Dead Plagiarists Society
Will Google Book Search uncover long-buried literary crimes?
By Paul Collins
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2006, at 12:22 PM ET

Amir Aczel knew just whom to blame. "It seems," the science author complained last month in an irate letter to the Washington Post, "that [Charles] Seife has submitted every sentence in my book to a Google search." Days earlier in a Post book review, Seife exposed what appeared to be embarrassing plagiarisms in Aczel's new book, The Artist and the Mathematician. But if Seife's discovery that Aczel lifted text from the Guggenheim Museum's Web site was instructive, so was the assumption behind Aczel's response. For any plagiarist living in an age of search engines, waving a loaded book in front of reviewers has become the literary equivalent of suicide by cop.

As it turns out, even authors not living in this online age are in trouble. My fellow literary sleuth Alex MacBride recently revealed to me that he'd uncovered an old crime in a new way. MacBride, a linguist employed by Google, idly ran a phrase from England Howlett's 1899 essay Sacrificial Foundations through Google Book Search, his employer's massive digitization of millions of volumes from university libraries. The search had nothing to do with his job—like the rest of us, sometimes Alex just kills time by plugging stuff into Google—and rather than go to the trouble of digging out Howlett's book by name, he'd decided to call it up with a phrase. To his surprise, he got more back than just Howlett: The search also revealed a suspiciously similar passage in Sabine Baring-Gould's 1892 book Strange Survivals. A lot of suspiciously similar passages.

Perhaps it's not too shocking that a small-time amateur like Howlett swiped from Baring-Gould, a frenetically prolific folklore scholar who published hundreds of books and articles. But, the search results revealed, this was not quite the end of the story. "Charmingly," MacBride e-mails, "Baring-Gould seems to have had sticky fingers himself." The wronged author, you see, had in turn used the unattributed quotation from a still earlier work: Benjamin Thorpe's 1851 study Northern Mythology.

We're talking about forgotten writers here: I don't think there will be too many England Howlett fan clubs grappling with disillusionment today. But MacBride's discovery is the first rumble in what may become a literary earthquake. Given the popularity of plagiarism-seeking software services for academics, it may be only a matter of time before some enterprising scholar yokes Google Book Search and plagiarism-detection software together into a massive literary dragnet, scooping out hundreds of years' worth of plagiarists—giants and forgotten hacks alike—who have all escaped detection until now.

But wait, you might ask, don't people accidentally repeat each other's sentences all the time? It seems to me that this should not be unusual. Yet try plugging that last sentence word by word into Google Book Search, and watch what happens.

It: Rejected—too many hits to count
It seems: 11,160,000 matches
It seems to: 3,050,000
It seems to me: 1,580,000
It seems to me that: 844,000
It seems to me that this: 29,700
It seems to me that this should: 237
It seems to me that this should not: 20
It seems to me that this should not be: 9
It seems to me that this should not be unusual: 0

It seems to me that this should not be unusual is itself ... unusual.

Google Book Search contains hundreds of millions of printed pages, and yet after just a few words, the likelihood of the sentence's replication scales down dramatically. And even before our sentence implodes into utter improbability, there's another telling phenomenon at work. The nine books that contain the penultimate It seems to me that this should not be are from a grab bag of subjects: a 2001 study of Freud, an 1874 collection of Methodist camp sermons, minutes from a 1973 hearing of the Senate subcommittee on transportation. So, if replicating the same sentence alone is suspicious behavior, then to also replicate it on the same subject warrants dialing 911.

Read this article in its entirety:
http://www.slate.com/id/2153313/

MIAMI BOOK FAIR 2006

I look forward to the fair every year, and this year was no exception. In fact, I was even more excited than usual because Jonathon King had told me that the Mystery Writers of America had kicked in some money and that Sunday was to be MYSTERY SUNDAY at the fair. There were mystery panels all day long, interspersed with shopping the street fair - bliss! Well, almost bliss (scroll down to read "MWA TAKES A HIT AT THE MIAMI BOOK FAIR").

Bob Williamson, president of the Florida chapter of the Mystery Writers of America, moderated almost all the panels. He started the day by introducing Mitchell Kaplan, owner of Books & Books and the founder of the Miami Book Fair. Williamson explained that each year the MWA gives out an award called the Raven, "a special award given for outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing." The 2007 award will be going to Kaplan in New York in April. Some of the previous recipients have been Joan Hansen, creator of the Men of Mystery Conference; Bonnie Claeson & Joe Guglielmelli, owners of the Black Orchid Bookshop; Martha Farrington, Owner of Murder by the Book, Houston, TX; and Diane Kovacs and Kara Robinson, founders of the DorothyL listserv.

First panel of the day featured James W. Hall, Jess Walter, Melanie Rehak and Jeff Ford. Walter wrote the 2005 Edgar winner, Citizen Vince, a terrific crime novel set in Spokane, Washington, a month before the 1980 Presidential election. It concerns a Mafioso in the witness protection program who is, with his new identity, now eligible to vote. Walter, a journalist, said he got the idea when he learned through some research that Spokane is apparently quite popular with the witness protection program. One year on Election Day as he was voting, he started thinking about how convicted felons can't vote, but in this program they can, and a story was born. His latest book, The Zero, was a finalist for the National Book Award.


(from left to right: Jess Walter, James W. Hall, Melanie Rehak, Jeff Ford)

Melanie Rehak wrote Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her. She was influenced to write the book after she heard an obituary on the radio for Mildred Wert Benson, the first ghost writer as Carolyn Keene, author of the enormously popular Nancy Drew series. She got a fellowship that allowed her a small office in the New York Public Library, which has archived all the papers & correspondence of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, Nancy Drew’s creator. She is currently working on another nonfiction book about restaurants, food & family in America, but says she may eventually write a mystery.

Jim Hall is always entertaining and seeing as we were sitting on the patio, he couldn't resist starting off his remarks by doing a bird call, one of his more unusual gifts. With his PhD in literature, Hall heads the creative writing program at Florida International University in Miami, which has turned out some very fine writers like Dennis Lehane. Hall spoke about how he started out writing "literary novels" except that they were crap. He said he was too stupid to write those, all he was interested in were the "pretty words" and he severely neglected things like plot and character. So he moved on to writing "escapist crap" instead, mysteries. His Thorne series is being blessed with a new addition next March called Magic City. Set in 1963 Miami, Hall gets to share some of Miami's rich history.

Hall is also working on a nonfiction book about the twelve biggest bestsellers of all time, books like Peyton Place, The Godfather, Gone With the Wind, The Da Vinci Code, Jaws, and Valley of the Dolls. He was asked the difference between "literary thrillers" and "thrillers," and responded, "There are good books and books that are not as good."

