Sell with a whimper, or a bang?

Today's issue of Shelf Awareness included an article about a presentation by Harvard Business School professor Anita Elberse regarding the theory of "the long tail." We all know about this by now, right? The theory goes that in the Internet age, companies - let's say publishers specifically, as that is what we're talking about here, can sell a larger variety of products, each with lower numbers, than in the past when publishers had to sell more copies of few products to make margin - the blockbuster effect. Booksellers don't have to keep all these different books in storage, because people can just go to Amazon, which has huge warehouses, or get an e-book or what have you. So publishers, by this theory, should keep books available for longer and plan on them continuing to sell. Even if each title sells few copies, it's in a publisher's interest to keep as many available so as to have more opportunities for profit.

Professor Elberse, in a presentation to the Book Industry Study Group's annual meeeting and in a Harvard Business Review article (you can view the first page and then they make you pay), refutes this theory. She explains that people want to share in the experience of blockbusters, whether it's the hot cd or the big movie on opening weekend. In fact, according to her research, even people who like more niche things will also like the blockbuster. Moving away from having the big star products in favor of more diversied products will lead to consumer disinterest, even from those consumers who want the more obscure products. I appreciate this point, especially in talking about readers who are by their nature, to some extent, loners. We read alone, but that doesn't mean we don't want to discuss what we are reading alone. People read book after book in genres like fantasy and sci-fi, but then they get giddy with excitement when they can join others who appreciate these genres.

I found the opening to Elberse's Review article particularly interesting:

In a typical year, Grand Central Publishing (formerly Warner Books) goes to market with 275 to 300 book titles spread across two catalogs—its fall and winter lists. For each list the company identifies the handful of books it believes have the greatest sales potential and gives them the full benefit of its marketing capabilities. Of those, it spotlights just two “make” books, one fiction and one nonfiction, for which the company’s publisher is willing, in her words, to “pull out all the stops.” In the fall of 2007 those books were David Baldacci’s Stone Cold and Stephen Colbert’s I Am America (and So Can You!). The effects of this strategy show up in sales figures and profits. Whereas the 61 hardcover titles Grand Central put on its 2006 front list, on average, incurred costs of $650,000 and earned gross profits of just under 100,000, a wide range of numbers contributed to those averages. Grand Central’s most heavily marketed title incurred costs of $7 million and achieved net sales of just under $12 million, for a gross profit of nearly $5 million—50 times the average.

Grand Central is pursuing what is known as a blockbuster strategy—a time-honored approach, particularly in the media and entertainment sector. With limited space on store shelves and in traditional distribution channels, and with retailers and distributors seeking to maximize their returns, producers have tended to focus their marketing resources on a small number of likely best sellers. Although such an approach involves substantial risk, they expect that the occasional hit’s huge pay-off will cover the losses of many misses, and that a few big sellers will bring in the lion’s share of revenues and profits. In 2006 just 20% of Grand Central’s titles accounted for roughly 80% of its sales and an even larger share of its profits.

That really throws things into a certain light. Part of me sees that and thinks, ya can't argue with numbers.

I appreciate Elberse's point, that it's naive to hope you can achieve profitability through a series of niche items. Most small publishers have a break out hit at some point that helps the rest - George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant surely offered Chelsea Green the opportunity to pursue more niche titles, and I'm sure Lydia Millet novels help Soft Skull's bottom line. It's important for an author, when s/he prepares for his/her book's publication on a list, appreciates this dynamic and does not inappropriately demand the same marketing dollars and effort for his/her book as the star is getting. It's in your best interest! That does not mean the publisher should just ignore a book on their list, but even small publishers are going to have this dynamic where effort is distributed unevenly. The publishers then can reinvest the profit from the blockbusters into the smaller books.

Publishers lose their way, it seems, when they start chasing the blockbusters and ignoring the smaller books. These smaller books are often the ones they use for credibility, whether that's literary or scholarly credibility. Nothing is more tragic than flipping through a new catalog from a big corporate publisher and seeing blockbuster after blockbuster, big name mystery authors next to big name political authors next to big name animals authors, etc..., with no cohesion. I know most readers don't read by brand, by publisher, but if a publisher has this eclectic mix held together by profit alone, authors should be weary of the kind of treatment they'll get if their particular genre falls out of favor before their book comes out.

Elberse's advice, then, should be followed by independents. You have to get a few big names, but they should be books that still fit your larger mission so bringing people to the list with the big name might help the smaller names. Even university presses publishing regional cookbooks still makes sense as they are reminding readers that they are regional publishers, and they probably have local history books on their list as well.

And if you're a star player, maybe publishing the big book for an independent can really pay off. I don't hear Lakoff complaining! You can still get your book out there in a big way, but unlike ending up on page 13 of a catalog next to a book about a puppy who changed some suburbanite's life, you'll be on page one, on the cover, and pulling along behind you some original and valuable voices that may not get heard otherwise.

New Discovery for Me

Given the time, I like to head out to Harvard Book Store from my job in Harvard Square. Given rain and less time, I to make due with the Harvard Co-op, now a B&N college store. It has size on its size, but it also has that special sterile corporate feel that has come to define modern chain bookstores.

Anyhow, I noticed a very cool looking book entitled A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern-day Iraq, by Fernando Baez. I wasn't quite prepared to buy it as my TBR pile, as apparently it's known (I've noted from emails I now get as part of the Book Bloggers' Appreciation Week), is far too high just now, a bit higher after a quick trip to Brattle Book Shop on Saturday. All the same, this thick book with an odd, small trim size looks intriguing, quite fascinating actually. From the description online:

With diligence and grace, Báez mounts a compelling investigation into the motives behind the destruction of books, reading man’s violence against writing as a perverse anti-creation. “By destroying,” Báez argues, “man ratifies this ritual of permanence, purification and consecration; by destroying, man brings to the surface a behavior originating in the depth of his personality.” His findings ultimately attest to the lasting power of books as the great human repository of knowledge and memory, fragile yet vital bulwarks against the intransigence and barbarity of every age.

Right?

