MISQUOTING JESUS News
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LA Times Book Awards 2006
http://www.latimes.com/bookprizes
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This year’s Los Angeles Times Book Prizes honored outstanding literary achievement in nine categories: biography, current interest, fiction, first fiction, history, mystery/thriller, poetry, science and technology, and young adult fiction. Each winner, including Didion, receives a $1,000 cash award.
National Endowment for the Arts Chair Dana Gioia served as the master of ceremonies for the presentation of the Book Prizes.
Book Prizes winners
Biography: Hilary Spurling, “Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse, the Conquest of Colour,” 1909-1954 (Alfred A. Knopf); presented by Blanche Wiesen Cook
Current Interest: Anthony Shadid, “Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War” (Henry Holt); presented by Ronald Brownstein
Fiction: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “Memories of My Melancholy Whores” [translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman] (Alfred A. Knopf); presented by Luis J. Rodriguez
Art Seidenbaum Award For First Fiction: Uzodinma Iweala, “Beasts of No Nation: A Novel” (HarperCollins); presented by David L. Ulin
History: Adam Hochschild, “Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves” (Houghton Mifflin); presented by Leo Braudy
Mystery/Thriller: Robert Littell, “Legends: A Novel of Dissimulation” (Overlook Press); presented by Mary Higgins Clark
Poetry: Jack Gilbert, “Refusing Heaven: Poems” (Alfred A. Knopf); presented by Dana Goodyear
Science and Technology: Diana Preston, “Before the Fallout: From Marie Curie to Hiroshima” (Walker & Company); presented by Robert Lee Hotz
Young Adult Fiction: Per Nilsson, “You & You & You” [translated from the Swedish by Tara Chace] (Front Street/Boyds Mills Press); presented by Adam Gopnik
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Mystery Writers of America - Edgar® Nominees & Winners
Mystery Writers of America - Edgar® Nominees & Winners
Mystery Writers of America is proud to announce its nominees for the 2006 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, television and film published or produced in 2005. The Edgar Awards were presented to the winners at our 60th Gala Banquet, April 27, 2006 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York City.
Read on for the winners.
Helen Reddy ROARS
Helen Reddy to Receive Veteran Feminists of America’s First Lifetime Achievement Award at May 1 Event in Los AngelesNew CD Anthology, Helen Reddy: The Woman I Am - The Definitive Collection, in Stores May 2
Reddy’s New Memoir, The Woman I Am, in Stores May 4
WHO: Helen Reddy, world renowned recording artist
WHAT: Veteran Feminists of America luncheon and awards ceremony, where Reddy will be honored with the organization’s first Lifetime Achievement Award
WHERE: Feminist Majority Auditorium in Los Angeles
433 South Beverly Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90212
WHEN: Monday, May 1
1:30pm-5:00pm
My parents had a Helen Reddy tape cassette that we listened to all the time back in the 70s. I loved it.
Roar.
Welcome to Nimble Books!
In case you are wondering “what the heck is all this stuff?” the simple answer is that it is the official blog of W. Frederick Zimmerman, Publisher of Nimble Books LLC. If you are wondering “why are there so many different topics discussed here?” the simple answer is that I’m interested in a lot of different things! If you want to focus on a particular topic, I suggest using the search box at top right or the category list at near right.
Welcome aboard! Take a moment to drop me a note and tell me who you are and what you’re interested in.
Hyena Mothers Give Their Cubs A Helpful Dose Of Hormones
ScienceDaily: Hyena Mothers Give Their Cubs A Helpful Dose Of HormonesAmong spotted hyenas, being a supermom is less about packing lunches, and more about packing a hormonal punch that gives her cubs a powerful head start.
In a study appearing in the April 26 edition of the international science journal Nature, Michigan State University zoology professor Kay Holekamp and her former graduate student Stephanie Dloniak along with Jeffrey French from the University of Nebraska, report that high-ranking, dominant spotted hyena mothers pass to their offspring high levels of certain hormones that make cubs more aggressive and sexually vigorous – in other words more likely to survive, thrive and reproduce…
“This research sheds light on mammalian reproductive biology and helps us imagine how evolution might have produced such a bizarre product,” Holekamp said
Are we sure it’s bizarre?
Kobe switching to No. 24
ESPN.com - NBA - Sources: Kobe switching to No. 24Bryant’s switch is the NBA’s most significant jersey number change since the 1994-95 season,
What?
Why Publish with Nimble Books?
Nimble Books LLC is an innovative publisher of timely material on topics ranging from Harry Potter and Dan Brown to politics, business, science, and medicine. We use electronic publishing technology to reach markets that are moving too fast for the large publishing conglomerates to address. Because our marketing strategy is tightly focused on the Internet, we look for titles that respond well to keyword searching in on-line markets, or on-line promotion via blogging.
Some of our recent projects include:
RED ZONE BLUES by Pepe Escobar
THE JESUS FAMILY CONTROVERSY by Dillon Burroughs
GLOBALISTAN: HOW THE GLOBALIZED WORLD IS DISSOLVING INTO LIQUID WAR by Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar.
