I recently finished reading The Alchemist (aff link) for a book club I belong to. I must admit, at first the book didn’t excite me very much. Even the first chapter or two dragged. But after that, I became engrossed in the story and I ended up liking the book enough to recommend here. That is hardly the point of this post, however.

The Alchemist was originally written in Portuguese, and then translated into many languages, including English. It’s probably one of those rare gems in the US publishing industry that a translated book becomes such a big hit. I have never been averse to reading translated works of literature (maybe with the exception of poetry, but that’s another post for another day). But I often wonder what has been lost in the translation process. Perhaps many Americans feel this way, which is why we (as a country) don’t read that many translated books. Maybe the issue is much more complicated than that.

On Sunday, while reading the New York Times (online, of course), I came across this article about the lack of translated books from foreign authors in the American publishing industry. It’s actually a deficit that is hurting Americans more and more as the world becomes more connected through travel and technology. Yes, there are world-class authors right here in the United States and world-class books are being published, in English, every year. But we (Americans) are still missing out on the larger picture of world literary discourse.

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I normally don’t expect any good news to come on a Monday. Generally, Monday’s are filled with doom and gloom, made worse by the ending weekend and an entire workweek to ponder with dread.

But this morning was different. I was reading my Publishers Weekly e-newsletter and came across a story that lifted my spirits. Publishing house Simon & Schuster will be going mobile! Here is, in part, what the article said:

Simon & Schuster and Macmillan Publishing Solutions subsidiary MPS Mobile announced a partnership today through which MPS will distribute over 500 S&S e-books through its Global Reader platform, which makes digital book content available over any Web-enabled mobile phone.

The article goes on to say that the first books to be made available right away are The Secret and the Star Trek books.

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Long-time readers of this blog know that one of my main interests is new, workable models for the publishing industry. The current model is out-of-date, antiquated and goes against the grain of most other business models for consumer products (what other industry, other than publishing, demands that manufacturers take back product that doesn’t sell?).

One idea that has intrigued me for a while now is a subscription-based book publishing service. Here’s how it can work: A publisher (usually a small press in a niche market) markets directly to consumers, bypassing bookstores altogether. The consumer pays a one-time annual subscription fee and each month, the publisher sends the subscribers a new book on their catalog.

Of course, there are variations on this. The frequency of books sent to subscribers would vary with how many books a press published each year. And like magazines, the cost of the subscription would include shipping, handling, etc.

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The same group that helped in the defense of Roger Rapoport, who was sued after trying to publish The Harry Potter Lexicon (read more about the case here), will become an official tax-exempt organization to help writers with issues on fair use and first amendment rights. I came across this article on Publishers Weekly, which describes the goals of the new organization that will…

…help support other creative artists faced with legal threats or lawsuits.

Additionally, the Right to Write will also collect and help spread information regarding intellectual property issues:

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There’s no question that technology is changing the way we consume all types of media, including literature. But what happens when you want to turn the novel into something akin to a movie or television show?

One person is trying to do just that, and he calls it the "digi novel". Who is he? It’s Anthony Zuiker, the man behind the popular CSI series (which, I must confess, I have never seen a complete episode). I came across this blog post from the UK site Guardian Unlimited. Here is Zuiker’s idea:

With the modesty of one of the most important men in the American media, Zuiker thinks the digi-novel "offers publishing a chance to catch up with the YouTube generation that has lost passion for reading". That chance comes at a price; Penguin imprint Dutton are paying Zuiker a seven-figure sum.

Zuiker continues:

"I want to give traditional crime novel readers a more immersive experience," Zuiker explains of what’s been labelled "storytelling 2.0".

That immersive experience involves short video clips every few chapters of a novel. Certainly not something your run-of-the-mill paperback offers. Zuiker justifies this idea by saying that he wants "To be rewarded every couple of chapters by seeing something visual…" I think he’s missing the point of reading a novel to begin with.

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Move over ebooks, move over print books and what the heck, throw everything you know about writing a novel out the window. Well, maybe not quite everything.

Many of you are probably familiar with the micro-blogging tool called Twitter. Personally, I don’t use the service because I’ve never really had a use for it. And getting sent messages about the minutia of everyday life from people I don’t really know isn’t all that appealing to me.

