A Friday night book signing; what could be better?

Borders, with its usual lack of fanfare and publicity, nevertheless hosted a very well turned out reading by a new author, Andrew Furman.  His first novel, Alligators May be Present, looks to have a built in audience in my south Florida neighborhood for sure. A synopsis from the publisher:

While many Jews have picked Florida as the perfect place to retire, Matt Glassman has chosen it as the place to begin his adulthood. Perhaps that’s because the pressures of life have always reminded him about his grandfather who mysteriously disappeared from the family twenty years ago. Now, while he tries to begin a family of his own, he also builds a relationship with the one person who might know the truth about his grandfather’s disappearance: his grandmother. She’s remained stubbornly reticent on the topic all these years, but when a familiar old man shows up at Glassman’s office he thinks he may finally get some answers.

I'm looking forward to reading it.

Want To Know What To Read? Storycode.com Will Do the Math
May 20, 2005
By Rachel Deahl

The notion that taste is personal may have gone the way of eight tracks and Hammer pants. A number of new companies are pioneering a variation of the search engine, known as "recommendation technology," which would use hard data to essentially tell consumers what music, movies and clothing they will like . . . even if they don't know it yet themselves. While this software is already present in the book industry—anyone who's ever been startled by Amazon or B&N's seeming omniscience ("Geez, how'd they know I'd love Knitting to the Oldies?") can attest to this—some companies are now gearing up to bring it to readers in a more ambitious way.

Storycode, founded by Steve Johnston, is one such example. Currently in "soft launch" mode (as of March 1), Johnston claims his new venture—it's intended to function as a book-recommendations database for fiction titles, powered by a "coding" system—has the potential to change the face of the publishing industry. The codes, culled from readers' responses to a series of questions—queries are broken down into five categories and touch on areas like plot and characters—are used to classify, and compare, every book featured on the site. Adding that the site will not publicly launch until a critical mass of codes has been entered—this could mean waiting for books to receive upwards of 20 codes each—the system is intended to offer readers recommendations of books, based on statistical data. In other words, if you just finished The Corrections and loved it, and now want to read another novel just like it, Storycode, Johnston says, will provide a recommendation, complete with a percentage quantifying the similarity between it and a list of matching books.

If the notion of a quantifiable classification system for books, which are, after all, judged and experienced by readers in inherently personal ways, sounds dubious, Johnston counters that all fiction conforms to certain guidelines.

"Every novel does, in some combination, form to a classic story type," says Johnston, who previously spent his professional career in two places: behind the counter of a bookstore; and in front of a computer. After a decade as a bookseller, Johnston became a Web consultant, offering his services to business owners looking for ways to successfully leverage the power of the Internet. "Even with more sophisticated anti-plot novels, the codes will reflect the ambiguity of responses that they receive." He says he sees Storycode as "filling a hole in the retail book trade," and predicts a time when retailers could offer booksellers a more satisfying and viable way to guide their customers to more informed purchases—what he calls "genuine recommendations." The Storycode future he envisions has booksellers logging on to the site from behind their counters, or e-booksellers repurposing his database online. Independent booksellers, meanwhile, are the "potential evangelists" for Storycode.

Leonie Flynn, a former independent bookseller and an editor of The Ultimate Book Guide (A&C Black), says she thinks Storycode is a good idea but doubts booksellers will latch onto it the way Johnston predicts. Saying the site was "more a browsing tool than a fast, immediate selling tool," Smith foresees the site as a place for book lovers over industry professionals. Andrew McClellan, manager of books for Virgin Megastores, says right now Storycode is "no more than an interesting idea." McClellan says that Storycode has potential, but wonders if it can be fulfilled.

"If they receive a lot of input from members of the book reading public, then the site may provide a credible and organic resource of recommendations…as well as becoming a hub for book readers online," he says." From that point, retailers and publishers could make great use of it; however, that's a whole lot of ‘ifs and ‘mays.'"

The idea behind Storycode echoes what other technology companies have been doing for some years for other kinds of products. ChoiceStream, Inc., for example, a Mass.-based company that delivers recommendations across a number of fields, including music, general retail merchandise, television and movies. The company licenses its database to companies such as eMusic, AOL and Yahoo. Its software is programmed to not only know just what consumers like, but more importantly, why they like it.

Darren Gill, ChoiceStream vice president of business development for entertainment, says the company's database is essentially a more advanced version of the recommendations systems on sites like Amazon and Netflix (which offer lists of recommended books and DVDs to consumers based on items viewed, bought or rated). According to Gill, because ChoiceStream has seven million users in its network, with a massive index of products classified, the company has a more advanced system for delivering personalized recommendations.