But I was also curious about the publisher, Atlas & Co. I didn't recognize the logo or the name. As it turns out, they are just launching a new season of very cool titles after previously, I believe, working in conjunction with other publishers, with series created presumably by James Atlas, current president. It's all explained here. I'm hopeful about their books and will definitely keep an eye out for what they're publishing. The current brand new list is briefly described:

International in scope, the list features a memoir by a former factory worker in China, a stunning collection of photographs of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders, a worldwide survey on the history of book destruction, and a spirited account of one man’s journey through Kazakhstan, among others...

Bring it!

Fun Things in the World

I've become a bit link crazy in recent posts, and I won't slow down now. I blame Google Reader.

First, a quick and provocative quote from Critical Mass, by author Wilfred Sheed:

“The ideal reviewer writes no books at all, lives outside New York but doesn’t resent New York, has no credentials--because every credential is a trap. He simply-- well, how to put it?--has an interest in books.”

Perhaps that's sarcastic, but it seems like a good start to me. Then again, I occasionally groan loudly at awkward reviews from the Boston Globe, so perhaps not.

I know I'm not just link crazy, but Soft Skull / Richard Nash link crazy, but he has another good post, this one on giving books away / selling books. He starts with a quote on giving books as gifts from John Fox but then moves into the awkward equation independent publishers must work out to stay afloat.

Then this article in the NY Times' Sunday Book Review by Jess Row profiles the publication of William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner (found via BookNinja). I don't love this Styron book, but I am a fan of Styron, and I don't think he gets his due. As I've mentioned, I worked for the literary agent who represented him in the UK for a year, and actually spoke to him on the phone a couple of times. And according to this article, I have yet another connection to him via a book called William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond, published by my last employer, where I edited books. Who knew?! Anyway, the article is an interesting consideration of using fiction, historical fiction in this case, to wade into contemporary political issues. It also speaks to the ongoing dangers of having writers depict characters from different ethnicities, especially prominent historical figures with so much undocumented myth around them. Styron's pride in this novel, and subsequent defense of it and then shame from it, are all quite fascinating to consider. Perhaps it's useful to keep in mind the debilitating depression he faced as well, chronicled beautifully in Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, a slim book I'd strongly recommend to anyone who has wondered about friends and family who suffer from clinical depression. He transcribes his experience clearly and movingly, which is why this book holds up so well.

And finally, like many publishing bloggers, I wanted to post a link to the NY Times' obituary for Robert Giroux, editor-in-chief and publisher at the great Farrar, Straus & Giroux who passed away on Friday at the age of 94. This obituary tells of all the great writers who worked with Giroux, as well as the two projects that got away from this legendary editor. The projects? Jack Kerouac's On The Road and J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (which I just saw someone in a bookstore reading last night). I love editor stories about the ones that got away!

Not to ruin the obit for you - ugh, how macabre - but the ending quote is wonderful:

[Giroux's ] ambition to write might have prompted an exchange with [T. S.] Eliot, then in his late 50s, on the day they met in 1946, when Mr. Giroux, “just past 30,” as he recalled the moment in “The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes,” was an editor at Harcourt, Brace. “His most memorable remark of the day,” Mr. Giroux said, “occurred when I asked him if he agreed with the definition that most editors are failed writers, and he replied, ‘Perhaps, but so are most writers.’ ”

A short article in Publishers Weekly quotes current President and Publisher at FSG, Jonathan Galassi: "He was one of the great editors in the history of American publishing, a man of impeccable discernment and sensibility, generosity, and humor, a wonderful raconteur and, above all, a champion of literature.”

And just to throw in a cranky reminder of why I'm writing this stuff, it's sad to go to the FSG website - a publisher of such renowned, literary classics, known for thinking ahead and taking chances - and see the Macmillan banner*, and see no mention of Giroux's passing. If it were still an independent house, there would be a memorial up right away. Instead, you actually have a header on the banner with "Publishers," which, when you put your mouse over it, lists a dozen different publishers all working under Macmillan. That blows. I'm sorry for Giroux, to see that. It makes me especially sad as I was just flipping through the fantastic book The Way It Wasn't: From the Files of James Laughlin, all snippets of things from the great founder of New Directions - a press still proudly independent.

* In 1994, FSG sold controlling interest to the German publisher Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, a company which also owns Henry Holt and St. Martin's Press. Nonetheless, Farrar, Straus & Giroux has retained much of the freedom of an independent publishing house. (from NY Public Library archive)

Let's blow this joint

It's almost the end of the day Friday, but I did want to send out a couple of links.

First, can we all just agree to love Soft Skull? I do. I know they were acquired by Winton Shoemaker Co. last year after the whole disgusting PGW fall-out, but as the inimitable and perhaps even visionary Richard Nash said at the time, "Soft Skull is not no longer independent. Had I won the lottery and bought Counterpoint from Perseus, instead of Charlie Winton buying Counterpoint and then Soft Skull, we would not have ceased to be independent." I don't fully get that but I know Nash is still a champion of independent publishing in every way.

I am grateful to him most recently for pointing me to a wonderful series of posts at Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind on large corporate publishers and their many imprints. This Sarah Weinman is doing a remarkable job breaking down all kinds of information, so I heartily recommend spending some time reading about who owns what and how. It's invaluable work!

I'd also like to point out this tidbit of information about the horror show that is Sarah Palin. Yes this is going around amongst us bookish types, but it's important to broadcast:

[John] Stein [admittedly, incumbent mayor of Wallinga whom she beat in election] says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

For anyone the least bit irritated by this - surely anyone reading this?! - check out the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. They do amazing work, including the defense of librarians getting intimidated, and deserve any bit of attention they get.

I don't know how much more Palin coverage I can stand, so I may have to look away for a moment... and check out Sarah Weinman's fine research!

Will slush evolve?

This article in the UK Guardian by Aida Edemariam has been written before, but it's useful to keep republishing. (I found it via BookNinja.) It's about the much-feared slush pile, found in most publishing houses and magazine office, where unsolicited writing accumulates. I met my first slush pile as an assistant to an agent in London, and then spent time with one for about two years in my first editorial job. In both cases, I did read most of what I found there, but as I always told interns who handled this pile more often, it's easy to just reject 90% of what you find. So much of it is flat-out nuts.

