New CoOp in Shorewood?

posted by Jay

With the news of a planned book CoOp at the old HWS Shorewood location, we're interested in your take on the prospect of a new/similar/different bookseller/bookselling model in the same location.

I think it's safe to say all of us at the Flap are happy when new independent booksellers open, as the loss of the Schwartz shops were a loss for the community as a whole. Bookshops are places for discussion, for the sharing and communication and debate of free ideas of all kinds - and for the formation of social capital.

However, the question needs to be asked: how will this bookshop succeed where Harry W. Schwartz failed?

Is the "CoOp" model different enough to succeed?

What are "competitive" prices and how does that enable success?

Follow the discussion at the Inside Flappers social network, where you can discuss books, authors, write your own blogs - share your voice, ideas and media. We're keeping tabs on the news and articles on this development.

J.G. Ballard has Died

via GalleyCat:

J.G. Ballard, the influential novelist and namesake of the literary term "Ballardian," has died.

His novels included "Crash," "Empire of the Sun," and "The Drowned World." His novel "Super Cannes" won the Commonwealth Writers Prize after its publication in 2000. According to the BBC, Ballard's agent, Margaret Hanbury, noted that the author had been sick for a few years.

Crash is on the shelf, courtesy of David Zimmerman. (Sorry for never giving that back, David.) I admit it's unread, except for the first chapter. I know Bayard is a big fan. I enjoy Baudrillard's review of Crash.

Harry W. Schwartz to close all stores

Here are a couple of links to the full story:

Publishers Weekly
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Schwartz

And from two brilliant booksellers:

Justin Riley
Daniel Goldin

Very sad news, indeed.

Edit:

And the excellent Jack Pendarvis (who knows and has met Tom Franklin! In person!)

Who *reads* fiction on teh internetz, anyway?

or, Two More Meaty Ways in Which the Platform Changes, but the Song Remains the Same.

by digi-jay < partially x-posted from impoverished artifices >

-----------------------------------------------

Discussed:

BBC's Digital Planet discusses a South African mobile web app story serialization project.

NPR's All Things Considered compiled a story about the "wovel", which is, in essence, a roughly interactive serialization of a novel on a blog or on the web (web + novel = wovel).

Questions:

How interactive does interactivity have to be?

Are physical spaces that sell books doomed?

-----------------------------------------------

Listening to the very good Digital Planet podcast from the BBC World Service on the iPhone at the grocery store, I heard about a South African story project, Novel Idea. It's sent to subscribers over mobile texts, but it is not like the Japanese mobile text novels that the NYT had a feature on in January 2008. Rather than being a story in a text message, the text delivers a link to a WAP site that hosts the stories. There are several authors working on the project, with a variety of types of work (I *so* resist the word "genre" here...).

The form mimics serialization, as it condenses the space of composition into a word limit. The WAP rather than SMS, though, increases the amount of text that can be published per installment. "Punchy" was one term used to describe the mode of creative composition, as the author needs to hook the reader in a small space.

The manager of the project, Emma Kaye, mentioned that mobile technology in South Africa is more prolific than internet access. According to Kaye, mobile phones have a penetration rate of 90% in South Africa. One reason for this could be that, again according to Kaye, SMS is cheaper than voice rates. Thus, this form of literature can have a greater reach than the form that I'll discuss next.

The form, while not interactive, is certainly portable and a result of adaptation to new technologies. It can also be shared with friends, by forwarding the text link - though a believe the R$1.50 charge for establishing a subscription. It's also a competition: readers vote on the best story, until only one author remains. So, I suppose, in a way it is interactive--readers can end stories.

The "wovel" First World, as featured on NPR's All Things Considered is a similar development of writing meeting new modes of reading. Published in blog format--though, really, one could say published on the web, with abilities for comments; blog is just a catch word--this serialization offers readers a collective interactivity. They are allowed to vote for a binary option of how the story unfolds in the next installment. Through comments, they are given the opportunity for a digital rhetorical discourse on how the story should unfold.