"Storycode is asking you to do the background work," Gill says. "What we need from a user is to have them tell us about content; people who have done three or four ratings on Yahoo Movies, which licenses our database, get a personalized experience." Gill also says that ChoiceStream is looking to expand the reach of its business to cover other areas—with literature being one of those. "Books has been on our list for a while," he says.

Savage Beast Technologies, Inc., another company in the recommendations business, works exclusively with music and offers recommendations through a system it calls the Music Genome Project. The company, which currently licenses its technology to retailers like Best Buy and Borders, employs a team of specially trained musicians (the profile of a "music analyst" is someone with a four-year music degree and a background in music theory) to characterize songs according to some 400 different attributes. Tim Westergren, one of Savage Beast's founders, says he sees recommendation technologies, and the businesses that provide them, becoming more pervasive in our daily lives. "You can [apply this kind of system] to almost anything from food to dating. I mean, Match.com is trying to do it with people." Westergren says he believes "it's the next wave of the search."

http://www.thebookstandard.com/bookstandard/news/retail/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000929357

U.S. Book Production Reaches New High of 195,000 Titles in 2004
Tuesday May 24, 7:45 am ET

Fiction Soars

NEW PROVIDENCE, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 24, 2005--Bowker, the leading provider of bibliographic information in North America, today released statistics on U.S. book publishing compiled from its Books In Print® database. Based on preliminary figures, Bowker is projecting that U.S. title output in 2004 increased by 14% to 195,000 new titles and editions, reaching another all-time high.

The catalyst for growth in 2004 was adult fiction, which reversed a three-year plateau and increased a staggering 43.1%, to 25,184 new titles and editions, the highest total ever recorded for that category. Adult fiction now accounts for 14% of all titles published in the U.S., the highest proportion since 1961. New poetry and drama titles increased 40.5%.

The number of new titles released by the largest trade houses increased 5.4%, to 24,159, their largest increase since 2001. University presses increased their title output 12.3% to 14,484, reversing a 4.3% decline in 2003. Since 1995, new titles have increased 72% for all U.S. publishers, 22% for the largest trade houses, and 12% for university presses.

New juvenile titles continued to rise in 2004, increasing 6.6% to 21,516, a new high for that category. Among adult non-fiction categories, religion, travel and home economics enjoyed the largest increases, while education, history, science and biography suffered the steepest declines. The large trade houses published significantly more business, juvenile, law, sociology, and travel titles, and significantly fewer religion, poetry, and literary fiction titles. New adult fiction titles published by the large houses increased a modest 3.5%, a fraction of the increase seen from U.S. publishers as a whole.

Meanwhile, university presses enjoyed increases in almost all categories, with only philosophy and psychology experiencing significant declines.

In 2004, the average suggested retail price for adult hardcovers released by the largest trade houses decreased 10 cents to $27.52; adult fiction hardcovers held steady at $25.08; and adult non-fiction hardcovers decreased 29 cents to $28.49. Adult trade paperbacks increased 11 cents to $15.76; adult fiction trade paperbacks increased 7 cents to $14.78; adult non-fiction trade paperbacks increased 15 cents to $16.16; and adult mass-market paperbacks increased 14 cents to $7.35. The average list price for juvenile hardcovers increased 26 cents to $16.09.

Additional information, including charts to download, can be found at: http://www.bookwire.com/bookwire/decadebookproduction.html, http://www.bookwire.com/bookwire/trade.html or http://www.bookwire.com/bookwire/university.html.

"2004 marked a return to pre-9/11 patterns of publishing," said Andrew Grabois, senior director of publisher relations and content development for New Providence, N.J.-based Bowker. "The historic increase in fiction, and the high double-digit growth of the religion, personal development, domestic arts, and travel categories, point to a seismic shift in the marketplace from the political to the personal. Publishers are betting that the reading public, exhausted by four years of terrorism, war, and polarizing presidential elections, will be more than ready for the kind of escapist and self-help fare that seemed trivial and inappropriate in the wake of a national tragedy."

Other interesting statistics from Bowker include the following:

11,458 new publishers registered with the U.S. ISBN Agency in 2004, an increase of 5.3% over 2003.
4,040 books were translated into English from another language, a decrease of 8.1% from 2003.
Novels published by the large trade houses averaged 359 pages in 2004, a growth of 24 pages since 1995, and 43 pages since 1990.
The book production figures in this preliminary release are based on year-to-date data from U.S. publishers. If changes in industry estimates occur, they will be reflected in a later published report. Books In Print data represents input from 81,000 publishers in the U.S. The data is sent to Bowker in electronic files, and via BowkerLink(TM), Bowker's password protected Web-based tool, which enables publishers to update and add their own data.