As a sidenote, I'd like to say how tired I became of stories from the slush pile. It's a bit like what we're seeing here in Boston now with college kids, all talking as if they're the first to live in a dorm, go grocery shopping without their parents, etc... Interns going through the slush pile inevitably think they're going to thrill you with hilarious jokes at some unknown writer's expense. "This one says 'My novel knows no boundaries, and will exhilarate you beyond measure," and look how he spelled exhilirate!!!" I suppose it feels good to mock these writers when you're a sophomore in college with your own literary ambitions, but I learned to really hate it.

And sadly, Edemariam is not above it in this article, mentioning submissions from "prisoners who think it a good idea to include a picture of themselves with a gun pointed at the viewer (true story)." Who cares? It's just so tiresome. And it's a bit annoying that she writes about her own experience though she only did this for 5 months.

Anyhow, the article on the whole, despite my grumbling, makes some good if not mind-blowing points. Larger publishing houses often won't even consider slush, preferring to leave it to agents and then wait for the more reputable agents to bring them the best of the crop. This has created some opportunity for smaller, independent presses - in this case, Tindal Street Press in the UK is the example of that:

"Because we're small and we've been building a reputation, we haven't been an obvious choice for agents," says editor Luke Brown, "so the slush pile has been vital for us."

I certainly glanced into the abyss as an editor, even after it was my responsibility, and did find at least one book in there. It's a frustrating process though, as multiple people explain in this piece. Other success are added at the end of the article:

There will always be someone hoping to be like first novelist Rawi Hage, picked off a slush pile at Anansi Books in Canada to win the world's most lucrative literary prize, the £80,000 Dublin Impac Literary Award; or Nobel prize winner William Golding, rejected by 20 publishers then picked off the slush pile by Charles Monteith at Faber; or JK Rowling, picked out of the post by office manager Bryony Evens, even though she knew the agent she worked for didn't publish children's books.

So dare to dream?

But in this day and age, there are so many other ways to get your writing out there, so surely the whole mentality of publishing will change. I still say, as I've long maintained on this site, that we need gatekeepers to find the best and brightest, to hold us to a standard for arts in general, and literature in particular. But editors and agents have so many more resources now, so the field is changing, and publishers must take chances to get returns. It's an unless, desperate game of seeking out the next trend. Writers may go into it not realizing that they are being put into this game, if they are not away of the currents in publishing and the up-and-coming markets, and then they'll be dropped just as soon as that trend ends. (Look at the author of the book on the hideous candidate Sarah Palin, who wrote a book about the Alaskan governor only to see the publisher slammed with orders after McCain's disastrous decision.)

So writers, beware. I would recommend waiting until you are really confident in your writing, until you have shared it with others and feel good about it, and had smaller pieces published. At that point, put together a writer's CV and really present yourself well and find an agent who you known likes the kind of writing you're doing (look at the acknowledgments sections of your favorite books!). That's the best way forward, just to generalize. And if the agent is a good one, they'll steer you through the trends and keep you grounded on your own identity as a writer, whether you're on the bestseller list or keeping your day job to pay the bills.

Perhaps I'll wait for a future post to talk about pedestrian but innovative ways of sharing books, from BookMooch to a table with a box labeled "Honor System" (just walked by that in the rather boring Harvard Square, where I know work).

They read and they write, write, write!

Full list of book bloggers can be found here. It's overwhelming but a terrific resource for all the blogging on reading, writing, and publishing you could want! Enjoy, folks.

(I believe there is a voting component to this whole thing too, so feel free to vote for this blog if possible. Just sayin' is all.)

Author in the Middle

In internet time, I'm a bit late to this game, but I was saddened and frustrated, like many, to read about Stephanie Meyer putting her latest novel "on hold" after a draft was leaked to the internet. I haven't read her work, admittedly - my partner read the first novel in the current series and did not exactly praise it, and quite frankly, it's not my proverbial cup o' tea - but like many bloggers, I can't help but see this as a modern and particularly undignified problem.

The author's explanation on her website is just tragic, for anyone who appreciates the process. This woman may not be writing novels that are going to become literary classics, but she's writing successful novels with legions of fans, so she clearly has talent (again with the disclaimer, I haven't read a word). And she is showing respect for both herself and her fans in explaining how she feels:

"I did not want my readers to experience Midnight Sun before it was completed, edited and published. I think it is important for everybody to understand that what happened was a huge violation of my rights as an author, not to mention me as a human being... I tried to write Midnight Sun now, in my current frame of mind, James would probably win and all the Cullens would die, which wouldn't dovetail too well with the original story. In any case, I feel too sad about what has happened to continue working on Midnight Sun, and so it is on hold indefinitely.

I'd rather my fans not read this version of Midnight Sun. It was only an incomplete draft; the writing is messy and flawed and full of mistakes. But how do I comment on this violation without driving more people to look for the illegal posting? It has taken me a while to decide how and if I could respond. But to end the confusion, I've decided to make the draft available here (at the end of this message on the Midnight Sun page). This way, my readers don't have to feel they have to make a sacrifice to stay honest."

Good for the internet for making it possible for an author to respond to immediately and to respond so directly to readers, but shame this same technology led to such a disruption to an author's process of writing.

I should say that the ellipsis you see above is where I skipped her sentences on copyright, which is not to say I don't respect her explanation of copyright and her legal rights as the owner of this intellectual property, and her use of this angering moment to explain copyright to fans seeking her out, but I think readers of this blog know all about our nation's copyright system, with its warts and all. Right?

Naturally, we all recall when the final Harry Potter book got posted online just before it went on sale. Who are these people? I suppose they're opportunists looking to get a jump, and I'm sure it has happened in different incarnations for generations. But like McCain picking someone wholly unqualified to be his VP, this action, putting drafts of an unfinished novel unline, shows such a fundamental disrespect to the thing itself - in McCain's case, the office of VP, and in the Meyers case, a final book. Is respect for a book, worked to completion by an author working in partnership with an editor and a publisher, being devalued by e-readers and such so much that people don't care about anything but how the words themselves get strung together? It's one thing to not care about packaging - hell, I sometimes can suck it up and read a mass market novel - but it's quite another to scrap everything and just download an incomplete manuscript so you can say you read it first. How much can one enjoy such an experience? On some level, I guess I have to wonder, "what are you after?"

