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Happy Children's Book Week, all! I'm a little late to the party, but then for me every week is children's book week.
All the same, I thought I should point you to
this cool event over at Mother Daughter Book Reviews: a kid lit giveaway connecting to all kinds of other blogs, with great prizes. It's like a giant virtual book party where you can win stuff--now what's better than that, right?
Read on, YA Sleutheri... And consider making it a children's book this week.
Goodreads has created a massive William Shakespeare flowchart to celebrate the famous author’s birthday today.
We’ve embedded the complete chart below–visit AppNewser to download free copies of all these plays.
If you want all these poems and plays in a single place, you can download a free copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. If you don’t feel like reading a whole play, try Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
What is the worst book ever written? For the last century, many readers have argued that Amanda McKittrick Ros wrote the worst books ever.
Download a free copy of Ros’ Irene Iddesleigh novel and decide for yourself. Published in 1887, the book has a long history among critics. In his Kindle Single “Epic Fail,” author Mark O’Connell rounded up some famous fans of Ros’ unique “accidental surrealism.” Here’s an excerpt:
There were Amanda McKittrick Ros societies at Oxford and Cambridge. C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and their fellow Inklings were largely responsible for this enthusiasm: the informal Oxford literary group held sporadic Ros reading competitions, in which the winner was the member who could read from one of her novels for the longest without breaking into laughter … She was a sort of Bizarro World Oscar Wilde: an Irish author who became a London cause célèbre for the complete witlessness of her writing. Her fame even reached the shores of the New World, with no less a figure than Mark Twain crowning her “Queen & Empress of the Hogwash Guild.”
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
What’s your favorite children’s book setting?
The travel site cheapflights.co.uk has published an infographic exploring some of the most beautiful real-life locations from children’s books.
We’ve embedded the complete infographic below along with free digital book links to some of the books for your for your Kindle, iPad or other eReader.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
The great author Virginia Woolf drowned 72 years ago today. To remember her literary legacy, we’ve rounded up four free Woolf books for your Kindle, iPad or other eReader–follow the links below to download. You can find the rest of her books at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Over at Brain Pickings, Maria Popova has collected condolence letters from other authors and linked to Patti Smith‘s tribute to Woolf. Here’s an excerpt from the letters post:
On March 28, 1941, at the gruesome onset of WWII, Virginia Woolf filled the pockets of her overcoat with rocks, treaded into the River Ouse behind the house in East Sussex where she lived with her husband Leonard, and drowned herself. She had succumbed to a relapse of the all-consuming depression she had narrowly escaped in her youth. Once news of her death broke, an outpour of condolence letters captured the enormous collective grief, mourning at once the deeply personal emptiness left behind by a remarkable woman and a loyal friend, and the severe cultural loss of a brilliant mind and a transcendent artist.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Happy Extraterrestrial Abduction Day!
To help you celebrate, we’ve rounded up some free fiction, nonfiction and audio about alien abductions–inspiring reading for all kinds of writers. Yahoo News had more about the holiday:
Extraterrestrial Abduction Day, sometimes called Alien Abduction Day, could be the answer to your financial, mortgage and bad boss troubles. Maybe a UFO will land, abduct you and relocate you to a better world. In previous years, people (or aliens?) have celebrates this odd holiday with festivals or movie marathons … Stay safe indoors, and away from alien abduction hot spots.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
The great novelist Philip Roth turned 80 years old today. To celebrate his birthday, we’ve linked to a long list of free eBooks that inspired his long career as a novelist–follow the links below to download for your Kindle, Nook, iPad or other popular reader.
The New Yorker has more details: “Roth told Les inRocks that when he turned seventy-four he reread his favorite authors—Dostoyevsky, Conrad, Turgenev, Hemingway.”
You can also explore more free eBooks at Project Gutenberg: our 50 Free eBooks To Be Thankful For list, our Free Books for Halloween collection, our Free Edgar Allan Poe books collection, our Downton Abbey poetry reading list, our Free Books That Inspired David Foster Wallace list and our Free Books Neil deGrasse Tyson Thinks Everybody Should Read collection.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of The Da Vinci Code, Doubleday is giving away digital copies of Dan Brown‘s runaway bestseller until March 24.
