AuthorHouse launches new partnership with Waterstone's

Self-publishing company, AuthorHouse UK, have announced a new partnership with high street retailer Waterstone's.

Through this partnership, AuthorHouse will provide Waterstone's Self-Publishing Packages which includes, among other things, guaranteed shelf space for self-published authors in Waterstone's flagship store at 311 Oxford Street in London, England.

"Big publishers do not have the monopoly on good books," said Scott Pack, Buying Manager for Waterstone's. "Some of the most exciting books we see nowadays are from small independent publishers or self-published authors."

Customers shopping Waterstone's will notice a new "Self-Published" book section which will display and sell authors' books being published through the AuthorHouse UK/Waterstone's partnership. Self-published authors will have their books stocked a minimum of eight weeks, giving Waterstone's buyers a chance to see how their book sells.

"Retail distribution for any author, especially self-published authors, has always been a challenge, " added Bryan Smith, President and CEO of AuthorHouse. "Our authors have complete control over the look, size, release time, royalties and now, retail distribution of their books."

The announcement comes less than a month after Amazon.com's purchase of self-publisher BookSurge.

Is the self-publishing industry coming of age?

Translators recognised by Man Booker International Prize

A special translators award of £15,000 will be given as part of the Man Booker International Prize 2005, reports The Guardian.

The move has been inspired partly by the judges arriving at a final shortlist in which 10 of the 17 authors wrote in other languages. The winning author would have got £60,000, with nothing, until now, for the translator.

"The judges became increasingly aware of the huge role translators play," said their chairman, John Carey.

Among those in line for the inaugural prize are the translators of Gabriel García Márquez, Günter Grass, Milan Kundera, Stanislaw Lem, Naguib Mahfouz, Tomas Eloy Martínez and Kenzaburo Oe. The winning author decides which translator gets the prize, with discretion to split it among several translators.

Edinburgh strike threat

Workers at the King’s and Festival Theatres are being balloted on strike action following seven months of wrangling over job cuts. Talks between management and unions broke down over two compulsory redundancies at the council-owned theatres, which are run by a joint trust, Festival City Theatres Trust.

Strike action could hit the theatres during the Edinburgh Festival this summer. The full story is in The Scotsman.

Brooklyn Books

Brooklyn's brownstone enclave of Park Slope seems to be particularly favoured by writers. Gourmet bread, design furniture, chai lattes and of course bookstores are staples on the main drag, 7th Avenue. Its London equivalent would be Crouch End, with a hint of Hampstead (Prospect Park!).

So when local author David Grand found out that the city-run school (PS 107) frequented by his sons didn't have sufficient funds for a library, he decided to tap into some of Brooklyn's natural resources. Teaming up with the school and 7th Avenue's Community Bookstore, he organised a sold-out series of four readings by Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead, Paul Auster, Siri Hustvedt, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jhumpa Lahiri, Gary Shteyngart and Darin Strauss.

Less than 100 of NYC's 650 elementary schools have functioning libraries and 60% of New York City's public school students in grades 3 through 8 are reading below grade level. At least PS 107 doesn't have to worry about that anymore. The sold-out series has been enough to fund a $ 35,000 library (including furniture, computers and a librarian).

The May 3rd reading featured Jhumpa Lahiri and Jonathan Safran Foer. The following Q&A was moderated by Vanity Fair editor Elissa Schappell. Since most of the audience seemed to consist of (aspiring) writers, the discussion focussed on craft-related issues.

Q: What is the most important quality a writer should have?
JSF: When I was in college, Joyce Carol Oates told me that a writer should have energy. I've been thinking a lot about Saul Bellow and the energy in each of his sentences, in his books in his whole career. I've only written two books, but it's starting to feel like a Monster Truck Ball; the further you get, the more you have to carry. It's kind of painful. Even keeping parts of your own personality to yourself takes energy.
JL: The one trait I relate to is curiosity. Writing has opened up the world to me. I'm not an immigrant - I came to Boston from London when I was two - but want to know what my parents went through. Most of my protagonists are men because I want to know what it's like to be one. To care about someone enough that you would want to go into their head, that's where the compassion is.

Q: Do you have any special fetish to get you into a writing mode?
JSF: When I was writing my second novel in the New York Public Library, I would listen to Dolly Parton's I Will Always Love You on my iPod. I don't even like that song, but it helped me get my subconscious to a place where I would be more receptive.

Q: What's the editing process like for you?
JL: I'm always editing. I was editing even as I was reading the story to you, because it's unpublished and fairly new and I'm keen to get the best possible version out. Somehow in my head a story gets started. Then I usually clear the mess in my work until I think at least it's readable for a few people. Then when I get their feedback I do a few more drafts. There are days when I scrawl something on a piece of paper, maybe that could be considered the writing part, but I don't really distinguish between writing and editing.

