Bookish links 23 Nov: writing a pitch; jaded readers; editors: not waving, drowning more!

RIASS stuff:

Pumpkin-based jousting and Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow'Guys, I had no idea that this book was meant to be a funny story, not a spooky one. Its hilarious! Theres a pumpkin head!

I do not like that stalker man: a Seussian take on horrible love interests in literature'(yes, yes, I had too much coffee yesterday)

On Spoilers and The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens'In which I argue that if you're averse to spoilers'you're probably not reading the way you're meant to.

Does buying books second-hand make us bad people?

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my US readers (who probably arent reading this, but still)!

Other bookish stuff:

Tom Kerevan on how to write a pitch'Every word has to add value; every sentence is constructed to transmit strong visuals, communicate emotion or elicit a response from the audience. And seriously, less is more. You need to in 60 seconds, youve got a problem. Three crucial factors that need to be included in the pitch are why youre the person to tell the story, what the emotional content of the story is, and why the story should be told now.

On black female main characters in Hollywood'About film, but definitely applicable to books. The author notes that the roles that go to black women in Hollywood are those *written* specifically with a black female character in mindany other roles will be given, de facto, to a white woman. The same has been (and is) an issue in literature, where black characters tend to appear in issues books, or are characters dealing with things that are to do with their cultural backgroundrather than simply just being a character who happens to be black. 'Studios shouldn't be selling black female films to black females. They should be selling female films to females.

Really fat books that are worth the effort'The usual suspects, really: Joyce, Proust, Melville, Pynchon etc.

The daily routines of famous writers

JSTOR provides free access to Wikipedia editors via pilot program'The'Wikimedia Foundation is collaborating with'JSTOR, a service of the not-for-profit organisation'ITHAKA, to provide 100 of the most active Wikipedia editors with free access to the complete archive collections on JSTOR, including more than 1,600 academic journals, primary source documents and other works.

Digital sales at Cambridge University Press are up 50%

Publishers are getting grumpy at all the 50 Shades knock-offs. Um. (So are we, but sadly we poor readers have no recourse) It may seem a bit contradictory, but its not the content thats bugging publishers (after all, the book started off fan fic itself), but rather that others are using the strength of the 50 Shades brand to sell their products. (In other news, Im going to start a sunglasses company that stocks 50 different styles.)

Feeling jaded about reading and reviewing? This blog post is a great wake-up call for those of us drowning in review copies and struggling to find time for the books we want to read as a result. (Yes, theres a reason Ive been reviewing more classics and lit fic of late, and why there have been fewer blog tours on the site.)

On finding romance novels that wont make you cry'An interesting post about being asked for romance recommendations that wont make a reader sad. It may seem silly to non-romance readers, but romance novels do often hit tear-jerker statuseach contains a black moment where all is lost, and can be tough going depending on the subject matter.

The strange case of the drowning editor'The only way to get the most out of the 'publishing machine' is get your hands on as many of its levers as possible. An editor needs to be an expert copy writergraphic designer, to save a book from the me too dreariness that can be foisted on a book. A publicist; that is if you want more for your titles than to have them sent out to the same old people and have a few cursory calls made to magazines and radio stations. Ditto marketing if you want more than a facebook page and some optimistic talk which it inevitably turns out there isn't the budget for.

On recording an audiobook'I worried about delivering thousands of words with enough energy to keep readers awake and listening. I worried about getting through all of those words. Worst of all, I dreaded reading those words and not liking them. I've often found that reading my own work aloud can be mortifying ' why did I choose that phrase? That word is all wrong!

Esquire to make print magazine interactive through Netpage App'Esquire is offering interactivity without changing the print design, outside of a few text reminders guiding readers to try out the new app. Every bit of the magazine can be recognized by the app and saved on readers' smartphones as a high-resolution pdf. That means readers of the print magazine will be able to tweet a story easily, rather than having to go and find the web site version, which sometimes isn't posted until later. (As an aside, I was interested to read that many readers mistake QR codes for ads)

Are you an artist? Want to illustrate'Brave New World? Give this competition a shot.

This is ancient in the world of the internet (August, my goodness!), but I enjoyed this NPR podcast on the chumminess of the internet and the lack of truly critical reviewsa response to to that Slate article that was doing the rounds at the time.

Bookalanches: are you prepared?