The book will include the prologue and first chapter of Inferno, Brown’s upcoming novel. Follow these links to download: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google, Sony Reader, Apple iBookstore and Kobo. Brown also revealed his only U.S. appearance to support the book:
Doubleday also announces today that Mr. Brown will speak at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center on May 15 at 7:30 pm. The talk will be his only U.S. appearance, and Doubleday is providing a live stream to bookstores and libraries across the country. To date, 150 outlets have signed on to share the event with their communities. Tickets go on-sale today through the Lincoln Center Box office and [at this link].
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
To help GalleyCat readers celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, we’ve collected a long list of free books you can download for your Kindle, Nook, iPad or other digital reader.
Our picks include everything from great Irish literature to classic folklore. Add some culture to your weekend festivities!
Follow these links to explore more free eBooks at Project Gutenberg: our 50 Free eBooks To Be Thankful For list, our Free Books for Halloween collection, our Free Herman Melville books list, our Free Edgar Allan Poe books collection, our Downton Abbey poetry reading list, our Free Bram Stoker collection and our Free Books That Inspired David Foster Wallace list and Free Books Neil deGrasse Tyson Thinks Everybody Should Read.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Argentina’s Jorge Maria Bergoglio has been named the next Pope of the Roman Catholic Church. He will be Pope Francis I.
Amazon has ten different books written by the new pope. To help you prepare for this new chapter in Catholic history, we’ve rounded up five free eBooks about the papacy and papal history.
Follow the links below to download for your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, Nook or other digital reader.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
This weekend, why not take a blind date with a free eBook?
For years, libraries around the country have offered patrons a “blind date with a book.” They wrapped a book in brown paper to hide its true identity, offering a coy description of its contents. Like any good blind date, you have to give the mystery book a try.
We’ve adapted the concept for our digital reading audience, creating blind date descriptions for five free and classic digital books below. Over at AppNewser, you can take a blind date with a free app.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
This Valentine’s Day, why not fill your lover’s digital device with love stories?
Below, we’ve linked to the most popular free love stories on Project Gutenberg, enough classic literature to keep you reading together for the rest of the year.
Follow these links to explore more free eBooks at Project Gutenberg: our 50 Free eBooks To Be Thankful For list, our Books That Inspired Martin Luther King, Jr. list, our Free Books for Halloween collection, our Free Herman Melville books list, our Free Bram Stoker collection and our Free Books That Inspired David Foster Wallace list and Free Books Neil deGrasse Tyson Thinks Everybody Should Read.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
This weekend, why not take a blind date with a free eBook?
For years, libraries around the country have offered patrons a “blind date with a book.” They wrapped a book in brown paper to hide its true identity, offering a coy description of its contents. Like any good blind date, you have to give the mystery book a try.
We’ve adapted the concept for our digital reading audience, creating blind date descriptions for five free and classic digital books below.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Most people know, or at least have heard, about Project Gutenberg. Its mission is simple – to encourage the creation and distribution of e-books. Up until now it’s focused on amassing works, even minor ones, of major authors whose books are in the public domain – a vast array of classics now numbering more than forty thousand. What it wants is to provide as many e-books, in as many formats, to be read world-wide in as many languages as possible.
Sounds great, doesn’t it? At a time when the libraries are taking a flattening, certainly in the UK, here’s an online project appearing to achieve some of what libraries first set up to do – to spread public literacy [rather than stymie it], break down barriers that prevent people from reading, and develop an appreciation of our literary heritage. At least if one has access to a computer.
Well, the reason I’ve chosen Project Gutenberg as my subject this month is because last year they launched a new e-book enterprise called the Authors Community Cloud Library and [typically] I’ve only just come across it and [even more typically] I’m not quite sure what I think about it, and I’ve always found that writing about a thing is as good a way of working that one out as anything else.
The idea is that authors can now upload and distribute their self-published works through a self-publishing portal, and have it made available to Project Gutenberg’s vast worldwide readership. Project Gutenberg has had authors clamouring for this for years apparently. There’s even a social networking component to it all, allowing for all the stuff we’re now so familiar with - star ratings, comments, reviews, feedback etc.
