Creative 06/03/2022

The publishing industry remains woefully out of step and audiobooks enter the hot seat

UP FOR DISCUSSION

spent a bunch of time today looking at paintings of clouds. and my conclusion is that paintings of clouds are good pic.twitter.com/LesUzTmFdC

— david byron queen (@byron_queen) May 30, 2022

Fascinating cultural differences pic.twitter.com/gVsU7m63FD

— Alasdair Beckett-King (@MisterABK) May 31, 2022

ILL-CONSTRUED READING LISTS, OR, WHAT WAS THE THOUGHT PROCESS BEHIND THIS?

This week, senior editor of Amistad Books Jenn Baker expressed disappointment and frustration with Publisher’s Weekly after the vertical published an article entitled “Books to Mark Juneteenth,”  which neglected to feature any “Black editor or publisher.” The piece — written by two Black authors — solicits reading recs from eight high-ranking members of the publishing industry, seven of whom are white, and none of whom, as Baker pointed out, work with Black imprints like Amistad, Just Us Books, and One World. “I am SO tired of BIPOC capitalized on and cherry-picked for inclusion when it comes to our culture & history. A person is TIRED yall,” she wrote. Some commenters, like Ellen Oh, described Publishers Weekly’s misstep as “so not surprising,” though I’m struggling to find context as to why that may be (anyone know?).  

Also this week, The Guardian inadvertently courted ire after curating a list of “books by women that every man should read.” The problem? The list was entirely curated by male authors. Contributors included Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, and Richard Curtis, who suggested such obscure novels as To Kill a Mockingbird and Mrs. Dalloway. This article is, apparently, part of the hashtag campaign #menreadingwomen, in which men post selfies congratulating themselves on completing books written by the publishing industry’s biggest demographic. According to studies also published in The Guardian, the majority of workers in the publishing industry (both UK and US) are women, and the majority of “the 1,000 bestselling fiction titles from 2020 were written by women.” 

These both feel like such obvious oversights that I almost envy the editorial staff at Publishers Weekly and The Guardian for being so ignorant. I wonder if anyone has told them that Will Smith slapped Chris Rock. Or about Covid? My God, who will tell them?

AUTHORS TAKE UMBRAGE AT SLOPPY AUDIOBOOKS

Yesterday, Xiran Jay Zhao (“Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor”) posted a thread revealing that their publisher, Simon & Schuster, neglected to hire a Mandarin-speaking narrator for the audiobook version of their book, which is a New York Times bestseller. Zhao explained that the main character Zachary Ying uses “a LOT” of Mandarin in the text. “Mandarin is a tonal language,” Zhao wrote, “so if you don’t hit the tone right you are saying something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.” Zhao’s efforts to provide their publisher with a pronunciation guide in order to avoid exactly this problem were, according to the author, neglected, “because they all came out wrong.” 

Inspired by Zhao’s honesty, author Lillie Vale came forward with a similar complaint: Her novel, “Beauty and the Besharam,” includes words in Hindi and Marathi. When she got the recording, she wrote, the Hindi and Marathi words were pronounced incorrectly — she noted “the strange way most words were spoken, emphasis in all the wrong places.” But it got worse as the recording went on. “They sound like Apu, I remember thinking faintly,” she wrote. Vale’s ongoing effort to rectify the audiobook, which includes taking the product temporarily off the market, will likely have financial repercussions, she acknowledged: “Audiobooks make up a significant chunk of sales – which I’ve lost out on with the audiobook down.” 

These complaints are emblematic of an ongoing discussion in the audiobook world, which has been struggling to resolve questions of accents, imitations, race, and casting for the last year. In an article for Slate last year, Laura Miller described the predictably small, siloed team of freelancers that bring audiobooks to life, and the ongoing, unresolved questions about which narrators are adequate to perform characters of diverse identities. 

TLDR – THE LITERARY DRAMA ROUNDUP

Catty slights and mysterious expat writers abound this week: Gawker hints that an unnamed “expat writer” is coming back to New York after a sojourn and marital split in Paris, and if that’s not enough of a writing prompt for you, I don’t know what is. (If anyone DOES know who this is, please drop a line to [email protected] …). 

Meanwhile, the actress who played Doris Klompus on Seinfeld dissed and dismissed Ocean Vuong on TikTok for being convoluted. Say it with me, five times fast: Doris Klompus actress emerges from obscurity to snub prestigious poet in a not-yet-viral video on a popular app platform.  The Gawker writer who covered the slight seemed more pressed about Vuong than Ms. Klompus (“… it’s funny to watch someone like Annie, seemingly without context, read the words of someone so critically adored and say what many of us might be thinking: What is this shit?”). To that I say, jealousy’s a disease; get well soon!

