★ Winged with Death: An Interview with John Baker

John Baker is a UK-based author. He’s been blog­ging since 2002, which makes him a chap with uncom­mon stay­ing power. He has pub­lished nine nov­els, the latest of these being Winged with Death (Flambard), a story set in modern-day York and Montevideo of the early 1970s. Read more →

Cory Doctorow on the Amazon Kindle’s Text-to-Speech Feature

First off, this art­icle by sci­ence fic­tion author Cory Doctorow¹ in the Guardian shouldn’t be called ‘Authors have lost the plot in Amazon Kindle battle’. Pressure is com­ing from the Authors’ Guild and from pub­lish­ers. Both might claim to rep­res­ent authors, but whether they do or not is debatable.

Now, I hap­pen to dis­agree with that pos­i­tion because I don’t think that text-to-speech is a sub­sti­tute for audiobooks for the major­ity of listen­ers, and because the value of text-to-speech is such that people will buy enough ebooks to off­set any losses from sub­sti­tu­tion, and, most import­antly, authors who oppose this fea­ture look like grasp­ing, greedy jerks and will ali­en­ate their readers.

Quite apart from the infringe­ment of audiobook rights, there an access­ib­il­ity issue. Plenty of read­ers who are par­tially sighted or have dif­fi­culty read­ing will bene­fit hugely from hav­ing the text spoken aloud. This tech­no­logy has the poten­tial to bring books to a wider mar­ket. Meanwhile, those with a ves­ted interest are con­tent to arse around like mid-1990s record com­pany exec­ut­ives and the RIAA.

► Cory Doctorow: Authors have lost the plot in Amazon Kindle battle | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Us and Them

Simon Baron-Cohen, a prom­in­ent aut­ism researcher, writes in the New Scientist about his research being mis­rep­res­en­ted by a newspaper:

So how did The Guardian get it so wrong? First, because the head­line writers went bey­ond the data to cre­ate a simple, bite-size but inac­cur­ate mes­sage. Second, because they fused two issues that should have been kept sep­ar­ate: the study itself, on pren­atal hor­monal effects in chil­dren devel­op­ing typ­ic­ally; and the issue of aut­ism screening.

► Media dis­tor­tion dam­ages both sci­ence and journ­al­ism — 25 March 2009 — New Scientist

via Ben Goldacre

Locus of Control

Via @BubbleCow, here is pub­lisher Michael Hyatt’s take on the role of an author in the pub­lic­a­tion process:

This is why I believe would-be authors would do well to focus on those aspects of the pub­lish­ing pro­cess they can con­trol. That begins with writ­ing the best manu­script pos­sible. If the author doesn’t do that, then the size of the media plat­form is irrelevant.

It comes down to this again and again. Don’t com­plain about the wind, the rain, the slip­pery sur­face or the hom­icidal car drivers if you went out with square wheels on your bike.

► How Important Is an Author’s Platform? | Michael Hyatt

★ Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell: An Audiobook

For the past month, my chores, com­mutes — and those sleepy minutes before nightly uncon­scious­ness — have been filled by the voice of Simon Prebble read­ing Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, a novel pub­lished in spoken form by Audible. It is 32 hours in length, unabridged, and costs £52¹.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is an altern­at­ive his­tor­ical fantasy set in the early nine­teenth cen­tury. It fea­tures two magi­cians — the eponym­ous — as they struggle to return the craft of magic to England, a coun­try that has become dis­con­nec­ted from its magical heritage.

At root, the novel focuses on the rela­tion­ship between the two magi­cians. It encom­passes the war with Napoleon (fought and won with no little help from magic) and fea­tures sev­eral his­tor­ical char­ac­ters, includ­ing Lord Wellington, Byron and prime min­is­ter Lord Liverpool.

Darkness per­vades this book, from the names of char­ac­ters — Childermass, Greysteel, Drawlight — to the descrip­tions of smoggy London, foggy moors and moon­lit Italy. It is self-consciously drawn, how­ever, and I found the foot­notes and gen­eral tone of irony to run counter to the sin­cer­ity needed for an iden­ti­fic­a­tion with the characters.

Some things are lost in the trans­la­tion from page to voice. For example, Clarke uses archaic spellings for choose/chuse, show/shew. But more is gained. Pebble is an accom­plished nar­rator and has no dif­fi­culty in recre­at­ing myriad accents and tones.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is noth­ing less than impress­ive. I can’t help feel, though, that there is rather too much head about the book and too little heart. Clarke avoids cliché, but she does con­tinu­ally make safe choices in her story, and there is a sense of orchestration.

Merlin Mann and John Gruber: Topic x Voice

At the recent South by South-West con­fer­ence, blog­gers Merlin Mann and John Gruber gave their thoughts on the dif­fer­ence between good blogs and bad ones. It has been released as a 43Folders pod­cast. Plenty of swear­ing and Merlin Mann-style humour.

It Is Better to Use Google Earth Hopefully Than Arrive

Aliya Whiteley on whether a writer needs to be there or just look it up on Google Earth:

I know that place. Two of my rel­at­ives have held wed­ding recep­tions in that hotel. The beach is indeed stun­ning, and very often empty. Although the names have been changed, every detail is exact. And I sup­pose this stuff is not secret, but it is sur­pris­ing to find such a small corner of the UK depic­ted so accur­ately. I won­der why she changed the name of the place. I thought — she must live around there. And then I thought, hey, she’s a great writer, I’m sure she could have researched it and done it justice. Can you cap­ture a place so exactly if you visit it only once and then Google Earth it a bit?

Read more →

The Amazing Adventures of Strunk and White

Via Daring Fireball, I see that it’s the fiftieth anniversary of the pub­lic­a­tion of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. For those who don’t know, the book is a rock-solid primer on gram­mar, style and punc­tu­ation. (American English, of course, but 90% is applic­able to those writ­ing in International English.) I recom­mend it to my under­gradu­ates because it’s more straight­for­ward than Fowler’s. Have a writer in the fam­ily? Why not buy them a copy of Strunk and White? They’ll thank you — in a beau­ti­ful turn of phrase.

★ A Gentle Tweet

As some of you might know, m’friend Roger Morris has joined that Web 2.0 band of authors what seri­al­ise their nov­els via Twitter.

It’s true, get­ting a sen­tence or a frag­ment every hour — that’s how I am now schedul­ing my tweets — is not like sit­ting down and read­ing an exten­ded sec­tion of the book through. You won’t neces­sar­ily remem­ber what went before. The text will work on the reader in a dif­fer­ent way — but I am inter­ested to see just how.

Read more →

There Comes a Time When You’d Rather Cut Your Throat

[Marlowe was] the kind of man who would knock out a thug with ease and then start mus­ing about why the guy turned crooked and whether he had a wife and kids. And he was even known to refuse sex: “It’s great stuff, like chocol­ate sundaes. But there comes a time when you would rather cut your throat.”

Jake Kerridge on Raymond Chandler’s novels.

► Raymond Chandler’s nov­els under the mag­ni­fy­ing glass — Telegraph