All of this would have come sooner, but the sudden death of Project Gutenberg’s founder [and leading light in the Cloud Library’s development], Michael S Hart, meant that the launch didn’t happen until the 4th July last year – a great date if you happen to be American, or interested in the fact that what many consider to be the first ebook [the digitized Declaration of Independence] appeared on that date in 1971.
There’s something for everybody here. Project Gutenberg is happy because its Cloud Library enables it to add a contemporary component to its digital canon. E-authors are happy because their books are being made available to a whole new reading public and they don’t even have to give up their rights. And readers are happy because perhaps one of the biggest barriers Project Gutenberg smashes through is that of cost.
Aye, there’s the rub, as Shakespeare might have said - especially if you’re a living author seeking to keep it that way by earning a crust. Maybe all those writers of classic literature who’ve been made available again by Gutenberg are cheering from their graves. But living authors? Self-published because the e-book market is an opportunity authors? Authors like me, say, still writing and trying to earn a living today – would I, seriously, want to be a part of this library?
This is a genuine question, not a rhetorical one. What do I think about books being for free? Once my books are in the Cloud Library, readers can visit the site, search the archives and download those books AT NO COST. Then again, on Amazon, readers can browse their free offers of the day [made available by e-authors who’ve signed up to Select] and download as many e-books as they want AT NO COST.
NO COST is good, apparently. Those of us authors who think otherwise have blinkered vision. NO COST has a knock-on effect. Giving away our books AT NO COST raises our profiles. Weird as it may sound it’ll actually sell our books.
Well, I haven’t seen much of that myself. On Amazon Select I’ve given away thousands of Midnight Blues and, apart from suggest I write the sort of books that have no worth, I don’t think it’s done anything for my profile. It certainly hasn’t sold truck loads of books.
And if I don’t sell, why do I write? For those of you who think starving in a garret is part of the job, I’m not joking here. This is a serious and important question. And equally important for those of us who are readers, what value do we put on the books we read?
I can only answer for myself. I write to earn a living. I earn a living to write. I write because I have to; it sorts me out. There’s no way I can separate these statements. Writing stabilizes me. Time and again it literally saves me. And it sets me free. I write fiction because I see life in terms of story, and stories are what drive me. I write non-fiction for much the same reason. There’s a story in everything, and I love finding the words that tell it – and the word ‘telling’ here is crucial. Telling implies a recipient. These stories aren’t just for me. They’re stories that need sharing, and I have faith to believe that, though I don’t always get things right, what I’m sharing is at least worth listening to.
So if the answer to my first question is to tell, and to be listened to what’s the answer to the second question, the one about the value of books? Well, if a writer’s worth listening to, they’re worth paying for. It’s as simple as that. The value I’d put on, say, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Hundred Years of Solitude, would be equal to what I’d pay for a Picasso if I could afford to buy one. I could hang them both up side by side in my very own gallery and they’d be each other’s equal. And the same for other books too. You must know what I mean. Those books that have moved you and changed your lives are of inestimable worth. And, when you think of it like that, it’s not just the 99p end of the e-book market that’s a giveaway - even a hefty £25 hardback price is a good deal.
At least, that’s what I think. What do you think? And look out for my post next month when I examine the other side of this coin – if an author’s work is of value and should be paid for, is there ever a place for giving words away?
As Americans celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we have collected links to free digital editions of the books that inspired the life and writings of Martin Luther King, Jr..
We’ve included some of his favorite books, but King also taught a Seminar In Social Philosophy at Morehouse College in 1961. We found the complete outline of his syllabus at The King Center’s massive archive.
Follow these links to explore more free eBooks at Project Gutenberg: our 50 Free eBooks To Be Thankful For list, our Free Books for Halloween collection, our Free Herman Melville books list, our Free Edgar Allan Poe books collection, our Downton Abbey poetry reading list, our Free Bram Stoker collection and our Free Books That Inspired David Foster Wallace list and Free Books Neil deGrasse Tyson Thinks Everybody Should Read.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Readers around the globe have unwrapped new tablets and eReaders this holiday season. Below, we’ve included a long, long, long list of free and legal eBooks you can download right now for any device.