BEST OF LIT TWITTER

– Astra mag’s Aria Aber was tragically mistaken for a rocket scientist working for a rocket company named … Astra. 

– The New Yorker’s Rachel Syme asks for delicious novel recs (“a book you read recently that was so good that you didn’t need to look up for a few hours”), a useful compendium for those of us in search of a summer read. Possibly chiming in on this week’s discourse, Syme also classifies the “four types of audiobook narrators,” much to the delight of one Brandon Taylor.

– I was reassured by this quote from Greg Tate (author of “Flyboy in The Buttermilk” and “Everything But the Burden: What White People Are Taking from Black Culture”), shared by Tamara K. Nopper: “Really, any changes that happened with the writing, it was just maturity … You realize, after a while, your thoughts are incendiary enough; the language doesn’t have to also be on fire all the time.”

DEALS, DEALS, DEALS

– Quentin Tarantino is writing a film book called “Cinema Speculation.” The title will be released via HarperCollins in late October of this year, and dovetails with Tarantino’s long-standing vow to quit directing films after making 10 movies. According to Kirkus Reviews, Tarantino has said that, upon the cessation of his directing career, he will “pivot … to writing books about movies.” 

– Maris Kreizman, of Literary Hub’s “The Maris Review” podcast, announced this week that she is publishing a “memoir-in-essays” called“I Want To Burn This Place Down,” via Ecco. A release date has not yet been disclosed. 

COMINGS AND GOINGS

– Professor and writer Adam Dalva announced that he is the new Senior Fiction Editor at Guernica. He is replacing Meakin Armstrong, who published an open letter about leaving the site to focus on his writing in February. 

– This week, Megha Majumdar left her role as editor-in-chief of Catapult “to focus on her writing career and teaching opportunities.” She will be replaced by Kendall Storey, who has been promoted from senior editor. Replacing Storey is Alicia Kroell, now books editor. 

GET GLAMOROUS: THE FUNNEST-SOUNDING LITERARY EVENTS THIS MONTH

– Speaking of Guernica, the mag is hosting a “salon & reading” in person at Lowlands Bar in NYC on June 9. Mona Kareem and Syreeta McFadden will be reading, and all ticket sales will support Guernica. For all the information, see here.

WRITING PROMPTS AND CHALLENGES

– #1000WordsofSummer is an annual 2-week, entirely virtual writing challenge spearheaded by Jami Attenberg ( author of”I Came All This Way To Meet You” and “All This Could Be Yours”). The idea is simple: Write 1,000 words (or the equivalent in your genre of choice) every day between June 4 and June 17.  

AND EVERYTHING ELSE

– The vibes are shifting at The Paris Review, reports Vulture, with a capsule portrait of the heralded journal’s new staff and “softer” approach. In an effort to distance itself from once being a publication run by self-proclaimed “Tall Young Men,” The Paris Review’s new EIC, Emily Stokes, is going for something that “feel[s] really classic but not at all nostalgic.” 

– A book purporting to be the autobiography of disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein (“Harvey Weinstein: My Story”) was taken off of Amazon this week. Though the book’s manuscript came from the prison where Weinstein is incarcerated, reported the LA Times, it’s more likely that it was written by two other incarcerated people held there. After all, one of Weinstein’s attorneys told Page Six, “knowing Harvey, if he was going to do something like this, it would be on a bigger, more grand scale.” 

– Geetanjali Shree won the International Booker Prize for Tomb of Sand, a nearly-740 page novel. According to the New York Times, “It is the first [book] in an Indian language to win the International Booker Prize, and the first in Hindi to even secure a nomination.” Shree will reportedly split the award, equivalent to around $63,000, with the book’s translator, Daisy Rockwell. 

– Substack’s financial woes continue: After a meteoric rise in 2020, the self-publishing newsletter platform has been continuing to stagnate, slash jobs, and slough off big-name writers for months, who report struggling to keep up with the constant content such platforms necessitate. Representatives from the company are adamant that this does not herald the death knell of another trendy startup that took off during the pandemic, though a glimpse at the short life of Clubhouse might indicate otherwise. 

TIP JAR

Do YOU have absolutely juicy gossip or sizzling hot takes for the bookish? Have you spotted a literary celeb swanning about? No detail is too small; no tea too lukewarm! Channel your inner Harriet the Spy / Lady Whistledown and send ur updates to [email protected] :~) All will be published anonymously!