The Novelist’s Film a film by Hong Sang-soo
29 October 2022
The Novelist’s Film, trailer, the 2022 feature from Seoul based South Korea filmmaker Hong Sang-soo, casts a spotlight on “the importance of authenticity in the dishonest world of cinema.” And chance encounters.
The story might strike a chord with authors who have been fortunate enough to have a book of theirs adapted to film, though the writer here seems to be taking a slightly unorthodox approach to bringing her novel to the big screen:
A female novelist takes a long trip to visit a bookstore run by a younger colleague who has fallen out of touch. Then she goes up a tower on her own and runs into a film director and his wife. They take a walk in a park and meet an actress, after which the novelist tries to convince the actress to make a film with her. She and the actress get something to eat, then revisit the bookstore where a group of people are drinking. The actress gets drunk and falls asleep.
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film, Hong Sang-soo, trailer, video
Elon Musk takes control of Twitter, fires CEO and CFO
29 October 2022
After much back and forth, Elon Musk has completed his takeover of social media service Twitter. CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal have already left the company, and I imagine they’ll be followed by more senior managers.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is now in charge of Twitter, CNBC has learned. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and finance chief Ned Segal have left the company’s San Francisco headquarters and will not be returning, sources said. Vijaya Gadde, the head of legal policy, trust, and safety was also fired, the Washington Post reported.
Doubtless more changes are on the way, though Musk is trying to assuage the concerns of all, especially advertisers, regarding their extent, in a recent tweet:
That said, Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences! In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all, where you can choose your desired experience according to your preferences, just as you can choose, for example, to see movies or play video games ranging from all ages to mature.
It seems to me a lot comes down to the definition of “desired experience”. If hate speech and misinformation did return to the platform, does “desired experience” mean users will be able to block out such content? Is that the answer then? Content producers meantime will delight in Musk’s perspective on advertising: “highly relevant ads are actually content!”
I also very much believe that advertising, when done right, can delight, entertain and inform you; it can show you a service or product or medical treatment that you never knew existed, but is right for you. For this to be true, it is essential to show Twitter users advertising that is as relevant as possible to their needs. Low relevancy ads are spam, but highly relevant ads are actually content!
Revenue from adverts puts a roof over many a head, but an advertising experience that will delight, entertain, and inform? That I look forward to seeing.
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Elon Musk, social media, Twitter
A Bunch of Pretty Things I Did Not Buy by Sarah Lazarovic
28 October 2022
Instead of buying the things she wanted to, Toronto based Canadian writer, illustrator, and artist, Sarah Lazarovic decided to paint the objects of her retail desire instead. A year later she gathered the works together in her new book, A Bunch of Pretty Things I Did Not Buy, which is being published this month by Penguin Random House:
Based on a visual essay that was first published on The Hairpin, A Bunch of Pretty Things I Did Not Buy is a beautiful and witty take on the growing “slow shopping” movement. Sarah is a well-known blogger and illustrator, and she writes brilliantly without preaching or guilt-tripping. Whether she’s trying to justify the purchase of yet another particleboard IKEA home furnishing, debating the pros and cons of leg warmers or calculating the per-day usage cost of big-ticket items, Sarah’s poignant musings will resonate with any reader who’s ever been susceptible to an impulse buy.
If you’re looking for an introduction to the low shopping movement, A Bunch of Pretty Things I Did Not Buy sounds like the book for you.
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art, books, Sarah Lazarovic, trends
Tree Abraham designed the cover of her new book Cyclettes
26 October 2022
Designing the cover of the book they’ve written must be the dream of many an author. But it is far from a simple undertaking, especially in a world where books are judged by their covers, whether they should be or not. Make a hash of it, and your title might sit unmoved on bookshops shelves.
Canadian born, New York based writer, illustrator, and book designer, Tree Abraham had the opportunity to design the cover for her latest book, Cyclettes, and I think it’s obvious the results speak for themselves.
In an article at Spine, Abraham discusses the design process, and the challenges of creating a cover as an author. Contrary to expectations, being too familiar with the subject matter of a book can present numerous, often unforeseen, difficulties:
If I was only the designer and not the author, this cover brief would have seemed easy. There is an abundance of visual and metaphorical imagery within the book to inspire highly graphic directions. But because of my intimacy with said imagery, it also posed the greatest challenge. I was hyper aware of the interior aesthetic: like a xeroxed zine or old textbook with black and white diagrams and scrap photography. I believed for a cohesive experience, the cover needed to align with the illustrative and typographic style inside, without overwhelming it. I wanted the cover to feel like a shell. Additionally, most of the imagery that I would have excitedly leveraged as a designer was quickly negated because, as the author, I knew it didn’t epitomize the core problematique.