Explore our Project Gutenberg lists and click “read this eBook online” to sample the book without downloading anything.
If you have an iPad, iPad Mini, iPhone or iPod Touch, you can download the ePub edition. If you have a Kindle or a Kindle Fire, you need to download the Kindle edition. If you have a Nook, Sony eReader or a Kobo, you should download the ePub edition.
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Fed up with stories about how the world will end on December 21, 2012, NASA released the video embedded above: Why the World Didn’t End Yesterday.
The video provides some excellent insight into the Mayan calendar, an astrological masterpiece that scientists have studied for years. Instead of worrying about the end of the world, you should take this opportunity to learn more about the Mayan culture.
Below, we’ve linked to free eBooks about Mayans (available in all major formats) to help you learn more about this amazing culture.
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By:
KidLitReviews,
on 12/19/2012
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Join the Party! Jeff Gunhus is wrapping up a 3 week tour with a Twitter Party on Friday, December 21 from 6 pm to 8 pm EST Use the hashtag #JackTemplar to join the party. Missed the tour? Check out the entire tour schedule for great reviews, guest posts, and interviews!…………………………………………. MONSTER HUNTERS ~~AND ~~ [...]
Writerhood can be hard--you fellow writers know this. There's editing, writing, more editing, and stupid chores that piled up while you were doing all that hard work.
But I didn't write this post to be a Negative Nellie. I love my job, and domestic perfection isn't for me anyway. Yesterday, I got some good news, so I thought I'd share. Since you've been along for the ride.
The Horn Book Magazine, the people in the know about all things kidlit, gave
Double Vision a really nice review. Here's a little snippet:
Bradley gives Linc a great voice, with a good heart, some self-awareness, and a funny style: “I should probably mention right now that I qualify for the Guinness Book of World Records as the slowest, most out-of-shape twelve-year-old in history.” It’s entertaining if not deep, with a fast pace, snappy narration, and an epilogue that promises a new adventure.
Good news, so pass the drinks, all!
Oh, and if you're still on the hunt for a free ARC of
Double Vision,
you can sign up for the Goodreads giveaway the kind people of Harper are running...
By:
Tara Lazar,
on 9/29/2012
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Remember my video about the nightmare book signing?
Well, bad signings make frequent appearances in author circles.
Recently a friend set up a table at a “free” outdoor event for parents and toddlers. She thought it would be a good opportunity to showcase her picture book and sell some copies.
No one approached her all morning. She was getting very discouraged.
Finally, a woman who had been manning another table came up to her. “I’d like one for my son,” she said. “His name is [very unusual name].”
My friend picked up her pen, personalized the book to the woman’s son, wrote a special note, and autographed it. “That will be $15, please.”
The woman stared. “Oh, I thought it was free.”
My friend was taken aback. “Free? This is a picture book from [Big 6 Publisher].”
“But everyone here is giving away free stuff,” the woman said.
My friend then felt bad. SHE FELT BAD?! “Well, since you didn’t know, I will let you have it at cost. I paid $10 for it.”
“Never mind,” the woman said. “I don’t want it.” And she walked back to her table.
My friend was near tears. She hadn’t sold a single book and now she was stuck with one signed to “Jakellen.” What were the odds that another “Jakellen” would come to a future book signing? About a Jakellen-to-one!
This serves as a cautionary tale for both readers and authors.
Authors do not get their own books for free.
They are offered a very limited quantity upon publication, usually somewhere between 5 and 15 copies. The rest they have to pay for themselves, typically at 30-40% off the retail price. Sometimes they do better purchasing from Amazon and not the publisher-direct! Free books are very rare.
And remember, that author has worked years to publish that book. And authors do not get paid while they are writing it. A lot has been sacrificed to get that book onto shelves. So please don’t expect a book for free. And don’t walk away from a book that has already been personalized. That author has now lost whatever they paid for the book, and the royalty they earned doesn’t even cover 10% of it.