Nominees for the Anthony Awards for works published in 2004 have been announced.

The Anthony Awards, named for mystery's premier reviewer and critic, Anthony
Boucher, will be presented on Saturday, September 3, at Bouchercon 2005, the
World Mystery Convention at the Sheraton Hotel & Towers in Chicago.

Best Novel
Bruen, Ken -- The Killing of the Tinkers (St. Martins/Minotaur)
Katzenbach, John -- The Madman's Tale (Random House/Ballantine)
Krueger, William Kent -- Blood Hollow (Simon & Schuster/Atria)
Lippman, Laura -- By a Spider's Thread (HarperCollins)
Parker, T. Jefferson -- California Girl (HarperCollins)
Spencer-Fleming, Julia -- Out of the Deep I Cry (St. Martins/Minotaur)

Best First Novel
Balzo, Sandra -- Uncommon Grounds (Five Star)
Clemens, Judy -- Until the Cows Come Home (Poisoned Pen Press)
Hoffman, Juliane P -- Retribution (Putnam)
Konrath, JA (Joe) -- Whiskey Sour (Hyperion)
Kozak, Harley Jane -- Dating Dead Men (Random House/Doubleday)

Best Non Fiction
Frankie Bailey & Steven Chermak -- Famous American Crimes & Trials (Greenwood
Publishing)
Collins, Max Allan (et al) -- Men's Adventure Magazines (Taschen)
Conlon, Edward -- Blue Blood (Penguin Putnam/Riverhead)
Klinger, Leslie S (ed) -- The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes (Norton)
Rubinstein, Julian -- The Ballad of the Whiskey Robber (TimeWarner/Little, Brown)

Best Paperback Original
Burcell, Robin -- Cold Case (HarperCollins/Avon)
Isleib, Roberta -- Putt to Death (Penguin/Berkley Prime Crime)
McBride, Susan -- Blue Blood (HarperCollins/Avon)
Rose, M.J. -- The Halo Effect (Harlequin/Mira)
Starr, Jason -- Twisted City (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

Best Short Story
Bowen, Rhys -- "Voodoo," Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Nov. 2004
Faherty, Terence -- "The Widow of Slane," Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, March/April 2004
Hertel, Ted Jr -- "It's Crackers to Slip a Rozzer the Dropsey in Snide," Small Crimes; Bracken, ed (Betancourt/Wildside)
Nersesian, Arthur -- "Hunter Trapper," Brooklyn Noir (Akashic Books)
Viets, Elaine -- "Wedding Knife," Chesapeake Crimes (Quiet Storm)

Best Cover Art
Brooklyn Noir -- Sohrab Habibion; Tim McLoughlin (Akashic)
Fade to Blonde -- cover by Gregory Manchess; Max Phillips (Hard Case Crime)
Whiskey Sour -- Sal Barracca/Bradford Foltz Design; JA Konrath (Hyperion)
Good Morning Darkness -- Robert Santora; Ruth Francisco (TimeWarner/Mysterious)
Monkology -- Michael Kellner; Gary Phillips (Dennis McMillan)

The age of 50 marks authors' peak

Fifty is the perfect age to write a novel, a study of the best-selling authors of the past 50 years has shown.
The average age of writers who topped the hardback fiction section of the New York Times Bestseller List from 1955-2004 was 50.5 years.

"We wanted to discover the optimum age to write a best-seller," said Bob Young of Lulu, a website for writers and independent publishers.

"Unlike scientists or musicians, say, writers tend to mature with age."

Romantic novelist Judith Krantz and writer Joe Klein, who published political comedy Primary Colors anonymously, are among the novelists who topped the best-seller list in their 50th year.

Of the 350 authors who saw their novels reach the number one spot over the past 50 years, Francoise Sagan was the youngest with Bonjour Tristesse, published at the age of 19 in 1955.

By comparison, Agatha Christie was the oldest author to top the list, with her novel Sleeping Murder, published shortly after her death at the age of 85.

The authors who most frequently topped the list were horror writer Stephen King who has topped the list 27 times, and Danielle Steel who has amassed 26 number ones.

Nonetheless, authors like JK Rowling and Da Vinci Code writer Dan Brown, who both achieved global fame in their thirties, appear to be bucking the trend.

