Bookish News and Publishing Tidbits 22 June 2012

'RIASS stuff:

A'giveaway of ten (yes, ten) book packs consisting of a copy of'Catch Up with the Sun'and a Book Seat!'(Aussies only, please)

A'review of'Warm Bodies'by Isaac Marion'(Rating: )

A'list of Robin Hood retellings.

Feature: why are all YA characters so gosh-darn beautiful?

Are you a nerdy type? My husband is looking for a top-notch web developer to join his company.'Details here.

Other bookish stuff:

Do authors owe their native countries a debt of gratitude?'I was obsessed, while writing'Madame Mephisto, trying to understand the predicament of living in two countries, physically and mentally, and at the same time releasing my protagonist Magda, and myself as a writer, from any obligation towards my home country. Writing in English allows me to have dual identities. I feel more comfortable in my English skin than in my Polish. I stumble when I speak in Polish, and English immediately invades my mind when I speak or try to write in Polish.

John Scalzi on how to build a NYT bestseller: Independent of the quality of the book itself, the concept of the book is accessible and easy to understand, both to devotees of the genre and ' again, this is important ' to those outside of it. I can explain the book to anyone in a sentence ('The crew of a starship realize they're doomed if they go on away missions and try to change their fate') and almost everyone who has not lived under a rock for the past 40 years knows enough about televised science fiction that the possibilities for the book open up in their head.

The French still flock to bookstores: The French, as usual, insist on being different. As independent bookstores crash and burn in the United States and Britain, the book market in France is doing just fine. France boasts 2,500 bookstores, and for every neighborhood bookstore that closes, another seems to open. From 2003 to 2011 book sales in France increased by 6.5 percent.

When bad books happen to good writers'Publishing is a business. Like any business, we need to look outside ourselves and find a product that will sell to a wider audience.'Most people just want to be entertained. Sometimes that means sacrificing stylized prose. Other times it means you get to have high quality writing'and'the type of'story that hooks a majority of consumers. When the latter happens, we do a happy dance.

Does The New Yorker Give Enough Credit to Its Sources?'Of course, the magazine wants to keep the reader interested and not break up the flow of a good story. At least one'New Yorker'writer has lamented this. In 2006, Malcolm Gladwell told the New York Observer that he viewed his blog as a means to add additional material to his stories. 'In my perfect, nerdy world,' he told Tom Scocca, 'The New Yorker'would have footnotes.'

Writing a Young Adult Fantasy Series? What you need to know.'Outlining has been'a'difficult part of the process for me.' I'm not an outliner normally, I shoot from the hip.' Yet, with this series, I found that'NOT creating an outline will lead me down a path I don't wish to go, and that would be,'forgetting some important detail from a previous book that needs to be brought out in one of the next books.

Gail Z. Martin On What She Learned From Writing Fantasy'I've also learned how much contemporary stories rely on instantaneous communication and modern travel speeds, neither of which were available in the medieval world of epic fantasy.' This has major plot ramifications.' If something happens on one battlefield, there is no way to get word to someone hundreds of miles away faster than a horse and rider can travel, unless you use magic (but magic must be unreliable to avoid being a cheat).

An art project for book loverscreated by a sadist.

An interview with Jack Kerouac:'All my editors since Malcolm Cowley have had instructions to leave my prose exactly as I wrote it. In the days of Malcolm Cowley, with'On the Road'and'The Dharma Bums, I had no power to stand by my style for better or for worse. When Malcolm Cowley made endless revisions and inserted thousands of needless commas like, say, 'Cheyenne, Wyoming' (why not just say 'Cheyenne Wyoming' and let it go at that, for instance), why, I spent five hundred dollars making the complete restitution of the'Bums'manuscript and got a bill from Viking Press called 'Revisions.' Ha ho ho.

Why Amazons Rumored Retail Bookstore Will Be Huge: But Amazon's idea has the potential to reinvigorate the entire bookstore sector, and grow interest in reading in general. That could lift the surviving indie bookstores, too, particularly those that take the hint and innovate.Maybe some of those stores will see the writing on the wall and get into publishing their own unique product, too. The era of every bookstore selling the same thing is about to end

Infographic: e-reader vs print books

Liao Yiwu, author of The Corpse Walker, has won the 2012 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade

Randa Abdel-Fattah, author of author of Does My Head Look Big in This?, Noah's Law, No Sex in the City, and more, answers Six Sharp Questions

Kurt Vonneguts Eight Tips on How to Write a Good Short Story'(video)

Whos behind those witty New Yorker covers?'(video)

Anna Karenina trailer with Keira Knightley and Jude Law