Ink48 and Comic Sans

I'm staying at Ink48 Hotel in New York. It's new but it was once a printing factory. The meeting rooms are named after fonts: Helvetica, Garamond, and Courier. But no Comic Sans?

Rejection is hard II

Sometimes we want to publish a script and the author rejects us. The rejection boot is then on the other foot to what it usually is.

That's what happened today. We were interested in a script that had been submitted to us but after a few conversations the author said no this morning. Nobody likes rejection but it was the right decision.

We do want a close relationship with the author and with the script. We want to be involved. We can even be quite directive as editors. That's us, and it works for authors who like and benefit from that sort of support, from that sort of editorial conversation, from that sort of a conversation about where his or her writing is going. That's the concept of the publisher as a "house".

But it doesn't work for everybody. And its a prick of a place to be in when it isn't working - for everybody; when there is a mismatch between expectations. And I think many authors so want to be published that they say yes that's what I want, without exploring what the editorial relationship will mean for them and their book(s). Some, usually experienced, authors are clear sighted but there's lots of myths hanging around about what publishers should or should not do.

So the author in this case made the right call about what she wanted. And though it hurts, it's a decision that I respect her making. For us it was a process worth going through to establish that it was the right call.

I'm looking forward to seeing that manuscript as a book in a bookshop one day (soooner rather than later).

iiNet not guilty in Oz but Limewire guilty in US

iiNet was not held responsible in Australian courts for customers downloading content illegally but Limewire is being held responsible in the US courts.

In the iiNet judgement Australian Federal Court judge Justice Dennis Cowdroy said: "It is impossible to conclude that iiNet has authorised copyright infringement... (it) did not have relevant power to prevent infringements occurring,"

US District Court Judge Kimba Wood said, "The evidence establishes that LimeWire users directly infringed plaintiffs' copyrights, and that LimeWire engaged in purposeful conduct intended to foster that infringement"