Jeff Ford has written several science fiction and fantasy books, although he didn’t realize that’s what he was doing. He says the difference between sci-fi and literary fiction is that with a literary novel, there is “$5000 less on the next advance.” He is a big fan of hard boiled fiction, citing Hammett, Chandler and Cain as his biggest influences, especially Hammett’s The Thin Man. He tried to emulate that style in his mystery, The Girl in the Glass and judging by the excellent reviews, he succeeded.

The next panel of the day featured Lee Irby, Marshall Karp and Lisa Jones Johnson. I was so delighted to meet Marshall – I had done a promotion for his first novel, The Rabbit Factory, which has been favorably compared to Evanovich and Hiaasen. I am happy to report that Marshall is as charming and funny as his book would lead you to believe. He says that writing novels is his third and last career, following on the heels of being a “TV whore” and an “advertising whore”, where he worked with another thriller writer – James Patterson. Bloodthirsty, the sequel to The Rabbit Factory,comes out next year.


(from left to right: Lisa Jones Johnson, Lee Irby, Marshall Karp)

Lee Irby is a historian and teacher at Eckerd College with a wickedly self-deprecating sense of humor, and he’s managed to write two novels so far – 7,000 Clams and more recently, The Up and Up. Irby is also a fan of hard boiled fiction, and the historian in him led to research the slang of the era, which is found sprinkled throughout his books. The Up and Up is set in Miami during the 1930’s, when the chief of police was arrested for murder. Although he was eventually acquitted, Irby found enough intrigue there to inspire a novel. He told us he was dyslexic as a child and didn’t decide to try writing until he read Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.

Lisa Jones Johnson is a new-to-me author. She’s written her first novel, A Dead Man Speaks, which is a ghost story of sorts. She wanted to turn a mystery novel on its head and get the story from the perspective of the victim. Luckily, the ghost hooks up with a psychic detective, so his story could be told.

I couldn’t sit anymore after that so I wandered the fair a bit. The beautiful weather brought out thousands of people, and everyone seemed to be in a good mood. The chain bookstores were nowhere to be found, but lots of independents and used book stores were represented. Some of the publishers had booths as well, including Penguin and for the first time, McSweeney’s. In fact, my only purchase of the day was at the McSweeney booth. They have a new series of board books for toddlers that were just adorable. I couldn’t resist Baby Fix My Car, one of the titles in the 'Baby Be of Use' series by Lisa Brown. The other titles in the series are Baby Make Me Breakfast, Baby Mix Me a Drink, and Baby Do My Banking. They are just too cute.

I was late getting back to the Mystery Stage so I was disappointed to miss the first half of the next panel. Featured were Lisa Unger, Elizabeth Becka, Kristy Montee (half of PJ Parrish) and Mel Taylor. Sliver of Truth, the sequel to Unger’s Beautiful Lies comes out in early January and I can’t wait! She was there with her husband and perfectly behaved baby - she slept through the event. Kristy/PJ talked about writing with her sister via email and phone calls and how well it works for them. They will be spinning off a character from their popular Louis Kinkaid series into a new series next spring.



(from left to right: Elizabeth Becka, Lisa Unger, Mel Taylor, P.J. Parrish/Kristy Montee)


I really enjoyed Becka’s Trace Evidence and did not know that she is a practicing forensic scientist who testifies regularly in court. She was asked about the sort of research she does and replied that she has a shelf of text books in her office if she needs them. Mel Taylor is a local news anchor who loves to write. He talked about the difficulties of meeting his deadline last year after Hurricane Wilma hit. He was working twelve hour shifts with no days off and no electricity, but somehow got it done. Murder by Deadline seems like a most appropriate title.

The mystery panels continued with James Grippando, Barbara Parker and Paul Levine. Levine is working on the next book in the hugely popular Solomon vs. Lord series. He called the new book ‘Habeas Porpoise’ but apparently the powers that be (the publisher) didn’t like that name so it’s in limbo at present. Levine talked about writers that influenced him, including John D. MacDonald whose voice in the Travis McGee series, he said, sounded surprisingly like his own. He’s also a fan of Elmore Leonard and Tom Wolfe.



(from left to right: Bob Williamson, Paul Levine, James Grippando, Barbara Parker)

Jim Grippando is a very busy guy. He’s got a stand alone thriller, Lying with Strangers, that is available only through book clubs at present. I asked him about it, wondering if this was going to be a new trend. He said that book clubs have been hurting because their prime customers were always people who either didn’t have access to local bookstores or didn’t care to shop in one. But now those people can buy anything they want online. By making exclusive book deals with authors they are reinventing themselves. Grippando said that James Patterson is doing an exclusive with the book clubs soon, and more are to follow, probably about one or two per year.

Grippando also has a new Jack Swytek book coming in January, and a fantasy thriller for young adults called Leapholes was just released. His childhood was spent reading fantasy, and he especially liked the C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia. With Leapholes, he utilizes time travel to go back in time and meet famous historical figures like Rosa Parks, for example.

Another interesting discussion about the genre brought this tidbit from Grippando that he gleaned while on a panel (elsewhere) with Steve Berry. Grippando says that Berry had written all five of his published novels prior to the publication of the Da Vinci Code, but they had all been rejected. After the Da Vinci Code hit he was then able to get published, and all five of his books have ended up on the NY Times bestseller list.

Parker talked about her next book, The Perfect Fake, and how much she enjoyed doing research for it. An audience member asked about writers block and I loved her response – she said, “The answer to writer’s block is to lower your standards.” Levine wondered if plumbers get "plumber's block".

The last event at the Mystery Stage played to a packed house. Tim Dorsey moderated a panel he affectionately called, “Three Journalists and a Cop”. Dorsey, Jonathon King and Edna Buchanan were the journalists; James O. Born was the cop. These guys are all hilarious and to have them together was a treat. Dorsey started off by reading a sex scene from his latest book, The Big Bamboo, which caused a couple of mothers to hustle their children out of there.



(from left to right: Tim Dorsey, the BookBitch, James O. Born)

King also talked a bit about his research, informing us that the Everglades has the largest population of rattle snakes in the country. Not sure I really needed or wanted to know that! His most recent book is a stand alone thriller called Eye of Vengeance that has had incredible reviews and is in my towering to-be-read pile.

Jim Born was all excited about his next book, a stand alone thriller that has already gotten raves from the likes of Michael Connelly. It’s called Field of Fire and comes out in February. He says it’s got a more serious tone than the Tasker series, but as he does in the Tasker books, he tries to portray cops in a very realistic way. I’m really looking forward to it.

