Poor Mojo's Newswire

The ancient role, currently held by Andrew Motion and remunerated by 630 bottles of Spanish sherry, is due to be reappointed next year.

But hopes that the 10-year tenure, whose previous incumbents have included Ted Hughes and John Betjeman, could go to a woman look set to be dashed.

Almost none of the leading female poets are interested in the position. Wendy Cope, who had previously been a favourite for the role, has poured scorn on it, saying that she "never wanted" to be laureate. "Personally I feel it is an archaic post and means nothing. It's simply not important," she said.

* The Spain translation did the same thing, calling the character Tom Sorvolo Ryddle, in order to allow a direct anagram: "Yo soy Lord Voldemort". However, the Latin-American translation did not, showing the original English anagram followed by its translation.
* The German Translation called him Tom Vorlost Riddle, making the anagram "Ist Lord Voldemort" ("Is Lord Voldemort")
* In Norway: Tom Dredolo Venster becomes Voldemort Den Store - that is, Voldemort the Great.
* In France, they needed to make it spell 'Je suis Voldemort' - so, rather amusingly, they named him Tom "Elvis" Jedusor...

Not that writers are being explicitly harassed, but costly advance marketing plans are increasingly tied into the expectation that the most profitable authors will have a new book out at roughly the same time each year. In today's intensely competitive marketplace, readers will turn to another author if a writer fails to come through at the usual time, which could cost a publisher big bucks.

Many writers below the top tier are also being urged to pick up the pace. In some cases, publishers have made a book-per-year promise an explicit condition of taking on a new author.

"It's no problem, as long as you don't have a life," said Patricia Cornwell, the Massachusetts-based author of the enormously successful Kay Scarpetta crime thrillers. "The Scarpetta [manuscript] that's due out Oct. 7 is due in a few weeks, because they have to reserve the storefront real estate and pay for it. If I don't get the book turned in on time, they'll be freaking out. If I miss my deadline, I miss the entire year. Sometimes there's an overwhelming feeling of panic. It's like a rock 'n' roll concert, and what if I don't show up?"

Like leekspeak, Gal-Moji replaces the original Japanese letter with similar looking letter. Things making that more caotic is, however, Japanese language has 3 different character sets, Hiragana, Katakana and Chinese-origin Kanji with Roman alphabet and Arabic numerals, the total number of which can be over 3,000 letters. Letters not used in Japanese text like Cyrillic and Greek alphabets are even used. . . . .