„Wanted: The global bestseller.
A new study shows: Only a few writers are successful on a global scale. Yet national bookmarkets are diverse (not homogenized).“ Article„
It is just amazing how a really big organization like Amazon in less then 2 weeks makes an about face in their strategy for their arguably most ambitious strategic project, the Kindle.
After doing everything and a bit to roll out a radically proprietary machine, closing it like a can of Campell’s tomato soup to avoid piracy, and sharing of content, or allow any other players to put their fingers into the matter, they make a contrary statement, without blushing, saying that funny word: Oh, we discovered that there are a number of folks out there who perhaps won’t buy a Kindle, but who have a phone and who want to read e-Books as well. Sorry guys, we forgot about you initially, but right, why wouldn’t you continue to spend your reading money on Amazon.com. So welcome, and here is our reading software, help yourself.
The 2 simple things about (printed) books are that we got used to read wherever and however we want; and we like to pass that book to our friends and colleagues. Both of which e-Books so far tried hard to boycott – and therefore failed.
Bringing the books to your phone is quite another story.
But then, at what price?
Amazon already set their benchmark at $ 9.99 – while many publishers, notably in Europe, started to struggle for e-Books to be priced just as printed books.
A friend pointed me to the Apple iTunes store which I had not explored so far for books. In some aspects it is still weird, as the iTunes store indexes books like „Music style: Book“ – hinting that books only start to pop up on their radar screen, but they do come up.
They offer many freebies or cheapies, and the most popular, at least in Germany – you would never have guessed – are Karl Marx, followed by Goethe (oops) and Sun Tzu’s „The Art of War“ (the Bible, in English though, is only #6).
The really interesting thing however is pricing, plus the fact that some publishers started already to experiment with *cool* community driven backlist titles that are still under copyright. Karl Marx (who is free already, is priced at € 0,79, like Goethe). More relevant are probably recent titles by living and therefore copyrighted authors. I found a brand new eBook version, released on Feb 9, 2009, of Gerhard Polt: Hundskrüppel (Polt is a „cult“ author and popular comedian in Germany) at € 3.99. The same title is offered at the Amazon online bookstore as an audio CD at € 16.90, as a hardcover book at € 12.90, and as a paperback at €7.00.
Perhaps even more important is still another element illustrated by the iTunes store: Whoever is used to this iTunes environment takes it for a given that music videos, podcasts, audiobooks and now books are integrated into one realm, one pattern of *culture ware* (or stuff that I want to hear/read/watch), and the boundaries between say music and the word or the pictures have already blurred.
The book arrives here as a late, yet highly honorable guest at this party, and will certainly get integrated fast, but as just another format between all the many others. So the singularity, the uniqueness of the book will be gone – well, not really, I assume, because there are good reasons for the book to be considered as something special, as I have argued recently. But it is going to be interesting how things evolves.
Jason Epstein, only a couple of weeks ago at the O’Reilly Tools of Change“ conference, had this wonderful metaphor for what is going on right now, before our eyes:
„Like blind men in a room with an elephant, we cannot begin to imagine the eventual consequences as digitization and the Internet ignite a worldwide Cultural Revolution orders of magnitude greater than Gutenberg’s inadvertent implementation of western civilization.“
I guess it is a big elephant indeed.
2 events on translation are forthcoming – one local, one European – an I have the privilege to participate:
(a) „Literary Translation and Culture“ is a one day conference, initiated and hosted by Manuel Baroso, the President of the European Commission, on April 20, 2009, in Brussels.
The early alert reads: „In the context of its policies to promote multilingualism and intercultural dialogue, the European Commission is organizing a Conference on the role of literary translation in Brussels on the 20th of April 2009.“
I will have an opportunity to do a brief introduction to the „Diversity Report 2008“ and act as a rapporteur.
(b) A report on translations done and published by Austrian publishers, sponsored by the city of Vienna, is about to get finished and will be presented on April 16, 2009, 7 pm, at the Haupverband des österreichischen Buchhandels, Grünangergasse 4, 1010 Wien. Details and participants to follow.
According to our charts, he was probably the most stunning author across Europe in 2008, and now his book makes it to the movies: „Män som hatar kvinnor„. You don’t recognize the smash hit?
This weekend, Stieg Larsson’s „The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo“, volume one of his Millennium series, is opening – in Sweden and Denmark.
This is all about the really counter-intuitive story of a feverish Swedish investigative journalist who, to make some money for his retirement, writes a series of 3 crime novels, but does so in a way that normally guarantees it that the book is not a success. The author dies only a week after bringing the manuscript to his publisher who, of course, recognizes the jewel he got and publishes the book. The rest is probably the most iconic legend about writing and publishing in these days.
