Keef gets the silver, he gets the gold

Again, apologies loyal readers. Book Boy has been away on an emotional sabbatical - more dark, dark nights of the soul, more heartache. But this time, he's back for good!

So Keith Richards has sold the rights to his autobiography, for approximately $7.8 million. Not too shabby, eh? The joke going around is whether or not the Stoned guitarist will remember anything. But that doesn't matter as memoirs are normally a pack of self-serving lies anyway. Not only that, will Keef even be alive by 2010 to deliver the book?

But the real question is can Little, Brown and Weidenfeld ever hope to earn back that advance. I'm not too sure. Despite the obvious tabloidy interest that it will generate, the Stones fanbase isn't as large as it was. Do these big money celebrity books ever earn? It would be interesting to take a gander at Random's balance sheet to see if Bill Clinton ever came close to earning back the $12m that Knopf paid him.

In the end, though, it's probably not about making money with these big name celeb titles. It is prestige and proving that you can outbid the next guy. The publishing equivalent to a pissing match.

A long time...

Industry experts say to keep up interest in your blog, you've got to do it at least twice a week. I'm trying to be a blogging inconoclast - I say, you only need to do it twice a month.

Actually, Book Boy has been embroiled in some personal crises, dark night's of the soul, heartbreak and all that. But he's back and stonger then ever and needs to distract himself from his life.

Doesn't measure up

Can't say I'm really sure why there's such a hoo-ha about Daniel Kehlmann's Measuring the World, now published over here by Quercus.

Based loosely on the lives of early 19th Century Germans, the explorer Alexander von Humboldt and mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, it's been a massive success in Germany, sitting upon the bestseller list like a fat, unmovable burgermeister for ages, shifting about a million copies in hardback. The critics, too, lapped it up. Hailing it as a new sort of German novel, wry, with touches of irony, full of clever po-mo asides.

But I didn't find it wry, ironic and the po-mo asides grated. For instance Gauss says, "any idiot...can make up the most complete nonsense" about him in 200 years. Hey, get it? The author is commenting on how it's actually himself making up nonsense about Gauss. Oh, what delicious wry, po-mo irony! Or would have been about 20 years ago when that was fresh. Now, every damn graduate of the Iowa or East Anglia programmes who thinks he/she is the second coming of Dave Eggers is pulling that shit.

Good on the Germans for getting their irony schwerve on. But we here don't have to think it's fresh or funny.

Shiny Happy Granta

Nice piece in today's Grauniad by Ed Pilkington about a few of the bright young things on Granta's new best young American novelist list.

The list, announced about a month ago and published in Granta 97 on the 10th of May, has a few folk you know - Jonathan Safron Foer and ZZ Packer - and some you probably don't have a scoobie about - Rattawut Lapcharoensap, anyone?

Weighing in on lists is a bit of a mug's game. The only reason content providers produce them is to generate comment from other content providers - some sort of action/reaction Newtonian Law of the Media (and I am of course referring to Newton Minow). But, I'm a bit of a mug. One thing I'll say is that a couple of the people haven't yet published a novel - and I'll remind you, dear reader, that it is the Best American Young Novelist list. Still good on Granta for taking a punt on some young gunslinger. A bit like Sven Goran Ericson taking a chance with Theo Walcott. And that worked out well.

But the thing that struck me the most about Pilkington's article was the photos. And how happy they all looked. Grinning with their ca-ching American teeth, all just dee-freekin'-lighted to be there. OK, so they have a reason to be smiling. They're on the damn list after all and not, presumably, struggling along in the unheated windowless garrett.

Book Boy doesn't like his writers happy. He wants them depressed, with some sort of substance problem. On the verge, just a bad review away from the barbituate overdose.

Just the sign of the times, really. The suicidal author has been replaced by the well-adjusted one (you can't really be morose if you have to spend some time on Richard and Judy's couch), the garret by student accomodation at the Univ of East Anglia creative writing school.

Lit Legend Calder Sold

In another life Bookboy was a literature buyer at a bookshop. A few years ago, maybe we're talking 2002, I had an appointment with what I thought was the sales rep for literary fiction press John Calder - publisher of Becket, Celine and about a million other heavyweights of . But, no when the time came around, I saw an old man with a cane, huffing and puffing up the stairs (we were on the third floor). No rep, in fact, but the man himself. Jesus, I thought, as I shook his rather sweaty, trembling hand - this guy is part of 20th literary history. Not only publisher of most of these folk but friends as well.


Calder was both somehow both curmudgeonly and charming. He smelled of books that had been sitting around in a second hand shop for forty years. We concluded the sub and Calder got up abruptly and left. How rude, I thought. Not even a goodbye. I got on with my stuff and about 20 minutes later I hear some huffing and puffing on the stairs again. It was Calder, bringing up a box of the books his crane crooked in his arm. The books, incidentally were all scuffed, looking like they had been kicking around in the back of a boot for a while.

But, anyway, looks like Mr Calder won't be schlepping his books around too much any longer. He is 80, after all. The fine folks at Alma Books and Oneworld have bought out his list and shop in London about a month or so after he announced he needed to sell. Good for them. Alma do some great stuff (Tom McCarthy's Remainder in particular). It must be particularly graftifying for Alma for having beaten off indy giants Faber.

First post

First time's always the toughest, isn't it. Well here's the deal: I'm hoping onto the blogosphere - here to give my take on the news and views from the booktrade. And, to share in the wonderful world of the life of Bookboy.