As ever on this blog, I worry about sounding like a Luddite, but are we really so enamored at the thought of an immediate experience, and the thrill of being first, that we are willing to throw out the value of the larger experience so entirely? Damn shame.

I would just like to add before closing, are you reading The Root? Because I think you should, it's pretty amazing, very smart stuff over there. This article by Gary Dauphin on the website Stuff White People Like is a good one, but their stable of writers in general are quite top-notch.

A few things before we go

It's almost Labor Day, folks, so I thought I'd post a few links for anyone whiddling away these final hours before the long weekend.

First, Richard Nash, the publisher over at the amazing Soft Skull (seriously - I'm still working through the great selection we got from them when they did a grab bag last year for $100), was a guest blogger over at Ecstatic Days. Recently, he posted a few links, and one was to an interview by Grove Atlantic editor Jofie Ferrari-Adler of agent Nat Sobel. Go read it! No really! It offers an interesting perspective that encompasses so many aspects of publishing and bookselling. One particularly interesting point Sobel makes is that the loss of independent bookstores has hurt first-time fiction writers. He also sings the praises of literary journals, which was good to see. It's long but well worth the read.

Next, I was going to offer this link to a VT's public radio coverage of Chelsea Green's controversial decision to sell their new book, Obama's Challenge by Robert Kuttner, through Amazon's POD service exclusively, to get it to people during the DNC convention. (I appreciate how the company allowed a single bookseller comment on their blog regarding this decision, with a single response from an appropriate sales rep. Surely others tried to comment there.) Shelf Awareness offered more links to coverage of this decision, which many independent booksellers felt was inappropriate for an independent publisher, seeing as it gave an unfair advantage to the enemy, Amazon. But we can all appreciate B&N getting huffy about it! They've decided to pull their order, refusing to carry the book in their stores (though they'll carry it online). Remember when B&N said they wouldn't carry O. J. Simpson's If I Did It? Then they decided to sell it due to consumer interest? I know they carry serious weight when publishers, especially indie publishers, are deciding print runs, but let's all agree that they are fickle, not smart about their orders but chasing the market. This pretty much, for many of us, sums up the problem with corporate booksellers taking over the planet.

And finally, I added a button for Book Blogger Appreciation Week, which I believe was instigated by the blogger over at My Friend Amy's. Amy herself sent out an email to participating bloggers with a list of all the participants. It's long but pretty exciting, so I've listed the first chunk of them below. I wanted to list them all but it wasn't formatting right, and it is an exhaustive list. I also should note that I have not been to most of these blogs so I cannot vouch for them, but I imagine there's tons of fun stuff. So... get to clickin'!

http://bookingmama.blogspot.com
http://booksnbordercollies.blogspot.com
http://bookchatterandotherstuff.blogspot.com
http://savvyverseandwit.blogspot.com
http://blbbooks.blogspot.com
http://zero-toeight.blogspot.com
http://amateurdelivre.wordpress.com
http://zensanity.blogspot.com
http://bookchronicle.wordpress.com
http://ismellbooks.blogspot.com
http://icroak.wordpress.com
http://booklorn.com
http://deenasbooks.blogspot.com
http://jennsbookshelf.blogspot.com
http://worldaccordingtobooks.blogspot.com
http://readingtoolate.net
http://books-movies-chinesefood.blogspot.com
http://worducopia.blogspot.com
http://www.bookconfessions.com
http://zetor-mogsblog.blogspot.com
http://rjsbooklady.wordpress.com
http://cherylsbooknook.blogspot.com
http://smallworldreads.blogspot.com
http://jezebelsk.blogspot.com
http://athomewithbooks.blogspot.com
http://2kidsandtiredbooks.blogspot.com
http://musebookreviews.blogspot.com
http://julyso4463.blogspot.com
http://blog.literarily.com
http://relzreviewz.blogspot.com
http://mrstreme.livejournal.com
http://alessandrasplace.blogspot.com
http://smilingsally.blogspot.com
http://bookcritiques.blogspot.com
http://thethrillionthpage.blogspot.com
http://www.3rsblog.com
http://bermudaonion.wordpress.com
http://shootingstarsmag.blogspot.com
http://bookreviewmaniac.blogspot.com

Tragic Refusal

I don't have a lot of love for John Updike, I admit. I haven't read all those rabbit books, and quite frankly, I get him mixed up with John Irving in my head (fortunately, I don't usually do this aloud). I see his name and I think of bland older white men in suburban America. I suppose that's not fair.

Well in a post on the Guardian's Books blog, writer Joe Keenan really puts this old fella in his place. Keenan fairly uses Updike's famous address at Book Expo in 2006 to explain why Updike is falling behind, not in his writing style per se but in his effort to depict life as most of us currently know it. In that address, Updike complained bitterly about the digitizing of books, about the supposed end of books as we know it. I agree with him on the importance of books as "the site of an encounter, in silence, of two minds, one following in the other's steps but invited to imagine, to argue, to concur on a level of reflection beyond that of personal encounter, with all its merely social conventions, its merciful padding of blather and mutual forgiveness." But it's clear he's resisting an inevitable change too much, and while I'm all for exalting independent booksellers at every and any opportunity, you are doing them no favors by praising them for refusing to roll with these changes. I don't like the market anymore than you do, but it's still a massive force that can crush you - you, but at this point, not Updike.

So Keenan and Updike's new novel, The Widows of Eastick: Apparently, in this novel,

"the characters inhabit a world that has disappeared. When they are not gossiping on land line telephones, the three widows write long information-strewn letters to each other which they despatch via the mail... Sukie, one of the main characters, is dismayed to find upon returning to Eastwick that the rather smart local newspaper she helped produce has been closed down and replace by a cheap Xeroxed sheet. Xerox? Even the smallest hamlets now have their dedicated websites..."

Yikes. In sum, Keenan reports: "His withdrawal from the hurly-burly of contemporary communication may be one reason why his novels have become less despatches from the frontline than cosy remembrances of things past."

This presents for me a question I have often considered when watching movies or reading modern novels, or I should say novels set in the present. How can one produce a work of gravitas but still incorporate our current, incredibly casual modes of communication? Will something weighty and significant be created using snippets of text messages? If you saw such a thing in flipping through the pages of a novel, would you not think it was YA or at least very commercial? I would be concerned if I found an IM conversation in the middle of a new novel I thought looked promising, but then I actively IM people and have had very serious conversations using this form of communication.