Re-working Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

If you liked the big screen version of Hitchhiker's the man who deserves some of the praise (as well, obviously, as original author Douglas Adams) is US scriptwriter Karey Kirkpatrick. And if you didn't like it, then he's probably the man to blame! He's interviewed by Denis Faye for The Writers Guild of America, west

Primarily, it [Douglas Adam's original feature script] was missing a middle, a second act. It was missing things you'd expect, like an active central protagonist with an emotional arc. It's a hard piece of material to weave that into because it started as a series of sketches in a radio play that were turned into a book. A lot of its charm is in how verbose it is and its wordplay, so in that way, it'd sort of be a Monty Python movie, but you can't do that for the amount of money it takes to realize this kind of material. I think that was the thing that was preventing it from ever getting made.

What sci-fi writers think of Star Wars

Think science fiction writers would love Star Wars? Think again, says The New York Times.

One problem with Star Wars, science fiction writers say, is that it is not, ultimately, concerned with science, but rather with a timeless vision of good and evil. Mr. Lucas has said that his story, especially the journeys of his central characters from innocence through trials by fire to wisdom and acceptance, were rooted in Joseph Campbell's comparative studies of world mythologies, and especially in his popular book, "The Hero With a Thousand Faces."

What Mr. Lucas may have seen as eternal, however, science fiction writers have tended to see as antique.

"It started out 30 years behind," said Ursula K. Le Guin. "Science fiction was doing all sorts of thinking and literary experiments on a totally different plane. 'Star Wars' was just sort of fun."

"It takes these very stock metaphors of empire in space and monstrously bad people and wonderfully good people and plays out a bunch of stock operatic themes in space suits," she said. "You can do it with cowboy suits as well."

Science fiction, on the other hand, "is a set of metaphors," Ms. Le Guin said. "It's useful for thinking about certain things in our lives - if society was different in some way, what would it be like?"

Critic turns soap writer

Guardian (free registration required) TV critic Rupert Smith was challenged by Mal Young to write an episode of Doctors. The result can be seen tomorrow...

Understanding the mechanics of TV drama doesn't mean I've become a more charitable critic. If anything, it's made me less inclined to stomach some of the drivel I'm obliged to sit through in my day job. Producers set themselves very high standards, and if those apply to a daytime show like Doctors, they must be doubly important to primetime material. Internal consistency, economy of character, situation and dialogue, the sense of an ending - they're the qualities the Greeks were keen on, and they still rule today. There's a lot of awful TV drama out there that might be improved considerably, if only it didn't trample so gaily over the lot of them.

Tribeca Hooligans

When Elijah Wood was done with Lord of the Rings, he wanted to do something very different. So he signed up for a gritty indie film in which he gets to kick the living daylights out of Man U supporters. Screening at the Tribeca Film Festival, Hooligans is the powerful debut of Lexi Alexander, a former kickboxing champ from Germany who went to LA to become a filmmaker, doing stuntwork to pay for the bills. She took continuing education classes in directing at UCLA and made an Oscar-nominated short film about a boxer.

The average Newyorker's idea of team rivalry is shouting Boston sucks!!! at a baseball game, while downing tepid Bud Lites. No matter how much Yankees fans pretend to hate the BoSox, they will happily squeeze into the same subway car on the way down from the Bronx. Not so in Europe.

Elijah Wood plays Matt Buckner, a talented journalism student who gets kicked out of Harvard through no fault of his own. He flees to London, where his sister lives with a banker-type, who farms out Matt to his kid brother. Through Matt's American eyes, Stateside audiences are introduced to the excitement that comes with football matches - and post-game recreation in the form of a West Ham firm. For those already familiar with football, the film is intruiging for the stylishly choreographed fight scenes, superb acting and the train wreck that is Matt's culture shock. Hooligans has been sold to most European countries, including the U.K., where UIP will release the film later this year.

Filmmaker Lexi Alexander has first-hand experience with firms, having been a member in her native Mannheim. They really didn't take girls, but since she was their kickbox teacher, they couldn't refuse. "The guys would get together on Wednesday evenings to figure out the map of the away-city. When you realise that all of these guys have normal jobs, but this is what they do on the weekends, right there you have a movie, because it's all about character."

Although she received full co-operation from West Ham United, Lexi had less-than-great experiences with the London authorities when it came to shooting there. "They're not really friendly to independent filmmakers. If they do let you shoot, you have to pay a lot of money. They're not as infatuated with the film world; they couldn't care less. When I was shooting my short film in Alabama, the senator would send the local pizzerias to feed us and he would come on the set to ask me what else I needed. That kind of thing could not happen in London." Indeed. The idea of Ken Livingston doling out kebabs on a film set in Southwark seems positvely far-fetched.