Bob Williamson moderated all the panels, save the last one, and basically asked the same questions each time out. I overheard some people saying that it would have been more interesting had the questions been more specific to the authors on each panel rather than the broad questions asked that could have been asked of any author - mystery, literary or nonfiction. Even more maddening for those of us who were there for more than one or two panels was his cell phone virus joke – a cutesy way of asking people to make sure their cell phones were off. The first time was cute, the second time not so cute, and after that I just cringed each time he repeated it. Even better would be to have different moderators. Surely there are other MWA members available at the book fair who would want to participate.

There were lots of other events going on at the fair. I missed Carl Hiaasen, he was on first thing in the morning and I didn’t make it in time. The problem with the fair is that there are so many fabulous authors it becomes very difficult to choose. So I stuck with what I love best and missed other authors I also wanted to see, like Sara Gruen, Janet Fitch, Melissa Bank, Neal Gabler, Mark Kurlansky, Jay McInerney, Christopher Hitchens, Francine Prose, Katherine Weber and Da Chen. And that was just Sunday! But there’s always next year…

MWA TAKES A HIT AT THE MIAMI BOOK FAIR

The Miami Book Fair is one of the best known and largest book fairs in the country. As anyone who watches the event on Book TV (CSPAN) knows, the emphasis has always been on nonfiction, with a mega-bestselling novelist occasionally featured.

Mystery writers have had a presence, but you had to be a sleuth to find them. In fairs past, they have been shunted off into small classrooms in obscure buildings on the outer fringes of the fair. Someone has to be, I guess, so might as well make it genre authors. There have not been moderators assigned to the mystery panels either, just a fair volunteer on hand to introduce them, who would usually get the names wrong anyway.

The Mystery Writers of America decided to up the ante a bit this year. The Florida chapter's new president, Bob Williamson, has been a volunteer at the fair for many years. According to author Christine Kling, Bob convinced the membership to kick some money into the fair - $20,000, half from the local membership, half from the national organization.

What did they get for their money? Mystery Sunday at the fair had its own column on the huge schedule all fair goers cling to, but according to one author, they were "ghetto-ized" into the last column on the page. Their venue was changed from obscure classroom to something called the "Mystery Stage".

In reality, the "stage" was a patio area across from the children's event area and bordered by a busy Miami street. There was a chain link wall separating the building from the street, but it did nothing to muffle the accompanying street music of rumbling trucks, blaring horns and wailing sirens.

On the opposite side of the patio was the performer's entrance to the building. These were not just any performers; these were oversized characters of children's literature, so along with your mystery panel, you got to see the larger-than-life Three Little Pigs, Madeline, and a six-foot tall dog, which gave Edna Buchanan the giggles.

The outskirts of the patio housed picnic tables where families enjoyed their lunch. There were screaming children running around, adults chatting, cell phones chirping, all of which added a certain ambiance to the panel discussions that I'm sure the MWA had never planned on.

The weather was glorious and it was a lovely day to sit on a patio. Unfortunately, all there was to sit on were broken down folding chairs which were very uncomfortable and hard on the back. Had they done this last year with the more typical 85 degree heat/90% humidity, it might have been a problem.

The last panel of the day was scheduled at 5:00, which is closing time for the street fair. The giant trash barrels squeaked as they were pushed past the patio. The authors had to compete with the sounds of metal clanging as the booths were dismantled, a PA system blaring closing announcements and maintenance men going by with radios blasting, leading the usually loquacious Tim Dorsey to comment in his very brief closing remarks, "I couldn't top what I've seen here today."

Did the MWA get their money's worth? It was a definite step up for the mystery panels at the fair to at least have a moderator, and one who knew the author's names and work. I liked the ghetto-ization too, having them all in one place, but the venue was pretty well hidden, not comfortable or conducive to have any but the most diehard fans stay. Some panels had bigger crowds than others, but all in all I’d say attendance didn’t seem any greater than in previous years. I don’t know how book sales went so if they were good, then maybe they did get their money’s worth.

There still seemed to be the same lack of respect towards genre writers that I've seen in previous fairs. But I don't know if there is enough money in the world to change that. 11/06 Stacy Alesi, AKA The BookBitch

Wanda’s Excellent Book Giving Back Adventure!
7 Days, 9 Bookstores, $1500 Worth of Books!
Columbia, SC - Nov 20, 2006

What would you do if you had $1000 to give away?

That is the question Oprah had everyone asking themselves when she announced her Gift of Giving Back initiative, where every member of her studio audience received one thousand dollars, a camcorder, and the exhortation to go out and do good works.

So what would you do with $1000? “That’s easy,” said Wanda Jewell, the Executive Director of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA), “I’d buy people books.”

Giving Back Books
Although not an original member of Oprah’s audience, Jewell, like most people involved in the bookselling industry, is a fan of the show and was watching on the day Oprah first announced her Giving Back program. “I thought, ‘I can do that. I have $1000’” she said. Thus was born the idea for what Jewell is calling her Excellent Book Giving Adventure. Armed only with a camcorder, a $1000 Book Sense gift card, and a very patient husband, Jewell will spend a week in December touring bookstores in the South and offering to buy people a book.
“You know,” Jewell said,, “there have been plenty of times in my life when I walked out of a bookstore empty handed because I couldn’t afford to buy a book that day, no matter how much I wanted one. If I can give someone a book who wouldn’t otherwise get one, I want to do it.”

Jewell has worked out a kind of “tour” of bookstores throughout the states of South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, finally ending up at Page and Palette Bookstore in Fairhope, AL, where she will spend a week on the sales floor as a bookseller during the busy Christmas shopping season.

“We thought it would be a good idea for Wanda to have some experience on the sales floor,” said Page and Palette owner Karin Wilson, who is also a member of the SIBA Board. Jewell concurs. “I’m the Executive Director of an organization that represents independent booksellers,” she points out. “I need to know what I’m representing.”

Oh yes, and while she is brushing up on her hand selling skills at Page and Palette, Jewell will also buy people a further $500 worth of books, thanks to a donation from the bookstore. Altogether, Jewell hopes to buy a totla of $1500 worth of books for people on her trip.

Jewell hopes that the stores on her Excellent Book Giving Adventure Itinerary (listed below) will be able to use her visit as a way to promote themselves in their community, and that the whole trip will be a model for other people in the book industry to use to promote independent bookselling. To that end, Jewell will be promoting her visits to each of the stores with regular updates on her blog (http://www.sibaweb.com/wanda) and video streaming on SIBA’s websites, www.sibaweb.com and www.authorsroundthesouth.com. SIBA will also send press announcements to each of the communities she is visiting to encourage media to focus its attention on its local retailers.

