ABC claims copyright for Greens ad

The ABC says it can't release the ad created for The Pitch on The Gruen Transfer as they can't be seen to be supporting one side or the other. Fair enough. But it does raise the question of why the ABC is demanding exclusive copyright for the ads created for the Gruen Transfer. To quote the ABC:

"@empatt Yep. All pitches in Gruen Nation and Transfer sign over copyright. Otherwise too risky for a organisation like the ABC to do it," it said on its Twitter account.

Risky? I'm not a lawyer but bollocks. Why don't they just ask for a non-exclusive right?

Congratulations to Sue

Congratulations to Sue for After being highly recommended in the 2010 Australian Family Therapists Award for Children's Literature. Of course Sue's Allie McGregor's True Colours won three years ago. Both are great reads - with issues that challenge and provoke the reader.

Welcome to Gitsi

Gitsi joined us as our new publicist on Wednesday. And that's very exciting for us, and for our authors, illustrators and everybody in the black dog community. Thanks to KT for all her hard work in holding the publicity fort over the last months.

Congratulations to Lili

Lili has won the IBBY Ena Noel Award for Scatterheart, which is very EXCITING. And here's the announcement from the IBBY newsletter:

Scatterheart by Lili Wilkinson (black dog books)

Lili Wilkinson reveals on her publisher’s website that her most treasured possession is her collection of 32 different editions of Alice in Wonderland. As such an avid collector of the fantastic it is not surprising that fantasy finds its way into her historical narrative, Scatterheart, and informs its title.

A novel for young adults, Scatterheart is the story of Hannah Cheshire, an indulged, motherless, only child who enjoys a privileged lifestyle in early 19th century London before her father’s fortunes fade spectacularly and she is left destitute and alone. Before long, she is wrongly accused of a petty crime and after languishing in a filthy prison cell, finds herself transported to Australia.

Each chapter of Hannah’s story begins with the tale of Scatterheart, a fairy tale version of her own search for happily ever after. In a novel that is an interesting mix of historical fiction, fantasy, adventure and melodrama, Wilkinson has created in Hannah a strong character undergoing a metamorphosis from the spoilt and self centred society miss to a resilient, resourceful and loyal young woman. Her descriptions of well researched settings are equally memorable, from the dank and dangerous prison cells to the harsh realities and privations of life aboard a prison ship and in the penal colony of New South Wales. The amalgam of styles and stories revealed in Scatterheart engages, informs and entertains and is indicative of Wilkinson’s versatility.

Such skill is worthy of encouragement in an emerging young writer. The judging panel congratulates Lili Wilkinson, recipient of the IBBY Australia Ena Noel encouragement award for literature for young people.

EN judges: Jane Connolly (Qld), Judy Moss (Tas), Robin Morrow (NSW).

Henry tells it like it is

Henry's blog

the old and the new of reading the newspaper at breakfast

unavailable in Australia

Only one of the Barry Lopez titles that audible.com has is available for download in Australia.

Congratulations

… to Nic Brasch on his win in the Australian Educational Publishing Awards for The Science Behind.

No we didn't publish it. Macmillan Ed did. (Congratulations to Stuart and Col among others.)

But we did publish So You Want To Be Prime Minister (famously read to a class of primary students on TV by Julia Gillard shortly after publication last year) and Gallipoli: Reckless Valour, both very excellent books by Nick Brasch.

Not fair!

It's frustrating - ebooks and audiobooks I want to read, and listen to, are just not available to an Australian purchaser.

Here's a list of what I couldn't buy this week:

Plainsong (Kent Haruf) audiobook

A Wrinkle in Time audio book

We're in effect being intellectually impoverished by the way ebook market is evolving. An American reader has more access to much more reading (listening) than an Australian reader. The Australian government should look to an e-equivalent of the 30/90 day rule to force books to be available here in this territory.

And the same goes for music.

The publishers benefited from the introduction of the 30/90 day rule here so it would be a shot in the arm to the local branches of the multinational publishers based here. A win/win situation!

Final Twilight film due …

for release on November 16 2012. The end of the franchise is nigh? The of vampires as a genre? The end of paranormal (aka bit lit) as a genre?

"Blokes, Books and Brekky"

I've been off talking to Scotch College boys and their fathers about recommended reading for boys - with James Roy, Leesa Lambert, Eva Mills and Kristin Gill. After much reduction (using intense heat) I got the list down to ten series and authors, which was still too many for the 5 minutes of allotted time.

Here's a long (but still incomplete) list of picks:

For lower secondary (and upper primary):

Dragonkeeper series by Carole Wilkinson. - Carole helps everybody to realise that they have a special talent. A beautifully told magically realist tale.

The Cherub series by Robert Muchamore - AND the Henderson Boys. The poms do spies and thrillers really well.)