The most interesting aspect of Novel Idea and the wovel to me, as an author, is how the act of writing is being adapted to fit new methods of reading and publishing media. Neither of these styles of publishing are necessarily new, as the serialization of fiction has a very long history and has been far more interesting. For instance, sensation fiction publications in Victorian England purposely blended fiction and nonfiction to break down lines of categorization. These tehno-forms are just plain storytelling--on a new platform that may require some new limitations on length, predominantly.

I'm interested in the interactivity offered by the wovel, in that it is collective rather than individual. I would tend to prefer the individual choose your own adventure style of reading, rather than being offered a binary decision in which I only have a small say. Reading has traditionally (to me and in "Western" culture, I'd venture) been an individual act. Thus, this collective is both interesting and limiting. The limiting almost makes it identical to authorial decision-making, though that power is spread out. Again, I'd be interested in seeing that power dissolve, by offering infinite outcomes.

Why not paper? If we're talking about brevity, there are plenty of excellent flash fiction collections out there, such as Flash Fiction Forward (< /bayard_plug >). With paper, you do lose the technological convergence of the hand-held: voice, data, network -- and everything that accompanies these. Paper does have the advantage of the brain's mode of memory, however, in that the rigid layer of paper offers a static spatial sequence that can be internalized -- the paragraph at the top, the sentence on the left-hand page.

As bookseller, electronic distribution of texts is usually a generally threatening proposition. What happens when War & Peace is available for download on my iPhone or your Curve? OMG, we're all going to disappear!!1!

And, while this *is* slowly happening -- indies closing, chains starting down that road, Project Gutenberg delivers War & Peace to my phone for free, what I'm sure is a majority of reading now being done online (Lessig says so...) -- I don't think it's because I've actually read or would prefer to read The Society of the Spectacle or even Free Culture on my mobile, rather than in bound paper form. (For starters, I can't highlight my touch screen and write marginalia.) Rather, one giant reason is that readers are individually living online and letting the evil A and their superior algorithm tell readers what they might like. It isn't e-texts that are being distributed to problematize paper and bricks-and-mortar, it's paper being distributed from an electronic source that endangers your neighborhood bookshop.

Does that mean that the "real" is doomed to succumb to the "virtual"? I don't think so, and not just because I think that binary isn't accurate ("real" and "virtual" overlap and bleed and are much more porous than a binary realtionship allows -- see this blog and the bookshop we all happen to work at where we talk about this blog).

My hope lies in the fact that the evil A doesn't really offer a place for readers to organize or form commnunity. They are very much about commerce and have not been able to hide or complement that with a social aspect. In fact, there isn't a predominant or set of predominant social networks for readers -- at least that I've found. They all seem partial or don't offer the community we come to expect from more popular social networking experiences, like Facebook.

One speculation for this might sound something like the long tail of media consumption. TV and film have limited programming options to offer, due to methods of distribution (networks, basic cable, expanded cable, web-only, in a descending manner for TV). While this has grown with Web 2.0/RW/remix culture, the number of offerings for TV and film must be dwarved by the number of books published yearly by major houses. Add in small presses and academic publishers and that number probably doubles. (And that's not including self-publication outfits, as the RW culture has not crossed into the book world. "Self-published" and "vanity press" are very dirty words.)

So what, dude? you're asking. My point here is that it's easier to form community around a show like Lost, as so many more people view it, as their viewing options are intrinsicly less on TV than they are in a bookshop. Where's that message board for Gone Away World, Jordan? It's harder to find people who want to talk about the same books that you've read, as, not only is reading ficiton less common than watching TV, the number of ficticious books you can choose to read is far greater than the number of TV series you can choose to watch.

What's this have to do with bookshops with front doors, that pay local taxes to support schools and infrastructure and employ members of your community? In theory, it should hurt them, as ecnomies of scale and the long tail should make it easier and cheaper for small groups to connect online. (I'm sure there is a group of three people talking about Gone Away World somewhere in some corner of the internetz -- and I'd like you to give me the names of the other two folks, Jordan, so I can properly cite them.) But -- and here's the turn -- there's a difference between talking about and selling things, no matter how closely they're related. And, personally, this is where I see the advantage of the community bookseller over the evil A or equivalent.