Introducing „The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize” Long list, Boyd Tonkin, literary editor of The Independent likens Larsson together with Chilean Roberto Bolano’s “2666” (currently #14 in the UK charts) as the perfect examples for novels which, under conventional wisdom, should never ever make it into any bestseller charts, as both books are “very long, complicated, sometimes eccentric and driven by a quixotic idealism”, have a dead author and are translations- and yet.
The really amazing thing about the Larsson movie however is that after such a unique performance, it has not been turned into some Hollywood blockbuster with a cast of international stars. Instead it is a Danish production, directed by Berlin festival winner of 2006, Niels Arden Oplev.
Livres Hebdo reports that the movie may open the French movie festival in Cannes in May 2009, and that so far, volume 2 and 3 of the Millennium series are set to hit only TV and DVD screens, not the cinema. So far, TV rights for France have not been sold, but Canal+ seems to be closest.
Which just teaches a good lesson about culture and arts being much more complex as popular myths of „global homogenization“ have it.
It was Geety Dharmaraja of New Dehli, a beaming lady with an inescapable sense of mission and the founder of a stunning Indian translation project called Katha who made several of the most remarkable points at this week’s Salzburg Global Seminar on translation.
„Perhaps we are about to go full cycle“, she told the startled: „We started with oral traditions, moved on to written literature, and now get into oral story telling again!“ And, wrapping it all up, she would proclaim upfront: „Gutenberg must not have to live!“ Meaning something like who can be sure that the printed book on paper is once and for all the solution to our reading (and story telling) requirements.
Salzburg Schloss Leopoldskron
We were sitting in the prestigious Schloss Leopoldskron (where theater director Max Reinhard had an apartment during the fesitval in the 1920s), with lots of snow outside, and ever more falling from a grayish sky, some 60 or so translators from 4 continents and experts in literature and translation.
Presentations and discussions were going in various directions: About the status of translating literature (and the poor working conditions for many translators), about models to foster translations, and yes, about funding and how to better organize funding. There was a wide spread consensus that much translation of main stream fiction can hardly be done and only find a publisher, certainly in the English speaking world, if the cost of translation is somehow dunded by a grant. So translation is very much a not for profit activity – with Harry Potter and the like being an exception.
I had the pleasure to give a presentation on our „Diversity Report 2008„, maping languages that, aside from English of course, are strong in translations, and others that struggle on the margins.
Translators, as we all know, are a community of highly focused folks, busy with their craft. But in all our conversations, sometimes more openly, and sometimes only between the lines, the digital change ahead was the big question in the room: Can we still, for a while at least, do things as if nothing happened? And for how long? Or is change already here? And it was funny to realize how often someone acknoweledged that new things and new habits had already become part of the daily habits.
The Chinese internet platform Danwei reports, quoting an article in China Youth Daily, that the Chinese government is set to abandon direct control over most publishing companies by the end of 2010.
The goal is to allow „for profit“ media companies to get rid of direct state control, to end state restrictions on the allocation of ISBN, and to encourage the forming of „six or seven internationally-recognized press and media companies that are domestic leaders with assets and sales each over 10 billion yuan.“ (Original quote in Chinese)
After experimenting already with IPOs of state controled publishing groups since 2008, and with more or less independent „creative agencies“ acting as defacto publishing companies, or at least, as – partly very successful – imprints, this next move could be decisive in pushing China’s publishing industry internationally from being only a big buyer of copyrights into a real player in the global cultural industries.
Our Global bestseller list has been featured in the week’s buchreport.express, and buchreport online – Germany’s leading source of book market information.
The list which has been established for the first time ever, based on bestseller information from across Europe, the USA, and China, has had braod media attention, including The Bookseller, The Guardian and Associated Press.
While it is frightening to see in this very moment how the new Mandarin hotel next to Rem Kohlhas‘ CCTV tower is burning, I was checking all kinds of sources on news with regard to China’s publishing landscape.
Friends told me that the crisis so far did not have any knock out impact on the industry, but at the same time, I hear a lot of lines about „restructuring“ – or reconsidering all to bold and expansive strategies in publishing companies.
We learn for instance that Liaoning Press which was the first publishing company allowed to go public at the Shanghai Stock exchange in 2008 has been re-branded as North United Publishing and Media (Group) Co., Ltd. More significantly, most of the major Shanghai based publishing groups have been encouraged to become more of ‚companies‘ instead of state run cultural agents, and yet another publisher – Reader Publishing Group in Gansu Province – is also preparing to go public.
The annual Beijing domestic book fair held in January says in releases that business concluded with 2.5 bn RMB worth of deals (ca. 200 m up as compared to 2008).
Also, translations which had shown tremendous growth to an estimated 10,000 titles sold into China for translation per year, seem to remain solid. In a workshop sponsored by the British Council, it was announced that China will be the guest of honor at the London Book fair in 2012 (after being in that role in Frankfurt later this year).
