Book News, In Brief

Virgin Books is going to launch a horror imprint later this year. Their first two releases are Conrad Williams' The Unblemished and Ramsey Cambell's Grin of the Dark. Hopefully, these will be better than the uber-crappy comic books that Virgin has been putting out. I mean, have any of you actually tried to read Jenna Jameson's The Shadow Hunter?

Via Powell's Books: "Judge Zadie Smith (White Teeth, On Beauty) didn't think the stories submitted to this year's Willesden Herald International Short Story Prize stood up to her standards of greatness, so she declared that, by gum, there shall be no winners! 'Our sole criterion is quality. We simply wanted to see some really great stories. And we received a whole bunch of stories. We dutifully read through hundreds of them. But in the end — we have to be honest — we could not find the greatness we'd hoped for. It's for this reason that we have decided not to give out the prize this year.'"

Over at Boneville, Colleen Doran (A Distant Soil, Sandman) has written a brief remembrance about her time spent self-publishing comic books in the 90's.
There are highs: "At some shows, Dave Sim provided the core self publishers with limo service, as well as other ruffles and flourishes that supported a successful image. All base expenses were our individual responsibility, but limousine service made us look good, and The Guru of self publishing wanted to look good. Making self publishing look good was more important than the objective reality that self publishing was unlikely to be good for almost everyone trying to do it."
And there are lows: "Most people never made a dime of profit self publishing. More lost a small fortune. Some lost big. Caught up in the excitement and promise of big money and convention fame, they heaped scorn on anyone who tried to warn them. A few of us (like me) even loaned promising creators money. And we never saw these people (or our cash) ever again."