Monday News: RIP Jackie Collins, HC’s global campaign, fake app reviews, and public domain martial arts movies
Publishing Newsapplications / bonkbuster / fake reviews / films / global publishing market / Harper Collins / Jackie Collins / martial arts / obituary / public domain / publishing / reviews3 Comments
Novelist who redefined the ‘bonkbuster’ genre with her tales of bad behaviour in Hollywood. Source: The Telegraph
Thank you to Katie F., who answered my Twitter call for a good obituary on Jackie Collins. I think this long profile from The Telegraph is great, because not only does it treat her work with respect, but it also chronicles her very interesting life (did you know that she started writing books at age 9, for which Joan did the illustrations?). And I love the term “bonkbuster” – her books may not have been genre Romance, but they sure share an overlapping readership, and a lot of similar drama. At 77, Collins was young, and apparently she didn’t even tell her sister of her cancer until several weeks before her death. I definitely think it’s time for a re-read of Hollywood Wives (WHY has it not been digitized??).
She claimed to offer her readers an unrivalled insider’s knowledge of Hollywood and the glamorous lives and loves of the rich, famous, and infamous inhabitants of an increasingly rackety Tinseltown. “I write about real people in disguise,” she declared. “If anything, my characters are toned down – the truth is much more bizarre.” After one reviewer warned that Hollywood Wives should be read under a cold shower, the actor Roger Moore said he just hoped no one recognised him from one of the characters in the book.Jackie Collins earned critical as well as popular acclaim, being hailed a “raunchy moralist” by the film director Louis Malle and, perhaps more gnomically, “Hollywood’s own Marcel Proust” by Vanity Fair magazine. Her fiction debut, The World is Full of Married Men (1968), set in “swinging” 1960s London, was said to have ignited the touchpaper of female sexual fantasy in much the same way as EL James achieved nearly half-a-century later with Fifty Shades of Grey. But, as Jackie Collins herself noted, there was one important difference: “My heroines kick ass. They don’t get their asses kicked.”
Harper lays down the gauntlet with global deal. Source: The Bookseller
Although this story is technically about the acquisition of Karin Slaughter by Harper Collins from Penguin Random House, it’s more broadly about what Harper Collins calls its “global publishing programme,” which is where the publisher is headed in this “changing” world. Publishers have traditionally tried to acquire as many rights as they can from authors, but they don’t necessarily exercise those rights all at once. If that’s wchanging, then it could be interesting, especially given the geographical restrictions readers often have to deal with. And HC has made it clear that it’s primarily interested in commercial fiction with these deals, which could be a boon for genres like Romance. Or not. We’ll see, anyway.
HarperCollins president and c.e.o. Brian Murray has ramped up the publisher’s “unique global publishing programme”, announcing the acquisition of thriller writer Karin Slaughter in a four-book deal spanning world English rights and more than a dozen foreign languages. Murray toldThe Bookseller that the “world is changing” and said HC was actively targeting other authors in commercial fiction, crime/thriller and YA. HC added more than a dozen international publishing offices to its operations when it acquired Harlequin last year and is now also rebranding four more offices as HC. . . .
Murray told The Bookseller: “I’m very pleased with the author response [to our global publishing programme]… There are more authors we are talking to, and I’m pleased with the momentum we have built in a very short space of time. The way we are building this programme is in the commercial fiction area – we are not so interested in literary fiction and non-fiction because it tends to be much more tied to local culture. The big commercial fiction authors are much more likely to travel – they show up in bestseller lists in many markets.”
Christopher Pyne’s new education app propped up by suspect reviews. Source: Sydney Morning Herald.
So the Australian government paid a company – BCM Partnership – over a million dollars to create an education application that is currently available in the Apple and Android stores. The Education Minister has been talking it up, too, as have reviewers. Except that many of the positive reviews seem to have come from employees of the development company. Oops. I figured that app reviews were as vulnerable to corruption as book reviews, but this case is a good reminder to do some serious homework (heh) before buying those rave reviews.
On the Apple store, Nikita Baynes says the app is a “must have for any parent”. She says it has given her “countless ideas to help maximise the time I spend with my children. They love it too and I’m already feeling more involved than I’ve ever been in their education”.But a search of job networking site Linked-In shows Ms Baynes as an account coordinator at BCM.Indeed, many of the names attached to five-star reviews on both the Apple and Android stores correspond to those of BCM staff on Linked-In.
A Film Festival of Kick Ass Kung Fu/Martial Arts Films in the Public Domain. Source: Open Culture
I’m just going to let Open Culture’s Colin Marshall explain this one:
Everyone remembers their first kung-fu movie — or everyone remembers their first wave of kung-fu movies, anyway. For some, they came late at night on the less-explored frequencies of the television broadcasting spectrum; for others, they came on sparsely attended double- and triple-bills at the local discount theater. They looked faded and muddy, but somehow still vivid; they felt cheaply produced, yet full of life and energy; and as for how they sounded, time has turned their both hollow and theatrical English-language dubbing into an art form with connoisseurs of its own. They came from faraway lands, which rendered them exotic, but we experienced them almost as dreams, products of another reality altogether. And some of them you can experience again as public domain films.
Thank you for sharing the Telegraph obituary. I remember finding one of the Santangelo books at a UBS at the beach years ago (back when I was a teenager, before I even knew I was a romance reader) and being *fascinated*. I haven’t read Collins in years, but think maybe a memorial re-read (or new read) may be due now.
I read Hollywood Wives when I was 14 or 15 and OMG, are some scenes seared into my memory. I’m almost afraid to do a re-read – I have no idea how well it will hold up. But she was one of the authors that introduced me to the idea that sex was messy and weird but that it could be a lot of fun, and fun specifically for women, and I am grateful to her for that.
Christopher Pyne is the former Education Minister, he has been given a new portfolio after the Liberal party leadership spill which resulted in Malcolm Tunbull becoming our Prime Minister mid-term.
Does not surprise me there are “paid” reviews on the app.