Story from BBC NEWS
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Arts | The age of 50 marks authors' peak

Leaving Out What Will Be Skipped
By DAVID CARR

DETROIT, May 9 - Elmore Leonard is about talked out. The stories about the craft of America's premier crime novelist have become clichés waiting their turn.

So why not get the hooptedoodle, as Mr. Leonard calls "the part that readers tend to skip," out of the way? He writes seven days a week in the living room of a nice house in the suburbs here with a No. 5 Pilot Pen on unlined yellow paper. He does not use e-mail or a computer. He types the handwritten pages on an I.B.M. Selectric, which occasionally breaks down from daily exertion.

"There's one name in the phonebook who repairs typewriters," Mr. Leonard said, adding, "he says he can live on $6,000 a year. He lives in a trailer park."

That is all he says about the typewriter guy, but with those spare details, the typewriter guy comes alive in the room, full-blown.

That economy and precision have enabled a career that has lasted more than 50 years. One day ran into the next, one book became another, and now Mr. Leonard is a nearly 80-year-old man who has just written his 40th book.

Even though writing comes reflexively to him, there is nothing automatic or tossed off in his books, which use the dyad of character and dialogue to compose mini-epics on human folly, stripped of artifice and adjectives. "The Hot Kid," a robbers-and-lawmen tale set during Prohibition, will be released this week and is getting plenty of love from the critics. Charles McGrath of The New York Times called Mr. Leonard's books "ruthlessly efficient entertainment machines." Writing in The Boston Globe, Stephen King said, "the old guy's still got plenty of bite."

But not in person. To say that Mr. Leonard lacks pretension does not quite get it. He is scary normal, friendly in an absent way. This great American author, one of the best dialogue writers ever, lets people at charity auctions bid for the right to name his characters; Ed Hagenlocker, a "hard-shell Baptist" and cotton farmer in "The Hot Kid," got his name that way. "Why not help them out?" he said.

A former writer of ads and industrial films, "Dutch," as his pals call him, published his first novel, "The Bounty Hunters," a half-century ago. Switching from westerns to crime, he became a not-so-overnight sensation with the publication of "Glitz" in 1985. Mr. Leonard has written many best sellers, including "Mr. Paradise," "Be Cool," "Get Shorty" and "Rum Punch."

If those titles sound familiar to even nonreaders, it is because many of them have been made into movies - Hollywood producers pull up to the curb almost every time he writes, and "The Hot Kid," with its gun molls, strutting lawmen and so-dumb-they-are-smart hoods will be no exception. Mr. Leonard has won the Grand Master Award of the Mystery Writers of America, but he is no big fan of Hammett and Chandler, preferring the lean-and-mean gait of Hemingway and Steinbeck. Mr. Leonard does not think what he does is very complicated.

"The first part moves along O.K., and then I have to think about the second part, because the second part keeps it going," he said. "And then you've got to get to some new things, say around page 250. There is always those surprises near the end."

He wears jeans, sandals and a Detroit Pistons shirt. When he writes, he looks out on a tarp-covered pool and a tennis court beyond. The place smells of pot roast, being looked after by Christine, his wife of a dozen years. He lives in Bloomfield Village, 20 miles north of the city that has supplied endless grit and grist for his stories. His neighborhood has more in common with a John Cheever novel than one of Mr. Leonard's wiseguy librettos.

His longtime researcher, Gregg Sutter, did the grimy version of the Dutch Leonard tour earlier that day. There was a drive past 1300 Beaubien, a cop shop where the fifth floor is occupied by the homicide division, the holiest of holies and a pivot point for a lot of Mr. Leonard's books. There is the Greek joint down the street with the ouzo and the flaming cheese, where cops went to get hammered after their shifts. Mr. Sutter stopped in front of a dilapidated apartment building in the shadow of the now empty Tiger Stadium. It was the site of a triple homicide, Chaldean money guys ripped off by and then killed by drug dealers. Mr. Sutter, who lives in Los Angeles, but happened to be in town, saw it on the news and went right over. He called Mr. Leonard from the scene.

"We got a triple," he told Mr. Leonard. The murders, which involved a chainsaw, body parts and a fire to cover up the crime, appeared in "Mr. Paradise," published last year. But Mr. Leonard has seen and heard plenty in his time, so he can sit in a living-room office and create all sorts of mayhem.

The room includes none of the trophies that men of accomplishment acquire and no grip-and-grin portraits of him with the famous and infamous people he has known. There is just a picture of his agent, H. N. Swanson, who called him up after his first book and said, "Kiddo, I'm going to make you rich." Eighty-four rejections followed, but the now-departed Mr. Swanson ended up being right.