The bookseller(s) is better than the algorithm.

The good bookseller can tell you what people enjoy, what's new to the shelf, what people who read are enjoying -- and why.

The algorithm can tell you what other people bought.

Pick up your mobile and find out where your nearest (indie) bookseller is and start a conversation with anyone: a bookseller, that girl in the "science fiction" section or that weird guy over in the corner by magazines.

Rules for Radical Readers

As someone who is more frequently exploring the interweaving of social networking and bookselling, I can't say that I've ever found a sentence more exciting than this:

In one heavily trafficked thread entitled “Unhappy with Breaking Dawn? Don’t burn it—RETURN it!,” commenters debated whether returning the book was a valid way to express unhappiness with the book. <PW Daily, 7 Aug 08>

The above is referring to the less-than-enthusiastic reception of Stephanie Meyer's Breaking Dawn, the fourth book in the hottest YA series since that wizard kid (read Sarah's thoughts here). I can't honestly write that I've seen anyone return a copy to us this week - and if you're thinking of it, I recommend returning it to a megastore, instead.

Back to my interest in this story, though. I've recently finished Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody, a book on sharing, collaboration and collective actions through online social networking. It's a good intro to the rise of netroots actions across the spectrum - politics, business, creativity to name a few broad arenas - if less than critical. Still, I recommend.

In Shirky's world, collective action is the endpoint of successful online social groupings. As the chief advocate for our Ning network of book readers, I tend to concentrate on how the internets can facilitate sharing and collaboration - in essence, I'm hoping to initiate a conversation on books, etc. This blog, too, is an exercise in collaboration. Ideally, the collective action part of the equation is the translation from joining the network to helping independent booksellers keep their doors open by buying books from us (which you can do by clicking on a title or book cover).

In the 4 Aug 08 print edition of Publishers Weekly, (lo-and-behold!) Clay Shirky has a little piece on digital publishing, "Mattering to Readers", in which he predominantly argues for a more accessible publishing world to listen to and reach out to their readers, in order to form more personal relationships, or "to matter" to them. Shirky holds up Big Music as what not to do: don't become faceless, homogenized blobs, or folks won't have a problem digitally reproducing and redistributing your products without giving a damn about your coin purse.

The publishing industry has an advantage, maybe two: books are still not digitally-distributed to the extent that they can be "pirated". The second might be that mega-publishers haven't become blobs of homogenization, yet. I think there are more than a few arguments against that, though. Regardless, Shirky's claim only requires the first condition: folks can't rip off the publishers yet without the digital media; thus, the publishers still have time to become relevant to their readers. They'd better hurry, as some small publishers already are relevant to many readers.

What does this have to do with online social networking, besides the preferred method of distribution of digital media, you might ask? Two things: the writing process and the bi-directionality of networks.

Shirky writes that he wanted to write a book "to work with a publisher", rather than, say, make some money, share some knowledge, etc. Those things, I assume he knows, he can do - and foes - online. He goes for print due to a books ability to share and collaborate ("focus a conversation, creating social capital" are his exact words) across large scales and longer periods of time. (It talks longer to read and share a physical book, than forward an email, online story or blogpost.)

The conversation we want is one of sharing ideas, collaborating and collective action. Shirky, as a writer and communications theorist, understands the collaborative process inherent in bringing a finished book to the shelf - and how this is similar to what online communities can sometimes achieve. Here Comes Everybody, though, is published by one of the largest conglomerates in the publishing world - Penguin. (One can understand why he might not be interested in declaring that big publishing houses *are* exactly the same as their nameless, faceless music industry anaologs.) I can also understand why explicitly writing about the potential consequences of this conversation didn't make it into this article.

As Breaking Dawn is showing us, hosting that conversation can result in your readers trashing your products, for all to read, for some (if not most) to participate in, all at your hosting expense and their time. While there willingness to spend their free time is a strong sign of the readers' committment to the series, what I find more interesting is the power that the readers have wrested from the publishers, utilizing the tools the publisher has provided to organize a campaign to return the books. While I'm sure Little, Brown/Hachette was counting on kids flosking to their site to talk about Meyer's saga, I bet they weren't counting on losing their monopolistic power structure in the process.

