy the St Cuthbert Gospel, the oldest intact book in Europe.

The St Cuthbert Gospel: 'a window into a rich, sophisticated culture'  Photo: AP

The book, which is palm-sized and still leather-bound in its original cover, is believed to have been buried with St Cuthbert on Lindisfarne in 698, before the saint and his tome were later reburied in what would become Durham cathedral.

The St Cuthbert Gospel has been on loan to the British Library since 1979, and the library is now appealing to arts and heritage foundations across the country to raise around £9 million for a permanent purchase.

The National Heritage Memorial Fund have already pledged to offer a £4.5m grant – the largest single acquisition grant in the library's history. The Art Fund and the Garfield Weston foundation have each promised to pledge £250,000 towards the purchase.

Should the British Library be successful in acquiring the book, it will be displayed for half of the year at Durham cathedral, on the same site where it was found entombed with St Cuthbert in 1104.
Lynne Brindley, the British Library's chief executive, described the book as "a beautifully preserved window into a rich, sophisticated culture that flourished some four centuries before the Norman conquest".

Article taken from thetelegraph.co.uk

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BOOK NEWS: TV drama is the new literature, says Salman Rushdie

Television drama has taken the place of film or even the novel as the best way to communicate ideas, Sir Salman Rushdie has said.

'In television, the 60-minute series, The Wire and Mad Men and so on, the writer is the primary creative artist', said Rusdie Photo: LIONSGATE

The author of Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses believes that, far from its “dumbed-down” image, television has become the medium for some of the most sophisticated writing today.

Sir Salman, whose accolades include the “Booker of Bookers” award, has switched his attentions from literary fiction to the small screen, currently working on a new science fiction series in America.

Hailing the writing quality in hit US series such as The Wire, The Sopranos and The West Wing, he described television as “the best of both worlds” giving writers the kind of control over plot and characterisation previously enjoyed only by novelists.

“In the movies the writer is just the servant, the employee,” he told The Observer.

“In television, the 60-minute series, The Wire and Mad Men and so on, the writer is the primary creative artist.

“You have control in the way that you never have in the cinema. … if you have that, then what you can do with character and story is not at all unlike what you can do in a novel.” 

His change in focus follows protracted struggles to secure support for a screen adaptation of Midnight’s Children, his magic realism-inspired take on the history of modern India, which is currently being made into a film to be called Winds of Change. 

“[My agents] said to me that what I should really think about is a TV series, because what has happened in America is that the quality – or the writing quality – of movies has gone down the plughole. 

"If you want to make a $300 million special effects movie from a comic book, then fine. 

"But if you want to make a more serious movie… I mean you have no idea how hard it was to raise the money for Midnight's Children." 

To read the full article see www.telegraph.co.uk

BOOK NEWS: Kindle readers can now borrow ebooks from libraries in the US

Amazon has sanctioned the use of its e-reader – complete with note-taking facility – for ebook library loans in the US

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• Alison Flood
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 April 2011 13.15 BST
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Kindle users in the US, like these Massachusetts book club members, can now borrow ebooks from public libraries. Photograph: Mary Knox Merrill/Getty

Scribbling in the margins of library books will soon be permitted, after Amazon.com announced yesterday that it would allow Kindle users to borrow ebooks from more than 11,000 American libraries.

The deal follows similar agreements from the Kindle's rivals, the Sony Reader and Barnes & Noble's Nook, and will enable Kindle users to check out and read ebooks from their local libraries. "We're doing a little something extra here," said Jay Marine, director of Amazon Kindle. "Normally, making margin notes in library books is a big no-no. But we're extending our Whispersync technology so that you can highlight and add margin notes to Kindle books you check out from your local library. Your notes will not show up when the next patron checks out the book. But if you check out the book again, or subsequently buy it, your notes will be there just as you left them."

The move was welcomed by American librarians. "Anyone who works with the public has encountered the discouragement people feel when you have to tell them that Amazon does not allow library ebooks on the Kindle," blogged librarian Bobbi L Newman, a manager at the Richland County Public Library in Columbia SC. "It's SO exciting to see that Kindle users will now have access to library ebooks (especially when we know that library books usage actually drives sales up). Plus that note-taking ability they mentioned is a big reason I bought my Kindle! Very excited to see it on library books."

Roberta A Stevens, the president of the American Library Association,told the New York Times that Amazon's move into library lending was "all but inevitable". "I can't say that I'm surprised," she said. "They were just shutting off a whole part of the marketplace. It's just logical that this would happen."

