Hackpacker

MAMYU, the museum's mascot available for photo opportunities As lifelong comics fan and gold-standard nerd, I'd been looking forward to visiting the Kyoto International Manga Museum . Maybe a little too much. It boasts a collection in excess of 50,000 manga titles which create several walls of manga that stretch over 200 meters throughout the former Tatsuike Primary School. For bibliophiles it might be enough to see the shelves curving around the building or see Japanese visitors of all ages sitting reading their favourites. But the 'international' titles are restricted to a range of translations in the bookshop and a few examples of manga's influence with international books (including Australia's own Queenie Chan). Japanese manga is so popular that it almost doesn't need translation into English. Reading up on the extensive Wall of Manga There are great exhibitions which are bilingual. The Manga Hall of Fame, for example, draws together some of

These are not The Books of 2015 (note: important use of caps that usually singles out "of the year" lists). Instead its some books that I've read over the last year - some weren't published this year and it's just a way to draw a line under a year of nosing into pages. Earlier this year I wrote for Meanjin's What I'm Reading that I was looking forward to Peter Carey's Amnesia - mainly because it wasn't one of his heavy history books. Don't get me wrong, he's written good books based on history but Parrot and Olivier left me cold and Chemistry of Tears could have just been set in the modern and cut in half. So this romp into cyber-sabotage sounded fresh and fun. At times it was. Having Melbourne hacker Gaby release a worm that threw open the gates of Australia's prisons and detention centres was a bold premise and then chasing the story back to that event should work. From Assange to zeitgeist, it's a book that chimes with our

Over the last couple of months I've been part of the Hardcopy Professional Development program for writers offered by the ACT Writers Centre. The format broke into two long weekends - editorial and Intro2Industry. The latter wrapped up on Sunday after three intense and well-programmed days that brought agents, experts and literary shaman to the ACT. Okay so there were no actual shaman but the list of svengalis was impressive. Probably the best part was the range: from traditional dead tree publishers to the digital experimentation of IF: Book Australia . Over the entire program opinions varied (fiction books, apparently, must be at least  70,000 words , 60,000 words , okay 50k but that's really as low as publishers will go - unless it's a digital book) but there were a lot of great insights. So the only way to summarise a busy program is with a listicle right? Here's the top five things I got out of the program: 1) The Book is a zombie that refuses to die So t

There's been a lot of death knells sounded for the bookshop. And a few of the big chains have been in strife - Borders, Angus and Robertson were the big news. But an interesting rumination on the future of bookshops from the Association of University Presses got me thinking about how they could thrive. Rather than being defensive about online bookshops stealing business, the article suggests stealing clicks and mortar's ideas like showrooming. Bookshops are becoming the place where buyers encounter books but sneak home to buy them cheaply (or increasingly do it in store on their phones). Last Christmas in the US Amazon paid shoppers to report prices on their mobiles by promising discounts or cash then undercut physical bookstores on. There's no avoiding clicks and mortar in the physical world. So the article suggests bookshops are evolving into a "book place" offering book rental, secondhand options or membership models. It might even be possible to get a qu

Pulp is the latest in a long list of 1990s bands with too-clever accountants and mortgages to service that are touring again. One of the Sheffield group's bigger hits was Disco 2000, a wry look at teen unrequited love and the hope of reunion when the millennium clocked over. Recorded in 1995, the song will take on an odd retro-futurism when it's performed this year - 11 years after the rendezvous deadline. Since this song bounced through Converse All Stars in the mid-90s we've stopped focusing on a point in the future as hopeful. All through the 20th century, the year 2000 was something to aim for, a number that became synonymous with the futuristic, from the ABC TV science program Towards 2000 ( which became Beyond 2000 then Beyond Tomorrow ) to the British comic 2000AD . But the hope for the year 2000 became infected with the Millennium Bug as Y2K became something to fear. By 1999 Silverchair snarled in their Anthem for the Year 2000: "Never knew we were living

With the talk that e-books have finally arrived in Australia and that app reading with iBooks will open new markets , writers are getting forgotten. There's no doubt new markets and new readers are opening up with new technology, but few of these new revenue streams are passed on to writers. Including a forthcoming app on Sydney, I've written for five apps and the experience has varied considerably as publishers try to work out the rules. Mostly these projects have been re-purposing of text - that is getting text from a print project and using it in an app. In print this would be called syndication and an additional fee would be offered - often less than the original fee. By re-naming syndication re-purposing, publishers sidestep writer's fees. And there are good arguments for publishers making money off the digital frontier. They've invested in developing an app, gambled on costly technologies and have to work with unfamiliar distribution methods. But when publi

You’re probably already overwhelmed by iAnxiety – that rising mania as everyone you know has bought at least one iPad. Plus your inbox is full, you’ve got 14 unanswered Twitter DMs and they’ve probably just invented a new social network for you to be behind on. It’s time you embraced off gridding. Author Susan Maushart took the off gridder experiment, telling her family they’d live screen-free, truly cordless lives for six months. The connected kids LOLed, but Maushart’s book Winter of Our Disconnect has become a bible to turn off, tune out and drop out. Though they talk about increased attention spans and appreciating boredom, off gridders are commonly mistaken for Amish. In Other Words is a regular on the Big Issue 's Ointment page. Off Gridding appeared in Issue No. 356.

