Google vs Writers

Quill and Quire writes:

With the Jan. 28 opt-out deadline fast approaching, three major U.S. writers’ groups – The National Writers Union, The American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the Science Fiction Writers of America – have sent a joint letter to more than 60 members of Congress condemning the recently amended Google Book Search settlement proposal. It’s a notable break with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, both of which are working with Google on the settlement.

The ramifications of the amended settlement for any one author and any one book are exceptionally complex. We’ve talked to our members, authors like yourself. The ones who got the notice found it incomprehensible and just shook their heads in confusion. Go to the settlement website’s poorly implemented database and see for yourself how tricky this is – has your book been scanned? Is it commercially available?  Should you opt out? If you do nothing, you’re automatically included in the settlement. If you opt out, Google doesn’t even guarantee that it won’t steal your work in the future. READ MORE

My (and yours) long lost grandmother

Just found my long lost / forgotten grandmother:

Find out more

German Digital Library

Germany to follow France, will not stand idly by while private corporations digitize its cultural heritage:

Germany now has a plan to challenge Google at its own game.  In December, the government announced the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (DDB) — the German Digital Library — a plan to connect the databases of 30,000 German cultural and academic organizations and create an Internet portal that would be available to all German citizens.

This new digital library will contain everything from books and documents, to paintings, film and music recordings. In addition, it will be linked to Europeana, a similar project launched in 2008 by the European Union (that still contains little content and remains difficult to access), and to libreka!, the German e-book portal run by the MVB, a subsidiary of the Boersenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (the German Publishers and Booksellers Association). SOURCE

NATO Military Intelligence Officer defects

Knowledge possessed by the missing Polish military intelligence officer Stefan Zielonka is dangerous for the Polish agents operating abroad, daily Dziennik reports.

The paper learned that over the years Zielonka was teaching illegals, the officers who left under the cover for abroad, for instance, how to send coded reports to their headquarters. He knows their faces, identities and countries where they have been sent to.

The newspaper established knowledge possessed by Zielonka was not limited only by the knowledge of codes and codes used by the service. This information has been confirmed by several independent sources in the military intelligence service.

The illegals is an elite of any intelligence service; spy networks have been established abroad which normally operate without coming into contact with the members of the secret service stations. Their work is subject to much greater danger as they are not protected by diplomatic immunity. SOURCE Original Polish daily text is here.

I'd like to know why the Poles are crying so loud about Zielonka being in Chinese hands?

What publisher does for an author

In this increasingly virtual age of open access and universal availability, it's important for readers to keep in mind what it is that a publisher does for an author. A publisher -- and I write as one -- does far more than print and sell a book. It selects, nurtures, positions and promotes the writer's work. SOURCE

Ha.
Ha.
I am overwhelmed.

Anglo-American book publishing model

About 10 years ago I canceled my TV programming and haven't watched any since. My decision was partly based on the amount of noxious advertising, but more so on shallowness of programming itself.

Over the last years I find myself reading less and less Anglo-American literature, not just the kind that I am forced to write (if I want to be published) but also the so called "literary" works that in the English language publishing model became a genre (or: schema) onto itself. Most of my reads are books in translation or, for the lack thereof, in original, which include new as well as older titles.

Massey lecturer Alberto Manguel proves that I am not alone. In his excellent work "The City of Words" he argues (compellingly) that the current Anglo-American publishing vessel is sinking along with writers and readers.

[...] to follow the day's fashion, we will become "slaves to the system".

This is a self-fulfilling truth. The book Industry not only produces this dogma, but also makes sure that very little place is accorded to anything outside it.
[...]

[...] instead of promoting books of breadth and depth, for the most part the publishing industry of our time creates one-dimensional objects, books that are surface only and that don't allow readers the possibility of exploration.

Obviously there are countless writers who refuse to work according to formulae, and some who succeed in doing so, but much of what is being produced by the larger publishing companies today follows the set industrial model. A large portion of the reading public is therefore trained to expect a certain kind of "comfortable" book and, what is far more noxious, to read in a certain "comfortable" way, looking for short descriptions, patterns of dialogue copied from television sitcoms, familiar brand names, and plots that may follow convoluted entanglements but never allow for complexity or ambiguity.

BOOK is available here. Listen to PODCAST (highly recommended for all readers, writers, editors and literary agents)

Turkish novels beckon

Three publications on Turkish Literature promise exciting reading.

[...] the relationship between literature and economic/cultural conditions. ‘The Western novel, or rather the novel, describes the individual, the human example of bourgeois society,’ says Fethi Naci and claims that Ottoman society had a structure that prevented the ‘individual’ from emerging.

He studies the resistance against westernization as a theme in the first Turkish novels like Felatun Bey ile Rakım Efendi, Araba Sevdası, Aşk-ı Memnu and then follows the trail of the West-East theme of later novels. Rural novels and the author Yaşar Kemal are highlighted in this introduction, along with periodical novels such as the 12 March novels including Dawn (Şafak) by Sevgi Soysal and 12 September novels like It was a Summer Shadowed by the September (Eylülün Gölgesinde Bir Yazdı) by Ferit Edgü. He completes his foreword with the last decade of the 20th century, featuring novelists like Orhan Pamuk, Tahsin Yücel and young writers. READ MORE

Wets my appetite for Turkish novels. Can't wait to read Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence, which beckons from my bedside table...