A recent report from the American Library Association revealed research showing that 72% of public libraries offer ebooks and 5% of American adults own an ebook reader. The ALA said that ebooks account for only a small percentage of borrowed items from most libraries, but they are the fastest-growing segment: the Chicago Public Library, it said, doubled its circulation of ebooks from 17,000 in 2009 to more than 36,000 in 2010.

Librarians are currently grappling with an announcement last month from HarperCollins stating that the publisher will not allow any single copy of one of its ebooks to be checked out from a library more than 26 times. The ALA said that librarians fear other publishers could adopt a similar model. "When we purchase a print copy, we get to keep it for as long as we want," said Audra Caplan, president of the Public Library Association. "It may eventually wear out or not circulate, but that's our choice."

The Kindle Library Lending programme launches later this year, but Amazon.com did not give a precise date.

Taken from guardian.co.uk

BOOK NEWS: HMV considers selling Waterstone's

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  Troubled retailer HMV denies it is in takeover talks but confirms it may sell book chain and Canadian operation
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HMV's board is 'exploring strategic options in respect of Waterstone's', according to the company. Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian

HMV confirmed this morning that it is looking at selling off theWaterstone's chain of booksellers, but insisted that it is not in talks about a takeover for the whole group.

Shares in the troubled retailer jumped 7.5% to 18p, a rise of 1.25p, after it updated the City on its plans, which could also include finding a buyer for its Canadian operation.

Speculation has swirled that its shareholder, the Russian oligarch Alexander Mamut, could break up the business ever since HMV posted a shock profit warning following poor trading over Christmas.

Mamut has now assembled a 6.1% stake in HMV. There has been speculation that Tim Waterstone, the entrepreneur turned novelist who founded the bookshop in 1982, is plotting a bid for Waterstone's with Mamut. He previously teamed up with Mamut to invest in Bookberry, a now bankrupt Russian bookstore chain.

"In response to press speculation, the board confirms it is exploring strategic options in respect of Waterstone's and HMV Canada," HMV said. "The board also confirms that no discussions are taking place with respect to an offer for the group."

Amid worries that it could breach loan covenant tests, the company stressed that its lenders "continue to be supportive, our banking facilities remain fully available and the group is continuing to maintain a regular and constructive dialogue with its lenders".

HMV issued its second profit warning of the year at the beginning of the month, saying trading conditions had remained difficult since the start of the year. It also admitted that it expected to fail some parts of a critical loan covenant test next month and was busy renegotiating borrowing conditions with its bankers.

The company is already planning to close up to 20 Waterstone's outlets and about 40 HMV stores as part of a cost-cutting drive
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Taken from www.guardian.co.uk

BOOK NEWS: Ebook revolution accelerates in sales and status

Amazon is reporting Kindle edition sales outstripping paperbacks in the US, and the Booker prize jury is now reading on ebooks

A New York commuter uses a Kindle e-reader. Photograph: Lucas Jackson / Reuters

The ebook revolution has swept past two more milestones in its ferocious advance upon the bastions of literary culture. As the Man Booker prize embraces the digital era, the online retail giant Amazon has announced that sales of Kindle editions have overtaken paperbacks in the US.
Publishers entering books for the £50,000 Man Booker prize are now being asked to make all submissions available both as physical books and in digital form. This year's judging panel – which includes writers Susan Hill, Matthew d'Ancona, and politician Chris Mullin as well as the Daily Telegraph's head of books Gaby Wood, and is chaired by former M15 chief Stella Rimington – have been issued with e-readers. The move will help them prepare for the 2011 prize longlist, to be announced in July, without hauling around back-breaking numbers of submissions.
Man Booker administrator Ion Trewin said: "Traditionally we rely on proofs and hard copies, but it seemed to me if publishers were in a position to supply us with electronic downloads any earlier, it would help because time is of the essence. And it gives the judges an alternative. This is what the Kindle will do – it's not going to take over from print, but will offer another way of reading as well." The judges who'd responded to him thus far thought the development was "wonderful", Trewin added.
Meanwhile Amazon, posting its latest financial results, said that so far in 2011 its US wing had sold 120 Kindle ebooks for every 100 paperbacks. "Additionally, during this same time period the company has sold three times as many Kindle books as hardcover books," the company said in a statement.

Taken from guardian.co.uk -- click here to read the full article

BOOK NEWS: V&A museum pleads for cash to save Charles Dickens's manuscripts

Handwritten drafts of David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities and The Mystery of Edwin Drood are suffering from acid paper rot

Charles Dickens at work in 1860. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

When Charles Dickens picked up his quill in 1859 to write the words, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," at the top of a clean sheet of paper, he was setting down some of the most enduring opening lines in world literature. The novelist's striking phrase helped to set the scene for his celebrated story of love amid the turmoil of the French Revolution, but the famous passage with which he began A Tale of Two Cities might not endure for much longer without urgent intervention.