On Friday the Melbourne Writers Festival program was a hefty insert in the Age . In the past it came as part of Saturday’s weekend supplements, but it’s all part of the new energy buzzing through the festival. New director Steve Grimwade put his program out on Friday to coincide with online bookings and the program boasting more than 400 events has more in common with Friday’s hip EG than Saturday’s brunchable browser, A2. The big news in the program is Joss Whedon as the second keynote. Tickets have probably already sold out but it does give an excuse to show off Joss Whedon on writing for new media: Mark Scott presenting The Quest for Truth interests me less. We know where the ABC supremo is coming from already and there will be a lot of talking up ABC 24. Cory Doctrow on Copyright Vs Creativity speaks more to the challenges of our time: namely how can we continue to create quality content when it is free? The argument is often made that we should be giving away content, “gett

Reviewing Yann Martel's latest offering got me thinking of a mythical phone conversation Yann should have had with his agent. Yann: So I'm writing a new book about a donkey and a howler monkey... Agent: Keep talking, Yann-baby. This has Booker-bagging written all over it! Yann: ... as a fable of the  Holocaust. [pause] Agent: Yann-sweety, I think we might have a crossed line with Art Spiegelman here... Yann: No, no. It'll be great - because I'll bring together that essay I was writing about the Holocaust and create a way of re-imagining the history the way Camus and Orwell did. Agent: Yann, baby-doll, you know you're not Orwell, don't you? And that essay with fiction flip book idea always seemed kinda crazy... [sounds of faux static] There's something wrong with this line. I'll call you back, lambkin... I stayed away from Martell's Life of Pi as long as I could, because it was always being forced on me - usually by a dreadlocked friend who

If you want to look into the future of books and publishing, the record industry makes for a pretty good crystal ball. The iPod took music out of the physical into the digital in the same way e-books will take books off the page. The documentary I Need That Record looks at how music stores in the States have been gutted by the changes in music, not only by MP3 downloads but also by 'big box chains'. These stores stock the big records (the doco says 1 in 5 albums sold in the US goes through a Walmart checkout) at lower prices because of their huge volumes. If you followed the recent parallel importation debate then you'll see similarities big bookstores and big box chains. Does it follow that independent bookstore will be pushed out by the evil machinations of the big stores and the unstoppable march of e-books? For me the answer is: not so much. Independent bookstores remain a sensual and social experience that will be tough to replace. Going to a bookstore is as m

National Novel Writing Month is the brain child of Chris Baty, a San Franciscan who took November off to write a book and found a few friends to join him. It 's become a global phenomenon with more than 150,000 participants. Chris chatted about the future of writing, the Office of Light and Letters , book piracy and the bright future for the story in the age of laptops and Kindle. Hackpacker: What made you start NaNoWriMo? Was it a tool to beat your own procrastination? Chris Baty: The "why" of it all is such a good question. It wasn't because I had a novel in me that I was dying to write. I'd always loved novels and worshipped novelists but had never really thought I would write a book of my own. Until I started planning the first NaNoWriMo, I believed that novelists were a (superior) alien race that had been beamed down to Earth to delight and intimidate the rest of the planet. Then, in 1999, I quit my full-time job and try to make a living as a freelance wri

Google has been making headlines for its new stance on China after re-thinking a censored version of its search engine within China. It's bold dragon-slaying stuff, but there's another Google story that's been bubbling away since 2005. Last week Australia's Copyright Agency (CAL) ran a series of information seminars that told authors how to go register if they wanted their slice of the settlement pie and published their notes online . The kerfuffle started when the US Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers sued Google for its project that aimed to digitise publications for an online library. Google's defence was that their digitisation constituted 'fair use' under US copyright law, though in 2008 offered US$125 million in an out of court settlement. This will be a one-off payment to rightsholders (usually publishers and authors or their heirs) and asks you to opt-in for future use. It's reminiscent of an episode of The Simpsons where

A little while ago I wrote about being inside the mouthful that is the Centre for Books Writing & Ideas . A few other people must have been having trouble with the name because it is now the Wheeler Centre . At a function this morning the curtain slid back to reveal a Lonely Planet founders, Tony and Maureen Wheeler. According to the speeches, they're funding top-class or "Melbourne standard" events at the new centre named in their honour. It's all part of their Planet Wheeler foundation . The first program of events was unveiled in a glossy brochure. The big gig is A Gala Night of Storytelling , which boasts some of Melbourne's biggest personalities from Paul Kelly to John Marsden all telling stories passed down through their families. It's an intimate look at the cities literati. Its an exciting start to Melbourne's biblio-hub.