And, to me, that is the power of the reader who is connected to other readers. The temporal and physical structures of our society may keep us divided - suburban sprawl, homogenization of commerce, lack of mass transit, ad inifinitum - but we can build social capital in spaces that are more resiliant to these pressures.

Join the conversation.

(And, if you're in SE Wisco, you can join our siblings at 800-CEO-READ for their second Pecha Kucha night on 26 Aug 08.)

Homogenization, now available second hand

credit

From Publishers Weekly:

Amazon has reached an agreement to acquire AbeBooks, the British Columbia-based online marketplace that has over 110 million titles for sale through its bookseller network. The purchase, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter, will strengthen Amazon's already dominate position in the used book field. Terms weren't disclosed.

I'm generally not a fan of consolidation of power in any form; as a second hand book buyer, who reluctantly lists some books at the big A, this news is particularly sad. While it's a marketplace expansion issue (the same reason I list a few), it still homogenizes the way online consumers will view and purchase books. And, it seems, Abe Books (or the executives at Abe Books) is one bookseller who will benefit financially. I doubt that other, similar services will get the same (or any offers) from Amazon. Likely, they'll wither. Now, we'll exclusively send folks to Alibris, I suppose.

This isn't an online v. "real" world divide for me, as I don't necessarily believe that those spaces are separate for most people. That's why I blog. About books. And, more and more, about online community. That's why we Ning. The thought is that we can build social capital together, exchange thoughts on books. If you're in Milwaukee, you might stop into the shop on Downer to talk with us. If not in SE Wisco, you might leave a comment on the blog, join the Ning, follow our twitter and even buy a book from us online. Or, you might have cause to stop into your local independent bookseller to start a conversation there.

Rather, this is Amazon gobbling up competitors and consolidating the marketplace, which will only allow them to further dictate how (and which!) books are sold. Or, as smaller networks and brick-and-mortar shops disappear from your neighborhood, they will be able to control the flow of information in printed form, as they see fit.

Sure, pure free markets reward the most efficient, but we don't live in a pure free market (regardless of anyone's thoughts on the merits of capitalism). We can vote with our dollars, choose to support our friends and neighbors and form social connections, rather than exchange goods and services in bland transactions. In short, we can be a community: of geography, of interests, of taste, whatever.

Thanks for reading.

Hang out and build some social capital with us.

Feminist Bookstore

by Sarah Marine

I regularly check the New York Times online book blog Papercuts; it's worth the trip. I am of course, if you know me, attracted to the most scathing wit and straight-faced criticism out there and the short film Feminist Bookstore recently posted on Papercuts happens to be just that. Carrie Brownstein of the legendary punk-rock OLY WA band Sleater-Kinney and Saturday Night Live's Fred Armisen are the new comedic duo called Thunderant, which created the short. The film features Brownstein and Armisen as two feminist bookstore employees deciding for or against hanging different flyers in their store window. As a feminist, a bookstore employee and some-percent hippie it's pretty right on with its humor and criticism. Check it out.



Makes me wish Chic Ironic Bitterness was getting better reviews than this.

Pat Conroy & the Chemistry of Combustible Books

by Jay Johnson

Sure, this missed Banned Books Week by a month, but shouldn't we be thinking of the dangers of censorship year-round anyway? I think so.

October 24, 2007

Pat Conroy’s letter about Nitro High's book suspensions

· Author scolds censors, praises teachers and students

A Letter to the Editor of the Charleston Gazette:

I received an urgent e-mail from a high school student named Makenzie Hatfield of Charleston, West Virginia. She informed me of a group of parents who were attempting to suppress the teaching of two of my novels, “The Prince of Tides” and “Beach Music.” I heard rumors of this controversy as I was completing my latest filthy, vomit-inducing work. These controversies are so commonplace in my life that I no longer get involved. But my knowledge of mountain lore is strong enough to know the dangers of refusing to help a Hatfield of West Virginia. I also do not mess with McCoys.