While tempting, it may not be the best idea to do signings at advertised “free” events. People arrive with the expectation that they’ll never have to dip into their wallets. (And considering the economy, that’s the kind of feeling they want to experience often!) They are not in the mood to buy, and therefore may avoid you, even if what you’re selling looks good. They have not arrived with the mindset (or the money) to make a purchase.
And finally, it may be proper to let the reader know the price before you sign a book. Or else you might get stuck with a lot of “Jakellen” copies. And frankly, “Jakellen” isn’t even on the Social Security Administration’s List of Top 1000 Names. FOR ANY YEAR.
But who knows, maybe like “Splash” I’ve inadvertently begun a Madison-like name craze?!
My friend may be Jakellen-sellin’ after all!
.
Book and pen photo courtesy of Flickr user Jain Basil Aliyah.
By:
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on 11/5/2012
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E-book ISBN: B007IIXZ0O
Print ISBN-13: 978-0615613291
Print ISBN-10: 0615613292
If you haven’t read my paranormal young adult…
Google has created a Google Doodle (embedded above) in honor of the 165th birthday of the great horror novelist Bram Stoker.
To celebrate the milestone, we’ve rounded up free eBooks you can download download right now for your eReader, smartphone or tablet. Follow the links below to read.
Follow these links to explore more free eBooks at Project Gutenberg: our massive Free eBook Flowchart, our Free Books for Halloween collection, our Free Herman Melville books list, our Free Edgar Allan Poe books collection, our Downton Abbey poetry reading list and our Free Books That Inspired David Foster Wallace list and Free Books Neil deGrasse Tyson Thinks Everybody Should Read.
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What books have the power to change your mind? We’ve collected ten free digital books suggested by readers below, but add your thoughts in the comments section.
Over at Reddit, readers are building a list of books “that might help you change the way you think about things.” The discussion is filled with interesting books, we are sure our readers have plenty of more ideas.
Here’s more from the original post: “I give you: Sartorialconundrum’s list of twelve books that might help you change the way you think about things. The idea behind this list is that each of them take a different view than the established ideology in their field, or they take on a myth that we have come to take for granted in our way of thinking, or they are stories that don’t quite follow a traditional character arc.”
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By: Jason Boog,
on 11/29/2012
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Does the universe have a purpose? Physicist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson responded to that cosmic question in the video embedded above–do you agree with his answer?
Last year, Tyson answered another question that matters to all Galleycat readers: “Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on the planet?” The famous physicist and author responded with a concise list of classic books. Follow the links below to download free ePub, Kindle or text versions of the books.
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Want to give free eBooks to your friends and family this holiday season?
For all the GalleyCat readers who celebrate Christmas, we’ve collected 25 free digital books about the holiday–they can be downloaded in all eBook formats. Our list includes old classics like A Christmas Carol (pictured) but we also discovered some lost gems like A Kidnapped Santa Claus.
Follow these links to explore more free eBooks at Project Gutenberg: our 50 Free eBooks To Be Thankful For list, our Free Books for Halloween collection, our Free Herman Melville books list, our Free Edgar Allan Poe books collection, our Downton Abbey poetry reading list, our Free Bram Stoker collection and our Free Books That Inspired David Foster Wallace list and Free Books Neil deGrasse Tyson Thinks Everybody Should Read.
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Terrific post, Pauline. It raises many questions. I have no answers though.
I didn't know about this either. Surely at the least a system like PLR would be more fair?
A wise post, Pauline, and no I can't answer the questions either. There's faulty logic to the "everything must for be free" viewpoint.
I was talking about this just last night with a friend. He had loaned me the first in a very long running comic series. I'd loved it. It cost £15 to buy both pb and ebook version. I'd been ordering the subsequent editions from the library, which took ages. An online library would have been an amazing option. But I worried about the comic producers making money. My suggestion was, as this is a very long running series, maybe the first one could be free, the next 3 at 50p, the next 3 at £3 until the most recent are £15. So, a long tail back catalogue makes money, but you preserve the spike in earnings from new launches. Doesn't have to just be for series, any new publication by a writer you love would be full-price for, say, 2 years.