This weekend the Victoria and Albert Museum is launching a campaign to raise funds to conserve the original manuscripts of three of Dickens's best-loved works, including A Tale of Two Cities. Rescued from the novelist's home by his close friend John Forster, the manuscripts came to the V&A in 1876 when Forster, a literary agent, bequeathed his library to the fledgling museum.

The V&A now hopes to restore the priceless originals – which are still legible although blotched and underscored – in time for international celebrations of the bicentenary of Dickens's birth in 2012. "At the moment we can't display these manuscripts safely because they are so damaged and so fragile," said John Meriton, deputy keeper of word and image at the V&A. "They were last conserved in the 1960s, when they were rebound and placed in what are called 'guard books'. But the backing paper used, unfortunately, was very acidic, causing a lot of stress to the original manuscript leaves."

Some parts of the manuscripts are also impossible to read because the leaves were pasted down, making the left hand or verso pages inaccessible.

If the museum – which, like other national heritage institutions, is now facing severe budget cuts – can raise £25,000, curators say it will be able to protect the full manuscript of A Tale of Two Cities, the story of the love between Lucie Manette and the aristocrat Charles Darnay, as well as the original manuscript of the equally loved David Copperfield, published in 1850.

The third manuscript is Dickens's perplexing, unfinished last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. If this manuscript is restored and conserved, museum visitors and Dickens scholars will be able to study the author's own notes and textual alterations and even perhaps deduce their own solution to one of the most intriguing unsolved cases in literary history.

"You can see the corrections Dickens has made to each section of the stories," said Meriton. "And these are the pages that he would have handed into the printers for typesetting, before receiving the galley proofs for correction in return. We have some of those proofs too, and so it will be possible for visitors to trace the editing process that went on."

Written in "iron gall" ink on low-grade blue writing paper, purchased by the author from WH Smith, the manuscripts were never "wonderful quality", according to Meriton. But they remain a crucial part of Britain's cultural heritage.

To read the full article in theguardian.co.uk click here

BOOK NEWS: Chile miners' story signed up by publishers

Chile miner Alex Vega waves after being rescued from the collapsed San Jose mine. Photograph: Hugo Infante / Government of Chile / AP

Jonathan Franklin, currently covering the story for the Guardian newspaper in the UK, has already completed early chapters of book for Transworld

The long ordeal of the 33 trapped Chilean miners is finally at an end – and the buzz about book deals and film rights to the men's dramatic story has already begun.

The miners themselves are reported to have made a pact to collaborate on their own book, but in the UK the first book was signed up on Monday, before the rescue had even begun. Freelance journalist Jonathan Franklin, who has covered the dramatic story for the Guardian from day one, is to pen an account of the saga, provisionally titled 33 Men, for publisher Transworld.

Franklin, who is an American but has lived in the Chile's capital Santiago for 15 years, spoke about the book on his mobile phone from Chile, after 48 sleepless hours covering the emotional scenes as the miners emerged.

"This is one of the great rescue stories of all time," he said, admitting he himself had wept as the first miners were released on Tuesday night. "It's the reason we all want to be reporters: a remarkable story of the world coming together for a good reason. It taps into human altruism, the desire to work together, perseverance, faith that good things happen, never giving up." The early chapters of the book, he said, were already written.

As a journalist, Franklin had had "a backstage pass to the whole thing. I was allowed to tape record the psychologist talking to the [trapped] men, I spent last night in the hospital talking to the [newly freed] miners." He intends his book to reveal the characters of the miners themselves ("You could probably do a book on every one of them") and reflect their black humour: one of the men played dead, for a joke, during the first 17 days spent in the collapsed mine without food, while another attempted phone sex with the nurse who was attending to him 700m above.

To read the full article see guardian.co.uk

BOOK NEWS: Campaigners defend 'celebrated novels' from US censors

KURT VONNEGUT AND TONI MORRISON

American libraries and bookshops are celebrating the freedom to read this week but attempts to force books off shelves are still rife across the country, from the removal of Sherman Alexie's award-winning young adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian from shelves in Missouri to protests over Kurt Vonnegut's seminal title Slaughterhouse-Five.