How to use it effectively and maturely in art, then?

I don't have an answer, and I don't know if I've seen it done very well, so I appreciate Keenan raising this entirely fair critique. I'll have to continue looking out for examples of modern, casual conveniences in mature and artful literature... when I read it. (Which may not be for a long time, given the length of Strange Piece of Paradise!)

To each their own

My mother loves this expression - "to each their own." Having just spent four glorious days in Provincetown, a.k.a. Heaven on Earth, it should be no surprise that this phrase comes to mind.

But in fact, I'm thinking of this phrase as I ponder this post on Galleycat, regarding the publication of Crystal Mangum's memoirs - she's the young woman who accused three Duke University athletes of rape. The book, with the rather impressive title of The Last Dance for Grace: The Crystal Mangum Story, is going to be published by a new publisher called fire! Books, just getting off the ground led by her co-writer Vincent Clark.

Galleycat goes on to quote Clark on why he chose to publish in this way. In reading these quotes, I went from skepticism to... well my interest was piqued, though I'm still suspicious of motives. One must be when reading about this type of publishing, no? But he makes some points:

"[When I met her] She was being approached by people who said they could help her make a lot of money and all of them seemed to be a little slick and shady. I just talked to her about what she wanted to do with her life. We developed a good working realtionship and we worked on her just getting back to a normal life... It isn't about making money. She really wants to set the record straight about some of the things that have been said about her personally. Any large publisher would have been looking to do book tours and all of that stuff. She really wasn't interested in all of the extra stuff."

$1 from each sale will be donated to help battered women (though the post doesn't mention an actual organization, and who knows if the press release does. That's always questionable to me, when an actual org isn't mentioned.)

Clark's new business will also publish, eventually, something by the drug dealer who supplied Marion Jones and other "elite-level athletes" with performance enhancing drugs.

What piques my interest is that Clark seems to be developing this niche that could be just plain exploitative or it could be legitimate, in trying to publish voices getting maligned in the press who are problematic but are also, to some extent, in a position in society in which that are marginalized. They responded perhaps in an unhealthy way but that does not make their voice worth silencing, and they could offer an interesting perspective on a story we all, as a nation, know due to media hysteria. They are the people we want to disappear, the relatives that are embarassing. They are the Other in a way, right?

And he's publishing this in a way that is not entirely different from Free Press publishing Michael Phelps' Built to Succeed, his memoir that will conveniently be out by the holiday season this year. (Expect more gratuitous shots of his taut body, folks - at the pool, in the pool, from above looking down, from under the water, etc etc etc.) It's opportunistic publishing, trying to jump on a media sensation and capitalize on it while the iron is hot, knowing that many of those million books you print will end up on remainder tables and/or in used bookstores for years to come. Working in this kind of publishing, while surely exciting, must be hell, as you are just producing crap over and over. I'd be curious to hear of someone who enjoys this. Maybe the editor of Kathie Lee Gifford's autobio still has it proudly displayed on a bookshelf, and I'm the fool.

So I can't fault Vincent Clark for seeing an opportunity and going for it, and maybe he really is going to protect his subject/client/co-authors from media sharks. I'll be curious to see how it plays out, because a book by this Crystal Mangum could easily be another My Story by Amy Fisher, and surely no one wants that.

Review etc

I will do a book review, below, but I first wanted to point readers to the nice community forum that Shelf Awareness has set up regarding Amazon's Kindle. Readers of Shelf Awareness have been writing in regarding sightings (or lack thereof) of the Kindle, and feelings about this device. Some points are interesting, anecdotes are somewhat informative, comments are a bit annoying and even borderline rude, but to hear this was frustrating:

Ellen Smith of the Hudson Library and Historical Society, Hudson, Ohio, had a money-saving tip for all e-readers. "Train commuters who are inclined towards e-books (or audiobooks, for that matter) should realize they can save themselves their hard-earned dollars by downloading books from their public library for free--so long as they DON'T use a Kindle. Amazon has not made its device compatible with any public library version (a product of OverDrive), therefore everything viewed on a Kindle costs money!"

Oh Amazon. Tacky.


My review:

Young author Robert Leleux wrote an article for the Texas Observer about a gay Texan writer named Edward Swift, who wrote about a town just a few exits down Highway 59 from where I grew up, and I enjoyed the article, so I first wanted to read Leleux's book, The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy, before reading Swift's Splendora. Leleux is from outside of Houston, like myself, but my mother is not nearly as, um... fabulous as his, and this book is about her, his fabulous mother, in a way that I found a bit unsettling. If you get along with your parents, fantastic, but Leleux cannot get enough of this mother, who speaks in quotable quotes, and anecdotes that could be 2 pages long become 10 pages of "I know, can you BELIEVE she did that?! I KNOW!!!!1111!!omg!!1!!" If he didn't use the c-word, this book would be straight-forward YA and that would be fine, but as a book for adults, it's a bit l-i-t-e; having said that, he's a young guy and it definitely has its moments, so here's hoping he keeps at it, maybe gets over his mom and isn't quite as moonie over his husband, and turns to fiction to create an alternate bizarre world, rather than stretching this one to fit our current idea of whacky gay memoir.

(PS I couldn't get through Splendora after finding it in the library, as it's endlessly descriptive with little to no action (at least in the first 60 pages), but I still support any Viking novel published in the '70s in which a cross-dresser returns to his small town in Texas, a town I know and perhaps fear a bit, in complete drag. As you can see from what I'm reading on the sidebar, I've moved to Capote for southern gayness, and Other Voices Other Rooms, a book I'm thoroughly enjoying, should take care of this current gay-southern itch.)

New Ways to Publish Old Material

A post by Blake Wilson over at Papercuts, "A Blog About Books" hosted by the New York Times, was all about yet another blog. Papercuts seems quite good by newspaper literary blog standards, as those folks are really trying to generate discussion. Smaller papers smartly use local literary events and local bestseller lists for content, like David Mehegan's Off the Shelf hosted by the Boston Globe, and while that makes sense, it makes for a rather dull blog. So here's hoping Papercuts sticks with it and finds a strong readership.

