Furl http://www.furl.net/ http://backend.userland.com/rss http://www.furl.net/member/sree.rss Furl archive. Wed, 03 Dec 2008 07:25:28 GMT http://www.furl.net/item/30318661/forward http://www.furl.net/item/30318661 Sun, 03 Feb 2008 02:51:20 GMT Web Sites to note Very Techie 3 http://www.furl.net/item/30318622/forward http://www.furl.net/item/30318622 Sun, 03 Feb 2008 02:46:29 GMT Business Web Sites to note Social bookmarking 3 http://www.furl.net/item/27823249/forward http://www.furl.net/item/27823249 Type in a ZIP code and get lots of useful data, stats and more; compare it to other ZIP codes, too. Fri, 26 Oct 2007 15:30:48 GMT Web Sites to note Useful Stats 3 http://www.furl.net/item/27497435/forward http://www.furl.net/item/27497435 Sat, 20 Oct 2007 19:11:21 GMT Books sajaforum The Booker prize boosts the paltry sales of literary fiction. But I wonder how most authors keep going Two recent surveys have found that 60 percent of British authors earn less than 10,000 pounds a year Blake Morrison Friday October 19, 2007 The Guardian Anne Enright Big honour, small purse. Anne Enright. Photograph: Sarah Lee You know that feeling you get when you're eating in an empty restaurant or seem to be the only guest at a hotel, yet there are lots of waiters, chefs, maids, cleaners, barmen, receptionists, etc, and you think: how can they afford to keep going? Where's the income coming from? The figures don't add up. The business looks doomed. But when you return a year later the place is exactly as before. Article continues I had that feeling this week, about literary fiction, after the award of the Man Booker prize. The Booker is always a special week for fiction. And though terrestrial television coverage of the event is shorter and frothier than it used to be - 60 seconds of high drama on the 10 o'clock news as the winner is announced, rather than a half-hour programme with author interviews and a panel of critics - media interest remains intense. That's true in general of literary fiction: the new Philip Roth, the award of the Nobel prize to Doris Lessing, the reports of this or that novelist (usually Martin Amis) being involved in some spat - all generate hundreds of column inches. Reading groups have given a boost to fiction, too. And when, amid the bow ties and posh frocks, the Booker goes to a writer as talented as Anne Enright, it seems all's right with the world. Until you look at sales figures, that is. By mid-August, Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach had reached sales of 100,000, an astonishing figure for a hardback novel. But the results for the rest of the Booker shortlist make chastening reading. At the same point, Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist had sold 1,519 copies; Lloyd Jones's Master Pip 880; Enright's The Gathering 834; Nicola Barker's Darkmans 499; and Indra Sinha's Animal's People 231. It wasn't as if these novels had only just been published - most had been out for several months. Thanks to the Booker effect, they are now selling much better, of course. But despite enthusiastic reviews and massive publicity, even Enright's had sold only 3,500 copies on the eve of the prize. Let's suppose that a realistic sale for a literary novel these days is 2,000 copies in hardback and 8,000 in paperback. At current cover prices, that will generate royalties of around £9,000. Serialisations, film or television options and sales of foreign rights might push earnings up to £12,000. But this isn't annual income, it's the proceeds from the three or four years spent writing the novel. Two recent surveys have found that 60% of British authors earn less than £10,000 a year - and that median earnings are less than a quarter of the national wage. You wonder how they, and publishers and agents, keep going. Not surprisingly, an increasing number of novelists have day jobs as teachers and professors of creative writing. In recent years, there has been a huge growth in such MAs; some undergraduate degrees now offer creative writing as an option, too. That so many people want to write (and, in some cases, read as well) is encouraging. And a structured writing programme at a university can undoubtedly help, as the success of Enright (who did hers at the University of East Anglia) has proved. Only last week at Goldsmiths College, where I teach, one of our graduates had a collection of short stories accepted by a leading publisher. But when I think how tough the marketplace for the literary novel is (let alone for a collection of short stories), I feel every MA course ought to carry a health warning: "Publication not guaranteed. And likely to earn you next to nothing even if achieved. Write only if you feel you've no choice. And let your motive not be money or fame but pleasure." · Along with Angela Carter (who taught Enright), the writer most often mentioned by creative writing students is Raymond Carver: they find the spareness of his prose an inspiring model. Now his widow Tess Gallagher has decided it's too spare, and is hoping to reissue his collection of stories What We Talk About When We Talk About Love without the cuts and changes forced on Carver by Gordon Lish, his editor. Lish does seem to have been unusually interventionist, removing up to half of Carver's words and rewriting his endings. Towards the end of his life, Carver himself began to undo some of Lish's edits. But most attempts by keepers of the flame to restore an original text leave one admiring the author less and the editor more. If I were a friend of Tess Gallagher, I'd advise her to let be - or to save the uncut Carver for a scholarly edition. · If Gordon Brown was hoping to improve his standing in the polls through the feelgood euphoria of British sporting success, I fear he may be in for a rough weekend. Thanks to the unexpected success of the English rugby and cricket teams in recent weeks, things had begun to look highly promising. But since the English and Scottish football teams lost on Wednesday night, feelbad reality has set in. Now it's odds on that England will lose to South Africa at rugby, Lewis Hamilton will have engine failure in Brazil, and Andy Murray's wrist injury will sideline him till next year. The only man laughing will be David Cameron. · This week Blake watched the 30s documentary Night Mail for the first time in a decade: "Auden, Britten and beautiful snapshots of the British at work - who could ask for more?" He read Jane Feaver's first novel, According to Ruth: "An intimate portrait of a bohemian family in the sticks - great stuff. A pity it didn't make the Booker shortlist." 3 http://www.furl.net/item/25825624/forward http://www.furl.net/item/25825624 Wed, 19 Sep 2007 17:03:10 GMT Web Sites to note Useful Firefox Browsers Lists 3 http://www.furl.net/item/25439523/forward http://www.furl.net/item/25439523 A Web 2.0 approach to trip planning - very attractions-focused. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 02:52:26 GMT Web Sites to note Travel Web 2.0 3 http://www.furl.net/item/24486753/forward http://www.furl.net/item/24486753 A truly funny site - shows you whole new way to brainstorm. Keep hittting the symbol next to the word "Idea Generator." Wed, 22 Aug 2007 10:19:12 GMT Funny Web Sites to note Fun Sites 5 http://www.furl.net/item/23388158/forward http://www.furl.net/item/23388158 Lots of useful tips for job-seekers here. Tue, 31 Jul 2007 03:49:03 GMT Web Sites to note Jobs Web 2.0 3 http://www.furl.net/item/23352322/forward http://www.furl.net/item/23352322 Good tips for those interested in starting a business. Mon, 30 Jul 2007 10:34:55 GMT Business Web Sites to note Business Plans 3 http://www.furl.net/item/23314170/forward http://www.furl.net/item/23314170 BlueEgg ("All Things Being Eco") is a brand-new site that looks to teach the world about the environment in a fun way. What they say: "Blue Egg is an e-media company that celebrates attainable sustainable living. By providing clear, credible information and practical solutions, we want to help you become more mindful of the environment—without suggesting that you surrender style, comfort, and convenience, and without asking you to spend a lot of extra cash." The site is run by a team of veteran journalists and it shows in their emphasis on practical, understandable information. The site has videos, quizzes and news about the environment. It also offers lots of useful advice, especially in the "What You Can Do" section, which I liked. I look forward to following the site's progress (and my learning more) in the months ahead. Sun, 29 Jul 2007 13:06:07 GMT Web Sites to note Useful Environment 3