MISQUOTES IN MISQUOTING JESUS by Dillon Burroughs
UNAUTHORIZED HARRY POTTER BOOK SEVEN NEWS
We publish twelve titles per year and we are selective. We are looking for books that are substantially ahead of the curve in that they address emerging trends that are readily connected with large, literate on-line communities.
Distribution
We fulfill orders via Ingram using print-on-demand from Lightning Source. Your book will be available in most on-line booksellers including Amazon.com; the Amazon.com stores in the UK, France, Germany, and Japan; Barnesandnoble.com; Powell’s; and dozens of on-line resellers. Customers can special order the book in bookstores via Ingram, the market-leading distributor in the U.S. We also ship direct to prepaid purchasers and provide a quantity discount.
We are true partners throughout the publication, distribution, and marketing of the book. It’s not a case of give us the manuscript and we’ll give you the check – it’s now that the manuscript is ready, let’s go make some money together! Of course, we bear all costs; there are no author fees of any kind.
Online Sales
Our experience is that about 80% of our online sales come through Amazon.com, which means that you can use your expected Amazon sales rank as a rough indicator of your revenue opportunity. It’s important to note that Amazon’s algorithms diminish the visibility of short-discount books in some of Amazon’s inside-the-store marketing programs, such as “Buy X, Get Y,” and “Also Bought …” This means that your book’s sales will depend primarily on how many readers come to Amazon looking for your specific book or a book that is very close to your specific topic.
The key thing to know about Amazon sales ranks is that the relationship between sales rank and unit sales on Amazon is an inverse logarithmic function, so a book that is ranked #1 sells about 30 times more than a book that is ranked #1000.
Our business model
We normally sell books to retailers at a “short discount” of approximately 25% and do not allow returns. This makes our books considerably more profitable per copy than traditional offset books which are sold at a 55% discount with the additional cost of returns. However, there is no guarantee that we will always be able to sell books on these terms, so our book contracts are written to allow us to set the discount, return terms, and price at our sole discretion.
We pay authors 30% of net publisher compensation for the first 5,000 units sold, 35% for the next 5,000, and 40% for more than 10,000 units sold. Net publisher compensation is defined as (list price * wholesale discount) - printing cost. For a 25% discounted book, 30% of net publisher compensation usually works out to about a 17% royalty, considerably better than market rates.
The following table presents an estimate of the correlation between 30-day average Amazon sales rank (as measured by Titlez.com) and the net monthly author compensation for a $19.94/200 page book. Needless to say, this table is strictly an illustration and should in no way be considered binding.
30 day avg sales rank of … should result in projected net author compensation per month of about …
1000 => $1968
10,000 => $379
30,000 => $173
100,000 => $73
This model is based on Nimble Books sales data plus four different academic studies from 2001 to 2005 whose estimates of the relationship between Amazon unit sales and sales ranks all found r, or degrees of correlation, of .8 or higher; for details and citations, see this article on the Nimble Books website. The primary financial risks in this model are that any increase in printing costs or increase in the short discount rate would adversely affect both publisher and author net compensation.
Pros and Cons
The total theoretical revenue oportunity is less in our model than if you publish with a publisher that uses a traditional model (55%, returnable) for the simple reason that we are primarily addressing the online portion of the market, which is about 10% the size of the total market. However, if a book is successful enough, we do reserve the right to go to a second edition with the traditional model. Of course, the maximum potential for rights sales, etc. is just the same in our model as in the traditional model.
In our model, both author and publisher assume less risk.
- By publishing your work promptly, you reduce the risk that your work will go unsold.
- The success of your book is not constrained by the “six-week window” in which traditionally published books must “sink or swim” on the chain bookshelves. Your book will always be in print.
- You evade the trap of “midlist misery”, which traps many worthy authors in a vicious circle of lukewarm chain sales, half-hearted marketing, and difficulty selling new works.
Both author and publisher can take creative aim at niche, hypothetical, or “bleeding-edge” markets.
Both author and publisher can challenge the “big boys” by focusing online, where creative individuals can readily use successful blogs and websites to establish a category-leading presence.
You have better visibility into sales: we provide monthly statements.
You have an additional revenue stream: we pay every month.
What We Will Need From You
We prefer that manuscripts be provided in Microsoft Word format.
We will ask you to review chapters as they are copy-edited and formatted for production.
We may also ask you for the name of experts in your field who may be willing to review the manuscript for technical accuracy.
As the publication date approaches, we will help you set up a blog or website specifically devoted to your book. We expect you, as the domain expert for your topic, to take the lead on getting the word out about it to knowledgeable reviewers.
As a way of stimulating reader interaction and gathering positive reviews, we offer readers free PDF updates for each book. We ask authors to offer at least one chapter update per year.
Marketing
Please review the Nimble Books Marketing Playbook, which has grown long enough it needs its own page.
How We Pay
We get paid by our distributor, Lightning Source, 120 days after the end of each month in which your books are shipped. Accordingly, we pay you each month on a five-month delay from when your books sell. Thus, if we sell ten of your books in January 2006, we will pay your royalty in May 2006. In June 2006, you will receive February ’s royalties, and so on. We prefer to pay via electronic means such as Paypal but will issue paper cheques if necessary.