Now there’s new use for Twitter – writing novels and instantly sending them to your mass following! One such writer, Matt Richtel, wrote about his thriller novel he "published" on Twitter, which he affectionately calls "Twiller" (get it? Thriller + Twitter = Twiller). You can read about his exploits in this post.

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I have a fickle relationship with the online superstore Amazon.com: I love buying stuff from them, I even have Amazon affiliate links and ads on this blog (hey, domain hosting doesn’t pay for itself), yet I’m beginning to feel that Amazon is starting to have an unfair monopoly in the book industry.

This uneasy feeling actually started when I wrote this post, this post, and this post about Amazon’s shady policy of requiring POD publishers to use their (Amazon’s) own printing service. Then today, as I was reading my favorite blogs on Google Reader, I came across this post on the Teleread Blog about Amazon acquiring Shelfari, a book sharing and social networking site for bookworms.

So let’s run down the list of of how Amazon has a tight grasp on the book selling market:

• Amazon is the dominant seller of books online. If you’re book is going to be published, there’s a good chance it’s going to be sold by Amazon.
• As mentioned above, they insist on POD publishers to print their books using Amazon’s own POD printing service. So even self-published authors who want to sell on Amazon have their hands tied.
• Amazon owns Abe Books, another online bookstore.
• Amazon has the Kindle – its own proprietary ebook reader. While you can upload your own content onto the Kindle, it still has an unbreakable tether to Amazon.

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I recently came across this interesting blog post by Nathan Bransford, a literary agent. The post is basically a question for readers. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Is a publisher morally responsible for the content they publish, or should the publisher respond to public demand, stand back, and let the public and marketplace determine the merits of the books they publish?

The question stems from two recent controversial decisions in the publishing world: The first was the decision by Random House canceled the book The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones over concerns an Islamic scholar raised about the possibility of violence because some might find the book offensive. For those of you that don’t know, The Jewel of Medina, is a book about the bride A’isha, the bride of the Prophet Muhammad (read more about the book here). This, of course comes in the wake of the cartoon fiasco which did lead to violence and even a death or two.

The second incident is a book published by Simon and Schuster called Obama Nation (aff link), which has been highly criticized as a blatant smear against the Democratic front runner for the Presidential nomination.

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Sony is taking a positive step forward by adopting epub standards for its eReader P-505. What does this mean? Basically epub is a format for ebooks that can be used across many different hardware and software platforms. For a more detailed, and better description, check out this website.

What I find particularly refreshing about Sony’s move towards epub, is that it opens the doors for publishers to get their books onto the eReader. I came across this article from Publishers Weekly, and it states:

Brennan Mullin, v-p of Sony Audio, said the company was adopting the epub standard to encourage more vendors, booksellers and publishers to get involved in the e-book market and to broaden the amount of content that can be viewed on the Reader. The move to use epub is a significant change in approach for Sony, which has used its own standards and restricted consumers to buying e-books for the Reader from its own store. The use of epub will allow consumers to buy titles from a variety of outlets and will grow the number of titles compatible with the Reader to well passed the 45,000 now available through its online store.

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Everyone knows that the 2nd generation 3G iPhone is being released this Friday (July 11) and along with it, an application store on the Apple website that will finally allow iPhone/iPod Touch users to download native apps to our beloved devices. And if you didn’t know that, then you have been living under a rock for the last 7 months and probably aren’t worthy of the iPhone!

Well I’m pleased to announce that among these applications for the iPhone/iPod Touch will be a native ebook reader (actually, there will be several, according to reports I’ve read)! A recent post on The Unofficial Apple Weblog announced one particular ebook reader that looks promising.

ZappTek plans on partnering with "today’s hottest writers" to distribute new fiction using Legends to bring the reading experience to iPhone / iPod Touch 2.0. Each book appears as an icon on the Home screen, and the books automatically re-open to the last page you were reading. You can also bookmark or annotate any page.

It appears that the app itself will be free, but they will charge $1.99 for short stories and $4.99 for novels. Not too shabby.

The app is called Legends and so far, has more features than most other ebook apps for the iPhone I have seen announced. One of the biggest features is bookmarking, so you don’t have to scroll down 20+ pages to find where you left off. Also, if you look on the Legends website, the app looks clean and easy to use.

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