Wilson's post that caught by eye was entitled, "George Orwell, Tween Narcissist?" It was all about The Orwell Prize blog, which is publishing Orwell's diary entry by entry, as blog entries. As they explain, "From 9th August 2008, Orwell’s domestic and political diaries (from 9th August 1938 until October 1942) will be posted in real-time, exactly 70 years after the entries were written." August 12th entry reads,

Very hot in the morning. In the afternoon sudden thunder-storm & very heavy rain. About 50 yards from the gate the road & pavement flooded a foot deep after only 1 1/2 hours rain.

Blackberries beginning to redden.

I don't know, I find this rather charming.

I like the mundanity, and judging from the number of commenters, I'm not alone. (Wilson disagrees - read his post to see why). They are still working out the best way to provide context without taking away from the basic and simple concept, but I think we can get it from the About section.

This intrigues me as a way to publish important archival material in a engaging way, with modern technology that makes the material not just accessible, but strangely enjoyable. Orwell is on our level. The commenters are both amused and intrigued by their ability to speak back to the entries, clearly.

It makes me wonder what else can be digitized and made part of modern culture like this, in a way that seems to be relatively free of branding (besides the literary prize, which seems okay to promote). There's always something disappointing about a song being rediscovered because it's in a new car commercial. But this uses the internet, html, for it's original purpose, as a sharing tool, without corporate involvement. Hell, it's not even Google sponsored!

Kinda exciting stuff.

Our Progressive Zeitgeist

I am intrigued by this idea being led by Jennifer Nix over at Guernica: the need for progressives to reclaim art as a way to open minds and bring people into progressive thinking. Perhaps in part because of my own personal professional experience, I appreciated her discussion of people leaving art for activism, not seeing that the two can work together, side by side, for the same purpose. She explains that art and activism "are very much part of the same continuum, [but] over the past eight years there has been a kind of damaging divergence between art and life, for many progressive activists." She sees blogs in particular as ideal vehicles to bring these communities together.

She's drawing her inspiration from novelists like Mark Twain who, during the Gilded Age, reached more common folk by publishing in affordable newspapers, thereby upping the literacy rates and hooking in readers to think outside of the elitist rhetoric of the era: "The masses were able to read fiction and to imagine better realities than those put forth and controlled by the era's robber-baron elites." She's also jumping off Aleksander Hemon's The Lazarus Project, though I was confused by her quotes that she attributes to Hemon. If they were in this novel, the novel must break into some pretty didactic language.

Her point is that progressive blogs need to help "integrate literature back into American life." Who doesn't agree with this? But yes, she has a more specific plan of action, and I support her completely. Some novelists have made this effort - Barbara Kingsolver comes to mind, and of course writers from countries with oppositional leadership like Orhan Pamuk in Turkey - but we should encourage more. Let's get people over this idea that literary writers shouldn't muddy their hands with politics, or maintain objectivity just like journalists. So preposterous.

I then thought of The Poetry Foundation and their efforts to insert literature into the average American's life. If you'll recall, they received a massive $100 million donation from Ruth Lilly, great-granddaughter of the founder of pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. Initially, they had discussed "trying to figure out how to finance the notion of bringing poetry to people in libraries, schools and elsewhere," as reported in the New York Times. They then branched out to try to get poetry into hipper venues. This New Yorker piece by Dana Goodyear explains it well.

[T]the foundation is offering its services as an external poetry editor. Over the past year, it has sent a dozen magazine editors mockups with poems superimposed on actual layouts from those magazines (a Basho haiku in a Good Housekeeping spread showing how to “pair old china with fresh blooms”; Lucille Clifton’s “Homage to My Hips” on a fitness page called “Love Your Curves”). To Details, the foundation suggested an essay by Jim Harrison: “If Jim Harrison, poet, novelist (Legends of the Fall) and walking vat of testosterone, needs a daily shot of poetry, it must not be for sissies. . . . A good hed for the piece might be ‘Don’t Be Afraid of Poetry.’ A better one might be ‘Read Poetry. Get Laid.’ ”

Yeah, seriously. Actually, the article does a fine job, nicely mentioning the foundation's history. Goodyear explains how Harriet Monroe founded Poetry magazine in 1912 because “the well of American poetry seemed to be thinning out and drying up, and the worst of it was that nobody seemed to care. It was this indifference that I started out to combat, this dry conservatism that I wished to refresh with living waters from a new spring.”

I know another initiative in the foundation was getting poetry into smaller local newspapers, which I thought was smart. I don't know how successful the foundation's been in this new endeavor overall, but I respect the effort. I'm all for enlivening poetry and getting it to reach the masses in a form more sophisticated than children's verse.

And I applaud Nix's concept of reminding progressives that art and politics are not oil and water, and I thoroughly enjoyed Hemon's quotes in her article, including:

There is a loss of intellectual self-confidence all across the board, for capitalism prefers a non-thinking consumer to a thinking citizen. The restoration of public space in blogosphere, I think, alleviates that problem. I hope it can also provide space for a resurgence of serious literature."

Here here!

More on how to support her at the end of the article, so check it out - especially if you're a progressive political blogger.

It ain't me, babe

I had to post again so quickly to differentiate my general position on this blog from the position of Richard Cohen in this Washington Post op-ed, which I found through a Shelf Awareness link.

I'm concerned for many things in this world, including the pace of our cultural discussions, but I am not against digitization across the board. Reading this op-ed, that becomes more clear than ever. It's a tragic piece of writing, as many of the commenters note (sometimes nastily). Poor Cohen is misguided. He's right that bookstores offer a special and important environment, of course, and I'm all for someone promoting independents, of course. But you can find books online, using recommendations from any number of people - reviewers on Amazon, bloggers, bookstore employees who keep blogs, etc... And then when you buy that book, you may have no idea where you got it, just like he doesn't know where he got some of his books. He tells an anecdote about a bookseller guiding him to Her Privates We - "The Hemingway blurb sold me." I don't even understand that, but the reality is, one could stumble upon this book just as easily online.