I’ve enjoyed a lifetime love affair with English teachers, just like the ones who are being abused in Charleston, West Virginia, today. My English teachers pushed me to be smart and inquisitive, and they taught me the great books of the world with passion and cunning and love. Like your English teachers, they didn’t have any money, either, but they lived in the bright fires of their imaginations, and they taught because they were born to teach the prettiest language in the world. I have yet to meet an English teacher who assigned a book to damage a kid. They take an unutterable joy in opening up the known world to their students, but they are dishonored and unpraised because of the scandalous paychecks they receive. In my travels around this country, I have discovered that America hates its teachers, and I could not tell you why. Charleston, West Virginia, is showing clear signs of really hurting theirs, and I would be cautious about the word getting out.

In 1961, I entered the classroom of the great Eugene Norris, who set about in a thousand ways to change my life. It was the year I read “Catcher in the Rye,” under Gene’s careful tutelage, and I adore that book to this very day. Later, a parent complained to the school board, and Gene Norris was called before the board to defend his teaching of this book. He asked me to write an essay describing the book’s galvanic effect on me, which I did. But Gene’s defense of “Catcher in the Rye” was so brilliant and convincing in its sheer power that it carried the day. I stayed close to Gene Norris till the day he died. I delivered a eulogy at his memorial service and was one of the executors of his will. Few in the world have ever loved English teachers as I have, and I loathe it when they are bullied by know-nothing parents or cowardly school boards.

About the novels your county just censored: “The Prince of Tides” and “Beach Music” are two of my darlings, which I would place before the altar of God and say, “Lord, this is how I found the world you made.” They contain scenes of violence, but I was the son of a Marine Corps fighter pilot who killed hundreds of men in Korea, beat my mother and his seven kids whenever he felt like it, and fought in three wars. My youngest brother, Tom, committed suicide by jumping off a fourteen-story building; my French teacher ended her life with a pistol; my aunt was brutally raped in Atlanta; eight of my classmates at The Citadel were killed in Vietnam; and my best friend was killed in a car wreck in Mississippi last summer. Violence has always been a part of my world. I write about it in my books and make no apology to anyone. In “Beach Music,” I wrote about the Holocaust and lack the literary powers to make that historical event anything other than grotesque.

People cuss in my books. People cuss in my real life. I cuss, especially at Citadel basketball games. I’m perfectly sure that Steve Shamblin and other teachers prepared their students well for any encounters with violence or profanity in my books just as Gene Norris prepared me for the profane language in “Catcher in the Rye” forty-eight years ago.

The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave anything out. I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty of language. Because of them I rode with Don Quixote and danced with Anna Karenina at a ball in St. Petersburg and lassoed a steer in “Lonesome Dove” and had nightmares about slavery in “Beloved” and walked the streets of Dublin in “Ulysses” and made up a hundred stories in the Arabian nights and saw my mother killed by a baseball in “A Prayer for Owen Meany.” I’ve been in ten thousand cities and have introduced myself to a hundred thousand strangers in my exuberant reading career, all because I listened to my fabulous English teachers and soaked up every single thing those magnificent men and women had to give. I cherish and praise them and thank them for finding me when I was a boy and presenting me with the precious gift of the English language.

The school board of Charleston, West Virginia, has sullied that gift and shamed themselves and their community. You’ve now entered the ranks of censors, book-banners, and teacher-haters, and the word will spread. Good teachers will avoid you as though you had cholera. But here is my favorite thing: Because you banned my books, every kid in that county will read them, every single one of them. Because book banners are invariably idiots, they don’t know how the world works — but writers and English teachers do.

I salute the English teachers of Charleston, West Virginia, and send my affection to their students. West Virginians, you’ve just done what history warned you against — you’ve riled a Hatfield.

Sincerely,

Pat Conroy

In a Gazette article about the school board's cultural prescription, I found the following interesting:

Board member Bill Raglin was not sympathetic.

“That fool, Conroy, assumes ... that every person who is an English major [or teacher] is above reproach,” Raglin said. “I’m a chemist. Do I believe that all chemists are good? No.

“Maybe I should go back to school and change my major.”

He favors a book rating system or disclaimers on controversial books.

