Stephen King Gets Honorary National Book Award

Thursday, November 20, 2003

NEW YORK — Weakened by pneumonia and still limping from a 1999 road accident, Stephen King (search), accepting an honorary National Book Award (search), received a long standing ovation after making his case for popular writers.

But not everyone cheered his acceptance speech Wednesday night, including Shirley Hazzard (search), whose novel "The Great Fire," a sophisticated romantic novel set just after World War II, took the coveted fiction prize.

The 56-year-old King, whose many best sellers include "Carrie" and "The Shining," acknowledged that some thought him unworthy of a prize previously won by Philip Roth (search) and Arthur Miller (search) among others. He called for publishing people to spend more time reading writers like himself.

Hazzard, who writes in longhand on yellow legal pads and took more than a decade to complete her winning novel, rejected the notion.

"I don't think giving us a reading list of those who are most read at this moment is much of a satisfaction," said Hazzard.

Other winners Wednesday included Carlos Eire (search), who received the nonfiction prize for "Waiting for Snow in Havana"; Polly Horvath, winner in the young people's category for "The Canning Season," and C.K. Williams, the poetry winner for "The Singing."

Each received $10,000. Finalists got $1,000.

The National Book Awards are both dress-up time for the publishing industry, with a red carpet laid outside, and a fund-raiser for the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization that charged $1,000 a seat.

For the most part, it was King's kind of crowd. At $12,000 a table, the horror author had bought up five, and several of the night's nominees praised him as a gifted storyteller and a friend to fellow writers.

"He is one of the sweethearts of literature," fiction finalist T. Coraghessan Boyle told The Associated Press. "He has done so much for other writers."

King's speech was humorous, sentimental and defiant. He remembered his early years of writing, the typewriter sandwiched in the laundry room between the washer and dryer. He said he had been ready to give up on "Carrie," now a modern horror classic, only to be talked out of by his wife, Tabitha.

He also urged the book foundation not to make his award a case of "tokenism," an isolated tribute to commercially successfully writers. And he called on the industry as a whole to pay more attention, saying he had no "use for those who make a point of pride in saying they have never read anything by John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Mary Higgins Clark or any other popular writer."

"What do you think," he asked, "you get social academic brownie points for deliberately staying out of touch with your own culture?"

While King and Hazzard both celebrated the diversity of literature, you couldn't ask for two more different writers. King has written dozens of novels. Before "The Great Fire," Hazzard had not completed a work of fiction since the early 1980s. King was an early champion of the e-book. Hazzard does not own a television or even an answering machine.

And she has never read a Stephen King book.

"I just haven't had time to get around to one," she said, citing Shakespeare and Joseph Conrad as current priorities.

Just about everyone Wednesday seemed to have a point to make. Eire noted that he could have never published his book, a memoir about growing up in Cuba and his departure after the rise of Fidel Castro (news - web sites), back in his home country. The head judge for the young people's prize, Susan Campbell Bartoletti, said the boundaries between children's literature and books for grown-ups were breaking down. Mystery writer Walter Mosley, who hosted the ceremony, had special praise for the poetry finalists.

"Without our poets, we really don't have a heart," he said.


FOXNews.com

National Book Award Winners Announced

The winners of the 2003 National Book Awards were announced last night, November 19, at a ceremony at the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City. The annual awards are given by the National Book Foundation to recognize achievements in four categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People's Literature. The night's ceremonies included the presentation of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to Stephen King.

This year's winners by category were:

FICTION:

Shirley Hazzard, The Great Fire (FSG)
NONFICTION:

Carlos Eire, Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy (Free Press/S&S) -- a March/April 2003 Book Sense 76 Pick
POETRY:

C.K. Williams, The Singing (FSG)
YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE:

Polly Horvath, The Canning Season (FSG)

Take this McJob
By Jan Freeman, 11/16/2003

TO JIM CANTALUPO, chairman and CEO of McDonald's, finding McJob in the new Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary was like spotting a cockroach in the kitchen. Kill it, he ordered the lexicographers, calling the definition of McJob as "low-paying and dead-end work" (in his paraphrase) inaccurate and insulting to restaurant workers everywhere.

Cantalupo had no use for M-W's citations of McJob, either -- the people using the word, he said, were just "assorted academics, pundits and random news stories."

Besides, McJob (at least in the plural) is a trademark, said Cantalupo in his letter to M-W, which was also published in Nation's Restaurant News. McJobs, launched in 1984, is the company's own program for training people with disabilities. Trademark infringement, insulting the disabled, mocking happy restaurant workers -- how low can a dictionary go?

Cantalupo hasn't actually threatened to sue (maybe he remembers Fox vs. Franken), but he seems to think a dictionary can declare a word nonexistent, as if it were a slow-selling sandwich. And nobody seems to have warned him that a head-on attack might help revive the very usage he wants to stamp out.

It's only natural, granted, that McDonald's would like to control its eponymous offspring. Who wouldn't? The Disney Co. can't be pleased that "Mickey Mouse" means trivial or simple, as it has since the '30s (one of its early users, in fact, was that eminent eponym George Orwell). And the American Legion probably wishes someone else had come down with the bug now called Legionnaire's disease.

But eponyms have lives of their own. True, we've abandoned some eponymous national and ethnic slurs -- paddy wagons and welshing are frowned upon by editors -- but most of the time we don't ask permission to eponymize. Argyles, boycotts, and sandwiches belong to us now, not to the men they were named after.

And McDonald's was a particularly fat target for eponymy. Not only had it created dozens of its own McCoinages -- McScholar, McPollo, McWorld -- but the company prides itself on the kind of standardization such names suggest, prescribing routines and recipes practically down to the number of seeds on a bun. A slot in a copy shop or video store can be a McJob, but as the icon of replicability, McDonald's was the natural choice to epitomize (and eponymize) such work.

(I'm aware, keen-eyed readers, that eponym originally applied only to the person after whom something was named: "Emma is the eponymous heroine of Jane Austen's novel." I'm using it more loosely here, with reasons to come when space allows.)

If McDonald's couldn't accept satire as the price of fame, though, why didn't it protest the McJob coinage long ago? The first use in the Nexis database, it's true, wouldn't have raised hackles: It was an innocent play on words in a 1985 UPI story on the labor shortage. "Ronald McDonald has a mcjob for you," it began, with no scorn intended.

But McJob in the "robotic, dumb" sense popped up in the Washington Post just a year later, the work of an editor who headlined a 1986 opinion piece "McJobs Are Bad for Kids." The term was instantly adopted by economic commentators: They disagreed (as they still do) on whether such low-wage jobs are truly dead-end soul-killers or steppingstones to fulfilling careers, but both camps called them McJobs.

Though Doug Coupland often gets credit for coining McJob, he didn't join the chorus till 1991, when his best-selling novel "Generation X" made McJobs one element of the post-boomer cohort's disaffection. The term spread rapidly, and in 1993 the American Dialect Society, at its annual meeting, voted it "most imaginative" of the year's buzzwords.