In fact, I went to the Texas Observer site for some reason recently, where I found this terrific article by Robert Leleux about gay East Texas novelist Edward Swift. I'm now reading Leleux's book, as noted in "Now reading" on the margin here, and have Swift's novel, Splendora, out from the library, as well, to chase Leleux's YA-like memoir (sorry!). All done online! (The TX Observer, btw? **** (four stars). The New Yorker of the South! You heard it here... )

But Cohen says other tragic things, like:
- "I understand that it's bulky and expensive to ship and that it entails the consumption of paper, which is probably not green, but then what is?" What is green? Really?
- "If I were younger, I'd go [to the bookstore] to pick up girls. I'd look over their shoulders and say, "Oh, 'The Prophet,' a book of eternal truths" -- or some such tripe. (It used to work.)" Ugh. I mean, honestly. UGH.
- "It is called the Kindle, which must be one of those focus group words. Sounds like the German word for children. Sounds like kind. Sounds innocent. Of course, it is not." Oh Dick, the drama!

There must be a middle road, or at least a more sophisticated manner in which to navigate the electronic age. My concern is valuing knowledge and art and their (or its) production. I love bookstores and books, yes, but I also welcome technology.

So it's clear now, right? I'm not a luddite, and I'm not naive, and I'm all for moving forward. AND I don't buy books with Hemingway blurbs, I don't care what some ol' bookseller says.

Books of Connecticut Past

Off to Connecticut this past weekend, and despite my partner's feelings to the contrary, I quite like the state in some ways. I'm troubled by the gross inconsistencies, sure, wherein cities are intensely dangerous and rundown while the countryside is comically bucolic and moneyed, but I also find things to like in both city and country. But alas, I'll let those who know better debate the finer points.

On Saturday, we left my sister's li'l oasis in Middlebury to hit three bookstores. The first one was the John Bale Book Co. in Waterbury. It looked so cool, but as it turns out, it's closed every Saturday in August due to building repairs. I was bummed. The cafe looked pretty nice, too.

It was not meant to be this time.



So we left the fine industrial big town/li'l city of Waterbury to find the next store on our list, which was about 1/2 way between Waterbury and New Haven. It was listed as a book barn, and my partner and I both love book barns (Especially Pleasant Street Books of Woodstock, VT)!

And the store was Whitlock Farm Bookstore in Bethany, CT - which has no website, hence this link. It was, indeed, a charming place, with a good collection of books. We arrived in the pouring rain, after driving down a charming country road. It turned out to be near perfect weather for browsing through dusty old books in a converted turkey barn, the rain providing a steady beat as we went aisle to aisle, corner to corner.


Having read his book, Rats, I picked up a copy of Robert Campbell's The Meadowlands: Wilderness Adventures at the Edge of the City, about that swampy area of New Jersey just outside of NYC that is protected but presumably polluted to all hell. I've become a fan of this urban nature writing, so I thought this would be a good addition to the library. My partner, an academic, figured out that a fellow leftist historian had just sold a large collection of leftist history books to the store, so he found a good few titles to buy as well as a number of books he would have happily purchased if he did not already have copies at home.


But there was more! Whitlock has a second barn - converted from a sheep barn, the woman told me - about 30 yards away, so we raced through the rain to that barn to find all the books under $5. What a great idea! Neither of us ended up purchasing anything from this barn, but I loved that it was there, and it was full of vacation reads and books you don't mind buying just in case, since they were cheap cheap cheap.

The rain had stopped by the time we left Whitlock, and we got back on the road for New Haven. We did not have Yale in mind in and of itself, as neither one of us felt the need to see another ivy league campus, but I did want to see the Labyrinth Books, the indie bookstore that I believe started in New Haven before opening in Princeton and in NYC, near Columbia (not necessarily in that order. Though I have since learned that the store where I bought the charming novel, The Boy Detective Fails, in NYC is no longer Labyrinth, but is now Book Culture.

The store in New Haven was fine - clean, easy to navigate, approachable employees. Rather quickly, we headed to the annex downstairs with remainders, and found some good stuff. It was a predictable selection - white leftist intellectual stuff - but my partner found another few books to purchase. I almost bought Barry Glassner's The Gospel of Food, but decided against it. It was a bit eerie because there were very few customers there on this Saturday afternoon, but the thunderstorm had just finished and it was Yale in the summer, so it made sense. It just gave the place a bit of a sterile feeling.

So that was Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, as we headed back to Boston, we stopped at a place I have always noticed and always wondered about, like so many drivers on I-84: Traveler Food and Books, or Restaurant, or Bookstore. I don't know the official name, but the place is pretty damn cool. It had a certain sense of books - as not disposable, but far from elite. Here, books are lying around everywhere, around the tables, as you walk in, outside the restroom - this is on top of the basement that offers a more traditional used-bookstore set-up. And they also had book bundles they had created, with themese like Bestsellers, Horror, YA, Romance... and you could get a dozen mass markets for $10. Terrific! Sadly, I found nothing to buy here, but I was hungry and a bit cranky after a weekend with the family. Then we went upstairs thinking we'd eat, but my partner had been there before and wasn't sold on the food, and the prices were not as cheap as one might imagine looking around. Add to this the fact that the two women working there refused to look up so as to seat us, and you can appreciate why we left. I should note, however, that my partner once again found some leftist book to buy, so we did give them some money. I'm anxious to go back in a more relaxed state of mind.

So a bookish weekend, proving Connecticut is more than rich white people, NYC suburbs, and pizza slices. I also discovered, upon coming back, a new Texan writer to read up on, but more on that in another post...


[please forgive the formatting mess - or blame blogspot!]

The Meaning of Reading in an Internet Age

If I were more on the ball, I would have linked to this Motoko Rich article, "Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?," from the New York Times earlier in the week. The good news is that this is apparently "the first in a series of articles that will look at how the Internet and other technological and social forces are changing the way people read." So more to come!

It's an interesting enough article that does a fine job providing the kind of surface of this debate, which they are framing as "digital versus print." The parents want the kids to read books, the kids want to spend all their time online. I appreciated the point that some kids, and even some adults, saw books as boring when you know there is a more interactive alternative, but as ever, I was troubled by the lack of control of online content.

“It takes a long time to read a 400-page book,” said Mr. Spiro of Michigan State. “In a tenth of the time,” he said, the Internet allows a reader to “cover a lot more of the topic from different points of view.”

