Wengen, Picoult and e-books

A week ago today we decided we wouldn’t ski as the runs were still treacherous because of cloud in the valleys. Instead we went up on the train and walked back to Wengen dorf – a distance of about 10 kilometres. I enjoyed it. Much more time to look around and enjoy the pretty scenery, the pace energetic enough to keep us warm, and the route mostly a downhill drop of 2,500 feet from Kleine Scheidegg. Lots of sledges whizzing about, though none of them made up more than halfway up the hill in the picture!

Sledging

Jodi Picoult, one of the best-selling female writers, happens to be in the UK promoting her latest offering. In the Sunday Times, 5/02/2012, she suggests that electronic publishing may be far from a salvation for writers as so many claim. Writers, she says, get a smaller chunk of the profit when a book is downloaded rather than selling in print format. “The difference could cut their income by as much as a third.”

I must admit my understanding was that e-book writers were offered a larger chunk of the royalties than print contracts. What do others think?

Picoult hopes writers will try and revive interest in the printed book among younger readers, and to that end has collaborated with her 16 year-old daughter in writing a book for young adults. She will be appearing at the Oxford Literary Festival on March 28th. I heard her speak at the Hexham Book Festival two years ago and enjoyed her performance. She speaks clearly, is entertaining and wonderfully professional. When her time was up she smiled, bid us all goodbye and exited smartly, leaving us all staring at the gap on the stage.

Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult spoke yesterday at Hexham Book Festival and sounded relentlessly upbeat and charming. She has written 17 novels, but I've read only one of them - My Sister's Keeper.
As I mused on the energy she put into her talk, it seems she does the same thing with her writing. She rises, she told us, at 5am every day and goes for a three hour walk with a friend and gossips all the way. Once the kids are off to school she settles down to writing, which she does until 3pm when she metamorphoses into a mom again and starts car-pooling.
She follows this routine for nine months of the year, and reserves the other three for PR work, visiting spots all over the globe. Yes, she assured us, she devotes nine months to each new title. That includes research, writing, editing, until it is finally out of her hands and with the publisher.
(I felt exhausted by this stage, and I was only listening.) Within that time period she might also be editing another title, and doing research for the next novel.
She gave a reading from her latest title: House Rules, which is about a boy with Asperger's Syndrome who falls foul of the American legal system.