About Nimble Books
Our trusty Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary defines “nimble” as follows:
1: quick and light in motion: AGILE *nimble fingers*
2 a: marked by quick, alert, clever conception, comprehension, or resourcefulness *a nimble mind* b: RESPONSIVE, SENSITIVE *a nimble listener*
And traces the etymology to the 14th Century:
Middle English nimel, from Old English numol holding much, from niman to take; akin to Old High German neman to take, Greek nemein to distribute, manage, nomos pasture, nomos usage, custom, law
The etymology is reminiscent of the old Biblical adage, “to whom much is given, much is expected” (Luke 12:48). Nimble Books seeks to honor that Christian principle by combining the spirit of nimbleness with the Biblical concept of abundance: we deliver what you need to know when you need to know it.
Who’s Your Daddy? Komodo Virgin Birth
Who’s the daddy? That’s the question being asked by zoologists stumped by the birth of four rare Komodo dragons at London Zoo – with no obvious male contender on the scene.
The mother, Sungai, was brought from Paris to London to meet a new British lover to bolster the endangered species. But she gave birth before she was even introduced to him, and the last time she is known to have had sex was two years previously.
It could be that this fearsome species is one that is either able to sore up sperm for long periods of time to use it later. Or it could be that the lizards are able to clone themselves - reproducing without having sex, by a process called parthenogenesis.
Although the Komodo dragon may not be a looker (in the conventional sense) and has some pretty unappealing features – devouring large mammals like goats and deer, and even eating young Komodo dragons with its bacteria-teeming teeth – cloning yourself is pretty drastic.
Snooze Discovers “Consultants”
Consultant paid $372K by schoolsThe district has paid Baker an average of $124,021 a year for the last three years, his records show. He’s made an average of $75,708 a year for the last three years from the bond and $44,917 from the district’s operating fund. In total, Baker, who started out working for the district as a volunteer, has been paid $372,063 for his work since January 2004.
It’s money well spent, district administrators said. “He’s helped us do a lot of things we didn’t understand,” said Superintendent George Fornero.
Baker is a former IBM executive and a former partner in the local firm Blue Hill Development, which built University Commons for University of Michigan alumni, faculty and staff age 55 and older.
Ann Arbor News Discovers 20th-Century Business Practices
I hate when the News discovers something exotic like the “consultant” and gives it banner headlines.
Heads Up: ‘Princess Diaries’ Author Has a New Calling—Not Suitable For Children!
Heads Up: ‘Princess Diaries’ Author Has a New Calling—Not Suitable For Children!Meg Cabot’s work sits alongside that of Ann Brashares, Kate DiCamillo and Cecily von Ziegesar as required extracurricular reading for just about every self-respecting adolescent girl. That’s because Cabot’s astonishingly successful Princess Diaries series, chronicling the trials and tribulations of an ordinary girl who has royal status thrust upon her, so effectively merges fairy-tale fantasy with contemporary verisimilitude.
The series—comprising seven books, with an eighth on the way—has also been adapted for the screen, in two movies that launched Anne Hathaway’s film career and heralded the return to cinema of Hollywood queen Julie Andrews. Cabot wrote the screenplay for Disney’s Ice Princess, too, her tween-friendly brand having proven such a good fit for The House of Mouse.
But for her next project, Cabot is going down quite a markedly less PG path.
The author’s upcoming Queen of Babble, due May 23 from William Morrow, revolves around post-graduation uncertainty, secrets and sex through the eyes of a young woman who usually has her foot in her mouth.
I can’t even quote from the rest of the article. For shame, Meg Cabot! You are already established as a YA guru, you owe it to your audience to keep it clean.
Publishers Lunch Scoops Viswathan Plagiarism story
Publishers Lunch DeluxeMeanwhile, Lunch has obtained (that’s journalistic code for pretending you did a lot of hard work after someone dropped some documents on you) multiple documents asserted by the source to have been prepared by the principals representing author McCafferty. One section carefully cites over 40 passages from McCafferty’s two books accompanied by what are asserted as “duplicate passages in Viswanathan’s novel.” Another section cites 29 numbered comparisons (often a subset of those cited above) of “alleged infringing passage(s).” Presumably this is where today’s NYT piece gets its contention that “there are at least 29 passages that are strikingly similar,” but they don’t source their accusation. Many of the passages cited have similar (and in a few cases identical) page numbers as well, indicating that the “unconscious… similarities” often occurred at similar points in the respective books.
An additional section asserts an extensive overview of “identical scenes, plot points, and characters” shared between the books in question. It alleges: “After an initial, nearly original, 30-page set-up in Viswanathan’s novel, many of the primary plot points, characters, and settings in Viswanathan’s novel directly copy McCafferty’s work. Every major character in Viswanathan’s novel… is clearly modeled after a character from Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings. Both novels are written in the first person, each narrated by a witty, high school honor student who lives in New Jersey, whose primary desire is to get into a specific Ivy League college (Columbia/Harvard).” [and more and more...]
Good reporting by Michael Cader who absolutely puts to shame the flimsy coverage of this story in other outlets.