“It’s a crazy combination of Christmas spirit, bookstore tourism and pay-it-forward philosophy” says Jewell, who hopes her trip will inspire others to something similar in their own communities “I feel like the book fairy!” “But if it puts books in the hands of people who want them, it will have served its purpose,” she added. “And if it brings people to their independent bookshops, it will be a success.”

Learn more...

Pass the Juice

News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch announced this afternoon that the company is canceling publication of O.J. Simpson's book If I Did It as well as the broadcast of the two-part interview with Simpson that was conducted by Judith Regan and was to air on Fox News.

Murdoch commented: "I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project. We are sorry for any pain this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson."

Regan's imprint ReganBooks was to have published the book, which she called a "confession," on November 30. The deal was estimated to be worth $3.5 million.

As most of you know, booksellers across the country were among the many people who were revulsed by the project. Many booksellers decided to donate proceeds from the sale of the book to appropriate charities or not to sell the book at all.

For authors, writing's just half the job
In today's multimedia world, authors must leave no stone unturned in marketing their books.
BY RICHARD PACHTER
Special to The Miami Herald

It's not enough to write a great book. Authors are now expected to play an active role in book marketing and promotion. In this brave new world of always-on media, scribes are expected to either pursue or make themselves available to every potential reader.

Though there have always been opportunities for interviews, reviews, in-store signings, book fairs, seminars and broadcast appearances, now publishers want to make sure no avenue for multimedia exposure is overlooked as a book competes with every other form of entertainment.

Most book companies have full-time staff devoted to pursuing publicity for their books and authors, but nothing is guaranteed.

''Publicity departments are too small and stretched too thin,'' author Joseph Finder (High Crimes, Company Man, Paranoia) said in a telephone interview from his Boston office. ``They do their best, but there's always another book coming out and I want to make sure that mine gets the attention it deserves before they move on to the next one.''

But he notes his publisher, St. Martin's Press, ''was extremely cooperative when I came up with the idea of including an audio CD'' to promote his current book, Killer Instinct. ''From the CEO on down, they're totally behind my books. In fact, the marketing director is a fan,'' he said.

Still, Finder felt the need to do more.

''I paid for my website [josephfinder.com], hired someone to design it and someone else to run it. It's impossible to gauge, but I see more and more response from reviewers, journalists and booksellers, and readers communicate with me, too,'' he said. ``Everyone likes to get inside information and have a connection.''

Making that connection also includes putting up special websites in countries where his books sell especially well, such as the Netherlands.

Edna Buchanan, a Miami Beach novelist and one-time Pulitzer Prize-winning crime reporter for The Miami Herald, said she works closely with her publisher's publicity department and will do book tours and almost anything else they suggest to sell her books.

''But I hate to leave Miami,'' said Buchanan. ``I'm basically a shy person but also I don't want to miss anything if I'm out on the road. Plus I don't like to go anyplace where they only speak one language and don't have Cuban coffee.''

But with her new book, Love Kills, which brings her recurring character Britt Montero together with the Cold Case Squad, due out in June, she expects to hit the road again if that's what her publisher wants.

Lissa Warren, senior director of publicity for Da Capo Books, which is based in Cambridge, Mass., said authors should first try to figure out how much of a priority their book is to the publisher. ''Is it in their catalog, and if so, how does it compare to other books? Is there a two-page spread? Is there a large print run? A big advance? A tour? Have they sent out galleys to reviewers?'' are the questions that should be asked, she said.

NAB THE BIG FOUR

'They should at least be able to secure reviews from the Big Four trade publications -- Publishers' Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist and Library Journal -- too,'' said Warren, a poet herself and author of The Savvy Author's Guide to Book Publicity: A Comprehensive Resource: From Building the Buzz to Pitching the Press.

''Some authors may initiate their own campaigns, often with the knowledge and blessings of their publisher, but sometimes without,'' Warren said, adding that independent public relations firms may also be hired to work on a project.

''It's big bucks,'' said Les Standiford, author of the series of novels featuring South Florida-based sleuth John Deal, as well as several historical works, including Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America.

''The plain fact is that in an industry where $25,000 is a substantial advance, after your agent's commission, taxes and a little money to live on, how much is left? My publishers have always been collaborative and like to see me tour and do signings, but do you know how many books you usually sell at a signing?'' he asked. ``Six to eight.''

``So if you do a 10-city tour with average expense of a thousand dollars a day, how much does that work out to be, per copy?''

Standiford, who heads the creative writing program at Florida International University, chuckled and added, ``But the publisher thinks it's worth it and that it helps with word of mouth, which is how most books sell anyway. I'm fine with that, because it's the most valuable and effective thing I can do to help sell my books.''

Does Standiford teach his FIU students how to promote their work? ''No.'' he said. ``That would be more of a business course, I'd imagine, but we do cover how to present material to an agent, which is an important step in the process.''

THE RIGHT STUFF

Investigative author Edwin Black, who wrote IBM and the Holocaust, War on the Weak, and Banking on Baghdad, is a skilled and tireless promoter for his books.

After conducting the substantial research behind his current book, Internal Combustion -- which chronicles the history of the energy industry and the suppression of alternate technologies, Black became a road warrior.

''Publishers know that in addition to getting a book, they're getting me,'' he said several weeks ago while in Broward County to launch the campaign for Internal Combustion. ``I'm out there, meeting with people at schools, organizations and other places that make sense.''

Black, who lives in Washington, D.C., wrote and helped produce a video trailer for his book that was completed with the assistance of volunteers, packaged on DVD and distributed online through YouTube. He also works with his publisher to secure reviews in print publications, as many authors do.

Major online booksellers such as Amazon.com and Bar nesandNoble.com also get into the act by inviting customers to contribute reviews and some have become quite prolific, with devoted followings.

But there are no editors or gatekeepers to ensure the authenticity of the reviews and the legitimacy of the reviewers. Political books, for example, are often critiqued on the basis of the author's personality or party affiliation rather than the content of the work in question.

THE POWER OF OPRAH

By far the most influential television venue for books is Oprah Winfrey's syndicated weekday show. Her mere mention of a title sends thousands to bookstores.

''When that happens, publishers have to make sure that there are books in shops to capitalize on it,'' said Da Capo's Warren.

Some authors are particularly savvy about using the electronic media to promote their work.

Prolific British fantasy writer Warren Ellis (Planetary, Transmetropolitan, Fell), sends short e-mail messages several times a week, under the heading ''Bad Signal,'' to fans and others who sign up to receive them. He comments on life, asks questions that come up as he writes his stories and scripts, and announces upcoming projects as well as on-sale dates of books. He even mentions quantities of distributor stock since a number of retailers and other professionals are also on his list.

Ellis rarely makes personal appearances, but his postings to his own website and on other online venues project a presence well beyond his British home base.