The film's producer Deborah del Prete generously gave Lexi an executive producer credit. "My business partner and I like to support female talent. I had been to London and seen the excitement around soccer, but I never realised it was organised around formal groups. Lexi's script gave me an insight in how young males could be sucked into that violence. I have a teenage son and I was always wondering, 'how do guys get involved in that?' So the film is really a cautionary tale."

Update from Tom (03/05/05): The original script for Hooligans was written by Guild member Dougie Brimson.

Macmillan New Writing

Macmillan have launched a New Writing list. It looks like a sort of middle ground between conventional publishing and self-publishing.

Macmillan New Writing is an imprint within the Macmillan group, designed to give an opportunity for new authors to achieve publication. The books are published at the company's expense, no contribution costs will be sought from authors, and royalties on sales will be paid. The books are sold in the market by Macmillan and will be carried in the company's catalogues, but to keep costs to a minimum to allow the maximum number of new writers to get a chance at publication, all arrangements for publication and contracts with authors are standard and there is a minimum of communication between publisher and author.

The Guardian reports that writers will receive 20% of royalties from sales but Macmillan will get all rights to the work.

[literary agent, Natasha] Fairweather described the deal as "shocking". Giles Foden, the author of several novels including The Last King of Scotland (and the Guardian's deputy literary editor), described it as "preying on the unwary", and "publishers trying to pull a fast one over impressionable young authors".

"It seems to be putting more risk on to the shoulders of the writer," [novelist, Hari] Kunzru said. "For writers the important thing is having the publishing control and retaining your rights. I'd publish on the net or think about a writer-led co-operative before going down this road."

Macmillan denies sharp practice. "I have been through over a thousand manuscripts, and, hand on heart, I haven't had a single author who has said it's unfair ... We are doing this with great integrity," Barnard said.

The Art of Screenwriting

A recent seminar in New York, organised by the National Board of Review, brought together six accomplished US screenwriters. The NBR is 95 years-old, has no ties to the industry and celebrates artistic excellence. The seminar took place in a similarly venerable environment, the Harmonie Club, originally a German-Jewish members club, modelled on the British originals at the Strand.

Robert Harling on director Herbert Ross's swift action when the leading actresses in Steel Magnolias threatened to improvise): "Herbert said: 'Ladies, we would treat the text as if it were Chekhov.' When the shoot was finished at four in the morning, I thanked Herbert for his compliment, to which he replied: 'I said to play it as if it were Chekhov, I'm not saying it is.

Richard LaGravenese on [British] reserve: "Editing and writing are very similar processes. There is a scene in Fisher King in which one character really explodes. Director Terry Gilliam was really uncomfortable with the emotions, so he cut half of the scene focusing only on the other character. His English editor also thought the scene was too emotional. Nowadays people are so afraid of emotions. They pull back, thinking everything will be carried by the actors, by looks, but instead it's just empty."

Jay Presson Allen on working with Hitchcock: "He encouraged me to cut whole scenes where people just sit and talk. I learned from him about visual compression. I wrote scene after scene for him, but at some point he would say: 'Why don't we show a fight and then the next shot is a flower with a card that says 'Congratulations'. Learning to go from A to B like that was just bliss."

Women on top in Hollywood - the NY take

The Tribeca Film Festival in New York is unspooling with a whopping 600 films. At least as many parties are unleashed throughout the city. A brunch organized by Dutch cultural attachee Jeanne Wikler celebrated Holland's contribution to the festival.

One of the guests was Terry Lawler, executive director of New York Women in Film & Television, who commented on the New York Times article about the rise of women in Hollywood. Although she was happy to see ink dedicated to the subject, she didn't share the view suggested by the article that the glass ceiling is now a thing of the past and that Hollywood is a model for other industries to copy in terms of female power. Lawler fired off a letter to the New York Times and her mailbox was flooded with emails from the filmmaking community voicing similar concerns.

Diana Evans - a chip off the UEA block

Diana Evans, shortlisted for the Orange Award for New Writers, is another success story from the University of East Anglia's writing programme. However, in The Independent Russell Celyn Jones, professor of creative writing at Birkbeck College, warns students not to raise their expectations too high.

It might be useful to compare one day the number of graduates from MA creative writing programmes who make a career in writing, with graduates of art, music and drama schools. About 80 per cent of creative writing graduates do not become published authors. Just think if that was the statistic for medical schools.