McJob peaked in print, however, in 1994, with more than 100 US citations; in the years since, it has leveled off, never again topping 50 mentions. But it remained common enough to rate inclusion in the American Heritage Dictionary (2000) and the online edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

So why the current McFlurry from corporate HQ? Perhaps because Merriam-Webster's publicists cleverly put McJob on its short list of new words in the 11th edition, ensuring that journalists would pick up on it. McJob citations are up sharply this year, on track to break the '94 record. And if the word does get its buzz back, McDonald's will have helped: Its complaint can only keep the debate sizzling and the McJobs tally rising. That's the kind of corporate strategy you'd expect from the clown, not the CEO.



Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Ideas / Take this McJob">© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

Libraries told 'stop lending'

Yoshikazu Suzuki Yomiuri Shimbun
Staff Writer

Authors and public library officials recently discussed the practice of libraries lending out large numbers of newly published books, including best-sellers, to find a way to coexist.

At a symposium organized by the Japan Pen Club in Tokyo last Saturday, both sides discussed the protection of copyrights and lending services of public libraries as they did last year.

On one hand, the number of books sold last year was estimated at 740 million copies, declining for the sixth year in a row.

On the other hand, the number of books lent by libraries in fiscal 2001 reached a record high of 520 million.

The prolonged economic slump lies behind the sluggish book sales, but authors organizations and publishing houses feel public libraries are becoming a problem, too.

They also blame second-hand book stores that are selling relatively new used books, as well as coffee shops with libraries of comic books, which are increasing rapidly.

In last autumn's symposium titled "Debate Between Authors and Libraries," authors said that lending a large number of new books would lead to a violation of their copyrights.

But public libraries refuted this claim, saying that lending out new books would increase the number of readers and the public service did not undermine book sales.

Authors proposed introducing a system requiring libraries to compensate authors financially according to the number of books they lend.

Countries in Europe recognize the right of libraries to lend out books to the public. Britain, for example, has a public lending law.

Authors requested that libraries not lend out new books for three to six months after publication.

Library officials were opposed to the proposal, saying that, with their budgets cut, they could not afford to pay compensation.

They also said a delay in lending books would deprive libraries of the opportunity to offer readers the latest information.

At this year's symposium, Kazuo Nishino, director of the Kawasaki Municipal Nakahara Library, voiced opposition to introducing a delay in lending books on the grounds that libraries guarantee the right of the public to read. He was sympathetic to the authors, though, saying if libraries thrived and book stores went bankrupt, it would be due to a failure in library administration.

Library directors have the power to restrict the number of new books the library lends, he also said.

Last month, the Japan Book Publishing Association and the Japan Library Association released the findings of their first joint survey on library book stocks and library lending practices.

The joint survey is regarded as the first step the two sides have taken toward resolving the problem.

In the past, they did not see eye-to-eye on whether libraries had too many copies of books for lending.

According to the findings, in major cities, each library had an average of 4.2 copies of each of the 11 literary best-sellers. Meanwhile, in towns and villages, each library had about one copy of each best-seller.

The more than 2,700 public libraries are faced with severe financial difficulties. With municipalities in dire financial straits, book-buying funds have decreased, falling below the 30 billion yen mark for the year.

Masahiro Mita, a managing director of the Japan Writers' Association, said that companies publishing a small number of copies would go bankrupt if libraries did not purchase a wide variety of books.

"Let's start a campaign to increase budgets for libraries," he said.

As the chairman concluded that the time of confrontation between authors and public libraries was over, authors and libraries showed signs of reconciliation.

The discussion was productive as both sides tried to increase the reading population and invigorate the publishing culture.

Although this year's symposium was titled "Authors, Readers and Libraries," few people spoke from the viewpoint of readers. How to handle best-sellers, which are in high demand by library users, and the establishment of a respite for lending should be discussed in respect to local situations, including the number of book stores in an area.

Understanding the needs of readers also will be indispensable in discussing this issue.

Copyright 2003 The Yomiuri Shimbun
Daily Yomiuri On-Line

Libraries told 'stop lending'

Yoshikazu Suzuki Yomiuri Shimbun
Staff Writer

Authors and public library officials recently discussed the practice of libraries lending out large numbers of newly published books, including best-sellers, to find a way to coexist.

At a symposium organized by the Japan Pen Club in Tokyo last Saturday, both sides discussed the protection of copyrights and lending services of public libraries as they did last year.

On one hand, the number of books sold last year was estimated at 740 million copies, declining for the sixth year in a row.

On the other hand, the number of books lent by libraries in fiscal 2001 reached a record high of 520 million.

The prolonged economic slump lies behind the sluggish book sales, but authors organizations and publishing houses feel public libraries are becoming a problem, too.

They also blame second-hand book stores that are selling relatively new used books, as well as coffee shops with libraries of comic books, which are increasing rapidly.

In last autumn's symposium titled "Debate Between Authors and Libraries," authors said that lending a large number of new books would lead to a violation of their copyrights.

But public libraries refuted this claim, saying that lending out new books would increase the number of readers and the public service did not undermine book sales.

Authors proposed introducing a system requiring libraries to compensate authors financially according to the number of books they lend.

Countries in Europe recognize the right of libraries to lend out books to the public. Britain, for example, has a public lending law.

Authors requested that libraries not lend out new books for three to six months after publication.

Library officials were opposed to the proposal, saying that, with their budgets cut, they could not afford to pay compensation.

They also said a delay in lending books would deprive libraries of the opportunity to offer readers the latest information.

At this year's symposium, Kazuo Nishino, director of the Kawasaki Municipal Nakahara Library, voiced opposition to introducing a delay in lending books on the grounds that libraries guarantee the right of the public to read. He was sympathetic to the authors, though, saying if libraries thrived and book stores went bankrupt, it would be due to a failure in library administration.

Library directors have the power to restrict the number of new books the library lends, he also said.

Last month, the Japan Book Publishing Association and the Japan Library Association released the findings of their first joint survey on library book stocks and library lending practices.

The joint survey is regarded as the first step the two sides have taken toward resolving the problem.

In the past, they did not see eye-to-eye on whether libraries had too many copies of books for lending.

According to the findings, in major cities, each library had an average of 4.2 copies of each of the 11 literary best-sellers. Meanwhile, in towns and villages, each library had about one copy of each best-seller.

The more than 2,700 public libraries are faced with severe financial difficulties. With municipalities in dire financial straits, book-buying funds have decreased, falling below the 30 billion yen mark for the year.

Masahiro Mita, a managing director of the Japan Writers' Association, said that companies publishing a small number of copies would go bankrupt if libraries did not purchase a wide variety of books.

"Let's start a campaign to increase budgets for libraries," he said.

As the chairman concluded that the time of confrontation between authors and public libraries was over, authors and libraries showed signs of reconciliation.

The discussion was productive as both sides tried to increase the reading population and invigorate the publishing culture.

Although this year's symposium was titled "Authors, Readers and Libraries," few people spoke from the viewpoint of readers. How to handle best-sellers, which are in high demand by library users, and the establishment of a respite for lending should be discussed in respect to local situations, including the number of book stores in an area.