This weekend I went to the first workshop at Melbourne 's brand spanking new Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas . It's the jewel in the crown of UNESCO's City of Literature and, based on the construction work going on out the front, there's a bit more polishing before it's fully open to the public. Even still it's up and running in a pilot mode with most of the resident organisations already moved in and some even starting their events. Six resident organisations - Australian Poetry Centre , Emerging Writers' Festival , Express Media , Melbourne Writer's Festival , Victorian Writer's Centre and SPUNC - all seem to be in various stages of unpacking. The centre itself starts programming events early next year. It's an impressive building from the inside and out - keeping the State Library's classic look while making it contemporary enough to be a work place. There's still a few bugs to iron out with the entrance which was still draped i

This week Australian publishing was rocked by the recommendations of the Productivity Commission into Parallel Importation of books. The Australian said there'd be elegantly expressed outrage as authors and publishers as they talked about how importing books from overseas would seriously damage the local industry. Several writers have spoken out about the report's findings including Sophie Cunningham , Shane Maloney and, previously, Tim Winton using his Miles Franklin acceptance speech to point out what this means even to mega-sucessful authors. But what about eloquent voices for the Productivity Commission? In the interests of balance I've animated the report so you can hear the commission's own words (there will be no reading in the future obviously): Want more of the commission's report ? You can buy it in book form off the website for their $18 ( possibly cheaper in Britain ). It's good to see someone can still make money out of books.

There's a lot of talk about how the GFC (it's got its own initialism now so it must be serious) will make 09 the year of the naycation . But smart folks will always find ways to travel. Take the ever enterprising Brian Thacker who is about to launch Sleeping Around , his rip-snorting account of couchsurfing the world. Brian heads off around the globe to see how far he can get by lobbing on people's sofas and asking them to show him around. Thanks to some great couchsurfing sites , Brian doesn't have to ask some bloke he met in an Iceland pub to let him doss, but he does meet some great characters along the way. Good couchsurfing sites let you browse the profiles of people who are offering their couches and include comments from previous guests. few of these comments say hosts are axe murderers. Brian's launching his book as part of the Melbourne Couchsurfing Festival tonight. And if you find yourself too boozed-up after the event, he can suggest plenty of places

Melbourne has officially been given the nod as the next UNESCO City of Literature. It will mean the establishment of the Centre for Books and Ideas at the State Library of Victoria. But will my hometown be able to measure up to Edinburgh, the first Bookopolis ? Does it boast fictional creations to measure up to Harry Potter , Inspector Reebus or even Begbie ? Nope, but we have got Andrew Bolt, who responded with his characteristic ascerbic charm that it was a victory for black skivvy wearers everywhere rather than great writers or readers. For the rest of Melbourne it's good news. Apparently Victoria's capital has more bookshops and buys more newspapers, magazines or books per capita than any other Australian city. And has more than a few lit classics up its sleeve from Power Without Glory to Loaded . I'm not sure how to compare its couple of hundred years of European writing with the long history of Auld Reekie, but it's got its share of page turners. Other co

Whether it’s fashion ( The Devil Wears Prada ) or childcare ( The Nanny Diaries ), tell-all books rely on serving-up the insider juice. Thomas Kohnstamm puts the squeeze on Lonely Planet with his memoir of writing his first guidebook to Brazil. Kohnstamm is off to a rocky start by sleeping with a flight attendant almost as he’s disembarking the plane in Rio. This just after he vows to “wring the life out of the project” which if he does it right “could even improve international relations”. Contradiction riddles this book. What might have been conceived as humour is bragging about shagging on someone else’s dollar. Concern about Lonely Planetization (when guidebooks damage local cultures with the numbers of visitors they bring) is undermined by Kohnstamm riding the tsunami by flashing his business card for kickbacks. It might have been that Kohnstamm needed to embellish his tale with sex and drugs to keep it interesting (actual research and writing is glossed over), but it’s more self

After a frantic day racing around Beijing heading out to 798 arts district in the morning then doing a travel writing workshop at the Bookworm in the afternoon, my last morning in Beijing should be tranquil. Time for some reflection by Beihai Lake, soaking up local life and seeing how everyday people start their days. Also when the pirate DVD stores don't open until 9, re-aligning your qi is the next best thing. On a hazy morning Beihai Park is the centre for exercises from tai chi to hackysack as Beijingers converge to stretch and strain, shout and sing. Mostly it's group participation - a bossy instructor out the front with a headset telling people to lift their legs or how high to jump. There's traditional music played including old Party songs and slow-mo sword skills, but my favourite is the calligraphers with giant sponge brushes painting in water on the concrete paths. There's a huddle around the old gurus as younger guys try to perfect the fat-bellied curves o

I'm off to China for a semi-business trip and I'm reading the excellent book by Ouyang Yu , On the Smell of an Oily Rag in preparation. It's loaded with cross-cultural references and observations of what it is to be a Chinese Australian. My favourite cultural confusion so far is that the Yahoo! search engine is mixed up with the Chinese ya hu meaning an elegant tiger. The introduction makes an interesting point about our cultural exchange: China purchases 50,000 titles from the West every year, while the West returns the favour by buying only 2000 titles. The imbalance is surprising. With the Chinese diaspora and the increasing interest in all things Olympic, you'd expect a few more titles to come our way. Apparently not. Ouyang's book approaches both audiences and hopefully isn't an example of another of my favourite Chinese expressions: dui niu tanqin , which according to The Meaning of Tingo means "to play the lute to a cow".