Forcasts e.g. in China Daily have it that books about macro economics as well as the now exactly 30 years of China’s opening may be among the top issues in the year’s new releases.
In fact in the top bestseller segment, the controversial „Currency Wars“ (货币战争) by Song Hongbing is back as #1 in non fiction. And 30 years of the special economic zone in Shenzhen have been turned into a novel called „Destiny“ (命运 ) by Lu Tianming.
Much more interestingly in terms of international reach is the clear trend that more and more regularly, books from Chinese authors are given prominent recognition abroad. In a piece in the New Yorker, the broadening reciprocal exchange of books and ideas via translations in both direction has been recently discussed – and compared to the lack of such an exchange with the Arab world.
Pankaj Mishra reviewed the English translation of the in its Chinese edition hugely successful novel „Brothers“ by Yu Hua in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. But also the very dark The Vagrants: A Novel
In the most recent Chinese bestseller lists provided by China Publishing Today, a new novel, long listed at last year’s Man AsiaLiterary Award, Murong Xuecun, hit the charts, „Dance the Red Dust“ (原谅我红尘颠倒), while his earlier book „Leave Me Alone, Chengdu“ was given a German translation at Zweitausendeins.
So one can be cautiously optimisti
c that the flow of books and ideas between China and us starts to broaden from the odd trickle that it once was into a quite robust – and exciting – stream.
The next step ahead however would need to involve more sophisticated and also two sided working relationships between publishers and editors from the West with their counterparts in Chinese publishing houses – which used to be for so long just this: state controlled government agencies.
The wonderful journal „Logos“ has published a tink piece I wrote on the „future of the book“ or, more precisely, on what e-Books and digitization may have changed – or not changed at all – about books:
What is a book? And, what’s really in it? These
two simple questions are getting both more
complicated and more interesting as books are
moving from their incarnation as “laminated wood
pulp” — as some digerati nerds mock the ink-onpaper
versions of traditional knowledge containers
— to other, mostly digital media.
With a multitude of new manifestations of
the book, initiatives on the book, book-related
gadgets and uses, and with 2008 as a likely
watershed year for the future of electronic books
(e-books), it seems only appropriate to revisit
these two primal questions in a more systematic
and serious way.
Admittedly, this article is more a loose set of
initial observations, thoughts and notes than a
thoroughly researched essay — at best a think
piece, trying to identify and pick up a number of
the loose ends of the current and often emotional
debate on e-books. I try to identify some aspects of
what may change — or has changed already — as
books go digital; what on the contrary will not be
so different, after all, in the digital future; what is
at stake; and, somewhat as a postscript, why ebooks
so far have not been at all successful in
competing with the traditional book.
You find more here
If book fairs are supposed to be still some kind of frontier, Cairo is the place to go. It is arguably the largest book fair on the planet, both in space (a huge area, with halls, shacks, walks and lawns (for pick nick), and a lot of surprise.
Yet despite its 1.5 million visitors in 2 weeks – who come to shop for books, as hardly any normal bookshops exist outside Cairo, and no reliable distribution, the variety is very limited to religion, children’s educational materials, romance and a few sprinkled other books.
Cairo - book stall
You see large crowds, people of all strands of life, many children, religious people and laymen, ready for a discovery.
(Find an entire album of pictures from the Cairo book fair at Flickr.)
However, doing the facts on the Arab book market is sobering. Looking out for relevant data about Arab book publishing, I got introduced to Salah B. Chebaro from Beirut, Lebanon, who runs Neel Wa Furat, probably the largest online book store in the Arab world. I asked him how many titles he has on his online catalogue, and the answer is ca. 8.000. He estimates that between Lebanon and Egypt, the two main book producing countries of the region, plus Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, some 15.000 titles are currently available. The Maghreb states may add another 5.000.
New titles on display
So altogether, this equals roughly the output of Poland, yet Poland’s population of 38 million needs to be set into perspective to an Arab population of 200 million. The Arab Human Development Report of 2003 estimated the Arab book production at not exceeding 1.1 percent of world production.
However there is growing international interest in the Arab world’s publishing. This year, the United Kindom, helped by the British Council, is the guest of honour and brings a lot of expertise and support. In the Emirates, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, ambitious new foundations have been set up to give a strong push and develop reading culture, translation and diversity. a few big players from Western publishing have set up shop recently in Dubai, notably Random House, Harper Collins and Bloomesbury.
And in just a few months, we will hold a „Global Market Forum: The Arab World“ at BookExpo America (28 – 31 May, 2009, in New York).
Amre Moussa, General Secretary of the Arab League, with Anna Swank of ArteEast, Nasser Jarrous and myself
It will be inaugurated by the General Secretary of the Arab League, Amre Moussa who received us kindly.
It will be a very special event to present writers, translators, publishers and experts to explore Arab culture in New York.
With more details, both on the Arab book market – with data and ressources – and about our program at BEA to come here soon.
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