Mr. Leonard seemed genuinely surprised that "The Hot Kid" had the press in a tizzy. "I kind of thought of it as one of my quieter books," he said. Part of the reason that "The Hot Kid" works is that it manages to bookend his career in one crisp little novel. The men, both bad guys and good, who ramble through Tulsa and Kansas City in the 1920's and 30's are part gangster and part gunslinger. As such, they are hybrids, embodying his early career as a western writer and his later critically acclaimed run as a crime novelist. He is happy for the good reviews but the approbation is a little beside the point.

"I write them to find out what happens," he said of his novels. "I don't write for anybody else."

Characters serve as can-openers on plots for Mr. Leonard. Once conceived, they become his masters, shoving him from one scene to the next, until the book ends, usually at about 300 pages.

Critics aside, "The Hot Kid" came up short. Two hundred and eighty pages.

"I thought it should be longer than 280," he said, sitting in one of the chairs in front of his desk. "So I said reset it with one or two lines less per page and make it work. And it came out to 312."

Mr. Leonard was less able to count when it came to his drinks, so he has been sober since 1977. At the end of the day, he enjoys a nonalcoholic beer and a single cigarette. He used to chain-smoke, but for the first time in his life, he seems to be aging with a bit of high blood pressure and arterial fibrillation.

"I'm turning into an old man all of a sudden," he said. "And I've got hearing aids, but they don't do much good. I have trouble hearing my wife."

His wife, picking at the daffodils in the front of the house, said, "Elmore always says you have to do what you love; otherwise, what's the point?"

But Mr. Leonard hates that he now takes pills. "I don't want to live forever," he said, having his daily smoke out by the pool. "What am I gonna do, write another book?"

He knows the answer is yes.



Leaving Out What Will Be Skipped - New York Times

Reviewing NPR Authors on NPR: A Conflict of Interest?
NPR.org, May 10, 2005 ·

There's a longstanding tradition of book reviews on NPR. Authors and publishers constantly send their wares to NPR programs in hopes that something about the book will pique a producer's interest.

Public radio listeners are voracious readers and thousands of books and their authors are aired on public radio every year.

When an author gets interviewed on NPR, it's almost a ticket to the top of the Amazon.com lists.

NPR Interviews NPR Personalities

There's another longstanding tradition in public radio. Whenever an NPR journalist, host or personality writes a book, invariably he or she is interviewed on NPR. And usually on more than one program.

Just as inevitably, listeners ask: should NPR employees use NPR programs to talk about their books? (NPR hosts may not talk about their own works on their own program.)

NPR is a creative environment and it houses a prolific bunch. Rarely a year goes by without someone well known to public radio audiences going on a book tour to promote a latest opus.

Now it's NPR's Scott Simon's turn. It's not his first book. But it is his first novel.

The novel is entitled Little Birds and Scott has taken a leave of absence from NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday to travel around the country, read excerpts in book stores and autograph copies for eager listener/readers. So far, the reviews in other media have been positive.

Interviewed on 'Morning Edition'

On May 3, Renee Montagne on NPR's Morning Edition interviewed Simon.

He read excerpts and answered questions from the host about how the novel originated from his own reporting for NPR News during the siege of Sarajevo in 1993.

After the interview, a number of listeners such as Gary Sullivan wrote to ask whether this constituted a conflict of interest on the part of NPR and Simon:

I was surprised to hear Scott Simon interviewed this morning about his new book.

I haven't read it -- I have no idea if it's any good. But does anyone at NPR think it's a little... unseemly... for a host to be interviewed, essentially to flog his own book?

Scott Simon also was interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. That provoked another round of e-mails.

From listener Donn Cohen:

NPR engages from time to time in the promotion of books written by its employees. Most recently you promoted a book written by Mr. Simon. There are many excellent books published almost daily but the authors of those books don't have the advantage of being employed by NPR and many fine books go unnoticed. I object to employees of NPR using their connections to gain publicity for their books. It's a conflict of interest and I decry the practice.

'Listeners Want to Hear This Side'

Bruce Drake is NPR's VP of News. His response to the question of whether this constitutes a problem:

NPR is blessed with some of the finest writers, journalists and thinkers in the business. When they write a book, it usually is a book that would merit invitations from a variety of news outlets for an author interview -- on TV, radio and in print. That is the basis on which we have maintained the tradition of allowing NPR people to be interviewed on our shows about their work. I would add my belief that given the close connection our audience has with us, they want to hear this side of the people they have known on air for so long.