Writer and marketing guru Seth Godin's books are often accompanied with clever marketing campaigns. A colorful cereal box, boldly announcing, Free Prize Inside, contained not a decoder ring or tiny plastic soldier, but a copy of Godin's book of the same name.

MARKETING MASTER

Each of his books is foreshadowed and accompanied by a flurry of online promotions, special offers, podcasts, and blog postings from myriad websites. Godin, who lives outside New York City, is also a frequent speaker at seminars and conferences and has deftly managed to keep his message consistent while offering fresh nuances and new insights to cultivate and retain a devoted following.

In response to an e-mail asking about how he markets his books, Godin wrote: ``The unspoken truth is that except for perhaps 250 giant books every year [out of 75,000 published], the publisher is expecting the author to do 100 percent of the sales and promotion. Because authors don't understand that, they end up bitter, angry and perhaps destitute.

WILLING TO RUMBLE

''The most successful authors drive from store to store in a sort of perma-tour, selling books out of the back of their car or just working with individual stores to make their titles stand out,'' he wrote. ``Oliver North made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling his remaindered autobiography at speeches to right-wing groups. This approach is antediluvian and time-consuming, but it works.''

CLOSE COLLABORATION

Godin said he works closely with his publisher, Portfolio, to create and market his books. ''Once we hammer out a plan, they do a terrific job in supporting it. There are other publishers who are far more conservative, far more certain that the tried and true is the only path. The problem with that approach is that it is wrong,'' he wrote.

Godin said he doesn't have a blog to sell books -- but rather to spread ideas. ''I don't flog the blog that hard, which certainly costs me short-term book sales. But that's OK, because the point is to keep the ideas moving around. I think it's pretty safe to say that the investment in the blog has certainly paid off in increased book sales over time,'' he wrote.

His advice to authors is to get out and really work for their books: ``You need a platform to make a published book work. If you don't have a platform yet, you should self-publish your first book and give away enough copies to get a platform, and then use that platform to engage your readers so that you can sell the second one to a publisher and quit your day job.''


Richard Pachter is the Business Monday book critic. For more business book columns by Pachter, go to MiamiHerald.com and click on Columnists. Or go to www.wordsonwords.com.




MiamiHerald.com | 11/13/2006 | For authors, writing's just half the job

National Book Awards Winners

Fiction: The Echo Maker by Richard Powers (FSG)

Nonfiction: The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan (Houghton Mifflin)

Poetry: Splay Anthem by Nathaniel Mackey (New Directions)

Young People's Literature: The Pox Party: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson (Candlewick)

Pynchon fans eager to feast on new novel
By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer
Sat Nov 11, 1:56 PM ET

Zak Smith is a painter, a rebel and an Ivy Leaguer, a Yale University graduate with a green mohawk, an apartment of wall-to-wall illustrations and a passion for comics, classic novels — and Thomas Pynchon.

About 10 years ago, Smith had a feeling that he should try Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow," an instinct confirmed from the very first page. Smith didn't just read the book, he reread it, marked it up and went back to it so many times that his paperback copy is held together by duct tape.

He also began seeing the book in pictures, eventually drawing hundreds of mostly expressionist sketches — one for every page of Pynchon's 700-page World War II novel — that were exhibited at the Whitney Museum in 2004, now hang in the permanent collection at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and will come out as a book this fall.

"A lot of the ideas that were in Pynchon were hovering around in my head — technology and the future and the present, true things and science fiction, and making them into pictures was almost a way to exorcise these ideas," says the 30-year-old Smith, a resident of Brooklyn.

Thomas Pynchon doesn't have the readership of Mitch Albom or Danielle Steel, but he is the rare writer who inspires such obsession by words alone. For more than 40 years, he has built and sustained a legend through such encyclopedic novels as "V." and "Gravity's Rainbow," avoiding all media contact or even publicity photos. For his new book, the 1,000-page "Against the Day," publisher Penguin Press didn't even issue a formal announcement, but assumed, correctly, that simply including it in the fall catalog would take care of the job.

"Pynchon fans tend to take his work seriously I think because, beyond the intrinsically interesting subject matter and intriguing stories, his books are so rich and complex, touching on so many topics," says Pynchon fan Doug Millison, a writer, editor and Web design consultant based in El Cerrito, Calif.

Pynchon is now 69, but time, and the Internet, have advanced in his favor. It's been nine years since his previous novel, "Mason & Dixon," came out, and fans have fully digitized their passion, building an online community worthy of an author who as much as anyone brought a high-tech sensibility to literary fiction. Numerous Web sites and a "Pynchon News Service" have been launched, and a team of experts is busy assembling a Wikipedia-like page for "Against the Day."

"It will, I predict, quickly become a focus of the several hundred reader-researchers worldwide who read Pynchon and write about his works in academic and popular media," Millison says. "The Internet has made it easy for Pynchon's academic critics and lay readers to find each other and sustain an online discussion that's continued now for over a decade."

Smith believes that Pynchon readers share a handful of characteristics, presumably not unlike the author's — liberal politics, an interest in technology and a broad and unpredictable range of interests.

Fans, who have gathered to talk Pynchon in London, Malta and elsewhere, all have their stories of conversion. Tim Ware, who runs the Web site http://www.thomaspynchon.com from Oakland, Calif., recalls having a hard time getting through "Gravity's Rainbow," at least the first time around.

"I went back and looked again at the first page and everything just sort of snapped into view, and I thought, `This guy is a genius,' like those who walked the Earth in the 19th century," says Ware.

"And I got rather messianic about it, and I wanted my wife to read it. I started creating an index of all the characters, because there were so many and it was so hard to keep track of them."

Millison also was turned on by "Gravity's Rainbow." He was an Army private — a company clerk "just like Radar O'Reilly" — in Korea in the summer of 1973, when he read the novel, which came out that year and won the National Book Award.

"`Gravity's Rainbow' hit me hard, especially the parts set in Europe during and just after World War II. I'd never read a writer whose voice on the page came so close to echoing the sound and feel of the Cold War '50s and '60s, hip and angry and complex," he says.

"I've read each of the novels at least twice, studying the text closely both times. I also collect first editions of Pynchon's novels, and first editions of the novels for which Pynchon has written endorsements, cover blurbs or support quotes that have been used in advertisements."

Charles Hollander, a Baltimore-based "independent scholar" of Pynchon, first read him as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University. It was 1963, the year Pynchon debuted with "V." Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" was becoming a counterculture classic, but Hollander believes that "Catch-22" was more about the veterans of World War II.

"Pynchon was the guy who wrote for my generation, so much so I heard people joke at parties that he had a receiver by which he could read others' late-night falling asleep thoughts," he says. "The reason ... (Pynchon) is important to me and his `fans' is he seems a bit ahead of the curve in seeing what is important, and what will become the important issues we are faced with."