Understanding the needs of readers also will be indispensable in discussing this issue.

Copyright 2003 The Yomiuri Shimbun
Daily Yomiuri On-Line

November 4, 2003
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
How's That New Best Seller? Well, the Author's Famous
By JANET MASLIN

Two weeks from tomorrow at a black-tie gala, the National Book Foundation will bestow on Stephen King a Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. In that setting Mr. King's latest novel should make an interesting conversation piece. "Wolves of the Calla" is the rollicking 714-page fifth installment of a projected seven-volume "Dark Tower" fantasy series, illustrated with images not normally associated with distinguished contributions to letters. For instance there's the naked woman in the forest biting the head off a frog.

Apoplexy time? Hardly. Mr. King deserves his due. It takes a certain skill to write books (in his case more than 40) so much in demand that no American airport — or library — is complete without one. Writers this popular are such cultural fixtures that they practically create their own weather.

Why determine the season via autumn leaves or diminishing daylight? When the best-seller list is as packed with brand names as it is now, it becomes its own kind of calendar. At the moment we're two weeks shy of James Patterson, and here comes Jackie Collins, too. "Leaving her readers to guess which real celebrities she has used as models for her fabulous characters," its jacket copy says, her "Hollywood Divorces" will soon bring an ambitious "sexy Latina superstar" who is called Lola Sanchez. Note the clever use of "Lo" in this roman-à-Collins name.

Right now Nora Roberts ("Birthright") has peaked, but John Grisham is everywhere. (Both "Bleachers" and a reissue of "Skipping Christmas" are out, with a new legal thriller due in February.) And Anne Rice has brought her bloodsucking meal ticket, the Vampire Lestat, back for yet another encore in "Blood Canticle."

The current crop of heavy-hitting best sellers divides into distinct categories. Like Jumbo: "Wolves of the Calla" and Neal Stephenson's 927-page "Quicksilver" (the first of three volumes), require major investments of time, energy and interest. For the reader who stumbles over Mr. Stephenson's showy prose (on board a ferry, "the sky's a matted reticule of taut jute and spokeshaved tree-trunks"), rest assured that "Quicksilver" is also larded with lessons in science and history.

More wit would have been welcome, and his long-winded storytelling skills seldom measure up to his erudition. But this is the place to confirm that Lima, Manila, Goa, Bandar Abbas, Mocha, Cairo, Smyrna, Malta, Madrid and the Canary Islands were all using Spanish coinage in 1713.

Other popular books fall into a Mini category, to the point where their size is a selling point. Sure, Mitch Albom's "Five People You Meet in Heaven" could have been about 23 people you meet in heaven instead. But Mr. Albom, the author of "Tuesdays With Morrie" — who may have an even bigger hit with this new book, since it taps into the baby boom generation's fear of death — chooses to keep this book short, sweet and colorful. You may not even want to wait for the movie version to discover that one of the five people is blue.

Short books — or those, like Mr. Patterson's, with chapters that can be finished in the time it takes to watch a few television commercials — are meant to be read easily. They ought to be less easy to write. But Ellen DeGeneres, whose "Funny Thing Is . . ." is liable to capitalize on the good will prompted by her new daytime talk show, is only on Page 2 when she resorts to talk of dental flossing. By Page 3: "I enjoy the smell of a freshly washed monkey."

This is not to say that Ms. DeGeneres isn't entertaining (on Eminem, supposedly her regular brunch guest: "I call him `Em.' I even call him `Auntie Em,' like from `The Wizard of Oz,' and he laughs — sometimes.") It's just that her position as a comedy all-star goes only so far. Steve Martin, whose second best-selling short novel ("The Pleasure of My Company") is much less captivating than his first ("Shopgirl"), this time also writes lines that aren't complete without the sound of his vocal delivery.

Two other breeds of best seller dish dirt and sling mud, respectively. A gossipy book in the first genre is almost certain to be popular, provided it trades on movie stars or Kennedy cachet. Even the sleaziest of these ("The Kennedy Curse" by Edward Klein recently showed the curse meant being vandalized by biographers) may just sell. Now it's open season on Caroline Kennedy with "Sweet Caroline: Last Child of Camelot." The author is Christopher Anderson, who counts "The Day John Died" and "The Day Diana Died" among his accomplishments.

Presumptuous as he is (does this author really have any business referring to Senator Edward M. Kennedy as "Uncle Teddy?"), Mr. Anderson has a way with the buzzwords of sob-sister hagiography. "They were impossibly attractive, outlandishly wealthy, elegant, witty, headstrong, exciting," he writes of Ms. Kennedy's parents. As for the children, they are "the freckle-faced girl sitting confidently astride her pony, Macaroni" and her brother John, "the tousle-haired scamp."

But this is a livelier crime against Camelot than "The Georgetown Ladies' Social Club" by C. David Heymann, who is brazen without verve. Nose pressed to the glass, he often seems to be describing parties to which he would never have been invited. In any case, the reader who joins in invading Ms. Kennedy's privacy with Mr. Anderson can have a certain solace. At least you're not buying a book by the big-mouthed butler to Diana, Princess of Wales.

Seldom have bare-knuckled political diatribes enjoyed the kind of list-topping popularity they share at the moment. At this rate Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingraham or David Limbaugh (pick one) may still be trading sweet nothings with Michael Moore, Al Franken, Molly Ivins or Lou Dubose (pick one) on Valentine's Day.

Mr. O'Reilly emerged as the noisiest of the bunch (no mean feat) on the strength of sheer vehemence and the occasional unpredictable touch. His "Who's Looking Out for You?" can both quote Neil Young ("Keep on rockin' in the free world") and blast: "Problems will hunt you down, slap you around, and leave you disillusioned and sometimes broke. That is, unless you meet them at the door and knee them in the groin."

The presidency looms large in these books, but it's also a hot topic in fiction. For Richard North Patterson, whose "Balance of Power" is the heftiest of current imaginings from the Oval Office, President Kerry Kilcannon is a plausible crusader again the gun lobby. David Baldacci's flimsier "Split Second," like his "Absolute Power," leads from the shooting of a presidential candidate into a Secret Service-related story. Then there's Stuart Woods, the writer likeliest to include a nice bed-and-breakfast, single malt Scotch and a pretty, flirtatious proprietor in a thriller about the First Family.

Mr. Woods may like things cushy, but he is the antithesis of Patricia Cornwell, whose "Blow Fly" trades on a taste for the stomach-turning. Ms. Cornwell provides a dead maggot in her book's first sentence, then a letter-writing prisoner of the Hannibal Lecter school ("Oh, the longing, the longing, the anxiety he cannot relieve because he cannot relive, relive, relive their ecstasy as they died") and much more in a similar vein.

If this is mainstream, where are the simple best-seller basics? (Good yarn, good characters, good time.) For now at least, they're in the South. Both James Lee Burke's "Last Car to Elysian Fields" and Stephen Hunter's "Havana" feature dynamic plotting. (Mr. Hunter opens with a gangster shooting a horse in Times Square.) And they present the authors' familiar, likable leading men, heroes who hail from New Orleans (Mr. Burke's Dave Robicheaux) and Arkansas (Mr. Hunter's Earl Swagger, who winds up in Cuba).

