Category: Places

Round-up, 25 October 2012: Murderous Self-Publishers, DRM, Supply and Demand, Handwriting, Serials

A lot of noise this week (quite rightly in my view) on how Amazon controls your Kindle content, and can shut it down at its own whim, it seems. More on this another time, perhaps, but here is the original blog that kicked up the fuss, and some other links with perhaps some of the most useful commentary:

Outlawed By Amazon (original blog)

Amazon Inspires Wave of Anti-DRM Sentiment Following Customer Kindle Shutdown (links from Booktrade.info)

I increasingly favour the DRM-free approach to publishing, at least for many aspects of content. What you give away comes back to you some way or other, I feel (but then I am a generous kinda guy, I hope). Here is an article from Publishing Perspectives describing a succesful DRM-free venture: Top SF Authors Raise $1m With Pick-Your-Price, DRM-Free E-Titles. May their success ever increase (and I love how its the genre writers who’re pioneering this).

From IndieReader, some provocative views on whether self-publishing is killing the publishing industry (basically, self-publishers need to get a bit more professional):

If indie authors are going to make their mark, they’ll need to band together, put out reputable works, and stop looking for get-sales-quick gimmicks.

And from the Globe and Mail, a pertinent discussion on the creative writing industry and whether we’re creating more writers than can or will be read, with Canadian examples: Writers: graduating by the bushel, but can they find readers? Given the laws of supply and demand, I’m inclined to think that Mexican critic Gabriel Zaid is right when he (only half?) jokes that perhaps writers need to slip a five-dollar bill into their books in order to pay their readers …

And from earlier in the week a lovely blog on the lost art of letter-writing in the Guardian. Do follow some of the links therein, and also back to the extract from Philip Hensher’s book on handwriting: Why Handwriting Matters.

And finally: I am a big fan of the idea of serial fiction, and I am enjoying the reports on Naomi Alderman and Margaret Atwood’s serialised novel The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home. I can see (see above too) I am going to have to look into Wattpad some more.

 

Eel Pie Island

I really love Twickenham. It’s a great mix of so many things, part of London yet too very much its own self, wrapped around a bend in the Thames.

One of its most magical spots is Eel Pie Island, a boho boatyard and hippietopia of sorts on an eyot (small island) in the river. No cars, just a footbridge, and a history going back to Henry VIII, who apparently stopped here for an eel pie on his way upriver to Hampton Court after seeing his mistress in Kew.

For a potted (and colourful) history, listen to this feature broadcast by NPR back in August: From A British King To Rock ‘N’ Roll: The Slippery History Of Eel Pie Island (that link has the recipe for eel pie, but this link from the producers has more pictures). I never knew Anjelica Huston had a connection to Twickenham.

The golden era of squats and skiffle and art students and trad jazz has passed, but some of the spirit lives on in the studios of the Eel Pie Island Artists. The yard where they are based is mostly closed off to the public, but it opens twice a year for the open studios weekends. Last Christmas I bought my mom a gorgeous glass robin there. And back in June, my friend Antonia and I sipped punch in the pop-up pop & punch bar assembled around heaps of boaty junk (items I don’t know the words for, but they were made of iron and peeling paint, and there was also a very rusty trampoline – I imagine it enjoys part of that colourful history).

And then we snuck through a gap in some bambooish thicketry, and wandered through the watery green of a nature reserve of sorts – tall and slender tree trunks, a high canopy of leaves, and the song of robins and blackbirds and our local squawky parrots. Were we in London?

Here are some other related links:

* Eel Pie Island Hotel & Dancehall – pictures, words, and links

* Eel Pie Dharma – a super haibun/memoir by Chris Faiers

* The Eel Pie Club – the current ‘home of Richmond & Twickenham Rhthym & Blues’, at the Cabbage Patch

* Come Hell Or High Water – Sunday Times feature by Richard Johnson

* Exploring Eel Pie Island – from the Little London Observationist

* Twickerati’s feature on the open studios in 2011

* Suburban Hymn – a walk around Twickenham from Simon Hoggart (from 2001 – not much needs updating; guess the burbs are pretty timeless in their charms, if not hipsterish, though we can brag about Noah and the Whale now)

And here are some snaps of my own, taken at various points during the last year.