Boy Soldier series by Andy McNab - another good pommy spy writer.)

Town by James Roy - for those who love dipping into linked short stories)

Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials - the movie was The Golden Compass, which was not a patch on the books.

Skulduggery Pleasant series by Derek Landy

The Spooks Books by Joseph Delaney

Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games. Two books out and one to come. Enough political depth to provoke thought. The provinces versus the centre

Black Dog's the Drum series.

Hatchet and its sequels, by Gary Paulsen

Shirley Marr's Fury - smart and sassy, a bit girly for guys just maybe, but a guy needs to know how girls think.

The Mortal Engines series by Phillip Reeve (and his Here Lies Arthur)

Leviathan by Scott Westerfield

anything by Morris Gleitzman. My brother picked up Two Weeks with Queen at 36 and commented on how good it was without thinking of it as a book for kids.

Eragon and Brisingr

Con Iggulden is hot at the moment and keen on Mongols

Louis Sachar's Holes (and the rest)

William Nicholson's Wind on Fire series

Patrick Ness's

Tomorrow When the War Began - after you've seen the movie, which is due out in September

The Joshua Files

Garth Nix of course. Any of his series.

Alex Rider

Charlie Hickson's Young Bond

Mark Walden's Hive series

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

The Joshua Files

And for the older reader

Q&A by Vikas Swarup - the book on which Slum Dog Millionaire was based.

Hostage by Karen Tayleur - a road book.

Ellen Hopkin's Burned, Crank, Tricks and Glass - that's three books - just out from Simon and Schuster.

Scott Westerfield's Pretties etc

The usual thriller culprits: Dan Brown, James Patterson et al

John Green, maybe try Looking for Alaska

Annie Rose's Sex and Other Stuff - essential reading

Mama's Song by Ben Beaton, for how blokes think girls think.

Qantas and Virgin Blue carbon offsets are not tax-deductible

Carbon offsets that are done direct with Qantas or Virgin Blue for business flights are not tax deductible!

A business is much better off making an offsetting donation through Greenfleet. This renders the Qantas and Virgin Blue programs very unattractive. The airlines should be lobbying the government to change that — if they're smart.

Of course any offsetting personal donation with Greenfleet is just as deductible.

That's a message worth getting out and about.

Gorgeous new Fitzroy graffiti appears overnigh

I drive down Marion Lane every day on my way to work and this morning as I swung around the corner into Marion Lane these visual treats appeared - as if by magic. It's a graffiti style I've not seen before - lovely brushstrokes, and a lovely freehand used in constructing the images.

From Melbourne, the Australia's graffiti capital!

black dogs

When we chose the name black dog it was in tribute to a couple of black dogs we'd know. Zac was a dog I'd had a university. He was a bitzer with a good chunk of cattle dog. Black with brown eyebrows. Smart. Fast. And his own master. Frank, Maryann's father, always had dogs on the farm, including, of course, Blackie. We thought there was something quintessentially Australian about the name black dog. There is and there is something quite international. From gelato in Chicago to restaurants on Martha's Vineyard, everybody loves a black dog. And there's lots of folklore about black dogs. Here's but one link.

IPod = change agent

There's British Bookseller report online that says a minority know about the Kindle, fewer know about the Sony ereader, but lots know about the iPad (even before its British release). The spin from the Bookseller was that the ebook threat is overstated but I'm hearing that its the iPad that's going to make the change.

I'm hearing lots of talk about the iPad being considered or trialled in schools - that will change the reading habits of a generation.

ebooks better or worse for so-called mid-list authors?

I'm with Richard Curtis on this one.

you have to love the thrillers that come through the email.

I am Captain Jim Hatchett of the US Marine Force on Monitoring and Peace -keeping mission in Baghdad-Iraq. On the 7th day of June 2009, we were alerted on the sudden presence of some Terrorists camping in a suburb not too far from Karbala here in Iraq. After Immediate intervention, we captured three (3) of the Terrorists, twenty-six (26) were killed leaving seven (7) injured.In the process of torture they confessed being rebels for late Ayman al-Zawahiri and took us to acave in Karbala which served as their camp. Here we recovered several guns, bombs and other Ammunitions including some boxes among which two contains nuclear weapons, one filled with hard drugs(cocaine) and the other four to my amazement contain some US Dollars amounting to $30.2M after I and two of my junior intelligent officers counted them. I however instructed them to keep this in high secrecy.I am in keen need of a “Reliable and Trustworthy” person like you who would receive, secure and protect these boxes containing the US Dollars for me up on till my assignment elapses in here in Iraq. I assure and promise to give you 30%
of this fund, however feel free to negotiate what you wish to have as your percentage in this business. Please assure me of your keeping this topmost secret to protect my job with the US Monitoring and Peace-Keeping mission.

A role for George Clooney?

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"