He is as remote from the general public as J.D. Salinger, but Pynchon experts say they care more about his work than about the man himself, who reportedly lives in New York with his wife and agent, Melanie Jackson. Both Hollander and Ware say they know people friendly with Pynchon who insist he is not "some guy squirreling away in his attic," according to Hollander.

"My sources tell me he is pretty social, in his style. I think he avoids the media because he sees the media as an arm of the establishment, a means of social control that he won't be a party to," Hollander says.

"I've stayed away from the cult of personality. I don't play in that zone," Ware says.

"His reluctance to speak with the press or have his photograph taken kind of plays into the style of the novels. There's a lot of mystery and ambiguity in them, and a lot of mystery and ambiguity about the author. When you know things about the author, you begin to insert those feelings into the books. Not having any information makes the reading experience a little purer."



Pynchon fans eager to feast on new novel - Yahoo! News

YouTube video sets stage for novel

A film version of the opening chapter of Michael Connelly's 'Echo Park' is posted on the website to whet readers' appetites.

By Dawn C. Chmielewski, Times Staff Writer
November 4, 2006


Books have long been made into movies. Now, they're heading straight to YouTube.

Author Michael Connelly adapted the first chapter of his new murder mystery, "Echo Park," into a 10-minute film for YouTube and other online video sites in an attempt to attract readers.

Harry Bosch, Connelly's dark protagonist who is a detective in the Los Angeles Police Department, made his brooding debut online before "Echo Park" reached bookstores last month. The video, shot for about $10,000, ends with the tagline: "Read what happens next in 'Echo Park.' "

"I do believe this was a tool in getting people excited," said Connelly, a former reporter at The Times. "It was on the Internet, it was on YouTube, before the book was out. It sharpened excitement. So when the book came out, they were ready to buy it. I do know statistically that the first week of sales for 'Echo Park' was the best first week of sales I've had."

Book publishers face the same challenge bedeviling all media: how to compete for attention in an ever-growing entertainment market that includes TV, cable, online social networks, downloadable music and video, podcasts and video games.

The average time Americans spend reading has declined from 117 hours a year in 1999 to about 105 in 2006. Meanwhile, about 172,000 books were published last year — more than 19 new titles published for every hour of every day of every week.

"The author and the publisher realizes there isn't just clutter in the marketplace, there is massive clutter in terms of competing with other books," said Albert N. Greco, senior researcher at the Institute for Publishing Research in New Jersey. "Then, you compete with newspapers and magazines and video games and cable and satellite and music and doing nothing."

Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux was among the first to try YouTube as a way to bring literature to the masses.

In August, it released a video book trailer to coincide with the release of "The Mystery Guest," a memoir from French writer Gregoire Bouillier. Others were soon to follow.

Broadway hired Santa Monica-based VidLit to create a book video of humorist Bill Bryson's memoir, "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid," using an audio book reading and black-and-white family photos.

"If you never saw Bill Bryson before, you definitely get an idea of what it's about," VidLit founder Liz Dubelman said.

Little, Brown and Co. produced a movie-slick trailer for "Echo Park" as part of an extended promotional campaign that mixes traditional book readings and television appearances with less conventional approaches, like podcasts and downloadable audio clips.

"The philosophy is just to create a movie-releases type of excitement for it," said Anthony Goff, an associate at Little, Brown's audio and digital media group.

Connelly wanted to do more.

He developed a script with Terrill Lee Lankford, a screenwriter whose credits include "Storm Trooper" and "Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers."

They selected a location with special significance — the apartment building where Robert Altman shot the classic film "The Long Goodbye," from the book of the same title by author and screenwriter Raymond Chandler, creator of hard-boiled Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe.

Lankford hired actors Tim Abell, who appeared most recently in "Soldier of God," and Bill Bolender, whose television and movie credits include "The Shawshank Redemption."

Lankford and Connelly hope the online video does more than spur book sales. They hope it will persuade Hollywood studios to bring Bosch to the big screen.

"We're not saying this is studio-level quality, but that piece is about mood, it's about atmospherics. That's what Harry Bosch is about," Lankford said. "It was kind of a steppingstone to say Harry Bosch could exist. We could make a movie of this."

I had started watching this before I read the book, but I just couldn't get through the whole ten minutes. I'd love to know how other people reacted to it. Here is a link to the YouTube video: Echo Park

YouTube video sets stage for novel - Los Angeles Times

Selling Literature to Go With Your Lifestyle

By JULIE BOSMAN
Published: November 2, 2006

Most customers at the Anthropologie store in SoHo come for the delicately woven knits and the ultrafeminine floral dresses. But these days at least some are coming for the books.

Last Sunday the merchandise and books were coordinated with near-perfect precision. Resting beside a black sweater ($68) and a jet-black skirt with orange embellishments ($118) were copies of Annie Leibovitz’s “A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005,” big and black and gleaming, for $75. A pop-up book called “One Red Dot” echoed a display of polka-dotted canvas sneakers, while another title, “The Persistence of Yellow,” perfectly matched a strategically positioned yellow knit sweater.

Books are turning up in the oddest places these days.

With book sales sagging — down 2.6 percent as of August over the same period last year, according to the Association of American Publishers — publishers are pushing their books into butcher shops, carwashes, cookware stores, cheese shops, even chi-chi clothing boutiques where high-end literary titles are used to amplify the elegant lifestyle they are attempting to project.

What began as a trickle of cookbooks in kitchen shops and do-it-yourself titles in hardware stores has become, in recent months, the fastest growing component in many major publishers’ retail strategies.

“It’s a way for the book business to stay alive,” said Abby Hoffman, the vice president of sales and marketing for Chronicle Books in San Francisco, which sells most of its 350 offbeat titles each year to places like high-end grocery stores, children’s clothing stores and wineries. “Anyplace that sells merchandise is a place to sell books.”

When Starbucks got into the book business last month, it hitched its brand to Mitch Albom’s latest inevitable best seller, “For One More Day,” helping propel it to the top of the lists. But the shift in the business can more clearly be seen in the sale of lower-profile authors in lower-profile settings, where the right title in the right location can make all the difference for a book that might otherwise sink without a trace.

Mike’s Deli in the Bronx, for instance, has sold more than 4,500 copies of Ann Volkwein’s “Arthur Avenue Cookbook” at $25 each. That book otherwise sold only 8,000 copies nationwide, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks sales at major book chains, independent bookstores and online retailers, but not at places like Mike’s. But it sold so well at Mike’s that David Greco, the deli’s owner, began stocking more titles, including “The Italian American Cookbook” by John Mariani and “Con Amore: A Daughter-in-Law’s Story of Growing Up Italian-American in Bushwick” by Bea Tusiani.