In these energetic, atmospheric Southern-based, thrillers, three ingredients are indispensable. The hero must be a brooding onetime alcoholic. He must have pain in his past. And there must be a Cadillac somewhere in the story. Put them all together, and you've got yourself a hit.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
Books of The Times: How’s That New Best Seller? Well, the Author’s Famous

I received this in an email - it was labeled as being from the Wall Street Journal, but I could not confirm that. It is an interesting piece, however:

November 6, 2003

Recipe for a Bestseller: Baked Fudge and Author Charm

By JOANNE KAUFMAN

New York

Hyperion was reasonably certain it had caught lightning in a bottle when it
acquired "PS, I Love You," a first novel about a woman coping, through a series
of letters, with the untimely death of her husband. Rights to the book were
swiftly sold to 14 countries -- and Hollywood. The author, Cecilia Ahern, was
young (22), pretty, well-spoken and, by the way, the daughter of Bertie Ahern,
prime minister of Ireland. "We believed she was someone who could break out,"
says Ellen Archer, Hyperion's vice president and publisher. Thus, the decision
was made to send Ms. Ahern on a six-city tour five months before the novel's
February 2004 publication, to chat up and charm bookstore buyers and owners at
specially arranged dinners, in the process perhaps convincing them to up
their orders for the book. "They loved her," adds Ms. Archer, "and yes, they
wanted more copies."

For decades, the author tour has been one of the key weapons in a publisher's
arsenal. The book comes out and the writer is dispatched to selected cities
for interviews, for readings, book signings and meet-and-greets with would-be
readers.

But over the past several years, many publishers have chosen not to wait
until a book is in print to put an author on a plane but to do so six months, even
four months before publication, all in hopes of generating big buzz and big
buys. "When we've done it," says Judy Hottensen, marketing director at
Grove/Atlantic Inc., "it always increases the order, whether it's by two books or 20
or 50."

In June, Sandra Brown, a prolific author of suspense novels, was on the road
for "Hello, Darkness," which was published last month. District attorney
turned best-selling novelist Linda Fairstein just got back from the pre-pub tour
for her latest effort, "The Kills," due out in January. And let's not forget
Grove/Atlantic, which arranged a pre-pub tour for the then-unknown Charles
Frazier, author of the phenomenal success "Cold Mountain." Or Doubleday, which sent out Dan Brown to get the drums beating for "The Da Vinci Code." Perhaps you've
heard of it.

"It's book publishing's version of the DJ tour that musicians have done for
decades to get that all-important segment to play their soon-to-be-released
records on the air," says Stuart Applebaum, spokesman for Random House Inc.
"Anything we publishers can do to break our authors out of the pack is something we
want to try."

Pre-pub tours often involve first-time novelists, a tough sell under any
circumstances, and mid-list authors who seem poised to hit the next level of
success. Mr. Brown is a case in point. So, to a lesser extent, is Elinor Lippman,
whose seventh novel, "The Pursuit of Alice Thrift," was published last spring.
"A few months before 'Alice Thrift' came out we decided to have a booksellers'
dinner in Los Angeles and San Francisco just to extend her reach," beyond the
northeast, where she is strong, says Carol Schneider of Random House. Ms.
Lippman charmed the crowd, Random House's L.A. sales rep baked fudge for everyone (that confection was a key plot point in the novel), "and come publication,"
adds Ms. Schneider, "there were huge stacks of the books at all the stores."

The pre-pub tour can also be good for an author who's working well-mined
territory. "Before 'John Adams' was published, we were all thinking 'another
biography of a president,' " says Anne Kubek, a marketing vice president at Borders
Books. But its author, David McCullough, "was good about showing that it was
a different take and it raised our buy." Other candidates include the novelist
who's just branched out to nonfiction (or vice versa), a well-established
novelist who switches genres, or a well-established author who switches houses
(witness Sandra Brown, a recent emigre from Warner Books to Simon & Schuster).
Depending on budget and circumstances, some authors who do pre-pub tours will
also do the traditional tour to coincide with the book's release.

Publishers know they have to be very selective in their choices. Booksellers
will clear their calendars for only so many author dinners; in any case,
visits from too many authors diminish the general effectiveness of the pre-pub
tour. The books have to dazzle. So, come to think of it, do the authors. Ms.
Brown, according to Simon & Schuster publicity director Victoria Meyer, "is
wonderfully charming and spectacular looking." Dan Brown, author of "The Da Vinci
Code," "is an appealing, charming and knowledgeable author," says Doubleday vice
president Suzanne Herz. "The pre-pub tour paid off in spades for that book."

Booksellers praise the innovation partly because it signals a publisher's
commitment to a book, partly because it calls their attention to a galley they
might otherwise have overlooked. "We hadn't paid any attention to 'Cold
Mountain' until Frazier came in," says Carla Cohen, co-owner of Politics and Prose in
Washington, D.C. "But he was so charming and so self-deprecating, and it was
fun to be with him, so it made us want to read the book." And order it big.

Booksellers say they can recall no author whose appearance did a disservice
to the marketing efforts; publishers insist they can think of no author they
should have kept at home working on the next book. "Be assured," says Random
House's Carol Schneider, "that we always have writers come and meet with us
before we decide to send them on the road."

On the Road No More: Book Tours Are Over
by Sara Nelson


Among the most frequently voiced opinions about contemporary publishing—on a list that includes such truisms as "Nobody really edits anymore" and the ever-popular whine, "It got good reviews, why didn’t it sell?"—is the idea that every author should go on a book tour. Like visions of Maxwell Perkins holding a pen in one fist and a tortured writer’s hand in the other, the picture of an author facing a hall filled with avid readers hanging on his every word is irresistible.

Never mind that it’s also unrealistic and unrealizable.

I published my first book last month, and no sooner had the boxes arrived in the stores than people—those in publishing and those outside—began asking: When do you go on tour? How many cities are you going to? My answers: I was going on a tour-lette, to just a couple of places where I actually had some friends and thus could beat the drum and send mass e-mails and call in old favors to get people to show up—and oh, by the way, this was not necessarily an all-expenses-paid-by-the-publisher boondoggle, but rather a cobbled-together financial plan involving my publisher, the venues that were hosting me, my day job and my very own bank account. To some, this was all surprising: Surely, the thinking goes, if a publisher is really "behind" a book, the house will pony up the money and the arrangements for an author’s soon-to-be-triumphant national tour.

Yet while I have no doubt that Hyperion, say, has paid for publicists to cater to Steve Martin’s whims as he goes around the country flogging his beguiling new novel The Pleasure of My Company, or that HarperCollins is covering Gail Collins’ multi-city trip on behalf of America’s Women, I’m equally sure that most so-called "mid-list" authors—like, God-willing, me—aren’t getting the same treatment.