That being said, there may be a perception problem when an NPR author appears on more than one NPR program. That has resulted from the fact that there are some programs produced in-house by NPR like Morning Edition and ATC, and there are what we call "acquired" programs (that) are produced by others that we distribute, and who do their booking of guests independently from the in-house programs. But all these programs carry the NPR name, so this is an issue we may have to think about.

Journalists Reviewing Journalists

Most news organizations are faced with this problem of how to review books written by their own journalists.

Newspapers partly resolve this by hiring freelance reviewers to write their assessments. But fellow ombudsmen tell me that it is almost impossible for a newspaper not to review a book written by one of their own journalists.

I suspect that, at NPR, the same subtle pressures exist.

Scott Simon's book may or may not be an exception to this since it is rare for any journalist -- at NPR or anywhere else -- to venture into fiction. So the rationale for asking him to appear on NPR is probably justified.

'Logrolling'* or Normal Decision-Making?

But other books by NPR journalists have, in the past, provoked grumbling from the producers who feel that some books just weren't good enough to merit interviews with the authors. Yet it's almost impossible to reject a book by a co-worker without appearing uncollegial.

One solution might be to adopt the outside critic model. NPR's All Things Considered does this by asking a professor of creative writing, Alan Cheuse, to review fiction that he alone picks (after running it by an editor).

NPR listeners are, we are told, always interested in hearing the ideas of NPR journalists. The presence of so many public radio supporters at any book tour is proof of that.

There is also nothing wrong with NPR modestly basking in the reflected glory of its employees' extracurricular achievements.

But listeners are still concerned whenever NPR's journalism appears to overlap with its employees' economic self-interest. And they worry that "logrolling"* -- as opposed to normal journalistic practices -- may be part of NPR's decision to review the book and interview its author.

*Webster's Dictionary, 4th Edition: Logrolling -- a giving of help, praise, in return for help, praise. In politics, mutual aid among politicians, as by reciprocal voting for each other's bills.



NPR : Reviewing NPR Authors on NPR: A Conflict of Interest?

Language: What's hot in the hype of publishing

By William Safire
The New York Times
MONDAY, MAY 2, 2005


WASHINGTON 'In the blurbosphere," says Charles McGrath, recent editor of The New York Times Book Review, "has there ever been a book that wasn't acclaimed?" He considers that indispensable adjective of praise - rooted in the Latin clamare, "to shout," also the root of "clamor" - to be the key word in publishing's "language of hagiography."

Let's parse that. I define McGrath's blurbosphere as "the throbbing universe of book promotion," coined on the analogy of blogosphere, "the galaxy of Weblog commentators." Hagiography (not, as I first thought, the bio of Al Haig) is "writings about the lives of saints." Thus, in the straining-to-sell world of book marketing, we have a language that treats lesser-known authors like stars shooting toward the firmament of literary fame.

Acclaimed, in this fulsome lingo of book ads and catalogs, now means merely "the author received at least one good review." Widely acclaimed means "two or more, plus a cable TV plug." Critically acclaimed means "it was decently reviewed in a specialized publication but didn't sell."

Long- is a beloved half-word adverb in the blurbosphere. The letters of Lytton Strachey, advertises Farrar, Straus & Giroux, regarded as one of the classiest publishers, is "a long-overdue collection." Whenever a writer has taken forever to deliver a book, it is hawked as long-awaited. On the other hand, if the author has a hot hand and sold well last time out, the adverb is switched and his work becomes eagerly awaited.

Sales problem: How do you blurb a dull book? Meticulously researched, or if you're really in trouble, definitive, exhaustive, spiced with profoundly insightful. Whatever covers a lot of ground and spans the millennia is a sweeping epic, which could soon be a major motion picture about three generations of janitors.

Brilliant, through overuse, has lost its sparkle. Fascinating has lost its charm, powerful is impotent and even towering achievement is getting shaky. Liberals go for heart-shattering and deeply empathetic while conservatives are attracted to gripping and compelling.

For adventure novels, riveting is getting a rosy run, along with the hypnotic mesmerizing and the noun page turner.

Desperate copywriters use the "in the tradition of" device, piggybacking on another writer's fame. This says "if you liked that best seller, you'll automatically love this," a marketing idea Amazon seized upon. In fact, it signals "we're using this best-selling name without permission to attract your attention because that author would never stoop to blurb this."

Literary editors have learned to be suspicious of all endorsements. How can a kindly person praise a friend's fairly good work without leaping overboard into the prepublication pool of prevarication?