Women on top in Hollywood

Gail Berman's appointment as the head of Paramount Pictures' creative team means that four of the six major Hollywood studios now have women in the top creative decision-making roles, reports The New York Times.

Though men still figure most prominently in the corporate echelons of the media companies that own the studios, and talent agencies like William Morris and Creative Artists Agency are still male dominated, these women, who over the years have fought and fostered one another as part of a loose sisterhood, have finally buried the notion that Hollywood is a man's world.

E4 coming to Freeview

Channel 4 will make its digital channel E4 free to air on the Freeview platform from next month, reports BBC News.

While the schedules will initially be dominated by the new series of Big Brother, E4, which is aimed at young people, also screens homegrown comedy such as Peep Show and Green Wing.

There are currently five million homes in the UK with Freeview.

Update (19/05/05): The latest news is that E4 will launch on Freeview on 27 May, for the launch of Big Brother 6.

Keating wants more drama on BBC 2

BBC 2 Controller, Roly Keating, has pledged to make more original drama for the channel, reports The Stage.

Pointing to the channel’s past success with shows such as nineties hits Our Friends in the North and This Life, he acknowledged it is missing a similar style of contemporary, original and imaginative drama.

Keating added that he hoped a key legacy of his time as controller would be the development of the channel’s distinctive drama profile with new writers and series but conceded his plans would take time to filter through to screens.

Write Live 2005

Write Live 2005 invites any West Midlands-based playwright to submit a full-length play, written for theatre. The submission will then be considered for the Birmingham Repertory Theatre’s Attachment Scheme for Playwrights, and there is also the possibility of the writer receiving development from SCRIPT through mentoring and showcasing.

The deadline is 13 May 2005.

BBC Drama Series Writing Academy 2005

The BBC has launched a new initiative to train writers for long-running drama series.

The BBC Drama Series Writing Academy 2005 will take on eight writers for a year of full-time training focusing on Doctors, Casualty, Holby City and EastEnders.

Applicants must have already had at least one film, television or radio drama script produced or one theatre piece performed professionally.

Applications must be received by 9 May, with the course due to start in September 2005.

TV's lost generation

It doesn't seem very long ago that we were all worried about how much television teenagers were watching. Not any more. The problem, for the TV industry at least, is that viewing hours among all young people are declining. While children's TV is protected by regulation, programming for teenagers has been in decline, with most 11-18 year-olds now choosing adult shows as their favourites.

This "lost generation" of TV viewers was the subject of an interesting debate at BAFTA in London on Monday evening, with contributions from a range of industry insiders, as well as from young people themselves.

The bottom line is that, as one audience member put it, while children have grown increasingly sophisticated as TV consumers, the regulations covering content have not kept pace. Programme-makers steer clear of controversy, making it difficult for children's TV to tackle the kind of issues that teenagers are interested in.

The teenagers themselves said that they wanted more comedy and drama aimed at them, but, as producer Richard Langridge pointed out, slots in the schedule are not being made available. He, and several other contributors, argued that BBC 3, which was originally targeted at those 16+ but is now aiming for people aged over-24, had been a missed opportunity.

Elaine Sperber, Head of CBBC Drama, admitted that the teenage audience was being short-changed, and said that the BBC was looking at new ways of delivering content to them.

Could there be a new teen channel? Trouble and Nickelodean have been very successful, and many of the young people in the audience complained about the lack of a homemade equivalent.

The UK can do teen programming. Hollyoaks is a mainstream hit, and As If showed that more experimental approaches can also succeed. What is needed, it was agreed, is commitment from senior management, especially within the BBC, to make slots (6.30 on BBC 2, for example) and money available.

Representatives from Ofcom said that they had already commented on the lack of programming for teenagers. The consensus at BAFTA on Monday night was that a concerted campaign was required to persuade the broadcasters to do something about it.

In defence of short plays

Playwright David Eldridge in The Guardian hits back at Michael Billington for his argument that short plays are damaging theatre.

He [Billington] hints that new dramatists aren't serious, but these forms are created out of the serious endeavour of telling stories in the most truthful, effective and expressive way possible. The drama we are creating is often more experiential and variations upon the single action are almost always the right way of telling these stories. One admired dramatist has said to me that the interval has always seemed mad for a lot of her plays because of their subjective nature - and she won't throw everything she's carefully built up to give the punters a packet of crisps and a gin and tonic. The works of Beckett and Pinter are in our culture now, and for Billington to infer that we ought to hack away at old-fashioned forms that don't express the truth of our stories is pure poppycock. What about Sarah Kane's first play, Blasted - should she have conceived her material as a traditional well-made play?

Litblogs

A guide to litblogs, the new internet phenomenon proving that new media and books do mix, by Joy Press in Village Voice.