Is it surprising that a physical scientist's answer to this problem is an unwavering faith in the triumphant privileging of rationalism? Oh, the Enlightenment and its progress in rationalism! More labels, more categories, Mr. Raglin. Perhaps a factory of book rating (good books go to the sleeping chambers, bad ones go where?) would appeal to him, as the prevalent model of the century of camps (thank you, Zygmunt Bauman - excerpt) would be recognizable to rational logic.

And, yes, you should go back to school; as a person who occupies a position of leadership in the community - I won't cite you as a role model - you should be continually expanding your knowledge, growing your field of perception. Chemistry has changed since you graduated; so has the world, whether you're with it or against it. As a school board member, I would expect Mr. Raglin to be supportive of continuing education. But, I suppose I'm confusing advocacy with board membership.

If he does return to school, perhaps he will see the disconnect in his confusing reproach with a qualitative pronouncement of value. It's censure, Mr. Raglin, not censor. At least we can agree that there are bad chemists - and be glad they aren't concerned with the teaching young Americans to think critically and independently. Clearly, English teachers - not Chemists - should be in charge of that.

Slush Pile Update - Dan Wickett of Dzanc Books

This is part three in a series of dispatches from independent publishers, instigated by a banal and ignorant comment from an editor at Simon & Schuster about the dearth of unsolicited manuscripts being published today.

The previous two installments can be found below:

The Slush Pile Is Dead! Long Live the Slush Pile!

Slush Pile Update - Eli Horowitz, McSweeney's

I recently had a moment to send Dan Wickett, the Exectutive Director and co-founder of Dzanc Books, a Michigan-based nonprofit publisher, founder of the Emerging Writers Network and a member of the Litblog Co-op. Dzanc supports lit journals across the country; as the Editor-in-Chief of cream city review, a student of fiction, and a reader who is interested in finding fiction, poetry, and nonfiction that has more than simple commercial potential, I would suggest Dzanc Books deserves at least a peek from discerning readers.

They make it easy to get hooked: they have All Over an exciting new collection from Roy Kesey (published in great journals like The Iowa Review, McSweeney's, and The Kenyon Review) out now.

A new collection from Yannick Murphy, author of the fabulous Here They Come (buy the swanky McSweeney's hardcover, dammit), the upcoming Signed Mata Hari, and a new story in the upcoming cream city review (shameless?) is due in February 2008.

JJ: How deep is your slush pile of novel-length (or short story collection) manuscripts?

Dan Wickett: It's done via email, but if printed out, it would definitely be taller than I am.

JJ: How many unsolicited manuscripts do you receive monthly?

DW: Since the P&W article, we've been receiving over three per day.

JJ: How often do you read manuscripts out of the slush?

DW: Every day at least one or two are looked at by myself and our initial readers.

JJ: How many slush authors receive correspondence?

DW: Every single mss [manuscript] submitted will receive at least a 'No thank you' email from us. If something specific jumped out as to why we weren't interested, we'll try to include that. If something is close - a manuscript that maybe we asked to see the whole thing and then didn't take it - we'll try to explain a little further as to why not.

JJ: How many books have you published from slush?

DW: The fourth title we publish, a trio of novellas from Hesh Kestin, will be the first title that is truly from the slush pile - a manuscript not solicited by us, or brought to us by somebody we knew. Then the Suzanne Burns story collection to follow that was also from the slush pile. The Robert Lopez titles as well. It seems we're running about 50/50 so far.

JJ: Do you and your assistant editors eat pizza, salads, or both?

DW: Both but pizza much more often in my own case.

JJ: Would you rather read a slush pile MS or create a marketing sheet?

DW: Mss all the way.

For more on Dzanc Books, check their website and find the Sept/Oct Poets & Writers.

Slush Pile Update - Eli Horowitz, McSweeney's

In response to my thoughts on the slush pile in contemporary publishing, McSweeney's Editor Eli Horowitz answers some questions on their slush pile. McSweeney's next book is Millard Kaufman's Bowl of Cherries.

