Freebies

Another little one - top banana item in Publisher's Weekly:

At NYU Event, Macmillan CEO Says “Free” Content Will Be Challenge for Books

Digital revolution

The BBC are attempting to create an open source documentary about the internet, to be broadcast on BBC2 next year

Rejection, acceptance and a Merry Christmas

Over on dovergreyreader's armchair, Fay Weldon tells how she came to write her latest book, in opposition to expectations of her publishers and the marketing and sales departments therein. Guess what? It was rejected. Luckily, Corvus picked it up.

In other news, The Friday Project's An Atheist's Guide to Christmas is now available.

And in possibly my first fit of brilliant item linking, here's Weldon finding God after 70 years the non-believer. (Okay, so, yes, it's over three years old and she converted almost a decade ago, so shoot me.)

All together now...

In response to the response to the last post

and indeed:

Here is a little song I wrote
You might want to sing it note for note
Don't worry be happy
In every life we have some trouble
When you worry you make it double
Don't worry, be happy......

Ain't got no place to lay your head
Somebody came and took your bed
Don't worry, be happy
The land lord say your rent is late
He may have to litigate
Don't worry, be happy
Lood at me I am happy
Don't worry, be happy
Here I give you my phone number
When you worry call me
I make you happy
Don't worry, be happy
Ain't got no cash, ain't got no style
Ain't got not girl to make you smile
But don't worry be happy
Cause when you worry
Your face will frown
And that will bring everybody down
So don't worry, be happy (now).....

There is this little song I wrote
I hope you learn it note for note
Like good little children
Don't worry, be happy
Listen to what I say
In your life expect some trouble
But when you worry
You make it double
Don't worry, be happy......
Don't worry don't do it, be happy
Put a smile on your face
Don't bring everybody down like this
Don't worry, it will soon past
Whatever it is
Don't worry, be happy

Sexy readers

Over on Lydia Hart's blog the hostess in question nabs a Joanne Rendell column from the Huffington Post. Very insightful it is too (although the bigger authors with marketing spends pushing their books may not be so keen on it).

I doubt very much if any publishers will take note, but working in and around the advertising industry, I think Joanne's points are valid. A shame the larger publishers are the ones who will have the budgets to actually achieve what she's suggesting, but the smaller ones tend to be the ones with the ambition to make the push.

"Pennies" from heaven

An amusing link from author and literary agent Nathan Bransford's blog: The Blog of Unnecessary Quotation Marks

I won't get that time back OR Come on, come on, come on, get through it...

So Aliya's given up on Wolf Hall. Like she says, she's not usually a quitter.

I managed to get through One Hundred Years of Solitude and Lark Rise to Candleord and am glad I made it, but I did abandon Le Carre's The Naive And Sentimental Lover to the whimsy of the London Transport system, and have been put off reading any more of his work. And David Hebblethwaite has just convinced me to steer clear of Oryx & Crake and The Year of the Flood by damning them with faint praise. There are scores of other similarly abandoned and never reads littering my past. But maybe I should have persevered with some (Do I really need to read Tender is the Night? The writing is beautiful but the characters--muh.) and not bothered to finish some of the others--I'm looking at you Richard Beard's The Cartoonist.

What books have you wasted time on--and wish you hadn't--and are there any you started, but didn't finish, but have a niggling suspicion maybe you should have?

Outcasts

I'm just finishing up with my copy of Watchman and readying it for its trip back into the great outdoors, and next up is Sadie Jones' The Outcast.

Here's an interview with her from last year, in the Telegraph, talking about the frustrations of screen-writing and paying her dues as a writer.

At the foot of the article are four other--kinda obvious and lazy--attempts at pointing out other authors who had a time of it trying to get published. Rowling and Austen are on there, along with Frederick Forsyth who was rejected three times--what we wouldn't all give for just the three rejections, huh. Surely there are some far greater tales of rejection prior to finding wide-ranging success?