Saul Bellow, Nobel laureate and surely one of the 20th century's greatest writers, who died last month at 89, showed me the way. A decade ago, a cloak-and-dagger novel of mine was roundly panned in the daily New York Times. Bellow, master of the art of fiction, sent me a note calling the review "offensive" and cheered me up with: "I thought your book was ingenious, diverting and even instructive. Nietzsche wrote somewhere that when you show people something true they sometimes behave as if it were old hat - vieux jeu - and accuse you of peddling platitudes."

That was a morale picker-upper, all right, not least because the adjectives he chose with his usual care to describe my book were neither excessive nor condescending. Ingenious dealt only with its complicated plot; diverting evoked a spirit of amusement about a work not to be taken seriously; and instructive described the informational use of spooky tradecraft. Each adjective showed restraint in friendly comment, and in a private note not to be exploited. But taken together - and with that Nietzsche allusion as well as a French vernacular version of "old hat" tossed in - it was the most generous "acclaim" a journeyman novelist could hope for.

Language: What's hot in the hype of publishing

LIBRARIAN WRITES THE BOOK ON ETIQUETTE FOR PATRONS

DEAR ABBY: I have been thinking about writing this letter for a long time. I'm the director of a small public library. I love my job and serving our patrons. But you would not believe some of the outrageous behavior that occurs in libraries -- so I have written:

A LIBRARIAN'S PLEA FOR LIBRARY ETIQUETTE

Please keep your children with you at all times. A librarian is there to help you select materials -- not baby-sit or clean up after your children. An unattended child can create hours of cleanup work in only a few minutes. Teach your children not to run or shout in the library.

If your child throws a tantrum, screams or continually whines, please take the child home. He or she probably needs a nap, a snack, or simply your undivided attention. While you can probably tune him out, other patrons cannot.

Do not use your cell phone in the library. No one wants to listen to you scream at your spouse or discuss personal finances. You never know who's listening, but you can be sure somebody is.

Do not bring food or drink to the library. A spilled drink can ruin books in an instant. Even if the book dries out, it will develop mold, which spreads to other books.

Return materials on time. Most libraries have limited budgets and limited staff to serve a large population. Don't waste our resources by failing to return materials when due. Don't claim you have returned a book when it's actually in your bedroom, child's room, gym locker, office or the back seat of your car. Librarians get no pleasure from collecting fines for overdue materials. Calling to remind you that things are overdue wastes limited staff time. It also wastes time and money to replace lost books, order the replacement (if there's money in the budget), and process it to be put back in circulation.

We are happy to help with your reference questions. But please remember we're not magicians. If you have a deadline, plan ahead. While we can perform miracles, they take a little time to accomplish, and there are other patrons to be served.

If you want to view pornography, buy a home computer. While we support free speech, our facility needs to be child-friendly. No one -- not children, other patrons or staff -- wants to see your "private life."

Talk to us in complete sentences. We are not mind readers. When you silently thrust a library card at us, we don't know what you want unless you tell us.

Please remember this is a library, not an office service. We are happy to help you find resources, but don't ask us to do your homework, write your paper, edit your letter or do your taxes.
And by the way, a simple "Thank you" makes our day.

I know this letter is too long to print, Abby, but thank you for letting me get this off my chest. I feel better. -- MARIAN THE LIBRARIAN IN KANSAS

DEAR MARIAN: You're welcome. I'm printing your letter in full because it has merit, and also because I suspect most of the offenders do not know any better.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Write Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.

Dear Abby on uExpress

check out this blog -

The Da Vinci Crock

Steve Jobs's review of his biography: Ban it

By Katie Hafner

Story last modified Sat Apr 30 04:20:00 PDT 2005

SAN FRANCISCO--No one can accuse Steve Jobs of indifference.

In an image-obsessed fit of pique, Apple Computer has banished books published by John Wiley & Sons from the shelves of Apple's 105 retail stores--all because of Wiley's plans to publish an unauthorized biography of Jobs, Apple's chief executive.

It is not clear whether Jobs or anyone else at Apple has read the book--"iCon: Steve Jobs, The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business," by Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon, which will go on sale next month.

The very ambiguity of the title--Icon, or I Con?--is the first clue that the work may not be hagiography. But in the publisher's view, the specifics are probably beside the point.

"It was clear they didn't want us to publish the book," Susan Spilka, a spokeswoman at Wiley, said.

In recent months, Apple showed its penchant for secrecy by suing a Harvard student who operates a Web site for Apple enthusiasts, accusing him of trying to induce Apple employees to divulge company trade secrets. It also filed lawsuits to stop leaks of company information on several Web sites that traffic in Apple news.