Just an idea we batted around which the rugby was on...
Yes, thanks for a thoughtful post, and a big question. Have people always thought it was easy to write a good book? Maybe it is for some, but for most people it's a long hard slog, often with the cost of doing some training involved, even if, as you say, writing holds us together. Would anyone think it was easy to paint a Goya, or make a David, or do brain surgery?
I think it's great that the classics are being made available freely. But I'm a bit dubious about any boost in profile or sales from giving away work for free - except for the very few. Giving away work for charity etc is a different matter.
It seems everyone wants to write, and so maybe the writing gets devalued. Many writers seem to have to spend so much of our time on 'writing-related activity' in order to live that there's not much time to write.
On the other hand...I'm just delighted every time I hear of someone I haven't met reading my books. I love that they're freely available in the library. I'm a huge library fan, and user.
Lots of think about...
All very pertinent, Pauline.
I have been using Project Gutenburg since the 1980s. Their aim is to make everything available in electronic format, rather than specifically as e-books (as the project long pre-dates e-books as we now think of them). In the days when I was doing serious literary scholarship, it was a godsend. For my PhD I had to read everything to find stuff, as the books weren't available in electronic format (too obscure for PG then). But last summer, working on Oliver Twist, it was brilliant to be able to find a remembered phrase, or all instances of a word, instantly.
As for the Cloud initiative, I think the clue is in what you say, Pauline - authors had been clamouring for it. Not readers. Authors who have failed to find a publisher and want a readership. Not the authors that the public is rushing to read.
Remember that this is no kind of a grab - no one's books will suddenly appear there if the author doesn't volunteer the books.
I agree that free books devalue our currency. I would not do a free promotion of Amazon - it sends all the wrong messages. Then again, I don't use free e-books either - even of out-of-copyright classics. I'd rather pay a small amount for one that is more likely to be competently put together. My time is too valuable to read free crap.
I agree that free e-books are a huge worry. But then again - I spend all day listening to radio 3, which is free music. If I want a special music-time, I'll go to a concert. If I really like something, I'll buy it so that I can listen to it when I want to. Free works alongside paid-for in lots of fields. Movies - I don't have to pay £11 to see a movie, I can wait for it to be on TV. But I often don't. We could all walk or hitchhike - but we don't, we pay for transport.
Some people will use free books because they are poor or because they are stingy. But how many books would they have bought anyway?
I agree with Elen that making older books in a series cheap or free to attract people to later, costlier books is the way to go.
I think what you say in your final paragraph is very important. Value is something very subjective, but something that is, contrary to scaremongering, important to fans everywhere. I also think you make an essential point that we are readers as much as writers, and I think (very much just my opinion) as writers our duty is very much towards current and future readers and our wider culture. My problem with steering clear of projects like this is that I think I'd want to remove any possible barrier to people reading anything - it is certainly true that not everyone can get to the internet by a long chalk, and that is a key thing we need to address, but widening access to as much of culture as we possibly can is, for me, a key social and political goal for our age. As long as we recognise that things like this are only part of it, along with access to the education that will help people read, access to the channels of distribution that will enable all social groups to read similar voices to their own, being relentless in the battle against censorship both direct and indirect, then I think it's a fabulous thing.
My personal preference at the moment would be for works to be downloadable for free with the opportunity for those who are able to pay to be able to contribute what they think the book is worth to them - not just at the point of download but after they've read the book, and for many years to come as books become more and more important to them. In the long term, we really need to have a full and frank conversation about how art is funded
thanks so much for your thoughtful commentary on this subject. As a writer who has worked many, many years on my craft, I hope that I have something to offer readers which is more valuable than some book that can be downloaded free from the internet.
Does having a lot of free reading material available free, reduce the demand for better writing? Like everything else, some people will demand high quality while others are satisfied with mediocre. I don't have any answers, but I wish i could make a living writing.
