Newsletter: October 2007

Autumn has well and truly set in here in the UK, and publishers are already gearing up for the busy period leading up to Christmas. What will this year's ridiculous and unforeseen bestseller be? A rant about grammar? A collection of random trivia? Kerry Katona's debut novel? We'll have to wait and see.

As always, there have been a few literary awards won, and narrowed down, over the last few weeks. First off, the winners of this year's New Writing Ventures awards: the fiction award went to Azmar Dar for The Secret Arts, while the British Council's own Suzanne Joinson won the creative non-fiction award with Laila Ahmed, a reconstructed tale of family relationships, culture, memory and history inspired by a box of letters found in Deptford Market. Jemma Borg took the poetry award. Each of the winners receive £3000 and a year's mentoring from The Literary Consultancy. Find out more.

There's more to US writer and film-maker Miranda July than dreaming up clever websites to promote her work. She's just scooped the world's richest short story prize with her debut collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You, published by Edinburgh independents Canongate. She wins 35,000 euros (£23,000). Find out more about the prize and the winner.

Meanwhile, the shortlist for this year's Man Booker Prize for fiction has been announced. In the running are: Darkmans by Nicola Barker, The Gathering by Anne Enright, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones, On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan, and Animal’s People by Indra Sinha. The bookies favourite seems to be Mister Pip at the moment, but we'll have to wait until 16th October to find out if they were right. More about the prize.

Incidentally, the Booker judges probably won't be that bothered, but somebody worked out recently that Crystal, the novel by UK 'celebrity' Katie Price (AKA Jordan) is selling more copies than the whole shortlist combined. Now who'd have predicted that?

In the world of bookselling, Channel 4 chairman Luke Johnson has stepped in and bought beleagured book chain Borders, which has faced an uncertain future since being put up for sale by its US parent company. Borders has 70 shops across the UK, many in 'out of town' locations next to DIY superstores and the like. Johnson is confident that he can put the chain's fortunes bak on an upward path. They'll be hoping for a good Christmas. Find out more.

And moving to publishing now, ongoing attempts to persuade boys to read more are said to be being undermined by publishers insisting on using lurid 'Barbie pink' covers on books. National charity Bookstart have registered their dismay at the gender-specific marketing now being used by publishers to lure young readers. The organisation is starting a scheme to distribute a free book to every eleven year old in the country, amid fears that boys are lagging behind girls with reading. Find out more.

And the marketing people took another bashing as children's authors complained that their creations have been crassly used to sell all sorts of unrelated products. Paddington author Michael Bond and Raymond Briggs, creator of The Snowman, have been disappointed that their much-loved characters have been used to sell, variously, Marmite, soft drinks, and toilet paper. Unfortunately they published (and signed contracts) before the days of mass commercialism - something writers now are more aware of, and, thanks to agents, more in control of. Find out more.

Paddington Bear: didn't he used to prefer marmelade to Marmite?

Susan Tranter

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