But this is not a complaint; it’s a fact. And besides, the publishers are right: In an age of dwindling local-newspaper book coverage, formidable Internet, radio and TV outlets and—let’s face it—strained budgets and stagnant (at best) book sales, most authors shouldn’t spend thousands of anybody’s dollars to show their faces in Cleveland—unless, of course, they happen to have grown up in Cleveland. It’s simply not cost-effective, especially since even the author of a book showing modest to decent sales will likely end up in a Barnes and Noble in Berkeley with only three audience members, two of whom are homeless.

"I’d rather they just gave me the money," opined one such mid-list author whose name you’d know if only he’d let me use it. Or, better yet, spent the cash—and, not incidentally, the publicist’s energy—on ads, or on placement in stores, or on national radio coverage. "I’d spend days and days planning an author’s trip and arranging local TV shows in St. Louis—where we’d ultimately sell five books," said a former book publicist. "It would take away from the time and energy I might have had to get the book on Charlie Rose or Fresh Air." But to authors, appearances—
especially public appearances—
remain important.

"I can’t tell you how many authors still believe a publisher’s love is measured by the number of cities on their book tour," said Barb Burg, a senior vice president and director of publicity for the Bantam Dell Publishing Group. "I tell my authors, ‘You’ll know I really love you and care about your book when I spare you the humiliation of empty bookstores and lonely hotel rooms and spend our publicity time, energy and dollars on what’s best for the book.’"

That said, even the most harried publicist and frustrated author will agree that the human touch—a personally signed book at a reading or, maybe even more important, a friendly relationship between author, publisher and smart independent booksellers—never hurts sales. Yet it seems to me that you can establish those relationships without necessarily getting on a plane. My publisher, Putnam, brilliantly suggested that I send personal notes and signed books to booksellers around the country—some of whom I’ve met, thanks in part to my column in this paper—but also to many I have not. I’ve also been making a point of stopping in bookstores and signing stock; who knows if one of those "Autographed Copy" stickers might sway a wavering book buyer? And yes, I’ve gone out of town, too—I’m writing this from a hotel room in Florida, in fact—but I doubt I’ll ever log as many miles as Jill Nelson, the journalist and author of Sexual Healing, who said at the Sarasota Reading Festival on Nov. 1 that she’s visited more than 20 cities since her book appeared last summer. Her novel—from tiny, brand-new Chicago-based publisher Agate—is doing well; it’s selling strongly and has been sold to the movies.

But is a book a hit because its author toured, or is a tour successful because the book’s a hit?

You may reach Sara Nelson via email at: snelson@observer.com.

COPYRIGHT © 2003
THE NEW YORK OBSERVER
On the Road No More: Book Tours Are Over

November 4, 2003
PUBLIC LIVES
Those Books Look Good? Imagine Reading Them
By ROBIN FINN

It doesn't take much solo snooping to deduce that Nancy Bass — the third-generation owner-operator of the Strand Book Stores, New York City's overflowing repository of the printed page — keeps her office at the flagship store conspicuously, even suspiciously, bookless.

With 16 miles of reading material at the corner of 12th Street and Broadway (it used to be, famously, eight miles, but according to the new awning, Ms. Bass recently doubled the inventory), why not sample her own wares?

After all, she's the woman who masterminded an ingenious, lucrative spinoff of the family business: she supplies good-looking books to the libraries of good-looking readers like Tom Cruise, Richard Gere and Bono, and creates literary backdrops for television and film sets such as Dr. Melfi's office in "The Sopranos," Mikhail Baryshnikov's artsy loft in "Sex and the City," Bette Midler's salon in "The Stepford Wives" and Denzel Washington's den in "The Manchurian Candidate." Doesn't she have her own personal library?

Not on the job; not when she's busy designing and collating home libraries in East Hampton for Steven Spielberg and Ronald O. Perelman, or selecting the perfect books for the 34-room Manhattan apartment of Stephen A. Schwarzman, a raging bibliophile and the chief executive of the Blackstone Group. For a Ralph Lauren Polo shop in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, she supplied books that contained no religious images or illustrations of birds or women; for a "Saturday Night Live" skit, she scraped together 50 feet of books about bears. Her "Books by the Foot" installations usually cost around $100 per foot, $350 if top-grade leather and gilt are specified for yachts or mansions with antique pretensions. As for rarities: anyone who craves that second printing of Shakespeare, circa 1632, will have to shell out $125,000.

But Ms. Bass couldn't be happier that people are springing for books the same way they spring for designer wallpaper. If they actually read their décor, all the better. "I think it's good to have books in the house; it warms things up, but I find that having books in my office is too distracting," is how Ms. Bass, 42, blithely explains away their absence when she sweeps in a little late and a lot damp, chic trench coat and long blond hair flapping, and discovers her third-floor sanctum being scrutinized by a nosy stranger.

A few blocks away on Fifth Avenue, where she lives with a talkative parrot named Monkey who doubles as an alarm clock, she has one room devoted to books, mostly biographies and New York City-centric titles. On her nightstand is "The Swiss Family Robinson," catch-up reading. Her all-time favorite books are "The Odyssey" and "Lolita," which she feels has gotten a tacky rap from Hollywood, but she doesn't own copies of either. "I'm not a hoarder," she says, hoarsely. Ms. Bass's voice is musty and dusty. It sounds, appropriately enough, like old books smell.

But her office is not the lair of a bookworm. It is the streamlined lair of a confirmed cosmopolite/socialite (she won the award for best Halloween costume last week at the Central Park Conservancy gala) with an M.B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an aggressive management style honed by three years at Exxon. There are file cabinets where bookcases could be, and framed publicity pieces — clipped from magazines like New York, Crain's and People — on the walls. Yes, that's Ms. Bass who had a walk-on role in "Absolutely Fabulous."

There's a model of the 11,000-square-foot addition to the store, a floor dedicated to art books, that she intends to unveil next spring; a futuristic elevator will link the bargain hunter's delights in the basement to rare books on the third floor. Ms. Bass is all about transition and progress: rather than losing momentum to the Internet, the Strand credits 20 percent of its $20 million annual revenue to sales made on the Web.

ANYHOW, that copy of "In Praise of Nepotism" in here sticks out like a sore thumb. Ms. Bass is, after all, following in the footsteps not only of her father, Fred, who still does all the book buying for the Strand from his first-floor perch, but her grandfather, Benjamin, who opened the store in 1927. It is named for London's publishing district, which he frequented. But classic nepotism isn't the reason she has the book; turns out the author is a former Strand employee, Adam Bellow, son of the novelist Saul Bellow. She hasn't even read it yet.

"The only problem with owning a bookstore is that everybody expects you to have read everything," Ms. Bass says. "My mission is to keep this place going; I'm very lucky that it's a beloved place. Our history is genuine. We're independent. We don't worry about the competition, but we do keep tweaking the store."

She has begun holding Plimptonesque soirées, and fantasizes about a coffee bar on the second floor (don't tell Dad; he's anti-cappuccino). Besides expanding the store, she's training for a triathlon; on a whim, she biked 92 miles in a race in July and has since embarked on a fitness blitz.