Mr. Greco says he must factor in at least one expense that bookstores don’t: “When you deal with salami and mozzarella, its a little greasy. So we keep the books in plastic bags.”

After years of concentrating on big-box retailers like Borders and Barnes & Noble and online retailers like Amazon, many major publishing houses are retooling their tactics to take advantage of this new frontier.

Simon & Schuster, one of the industry’s largest publishers, is urging its sales representatives to punctuate their bookstore rounds with impromptu pitches at promising shops and markets they spot in their travels. The Time Warner Book Group routinely changes the color or design of book jackets at a store’s request so the book will color-coordinate with merchandise. And HarperCollins plans to design books for its spring catalog in shades of “margarita and sangria,” greens and reds that store owners have told the publisher will dominate that season’s color palette, said Andrea Rosen, vice president for special markets.

At Penguin Group, sales representatives have begun pushing into rural areas that are short on big bookstores, selling at cattle auctions, among other places.

The total number of books sold outside bookstores is impossible to discern. BookScan’s sales figures typically account for 60 percent to 70 percent of a book’s sales, but those figures do not include copies sold in nontraditional places.

Nonetheless, publishing houses know how it has affected their bottom line.

In the last four years Simon & Schuster’s special market sales, as they are called, have grown by 50 percent, surpassing total sales to independent bookstores, said Jack Romanos, the publishing house’s president and chief executive.

“The publisher now has a responsibility to put books in front of more eyeballs,” Mr. Romanos said. “The market was always there, but I don’t know that most publishers were as aggressive about trying to develop it 10 years ago as they are today.”

Some placements make intuitive sense: publishers sell a baby book to a specialty store like Buy Buy Baby; cookbooks go to Williams-Sonoma and other cookware outlets; glossy fashion books to clothing boutiques; design books to stores like Restoration Hardware. But some matches may not be so obvious. Even Bath & Body Works, at Westfield Garden State Plaza in Paramus, N.J., for instance, sells a half-dozen titles on subjects including weddings, gardening and travel to Provence.

With the proper placement, a book displayed at a national chain like Urban Outfitters can easily sell more there than at any other retailer, including blockbuster stores like Barnes & Noble. A recent article in Publishers Weekly noted that one surprise fall hit, “Wall and Piece,” written by the graffiti artist Banksy and published by the Century imprint of Random House in Britain, saw its biggest sales at Urban Outfitters and independent bookstores.

The point, publishers say, is to follow customers who might not otherwise visit bookstores into the places where they do shop, rather than waiting for customers to show up at bookstores or click on Amazon.com and other online sales sites.

People who buy books at farm-supply stores, for instance, are a prime potential market because there may be no bookstores in their rural communities, said Barbara O’Shea, president of nontrade sales for Penguin. “There is nobody selling books, so we’ve gotten these places to sell books,” she said.

The phenomenon is an urban and suburban one, as well.

Martin & Osa, a new clothing retailer aimed at 25-to-40-year-olds, stocks dozens of titles in its four stores and is planning to add more, including a “reading list” of graphic novels, fiction and nonfiction for customers. “We try to offer them things that aren’t mainstream, more unusual, more unique,” said Arnie Cohen, the chief marketing officer.

At Anthropologie on Sunday, Ruth Rennert lounged among the throw pillows on a mustard-yellow sofa — not far from that display of yellow sweaters and books — leafing through “Jackie: A Life in Pictures,” about the former first lady. Shopping for books in a setting like this, she said, is preferable to enduring the hustle and bustle of big bookstores.

While the bulk of books sold in some of these places are novelty titles — like “Bruce Aidells’s Complete Book of Pork” from HarperCollins, now in hundreds of butcher shops — in recent months a broader list of titles has also begun to emerge.

Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” is for sale at Urban Outfitters, for instance. Staples, the office-supply chain, began carrying business books several years ago, but more recently has added titles like “Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential,” by Joel Osteen.

And publishers have stumbled on advantages that often come with this territory: outside of a bookstore, a title enjoys less competition, a more inviting display space and the store’s implicit stamp of approval.

“You walk into Restoration Hardware and you want the couch and the vase and the nightstand, and then you want the two books that are on the nightstand,” Ms. Rosen said. “The books complete the story.”




Selling Literature to Go With Your Lifestyle - New York Times

More Pop

I checked with the fabulous Young Adult librarian, Karyn Dombrosky, at my library because if there was anyone who would know about the status of Pop and the likelihood of it appearing on the library's shelves, it would be this Goddess of all things pop culture and young adult. Not only had she ordered a copy, she had also read it. She liked it, thought it funny and cute but definitely graphic in the portrayal of sex - although not necessarily in a bad way.

Because it is an uncataloged paperback, there aren't nearly as many hoops to jump through to get the book into the library. But shelving it is another matter, and Karyn wasn't comfortable enough with it to just put it out there. Instead, she plans to turn it over to the branch manager to determine whether it should be shelved in the adult or young adult section. Generally books that have a protagonist that is a teenager and revolve around teenage angst would be shelved in YA, so we'll see.

Karyn then introduced me to Johnny Hazzard by Eddie De Oliveira. The hardcover came out last year but we had just gotten in, again, the uncataloged paperback. Karyn called it the "boy version" of the Pop book - a sexual coming of age story but told from the male perspective. Miraculously the book fell open to a graphic sex scene that included my favorite new phrase, (although I must confess that I'm unsure of its exact meaning) "spank the cheeky monkey."

Then our unrestrained librarian turned the tables on me and asked what I thought as a parent of a young teenager. She is aware that I don't believe in censorship as a rule, and this was no exception. After reading that bit of Johnny Hazzard, my feelings are that I wouldn't bring it home and say hi honey, here's a great book you should read, but on the other hand, I wouldn't mind if my daughter brought it home on her own. Although frankly, I do know other parents that would mind. A lot.

Books that feature sex among adolescents is a touchy subject but I still feel it best to err on the side of openness and availability. If you don't want your child to read certain books, then monitor what they take out from the library or buy from the bookstore or borrow from their friends - but don't ask the library or bookstore not to sell it to anyone else. And even worse, bookstores shouldn't censor themselves; after all, they are in the business of selling books and you can't sell what isn't on your shelves. Leave it up to your customers to decide how to spend their dollars.

Jessa Crispin Pops A Question To Borders
October 26, 2006
By Jessa Crispin

It's no revelation that today, getting a book published is only the beginning of an author's battle: The old fantasy that just having a book "out there" might be enough for it to find an audience has been replaced with the reality that an author has to take control of her own publicity—because as likely as not, the publisher-assigned publicist has moved on to a bigger, more marketable titles—in order to get potential readers into stores to buy books.