As this year's Banned Books Week begins, Joan Bertin, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship, said the organisation is "increasingly ... seeing challenges to celebrated contemporary novels". The NCAC has recently protested against the banning of Alexie's novel, which drew parent complaints in Missouri over a description of masturbation, against the removal of Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon from classrooms in Indiana and against the cancellation of the appearance of bestselling author Ellen Hopkins at a Texas literary festival following parent protests. It is also investigating the banning of Slaughterhouse-Five from another Missouri school and the removal of six books by Hopkins from a Nevada middle school library.

"If young people are going to become sophisticated readers and thinkers they need to be exposed to this kind of literature in school," said Bertin. "Depriving students of the opportunity to read widely stunts their emotional and intellectual development and puts them at a tremendous disadvantage in school and in life."

This week's Banned Books celebrations saw authors gather in Chicago at the weekend to share their experience as the targets of censors and read from their work. Young adult author Chris Crutcher, who hosted the event, told the Guardian he was "proud" to frequently make it into the list of the top 10 authors challenged or banned in the US.

"I think it's important to stand up to censorship because I think intellectual freedom is a cornerstone for any democracy. I think people don't understand what a slippery slope it is to let a relatively small group with a relatively loud voice, make decisions about decency and morality," he said. "Once one book is banned, all books are at risk."

Carolyn Mackler, whose novel The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things was the eighth most challenged book in the US last year for reasons including its "offensive" language and sexually explicit scenes, sent a statement to be read at the event. "While I'm honoured to be in the company of such amazingly talented authors, I'm certainly not honoured to be on the list," said Mackler. "And while I'm no stranger to book challenges, for some reason I'm always surprised."

To read the full article see the guardian.co.uk

BOOK NEWS: James Patterson brings in $70m to become world's highest-earning author

James Patterson, prolific 'brand-name' author, whose many books are written by a team of collaborators, takes twice as much as Stephenie Meyer, his nearest rival


With his name emblazoned on one in every 17 novels bought in the US, James Patterson has become the highest paid author in the world.

Working with a team of collaborators, Patterson writes around eight books a year, encompassing thrillers and children's books, making his publisher around $500m (£322m) over the last two years. These figures put him firmly on top of Forbes's list of the world's 10 top-grossing authors, with $70m earnings of his own over the year to 1 June. The last time Forbes published the line-up, in 2008, Patterson was in second place behind Harry Potter author JK Rowling and her $300m.

A former copywriter, Patterson works on his novels seven days a week, starting every day at around 5.30am and writing everything in longhand. Full of short, sharp sentences and brief chapters, packed with cliffhangers, his best-known character is the African American pathologist Alex Cross, but he is also known for his Women's Murder Club series and for the Maximum Ride books for young adults, about a group of children who are able to fly after being experimented on. He signed a multi-million dollar book deal last autumn that will see him producing 17 books by the end of 2012.

"I'm certainly not a world-class stylist. But the storytelling is pretty cool, and the narrative power of the stuff is usually pretty strong," he told the Guardian two years ago. "These books are entertainments. It's a very different process than if you're trying to write Moby-Dick, or The Corrections. That's painful. That's different from very simple, plot-oriented storytelling. If I was writing serious fiction, I'd want more rest time."

Patterson earned almost double the amount of Forbes's second-placed author, Stephenie Meyer – a new entrant to the list – who made $40m over the period, selling 40m copies of her Twilight vampire series in the US and 100m worldwide. Horror author Stephen King comes in third with earnings of $34m, while blockbuster romance writer Danielle Steel, who has four new books out this year, is fourth with $32m. Output is important in this game: Steel has written more than 100 books to date; King is the author of almost 50 novels; and Patterson adds to his vast oeuvre almost monthly.

Ken Follett is the highest-ranking British author on the list, with his thrillers bringing him $20m in the year to 1 June, and it is rounded out by Dean Koontz ($18m), Janet Evanovich ($16m), John Grisham ($15m), Nicholas Sparks ($14m) and Rowling. Despite publishing no new Harry Potter novel this year, Rowling – the first author to become a billionaire – still made $10m, said Forbes. Spy author Tom Clancy, fourth-highest earner two years ago, fell out of the list – which sees the 10 authors totalling earnings of $270m over the period – this year.

The top 10 in full is:

1. James Patterson ($70m)

2. Stephenie Meyer ($40m)

3. Stephen King ($34m)

4. Danielle Steel ($32m)

5. Ken Follett ($20m)

6. Dean Koontz ($18m)

7. Janet Evanovich ($16m)

8. John Grisham ($15m)

9. Nicholas Sparks ($14m)

10. JK Rowling ($10m)

Taken from Guardian.co.uk