Ms. Bass grew up in Pelham Manor, but her notion of a perfect weekend was coming into the city with Grandpa: books, opera, theater, French restaurants. It didn't feel like a culture indoctrination; it felt like fun. When she got into stamp collecting, he told her there was no money it. By age 16, she worked weekends at the bookstore; the family always assumed she would join the business, and she is still glad she did. Exxon was a little too slow with the promotions.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Public Lives: Those Books Look Good? Imagine Reading Them

Head over heels for sassy chick lit
Publishers add imprints for plucky novels as genre catches on with young women

By Anita Jain
Published on October 27, 2003

Beyond torn clothing: "This generation wouldn't be caught dead reading a bodice-ripper," says Louise Burke, editor of Simon & Schuster's Downtown Press.

She's in her 20s or early 30s, works in publishing or advertising, and lives in the big city. She has to contend with messy roommates, noncommittal boyfriends and callous bosses.
Following in the footsteps of Bridget Jones--the weight-obsessed, lovelorn fictional character who sparked the "chick lit" frenzy five years ago--a legion of plucky heroines have flooded bookstores with their tales of single woe. The books have found a niche among young urban women looking for a sassy voice that defines their generation. Their popularity is breathing new life into a sagging book industry dominated by older readers.

"At heart, these books are about female empowerment. It's what the 20-year-old wants to read now," says Carrie Feron, editor of Avon Trade. "People love this format."

The trend has grown to such a crescendo that two publishers set up separate chick lit imprints this year and are rushing out these books at a rate of two to three a month. Simon & Schuster launched Downtown Press, featuring a shopping bag logo, and Kensington Publishing introduced Strapless.

HarperCollins and Harlequin Books caught the wave earlier, starting imprints Avon Trade and Red Dress Ink, respectively, in 2001. Random House has had a special marketing program called XYZ to tout the books for a couple of years.

Since Bridget Jones's Diary, written by British author Helen Fielding, debuted in the United States in 1998, publishers have disgorged hundreds of these titles. The most recent sensation is The Devil Wears Prada, by Lauren Weisberger. The novel is based on her stint as an assistant to famed Vogue editor Anna Wintour. Published in June by Doubleday, the book has already sold 500,000 copies in hardcover.

"This generation wouldn't be caught dead reading a bodice ripper. They're more cynical, more savvy," says Louise Burke, editor of Downtown Press. "They relate to these books in a way that my generation didn't relate to romance."

No longer trendy?

Still, some publishers believe that the phenomenon is losing steam. Chick lit has been declared passe in Britain, where the trend originated. The plots are formulaic and the themes identical, critics say.

"The field will start to blur, and you won't be able to distinguish the good from the bad," says Deborah Schneider, Ms. Weisberger's agent. "Publishers shouldn't do so much of it."

St. Martin's Press has forgone a separate imprint for its chick lit roster, despite the runaway success of The Nanny Diaries, which has sold 875,000 hardcovers and more than a million paperbacks since it was published more than a year ago.

"If you have an imprint, you have to have something to fill it, and you become less choosy," says Elizabeth Beier, who edited another chick lit hit, The Dirty Girls Social Club. "There's a potential to kill the golden goose."

Most publishers aren't worried about the movement tottering on its high Prada heels yet. They see the format as one that has staying power. Downtown Press plans to up the number of chick lit titles it publishes a month to two from one. Red Dress Ink recently increased its output to three a month, while Avon Trade aims for two a month.

They are banking on the loyalty of readers like Aren Cohen, who works at the Guggenheim Museum and devours about half a dozen of the cheeky novels each summer. "It's all the best and all the worst of that experience of being a single twentysomething gal in the city," the 31-year-old Manhattanite says.

Chick lit has also found a following among teenage girls. "The books are about shopping, about men, about what their lives are going to be," says John Scognamiglio, editor of Strapless, Kensington's imprint.

Regardless of the merits of the books themselves, they have young women reading. As bookstores begin displaying chick lit titles in separate sections, fans are scooping up two or three at a time, say publishers.

Lucrative niche

Industry experts say publishers can make more money from chick lit than from traditional fiction. Most chick lit authors are first-time writers who receive small advances ranging from $5,000 to $50,000. But their books sell far better than those by peers in other categories.

Chick lit novelists commonly rack up sales of 50,000 books, while many unknown writers in other genres could expect to sell only 5,000 to 10,000, Mr. Scognamiglio says. He adds that Strapless in a matter of months has become Kensington's third-best-selling imprint among five.

The push for a separate imprint at Kensington came from the sales department, which noticed how chick lit was flying off the shelves. "They wanted a book a month and wanted an imprint name to go with it," the editor says.

Isolating chick lit under a separate imprint demonstrates that a publishing house is serious about the genre, giving editors access to better books earlier on. After a heated auction, Downtown Press was able to snag Ms. Weisberger's second novel for more than $1 million.

The price may be worth it if it keeps young women reading. "This audience may graduate to more difficult subjects," Ms. Burke says.

Copyright 2003, Crain Communications, Inc

Amazon's New Search Engine

Amazon.com unveils new book search engine

SEATTLE, Oct. 23 (UPI) -- Amazon.com unveiled a massive new search engine Thursday called "Search Inside the Book", containing 33 million pages of a collection of 120,000 books.

Amazon's registered customers can receive specific pages by entering words or phrases into the search engine. Search Inside the Book allows users to view search results by returning images of actual pages, without the ability to download an entire book.

Wired magazine said the breakthrough creates a powerful research tool, while respecting copyright law. The magazine called the technology "one of the boldest maneuvers yet in an intense commercial competition."

The magazine said the Amazon.com archive is intentionally crippled. A search retrieves not text, but pictures of pages. You can find the page that responds to your query, read it on your screen, and browse a few pages backward and forward. But one cannot download, copy, or read the book from beginning to end.

Amazon.com will limit users to fewer than a few thousand pages per month, or no more than 20 percent of any single book.

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

From: AuthorsGuild Staff [mailto:staff@authorsguild.org]
Sent: Friday, October 24, 2003 5:09 PM
To: Member@authorsguild.org
Subject: Amazon's New Book Database

You might have read about Amazon.com's "Search Inside the Book" program, launched yesterday, in which the entire texts of participating publishers' titles are available on the Amazon.com website. Visitors can locate titles containing search terms they choose, and then access the two pages preceding and the two pages following the page containing those terms. Amazon sets a limit that permits a user to see no more than about 20% of a particular work. The company reports that publishers consented to the placement of all 120,000+ titles in the program.

We've reviewed the contracts of major trade publishers and concluded that these publishers do not have the right to participate in this program without their authors' permission. We wrote to these publishers after we learned about the program in July. Most argued with our interpretation of their contract (no surprise there), but some have said that they would remove a work from the program if the author insisted.

Whether your works should be in the program is hard to say. This program will likely prove to be useful in promoting certain titles. Midlist and backlist books that are receiving little attention, for example, may benefit from additional exposure in searches. For other titles, the program may erode sales. Most reference books would be at clear risk in such a database. So would many (if not most) travel books and cookbooks. Most fiction titles are not likely to be greatly threatened.