Eli Horowitz: I don’t know if we really have a slush pile here — not because we don’t take unsolicited manuscripts, but because almost everything sits in the same pile. Sometimes we’ve heard of the writer, or someone recommended them, and some others are sent by agents, but still they all mush together. So it’s not like a daring expedition into the darkest swamps — it’s no swampier than our overall book-reading procedure (which is fairly swampy throughout).

Jay Johnson: How deep is your slush pile of novel-length manuscripts?

EH: Only ankle-deep, but several yards wide.

JJ: How many unsolicited manuscripts do you receive monthly?

EH: For books, maybe fifty? (A lot more for stories.)

JJ: How often do you read manuscripts out of the slush?

EH: All the time.

JJ: How many slush authors receive correspondence?

EH: Well, they all receive something, or they all should. But do you mean personal notes? Pretty rarely.

JJ: How many books have you published from slush?

EH: Again, it depends what you call slush, but at least half our novels, I think: Here They Come, Icelander, Bowl of Cherries, etc.

JJ: Do you and your assistant editors eat pizza, salads, or both?

EH: Burritos.

JJ: Would you rather read a slush pile MS or create a marketing sheet?

EH: I don’t even really know what a marketing sheet is.

Immortalize The Classics Personally

So, need more proof that the rest of the world is cooler than us? Check out this idea from Penguin Publishing's UK branch. I'm sure this is a pilot program, and if successful in the UK, Penguin will do something similar here.

Design Your Own Cover

I have to admit; early in my booklife, I had no clue about the impact covers made. It's only been since working in the industry that I've realized their impact, and grown to appreciate the well-crafted ones. There are studies citing the cover as THE most important factor deciding whether a book is picked up by a customer.

With that being the case, Penguin is taking a chance (but not too big of one; the books eligible are all classics, and will likely sell for the rest of time) that the spark of creativity and the chance to express yourself will overcome blank space on THE most important marketing aspect of a book.

Even if this idea tanks, I've got to applaud the effort and ingenuity on display. The book industry needs to be shaken up constantly, or we'll risk truly becoming the dinosaurs of media some already take us for.

* Note: The Dinosaurs of Media would make an excellent rock band name.

The Slush Pile is Dead - Long Live the Slush Pile

On Tuesday, NPR's All Things Considered ran a story about an Gather.com's (an online community referred to as "Facebook for adults") open competition for authors to have a novel published. While this method is nothing new - read any writer's magazine to find contests offering cash plus publication - the comments on the slush were particularly abrasive to my ears.

Before publishing houses were part of huge conglomerates, before Sept. 11 and the anthrax scare made all mail suspect, writers would often send their unsolicited manuscripts off to publishers, hoping against hope that they'd be discovered. Those manuscripts would end up in what the industry called the "slush pile." And every now and then, a group of editorial assistants might assemble in a boardroom, order some pizza and read their way through the pile — on the off chance that greatness lurked within.

But those days are gone.

"They're no longer eating pizza," says Mark Gompertz, vice president and publisher at ouchstone books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster. "They're sitting at their desks eating salads. And they're most likely working on a marketing tip sheet for the sales department, to promote books that are coming in in the more traditional ways. So really the slush pile is no longer
there."

Perhaps, as the Editor of the nonprofit literary journal cream city review, my experience is biased. Trent Hergenrader, a local SF writer and friend, recently alerted me to a post by the Slushmaster (Doug Cohen) at Realms of Fantasy, in which one of his short stories is mentioned. The slush is alive and well at lit journals and magazines - which I admit noone is arguing against in the NPR piece.

While pizza and the slush pile my have been replaced by the generalization of marketing materials and salads at Touchstone, I don't think it holds true across the industry, especially at the most vibrant level - the small publisher. Dustin Long's Icelander surfaced from the McSweeney's slush pile. Furthermore, the notion that you need an agent to get a book published isn't a maxim I want to believe, either. Frances Hwang, author of Transparency, recently reported in Poets & Writers that she got a deal with Little, Brown without an agent.

I want to believe that talent and originality will find an arena and supporters, both in the publishing world and from readers. But, I need your help.

Below, I will attempt to compile a brief, incomplete, and anecdotal account of the vivacity of the slush pile. Leave your stories and knowledge in the comments below or send us an email. Check back for updates.