But what about a promising writer who finds herself at a huge disadvantage—essentially before even heading out of that starting gate—because one of the largest bookstore chains in America is refusing to stock her book?

Aury Wallington recently went from writing for television shows like Sex and the City and Veronica Mars to writing a young-adult novel called Pop! Her tale of a seventeen-year-old virgin and her quest to have sex is funny and reminiscent of another young-adult novelist. Wallington explained, "I wanted to write a book that would serve a new generation of girls the way Judy Blume's Forever served me—answering questions that I was too embarrassed to ask anyone, and showing the emotional issues of sex and virginity through a character I could identify with."

But sexual content in young-adult novels is a tricky issue right now, with books like Craig Thompson's Blankets getting pulled off of library shelves in Marshall, Mo., library because of an image on its cover of a couple lying in bed together, even though there isn't any sex depicted. As for Pop!, Wallington describes the book's sexual content as "on-screen, so to speak, although the language and act itself are not graphic."

While Barnes & Noble made the decision to carry Pop!, that’s not what happened at the other big store. Ami Hassler, children’s buyer for Borders Group, Inc., said, “It is true that we monthly review many titles and because the space in the YA section is not unlimited, we make choices every day regarding what to carry and what not to carry. Other factors in this decision include the format of the book, the price, the cover design, and the competitive landscape.”

So where does that leave Wallington and her book? Hassler does say that Borders will special-order Pop! if a customer requests it. But having the book available, and visible, in the stores is important. After all, a book’s marketing campaign has to be that much more convincing if a customer has to remember enough about the book to special-order it through a major retailer.

Wallington was disappointed to hear that Borders wouldn’t be carrying her first novel, especially with no clear answers as to why. Sexual content? No established audience? Perhaps it really was just the cover artthough that seems pretty unlikely, considering the image is of a soda can emblazoned with the title. Wallington believes the young-adult section is in need of books like hers. “There are so many contemporary young-adult novels that trivialize teen sex, where the characters are so glib and sophisticated that sexual intimacy seems like no big deal, and sex has few or no physical or emotional consequences, as opposed to the awkward, confusing struggle that most real teenagers go through, which I tried to capture honestly in my book.”

She continues, "I've been so pleased with the reaction I've gotten to Pop!, both from readers and organizations like Planned Parenthood (which is running an interview with me about both the book and the issues surrounding sex and virginity on its website, teenwire.com) that I was surprised and disheartened to learn that Borders won't be carrying it, especially since sex is such an immediate and overwhelming issue for most teenagers and there isn't a whole lot of current YA fiction which addresses the subject frankly without sensationalizing it."

Wallington's work will appear in Borders stores—just in the form of Veronica Mars DVD sets instead of Pop! Meanwhile, Wallington's editor at Razorbill, Kristin Pettit, is optimistic. "We remain hopeful however that Aury's voice will be heard through other channels."

I wonder if my library will be carrying this book? I wonder if yours is?

AGAINST THE DAY by Thomas Pynchon lands on my doorstep...

...and it makes quite a thud. I hated V, which is the only Pynchon I've read, but it's been a while since he's published and my hatred has simmered down to a general feeling of discomfort so I figured what the hell, I'll give it a try. I'm an English Lit major, I'm supposed to like this sort of thing. I can be like the cool kids, dis genre fiction and wax euphoric over novels with no plot. Oy.

I had a few days between reading assignments and I thought I'd plow through it and see what happens. But people, this isn't a book, it is a doorstopper. Over 1100 pages. Many, many characters and the setting spans numerous countries, some of which are made up. I can't do that in a weekend. And I've been sick and I'm too weak to even pick the freakin' thing up. It will take me a year to get through this and I don't know if I have the stamina for it.

Stay tuned...my trials and tribulations of dealing with Pynchon to follow...

Michael Connelly at Murder on the Beach


Sunday night I had the pleasure of attending a talk and book signing given by Michael Connelly at Murder on the Beach Mystery Bookstore in Delray Beach, Florida. Connelly is usually not all that comfortable with public speaking, but this is a small bookstore, and it was his second event of the day so perhaps that contributed to a greater comfort level than I've seen before. He spoke a bit about how he constructs his novels, in particular his latest, ECHO PARK. Then he took questions from the standing-room-only crowd - and there were lots of questions.

The Lincoln Lawyer is one of my favorite Connelly books, so I was happy to hear that another story featuring Mickey Haller will be forthcoming. However, when I asked if the two series - Harry Bosch & Mickey Haller - would at some point be merged into one, Connelly was quick to point out that Haller is not a series, and Bosch is the only series he writes. He did concede that since they are half brothers, at some point there will undoubtedly be a book where they come together.

Connelly also explained that Harry is getting near retirement age. He was born in 1950 (no birthdate ever given besides the year) and cops in L.A. don't generally work past age 60 because it's a money-losing proposition for them at that point. He also gave the impression that it is extremely unlikely that Harry would ever be killed off - and a collective sigh of relief was heard.

Raymond Chandler was cited as one of Connelly's biggest influences, along with Joseph Wambaugh and Ross MacDonald - and it shows in his writing, in my opinion. But that led me to ask another question, about the Janet Maslin review in the NY Times (Oct. 16, 2006) in which she stated, "And Mr. Connelly now does some of his writing in Mr. Chandler’s old apartment, a place he uses for inspiration. No living crime writer has a better right to be there."

Connelly was quick to point out that it was a mistake - yes, in the NY Times. He does rent an apartment in Los Angeles but it isn't Chandler's apartment. However, there is a connection - the apartment is at the address of Chandler's famous fictional character, Phillip Marlowe. Connelly said he didn't think that Chandler had ever stepped foot in it.


pictured, left to right: Tom Corcoran, Jonathon King, the BookBitch, Michael Connelly, James O. Born



The audience was appreciative and there was a long line of people waiting to get their books signed. A lot were serious fans and some were wanna-be crime fiction writers. I also ran into Oline Cogdill, mystery reviewer for the Sun-Sentinel, and some local authors, including James O. Born, Tom Corcoran, and Jonathan King. King told me that the Miami Book Fair was gearing up for Mystery Sunday on November 19, and I'm really looking forward to that!

THE KING IS COMING TO LONDON
(or going, depending on where you are)

Stephen King will soon make his first UK appearance in 10 years to coincide with publication of LISEY'S STORY. This exclusive event, presented by The Times, Hodder & Stoughton and Waterstone's, will take place at Battersea park Events Arena on November 7th at 7.00pm. Tickets cost £15.00 each. Book yours now on: 08708 303 488

I wish I could go, but since I can't, I'd love to hear all about it!