When we learned of the program, we thought that it would be impossible to read more than 5 consecutive pages from a book in the program. It turns out that it's quite simple (though a bit inconvenient) to look at 100 or more consecutive pages from a single lengthy book. We've even printed out 108 consecutive pages from a bestselling book. It's not something one would care to do frequently, but it can be done. So a reader could choose to print out all the fish recipes from a cookbook in the program. Or the section on Tuscany from a travel book. We believe readers will do this,
and the perplexing question is whether the additional exposure for a title -- and the presumptive increase in sales -- offsets sales lost from those who just use the Amazon system to look up the section of a book when they need it.

Other books at especially high risk include those that sell to the student (particularly college student) market as secondary reading. A student could easily grab the relevant chapter or two out of a book without paying for it. Students certainly have the time and most likely the inclination to do so, and, with the help of some willing colleagues, could print out the entire texts of books in the program.

We'll be sending you more information about the program shortly, and we're going to be in further touch with the major publishers. If you'd like a book removed from the program and your publisher isn't cooperating, please let us know.

-----------------------------------------
Copyright 2003, Authors Guild. This work may be forwarded and posted, so long as it is not edited. www.authorsguild.org

October 15, 2003
Sun Sentinel

By Oline H. Cogdill

Margery Flax, a New York City office manager, has become immortal. Or at least her name has. In a new mystery series by South Florida author Elaine Viets, "Margery Flax" is a 76-year-old eccentric landlady who has a penchant for purple. Flax, 52, couldn't be happier that her name is being taken in vain. She planned it that way.

Flax got into a bidding war during a national mystery writers' conference to have her name used in a Viets novel.

"I love the character," said Flax. "She has an attitude about life that I really like, and is independent. She speaks her own mind and makes her own choices. She's what I hope to be when I am that age."

Flax had only one request about her namesake -- that she love purple. "Other than that, I wanted the character to be what the author wanted it to be."

Auctioning off character names for charity has long been a fund- raising staple of genre writers' conferences. Winners pay to have their name -- or that of a friend, relative or even a pet -- used in an upcoming book. The named character may make a one-time cameo or, as in Flax's case, may become a series regular.

Now South Florida authors will be donating the name of a character as a thank-you gift for special donations to public radio and television station WXEL-Ch. 42 [and FM 90.7] during the station's fall membership drive Oct. 18-31. South Florida authors who will be donating character names include James Patterson, James W. Hall, Barbara Parker, James Grippando, Viets and Jonathon King. Carl Hiaasen is offering lunch with the author in Islamorada in a package that includes a two-night stay at Cheeca Lodge. Tampa author Tim Dorsey will be donating annotated, autographed manuscript pages of his upcoming Cadillac Beach, which is set in Miami Beach. Station officials won't say yet how high a donation to WXEL should be to get a name in a novel, but this may open a new chapter on fund-raising for the channel.

Authors, authors
BY CONNIE OGLE
cogle@herald.com

''Twenty will not come again,'' A.E. Housman wrote in A Shropshire Lad more than a century ago. But for the moment let's forget the gentleman's lamentation on his threescore years and 10 and concentrate on our own imminent and significant number: Twenty years of appearances by the most luminous authors. Twenty years of readings and panels and lectures, of demonstrations of culinary prowess and healing arts. Twenty years of delicate and rare volumes that must be touched with utmost care and kids' books destined to be passed around with jelly-stained hands. Twenty years of falling in love with books -- have you recovered from Augusten Burroughs' hilarious, poignant Dry yet? or Alberto Fuguet's nostalgic Movies of My Life? or Eric Schlosser's exposé Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market? Books, and books, and more books.

Let us think of 20 as our lucky number as the Miami Book Fair International celebrates its anniversary. The fun begins with a special appearance by former First Lady Barbara Bush on Nov. 1 to benefit the fair's literacy efforts and ends Nov. 9 in English with Edwin Black and his unsettling War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race and Abraham Foxman and his unsettling Never Again? The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism, and in Spanish with a panel on Latin American Perspectives with Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Alberto Montaner and Enrique Krauze.

In between, there are more than enough author appearances in both languages to flummox readers, who will face the annual searing dilemma: What to do when two intriguing sessions occur at the same time? How to choose between a reading with Caryl Phillips (A Distant Shore) and Martin Amis (Yellow Dog) and a panel that includes National Book Award nominee Carlos Eire (Waiting for Snow in Havana)? A program featuring debut writers Vendela Vida (And Now You Can Go), Julie Orringer (How to Breathe Underwater) and Felicia Luna Lemus (Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties) or readings by novelists Sena Jeter Naslund (Four Spirits), Pete Dexter (Train) and Robert Morgan (Brave Enemies)? And will there be enough time to fit in an arepa and to shop?

The fair began as a two-day event. Marjory Stoneman Douglas signed books; readers paid 25 cents for cookies with poems tucked inside. ''When we started, we had to beg publishers and authors to come,'' says Eduardo Padron, fair founder and president of Miami Dade College. ``Now they beg us to be here.''

The fair ''is a Miami original,'' says bookseller Mitchell Kaplan, cochairman and co-founder. ``Other people saw what we were doing in Miami, and they went to their own cities and began doing it themselves. The book fair is one of our great exports.''

Look back over the past, and you will find familiar names on this year's schedule. Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, who kicks off this year's week-night ''Evenings with...'' series on Nov. 2, also was the opener in 1986, the year the fair expanded to a full eight days. Garrison Keillor, who appears Nov. 3, shared his Lake Wobegon humor with an overflow opening-night audience in 1987. Other ''Evenings with...'' speakers are wonderfully recognizable: Mitch Albom (Nov. 4) on The Five People You Meet in Heaven; Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel (Nov. 5); a couple of Herald guys you might know, Dave Barry and Carl Hiaasen (Nov. 6); and choreographer Twyla Tharp (Nov. 7).

But the weekend, oh, the weekend! The street fair sprawls on Nov. 8-9; thousands flock, many to ingest arepas. Fiction lovers can revel in readings by Joyce Carol Oates (The Faith of a Writer; The Tattooed Girl) and Edmund White (Fanny: A Fiction); Carolyn Parkhurst (The Dogs of Babel); Lauren Weisberger (The Devil Wears Prada); Alan Lightman (Reunion); National Book Award nominee Edward Jones (The Known World). Budding political wonks can hear former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (Madame Secretary) or former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal (The Clinton Wars). Aficionados can meet Broward's Will Eisner, credited with creating the first graphic novel, A Covenant with God, and here to promote his new work, Fagin the Jew.

For history buffs: Walter Isaacson on Benjamin Franklin; David Maraniss on Vietnam with They Marched into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967; Caroline Alexander on The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty (hint: Fletcher Christian was the bad guy). For New Yorkers: Colson Whitehead's urban essays, The Colossus of New York. And current-events lovers can get their fix with correspondent Anne Garrels (Naked in Baghdad), with Jessica Stern (Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill) and perhaps with Malika Oufkir, who relates her harrowing ordeal in Morocco in Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in A Desert Prison.

So many books, so little time, and if you don't believe me, check with Sara Nelson, who wrote a book with just such a title. She'll be here, too. But as the man says, 20 may not come again. So it's time to celebrate.

