I’m no fan of JD Salinger. I’m talking about the man, not his writing. You can read my reasoning in this earlier post What do authors owe their readers. Mr. Salinger is not helping his case in an ongoing legal battle where he wants to prevent publication of a ’sequel’ to his infamous novel Catcher in the Rye.

You might recall that on July 1, an injunction was ordered by a judge that prevented the publication of the sequel by Swedish author Fredrik Colting called 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye. Since that ruling, groups ranging from free speech advocates, librarians, the Associated Press and others have been filing briefs with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to get the injunction lifted. The appeals court will start hearing arguments on September 3.

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I first read about Scribner’s plans to release a modified version of Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast (aff link) in this New York Times OpEd back in July, but have only now gotten around to writing about it. This story brings up a lot of questions about what publishers owe to the authors and novels they publish, especially after the author has long been deceased and can no longer speak for himself.

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I never really know what to think of most literary awards. Usually, the prestigious awards are voted on by a small committee of experts. And most of the time, they tend to pick obscure works with little mass market appeal. But at the other end of the spectrum, we have the science fiction Hugo award, where the finalists were decided by letting sci-fi fans vote for their favorite novels. The results were a little more mainstream, maybe too mainstream, according to one author.

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Today we have a special treat – an exclusive interview with author Wayne C. Long, who owns and operates LongShortStories, a website where he sells his short fiction as a subscription-based service. I first met Wayne back in 2008 after he sent me a message advertising his site – which I first wrote about in this post.

I’m going to keep this introduction short because I think the interview speaks for itself, and I hope you find Wayne’s answers as inspiring as I do. And when you get to the end of the interview, you might find a surprise!

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I’m really excited about the release of the new book by Chris Anderson, from The Long Tail blog, and plan to pre-order my copy soon. For those of you who don’t know, Chris has been leading the way in promoting ‘free’ as a new kind of business model. I advocate it here on this blog as well by encouraging and supporting authors who give away free ebooks to help promote a current title (for example).

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Iconic science fiction writer Ray Bradbury is still going strong. He writes for several hours a day, reads, mingles with visitors and still supports one of his biggest passions: Libraries. And given the recent economic meltdown, public libraries need all the help they can get. Because of high-unemployment and lower wages, libraries are seeing a bit of a comeback. But as local governments try to trim their budgets, libraries are usually the first to get the ax.

That’s where Ray Bradbury comes in.

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Whenever I read news stories about reclusive authors, like the famous J.D. Salinger, I usually just shake my head. Salinger is again in the news because another author wants to publish a sequel to the classic The Catcher in the Rye (aff link).  So, in typical Salinger fashion, he’s suing to prevent the book from being published.

However, that’s not what I’m really worried about. I have no problems with an author trying to protect his work (even though sometimes they go too far). What I do have a problem with, however, is iconic authors like J.D. Salinger, who have obviously had a huge impact on the American literary scene, shun their own fans.

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How do you turn a boring classic novel into something new and exciting? Add a bunch of brain-hungry zombies, of course. At least, that is the approach that author Seth Grahame-Smith took with his novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
(aff link). The novel takes the popular Jane Austen story and turns it upside-down with zombies.

I’m reading the book right now and find it very funny. But I should also admit that I haven’t read the original Pride and Prejudice, so I might be missing out on some of nuances of the story. Nevertheless I’m still being thoroughly entertained. You can bet that when I’m finished, I’ll write a more detailed book review here.

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I’m always on the lookout for authors who not only embrace ebooks but use them to compliment their print book sales. The most interesting way of doing this, I think, is by giving ebooks away for free. Science fiction writer Cory Doctorow does it and I’m sure a lot of other writers do to.

Last night I came across the blog of writer JA Konrath (who goes by the pen name Jack Kilborn) via this Enriched by Words blog post. As I side note, I’d like to mention that I had the pleasure of seeing Konrath in my local bookstore when he stopped by to sign a few copies of his book. He happens to also live in the Chicago area like I do.

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The glitch that caused Amazon’s website to pull many ‘adult oriented’ books (mostly gay & lesbian titles) from its sales rankings, causing the books to be harder to find, caused quite a controversy last week. I detailed it in this post Amazon ‘glitch’ stirs rumors of alleged censorship (April 14).

While the question of whether or not Amazon engaged in deliberate censorship because of homophobic tendencies is still up in the air, the fierce and harsh response to the incident on blogs and Twitter brings up other questions. Were people too quick to judge? Was there a ‘mob mentality’ in the online community?

These questions, and more, were brought up in this NYT article:

Although the way messages speed across social networks makes today’s digital world ripe for mob-fueled conspiracy theories, the controversy over Amazon was striking both for its ferocity and for the velocity with which it spread.

And at least one blogger, Clay Shirky, a professor at New York University, backtracked on his criticism of Amazon:

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"I was wrong, because I believed things that weren’t true," Mr. Shirky wrote, noting that "the idea that this was an event of mainly technological propagation, rather than a coordinated bit of anti-gay bias, simply escaped me."
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