Zachary Sims, the Old Greenwich, Conn., teenager, often stays awake until 2 or 3 in the morning reading articles about technology or politics — his current passions — on up to 100 Web sites.

“On the Internet, you can hear from a bunch of people,” said Zachary, who will attend Columbia University this fall. “They may not be pedigreed academics. They may be someone in their shed with a conspiracy theory. But you would weigh that.”

The difference between that 400 page book and a variety of websites, though, is that the book can be checked for accuracy, both in its content and in its presentation. I worry that this kid is giving equally weight to "someone in their shed" and experts. Are we really ready to dismiss credentials that easily?

Later, another teenager's habits are discussed:

When researching the 19th-century Chief Justice Roger B. Taney for one class, he typed Taney’s name into Google and scanned the Wikipedia entry and other biographical sites. Instead of reading an entire page, he would type in a search word like “college” to find Taney’s alma mater, assembling his information nugget by nugget.

Again, Wikipedia information is not always accurate. I'm not going to get too upset about the idea of piecing together information because this happened long before the internet, when people would do the same with books, but the sources are questionable, even unreliable, so the information is cheapened.

And I suppose this is what it comes down to: how much respect do people have for information if it's so readily available? It seems the value of this currency drops when it's provided by so many, some of whom may be putting out false information. Using a currency analogy also allows us to bring up the elitism of this view: am I suggesting only a privileged few should have access to and be able to provide information, to keep it's value high? I think everyone should have access, but not everyone should necessarily be providing information, or rather, we shouldn't trust anyone with information. If we don't continue to value education that turns people into experts, then we're heading into some fairly frightening uncertain times.

This article discusses testing internet navigation skills, and I can see some value in this. Kids are using it so often, why not test the skills so they do not waste time and trust bad sources of information? The Educational Testing Service developed an exam called iSkills, and of the 20,000 students who have taken it since 2006, "only 39% of four-year college freshmen achieved a score that represented 'core functional levels' in Internet literacy."

There's plenty of good crap to read online, but let's face it: 80% is personal opinion dressed as fact, or pornography. And I have no problem with opinionated writing or, for that matter, porn, but both should be enjoyed only when one knows enough to navigate them skillfully.

(I'm not sure how porn got tangled up in this point, but maybe it'll get the site more hits.)

PS - I just noticed a letter to the editor on nytimes.com from Mark Hussey, a professor of English from Pace University (whose name again calls to mind pornography), who makes this sound point:

As more and more people fail to “read,” it becomes easier for the powerful to hoodwink them because extended narratives disappear, to be replaced by the quick conclusions available in a Google search. We no longer see that we are repeating old narratives, no longer see how we got to where we are.

To engage with democratic processes — to participate in making difficult decisions or answering challenging questions (shall we go to war? whose fault is poverty?) — requires the ability to examine multiple perspectives, to hold conflicting ideas simultaneously in the mind.

That's in part what I meant to say... thanks!

Another Bullshit review

Sorry to have one on top of another, but here's my 4 sentence review of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn.

I tried this book a couple of years ago and ended up selling my copy after reading about 40 pages, but after meeting someone who worked with the author at Pine Street Inn, I gave it another shot. I'm glad I did, but Christopher rightly said that he found the narrator unreliable, and I'm afraid I found this as well. I was fascinated by the story of the author's father and his life, and I was horrified by the tragic early life of the author, but I found the author's clever asides and parenthetical allusions and occasional attempts at literary style (including a chapter in dialogue format, which I just had to skip) frustrating. He has his moments, and I particularly appreciated his handling of the inevitability of inheritance, as he comes to grip with his estranged father's delusions of being a writer as a writer himself, and it was an easy read, but it could have used perhaps one or two more edits to tighten it up, focus it, and really have it deliver, without MFA pretensions.

Outside of my 4-sentence review, let me just say how much I love the title and packaging. Fantastic!

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu

My 4-sentence review

This novel started out a bit rocky: I was concerned the author wasn't being consistent with facts, and I thought descriptions were uneven or thin. Two things allow me to forgive this rockiness to an extent: 1) it's his first novel, and 2) the fragments come together, the slow pace evolves into a sweet story that, in fact, parallels the kind, tragic character of Sepha Stephanos, an Ethiopian refugee running a bodega in DC with little to no passion for life, a broken man, a man watching gentrification occur around him as an outsider, who lets things wash over him and convinces himself they don't impact him, and he can't impact them. This story is very current, and quiet, and gentle. I wouldn't heartily recommend it, but it is sweet, simple enough for any modern reader (16 and up maybe?) but slow enough to not please anyone looking for a fast delivery, and urban in a way you don't see as much, insofar as it's very much based in the city, the city as character, without being frenetic or fearful, without feeling the need to keep up with the pace, but just being in the moment as pieces of the past, of the terror inflicted on the character's family during the revolution (not entirely sure of the politics of all this...), of the desperation of professionals and the poor surround this man, not a hero but not a case to pity either.

Don't believe the hype

I wish this chair were cooler than it is:

When I saw it referenced, I had high hopes, but it looks terribly uncomfortable, no?

I had thought of posting today about how this WSJ article by Rebecca Smith proves capitalism's a failure (how electricity deregulation in TX, signed in by Bush as governor there, has failed miserably) and somehow relate that to publishing and books, but alas, it never happened.

So... just... gaze at this chair instead.

Soon, Christopher and I will start 4-sentence reviews of our books, as we remove them from the "Now Reading" sidebar item. I guess I'll come up with reaction to Dinaw Mengestu's The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears soon. So there's that to look forward to.

Until then, go find a book. Happy reading!

Further proof the Cape is just that much closer to heaven

I cannot wait, cannot wait, cannot wait to go here next month: it's The Bookstore & Restaurant in Wellfleet, MA, on Cape Cod, and it looks so cool I cannot stand it. It's just what it sounds like, selling used books and breakfast, lunch, AND dinner. They also have "jazz & blues that swings!" No cover - no minimum.

I can't believe we didn't go when we were on the Cape this last weekend.

I hope this ol' codger is still there!

Did I mention that the "late night tavern" is a bomb shelter? I know, I KNOW.

And yes, that is a foosball table. Bring it.