---------------------------------

It Came from the Slush...

Icelander by Dustin Long:

"[I] sent it off to McSweeney’s and sent query letters to a few agents. The agents rejected me. Eventually, about six months later, McSweeney’s contacted me to say they were vaguely interested. About seven or eight months after that, they decided they wanted to publish the book..."

(from our own interview)

agent sine agent

Transparency by Frances Hwang

"Michael Mezzo, an editor at Little, Brown at that time, saw my stories in Best New American Voices. He wrote and asked to see more of my work, and I sent him an unfinished manuscript with six stories. About a month later, he offered me a contract. I didn't have an agent, but this seemed like a pleasant dilemma now that I had a publisher."

(from Poets & Writers)

NPR + AMAZON?

This is pretty disappointing:

NPR.org links to Amazon.com

I am as big an NPR fan as anyone (up to ten hours some days, in the Prius and streaming on iTunes--how's that for a stereotype?), but this is rather disheartening. As the above article and feedback mention, many independent booksellers are very involved in supporting and promoting their local stations.

Obviously, NPR is underwritten by many huge corporations (Target, ADM, etc), so having an Amazon link isn't that surprising. What irks me is the lack of an alternative. Booksense would be a great candidate and would give NPR listeners a choice in the matter, an element which probably led them to tune in public radio for news and entertainment in the first place. Booksense also offers the same click-through services, too, I believe.

I want to be careful to not completely bash NPR here: they are perhaps the most influential source of referring sales to many independent booksellers, sans Oprah. Our local station continually reminds listeners to support local bookstores and NPR features many prominent Indies recommendations on all the lists.

It just seems that not provided an alternative to a business that is driving down prices to levels that independents simply cannot afford to match if they are to stay in business--not to mention provide benefits to employess--is against what many of their listeners believe in.

Hopefully, NPR listeners speak up: buy books from your local independent at let NPR know you aren't happy about an exclusive online Amazon link.

--Jay Johnson, independent bookseller

2007 Quill Awards

I received an email today with the 2007 Quill Award nominees, which were announced earlier this month at BEA in New York. The Quill Awards are the self-declared "consumers choice" awards for books, sponsored by Reed Business Information and broadcast by NBC. It is the only televised book awards according to their own press, which apparently doesn't consider BookTV coverage of other book festivals. The categories I'm mainly interested in are the Debut Author of the Year and the General Fiction nominees.



For Debut Author of the Year the nominees were: Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone; Miranda July's No One Belongs Here More Than You; This Is Your Brain on Music, by Daniel J. Levitin; The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield; Love Is a Mix Tape, by Rob Sheffield. Based on sales and Starbucks cred, it'd be hard to imagine A Long Way Gone not being the favorite in this category. It is great to see a short story collection included, and Miranda July's is certainly worthy. You can read a few of our booksellers praise it here. The Thirteenth Tale was a favorite at our shops that are big with book club readers; it seems to have potential as a metafictional mystery, which is my own personal favorite minuscule book category. I have heard good things about Love Is a Mix Tape and we should have a short review here soon. I admit I know nothing about This Is Your Brain on Music.



For General Fiction: Brothers, by Da Chen; American Youth, by Phil LaMarche; The Road, by Cormac McCarthy; Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl; Jamestown, by Matthew Sharpe. We had Da Chen and Marisha Pessl in Shorewood and you can read my post about the latter here. The Road is amazing, and I have to say I'm really surprised that it is getting the attention it has been, though it is very deserving--perhaps the most deserving. Just remember that it won the Pulitzer *before* it was an Oprah pick. Jamestown has been officially added to the books I'm going to attempt to pick up this summer, though that stack is taller than I am at the moment.

For discussion of the Business category, I recommend checking out the blog of 800-CEO-READ, by far the coolest people selling business books in the world today. (I suppose I should also disclose that they are our sister company). Click on an any of the five titles listed and you'll see what 8CR (and others, including some of today's most-relevant authors) have said about them.

I'm going to work on the alternative awards (the Flappies?), composed of books not nominated for any awards this year, but were very deserving.