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Wrought a timelapse video of food gracefully going rotten
26 October 2022
States of decay can have a beauty to them. Depending on what’s in decay, and how up close you are to the action, that is. Leaves that have fallen from trees during autumn can be a colourful spectacle as they decay and breakdown. The same could be said — in some cases at least — for rotting food.
If you can’t see what possible appeal there is in watching food go off though, Wrought, trailer, a short timelapse film by Winnipeg, Canada, based producers Joel Penner and Anna Sigrithur, just might change your mind. After all, microbes spoil food, but sometimes they can enrich it:
While the very word ‘rot’ might give rise to revulsion — perhaps the memory of a mildewed fruit or the pungent stench of a past-its-prime cut of fish — the processes it describes often yield delicious results. Indeed, many of the world’s most popular foods, from beer and bread to kimchi and cheese, are born of chemical conversions that would, in other contexts, constitute a food ‘going bad’.
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Anna Sigrithur, film, Joel Penner, trailer, video
Bad news sells but negative lyrics also sell songs
24 October 2022
In a study published in 2019 by Cambridge University Press, researchers found the lyrics of pop songs have become increasingly negative in the last thirty years. They reached this conclusion after analysing the emotional content of more than 160,000 songs released between 1965 and 2015.
One major trend in popular music, as well as other cultural products such as literary fiction, is an increase over time in negatively valenced emotional content, and a decrease in positively valenced emotional content.
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Australian author Bri Lee on earning income from Substack
24 October 2022
On the subject of Substack, Sydney based Australian writer Bri Lee is another author who has turned to Substack. Asking subscribers for money can be a thorny matter, especially as readers have no compulsion to pay: Substack remains free for anyone to access.
But it comes down to the individual reader. They like a writer’s work, and wish to support them. As simple as that. No one is being forced to do anything.
People who do pay will often be paying to ‘support you and your work’ rather than necessarily paying because they perceive the value of what they get in their inbox is equal to the dollar figure you charge. When I launched the paid section in January 2021 I explicitly told people that I wanted to keep the vast majority of the content freely available, and that anyone who did pay was essentially subsidising the access of the non-paying subscribers.
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Authors with profile can earn money publishing on Substack
24 October 2022
British author Tim Lott writes about starting a Substack page, and how the publishing platform can help writers generate income from their work. In Lott’s case it’s so far, so good:
What do my subscribers get in return for signing up? Anything I want to give them. I have total freedom. There are no editors or advertisers telling me what to do. Independence isn’t without its downsides. You have to learn to sell yourself, you have to understand how online media works and you have to be self-disciplined and dedicated. No editors, no agents, no marketing department. You’re on your own. But we novelists know how to be on our own. Now we have the chance to be multi-media publishers as well.
Profile is key here. Anyone with sufficient followers on the platform of their choosing can make money. While there are plenty of people doing well on Instagram or TikTok, they are what I call visual mediums. But they’re not the best for writing, especially long form writing, as they do not function so well as blogging platforms. Substack then may be the solution writers are looking for.
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Australian genre fiction authors look overseas for publishers
22 October 2022
If you’re an Australian author, don’t bother submitting manuscripts for anything other than literary fiction to local publishers. Nothing else will be accepted. That seems to be the message from a number of prominent Australian writers, including Stephanie Laurens and Shelley Parker-Chan, who say they had to find overseas publishers for their works of genre fiction.
The local publishing landscape is dominated by trade houses that concentrate on contemporary or literary fiction: books that are often character-driven, serious and contemplative. But these novels are not the most popular. A 2021 survey of Australian readers found crime and mystery was their favourite genre, followed by science fiction and fantasy, then contemporary and literary fiction.
But according to Jo MacKay, the head of local publishing at HQ Books, a division of HarperCollins, the Australian book market is saturated by the likes of fantasy fiction. It may be popular, but no one is buying it, if that makes any sense. And while Australian authors undoubtedly greatly benefit from exposure to markets such as those in America, there are strings attached.
For instance, Laurens reported having to be content with a cover design her publisher thought would be conducive to sales, rather than an option she would have preferred.
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Australian literature, books, fiction, novels
Dates announced for the 2023 Melbourne Writers Festival
22 October 2022
The 2023 Melbourne Writers Festival (MWF) will take place from Thursday 4 May 2022 until Sunday 7 May. Mark it on your calender. The 2023 event will be held a few months earlier than the 2022 which ran during September.
Update: the decision by MWF organisers to move the event to early May 2023 has upset the convenors of a number of other literary events taking place at, or around, the same time. Most noteably organisers of the nearby Bendigo Writers Festival are particularly concerned, as their event takes place at exactly the same time.
It seems to me the MWF move could have been better thought out. To say the least.
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