October 23, 2003
To Stars, Writing Books Looks Like Child's Play
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI

Once upon a time there was a land in love with fame and brand names. By and by, some famous brand-name people, holed up in their castles, discovered a new trade. They started writing books for children.

Many wrote books about children who sounded like themselves. Jerry, a comedian who made pots of gold with a television show and more pots of gold with commercials for a credit card, wrote a Halloween book about a greedy boy who wants to get his hands on lots and lots of brand-name candy. Madonna, a blond star, wrote about a pretty little blond girl who has no friends because everyone is jealous that she "shines like a star." And Britney, a younger blond singer, wrote a book, with her mother, about a young blond girl who really, really wants to become a singer.

Everyone agreed there was lots of money and publicity to be made in kid lit. It was a time, after all, when a young British woman — who didn't have a famous name when she started — wrote a series of books about a boy named Harry and, legend has it, became richer than Madonna, and richer, even, than the Queen of England. Joanne Kathleen Rowling was interviewed on television and mobbed by adoring fans. The movies made from her books were hailed as a franchise.

Publishers were excited. Over the years they had signed up the likes of Bill Cosby, Jimmy Buffett and Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, as children's book authors. Then the floodgates opened. Soon children's bookstores were as studded with stars and has-been stars as "Hollywood Squares," with titles by Spike Lee, Keith Hernandez, Jesse Ventura, Jerry Seinfeld, Britney Spears, Maria Shriver, Katie Couric, Marlee Matlin, Bob Dylan, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, LeAnn Rimes, Jane Seymour, Harvey Fierstein, Della Reese, Michael Bolton and Debbie Allen jostling for shelf space. Madonna and Lynne Cheney, who is married to the vice president, are the latest celebrities to join the crowd. Their books — respectively, "The English Roses" and "A Is for Abigail" — made best-seller lists.

A handful of celebrities, like John Lithgow and Jamie Lee Curtis, actually have a gift for writing for children: they know how to tell a story and how to tell it with words and pictures and whimsical wit. For others, children's books are just another way to merchandise themselves, another vanity production: Britney books, along with Britney dolls, Britney cellphones and Britney mouse pads.

Instead of creating imaginary worlds or engaging fictional characters, many celebrities just riff about themselves. Cindy Crawford has filled her book "About Face" with pictures of herself and her son. And Shaquille O'Neal has given his younger self a starring role in fairy tales like "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." (At least he has a sense of humor: he has cast himself as Little Red and Goldilocks, not as the Big Bad Wolf or Papa Bear.)

Other celebrities seem to think they can use children's books to reinvent their images or jump-start a stalled career. Madonna became a children's author after her movie "Swept Away" failed to sweep anyone away. Spike Lee became a children's author when he said he was finding it increasingly difficult to get money to make his movies. And Ms. Cheney began publishing children's books when, as second lady, she exchanged her image as a combative veteran of the culture wars for the more traditional role of political wife.

The problem was that these authors counted on audiences being able to forget — or ignore — who they used to be. "Please, baby, please," the title of the book Spike Lee wrote with his wife Tonya Lewis Lee, was a famous line, used in a very different context, from his raunchy 1986 comedy, "She's Gotta Have It." And Madonna's previous venture into publishing was "Sex" — a 1992 book that celebrated exhibitionism, bondage, bisexuality and group sex.

The subtext of "Sex" was essentially sadomasochistic: that all relationships are about power and control. Her new book, "Roses," Madonna has said in interviews, strives to impart the Cabala-inspired wisdom that when we disconnect from the "one life-giving force in the world," we "bring chaos and pain and suffering into our lives."

As for Ms. Cheney's new book, "A Is for Abigail: An Almanac of Amazing American Women," it stands in jarring contrast to her earlier censures of feminism. A page on writers, for instance, features the name of Alice Walker and a drawing of Toni Morrison, even though Ms. Cheney, in her former capacity as chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, once pushed for the nomination of Carol Iannone to the endowment's advisory council. Ms Iannone, a literature professor, had written that awarding prestigious prizes to black writers like Ms. Morrison and Ms. Walker sacrificed "the demands of excellence to the democratic dictatorship of mediocrity."

Although Ms. Cheney has often denounced multiculturalism and political correctness, her children's books, "A Is for Abigail" and "America: A Patriotic Primer," are illustrated with pictures of people of many different colors. Madonna's "Roses" similarly features drawings of a rainbow quartet of girls: a blonde, a redhead, an African-American and an Asian.

In retelling several famous folk tales, Shaquille O'Neal's "Shaq and the Beanstalk and Other Very Tall Tales" also tries to take a politically correct approach to violence, awkwardly trying to reconcile the Grimm-ness of the original tales with a gentler perspective. Before knocking out an angry giant with a golden basketball, the hero pauses to deliver a finger-wagging aside: "I have always believed that fighting is the loser's way out. You get nowhere using violence. It's always better to talk your problems out."

Many celebrities serve up similarly well-meaning but trite lessons in their children's books, hoping perhaps to emulate the success of William J. Bennett's best seller, "The Children's Book of Virtues." Katie Couric's "Brand New Kid" delivers the message that kids should reach out to the new boy at school. Keith Hernandez's "First-Base Hero" tells the reader that everyone makes mistakes and that it is important to persevere. And Julie Andrews Edwards's book, "Dumpy and the Firefighters," preaches that everyone can make a valuable contribution to the community.

While such morals are certainly worthy ones, they are no substitute for real storytelling, a craft many celebrities seem to think can be picked up overnight in between their real-life gigs. Other celebrity books do not even promote worthwhile lessons. In Madonna's book a clique of cool girls considers the beautiful Binah a sadly deprived child because she has only one doll and lots of books and has to perform unheard of chores like setting the table and emptying the trash. "The English Roses couldn't believe their eyes," Madonna writes. "They had never seen a girl work so hard in their lives. `She reminds me of Cinderella,' said Amy."

Jerry Seinfeld's "Halloween" has an even more offensive message: greed is good and rudeness is funny. His hero, an obnoxious brat, spurns some of the trick-or-treat candy he has received with snarky disdain: "Do me a favor, you keep that one," he tells an old woman who has given him an orange marshmallow treat. "We've got all the doorstops we need already, thank you very much. We're going for NAME CANDY ONLY this year."

As for the branding of children's literature with celebrity names, the fad shows no signs of flagging. Madonna has four more children's books on the way. The next, "Mr. Peabody's Apples," is due out on Nov. 10. Jay Leno and the football playing twins Tiki and Ronde Barber reportedly have children's books in the works as well.

So far Joanne Kathleen Rowling — never mind the Grimm brothers and Dr. Seuss — faces little serious competition in the children's book business, at least not from the celebrities who covet her celebrity and underestimate the difficulty of her art.




To Stars, Writing Books Looks Like Child's Play

Sara Paretsky has been giving an eye-opening and thought provoking speech about the Patriot Act, libraries and freedom called "Truth, Lies and Duct Tape" and has made a text version available on her website. Check it out...

http://www.saraparetsky.com/silence.html