I have no answers either and don't know anything about this but free books is something I find myself instinctively rebelling against. Why should books be singled out? WHY should the labour that goes into books be unpaid when the labour that goes into sewing a dress, making a meal or serving in a restaurant be rewarded? Something wrong there. I think music, art, ballet, painting etc should be paid for. And books too. I'm happy to pay for books I want to keep. Those who can't afford to should use the libraries much more than they do! FREE BOOKS. FREE TO ORDER. Brilliant.
If anyone can think of another way for writers to make some dosh, then maybe things would be different. But as I say, I have no answers.
I have no answers either and don't know anything about this but free books is something I find myself instinctively rebelling against. Why should books be singled out? WHY should the labour that goes into books be unpaid when the labour that goes into sewing a dress, making a meal or serving in a restaurant be rewarded? Something wrong there. I think music, art, ballet, painting etc should be paid for. And books too. I'm happy to pay for books I want to keep. Those who can't afford to should use the libraries much more than they do! FREE BOOKS. FREE TO ORDER. Brilliant.
If anyone can think of another way for writers to make some dosh, then maybe things would be different. But as I say, I have no answers.
Thank you everybody for your thoughtful replies. Interesting idea, Elen, though I have to say, after giving it much thought, that I’m completely with Adele on the subject of free services. Nobody would expect to be served for free in a restaurant or be given free frocks in H & M, and I can’t imagine it happening either. No sane company would see that as making good business sense. They may offer deals – but free? I don’t think so.
Mary, I definitely think there’s something in what you say about the ready availability of free material reducing the demand for better writing. I was thinking along similar lines this afternoon in my local Starbucks, watching people going in and out of Waterstones across the road. It seemed to me there was a link between valuing books more highly as readers and valuing them as writers too.
If books are being hoovered up by readers who acquire them in mass, either online for free or in endless three-for-two giveaway deals [how many of those third books do you ever read?] there’s a danger that writers will only write books fit for hoovering up. Not because those authors are lazy but because, slowly but surely, they – like everybody else – will forget quite how powerful and wonderful a book can be. There’ll be a cultural shift. Books as treasures won’t be expected and books as treasures won’t be what anybody gets – or, eventually [unfortunately] writes.
Dan, I’m interested in what you say about removing barriers. I too want the greatest number of people to read books, but I want them to value them too and sometimes, strangely, barriers can be an aid in that process rather than a hindrance. Not that I’d deliberately put up barriers between people and books, but my own experience was of growing up in a totally non-bookish family, seeing my school friends with books, not having any myself – and yet coming to love and value them more than almost anything else. As a child, the library was as close as I ever got to books, but it wasn’t until I went out to work [not university; I was the girl, my brother could be scrimped and saved to send, but not me] that I owned my own books. The result of this massive barrier in my life, I say to this day, wasn’t to disadvantage me but to give me a very special sense of the value of each and every book I acquired. When I finished reading my very own copy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, for example, I took it to bed with my and held it in my arms. I literally couldn’t bear to let it go. The world was a better place for such a book being in it – AND I OWNED IT.
We need to get back that sense of wonder. That sense that, yes, you could hang a book in a gallery alongside a great painting and they would be each other’s equal. Readers need to learn to respect books. By this, I don’t mean put more reviews on Amazon, or talk about books in more book clubs, but to respect the whole IDEA of a book – to see it [whether in paper form or on a reading device] as something really special, the equal of any other art or craft. And they need to learn to respect authors too. I’ve read some terrible things about authors in Amazon forums [‘why don’t they get back in their pens?’ was a typical example]. But perhaps if authors are giving away their books for free, and doing so in vast numbers, they’re bringing this on themselves.
Perhaps authors need to get back their sense of wonder too. But that’s another subject. I’ve already gone on long enough.
yes, I absolutely take your point - where I'm thinking of barriers getting in the way are with people who have no way of hoping to buy books, and no access to libraries for whatever reason. It's true that much of the globe also lacks the internet, but telling those with an hour a week's access to a communal internet in the barrios of Mexico City or the remote villages of the Congo that the knowledge (and associated power) contained in books is not for them seems to me to be very dangerous - I think many of us will always for the foreseeable future be in a privileged position in the debate in relation to them, and as such I would find it very hard to speak up in justification of denying them access.