The action against Wiley seems meant to shield Jobs's personal privacy, not the company.

But as far as advance publicity goes, Jobs and Apple could not have done a better job in generating buzz for the book in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.

Frank Sanchez, the head buyer for Kepler's, a popular bookstore in Menlo Park, Calif., said the store initially ordered five copies. After news of the fracas was reported on the front page of The San Jose Mercury-News on Tuesday, he bumped the order up to 25.

"You know the old saying, 'There's no bad publicity,' " Sanchez said.

Wiley, in response to increased interest in what it calls an "intimate look at a controversial leader," has decided to double the book's initial press run of nearly 50,000 and race it to stores on May 13, a few weeks ahead of its original publication date.

The reaction is no surprise to people who know Jobs well, and certainly not to his many biographers over the years, who have seen his combativeness when it comes to guarding his private life.

"I think he's trying to show people he's serious about protecting his privacy," said Debi Coleman, a co-managing director of SmartForest Ventures in Portland, Ore., who worked closely with Jobs in the 1980s, when she was in charge of Apple's manufacturing. "And now he has the power to do something like pull books."

Parts of the new book are a rehash of Young's 1986 book, "Steve Jobs: The Journey Is the Reward," (Scott Foresman & Company). Young and Simon updated the older book with new material about Jobs' return to Apple, his success with Pixar Animation Studios, his bout with pancreatic cancer, and his marriage.

Written without access to Jobs or people close to him, the book has little new information and will disappoint readers hungry for fresh insights into Jobs.

Yet what the authors lack in firsthand sources they compensate for with attitude. One chapter in the uncorrected proof is titled "iPod, iTune, Therefore I Con." To introduce the section that discusses Jobs' cancer, they write, "Even on Mount Olympus, the gods of Greek legend were not invulnerable."

And in describing Jobs's manner with his employees, the authors describe "the aura of fear Steve carried with him like a dark cloud," adding, "You didn't want to be called in front of him to do a product presentation because he might decide to lop off the product, and you with it."

More than a dozen books about Jobs and Apple have been published over the years.

The biographies, in particular, rankle Jobs, who likes to maintain tight control over all information emanating from his universe, especially anything about his personal life.

"It fits his pattern," said Alan Deutschman, author of "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs" (Broadway Books, 2000). "Steve likes to be in control, and a book by an independent journalist is nothing you can control." Deutschman said Jobs had not spoken with book authors for the last 20 years.

Deutschman faced similar opposition when his book went to press five years ago. Jobs called Peter Olson, chief executive of Random House, to try to persuade him to stop publication of the book. Jobs did not succeed.

Apple's action against Wiley is reminiscent of other fits of corporate pique toward the publication of unflattering portraits.

This month, General Motors withdrew its advertising from The Los Angeles Times because it was irritated at the newspaper's coverage of GM. Chrysler withdrew ads from Car and Driver because of a 1983 article that recounted damage to a Dodge after it hit a steer at 60 miles per hour.

But in this case, the retaliation is hitting other authors who have never run afoul of Jobs. In the last few days, some two dozen popular technical titles, including "Dr. Mac: The OS X Files" and "GarageBand for Dummies" (as well as "Macs for Dummies" by David Pogue, a columnist for The New York Times), were removed from Apple store bookshelves and returned to Wiley's distribution center in New Jersey.

Spilka said that Wiley books sold in Apple stores represent a "tiny fraction" of the annual sales of the company's professional and trade book division.

"It's a sad state of affairs," said Robert LeVitus, author of "GarageBand for Dummies" and other Apple-related titles. "I didn't do anything. I just happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time and got nuked."

In the technology world, even the book's title is raising eyebrows. "With the capital 'C' it reads like, 'I con people; I'm a con man,'" said Jason Snell, editorial director of Macworld magazine in San Francisco.

But Young said the title was not intended to convey negative overtones, and that it was a playful twist on Apple's iPod and iMac. "He's become an icon, bigger than life," Young said.

Katie Cotton, a vice president for corporate communications at Apple, declined to comment about the book or whether Jobs had seen it. And Jobs did not respond to an e-mail message asking for comment.

In a lengthy telephone interview, Young, 53, spent much of the time excoriating Jobs.

"This guy is out of control," Young said. "I'm just a little guy. I'm just one of many guys Steve has destroyed over the years.

"I think he's lost it. He faced mortality, and he knows without some massive change Bill Gates will be remembered as the important person in the computer business, and I think he's lost it over that.

"He has an amazing ability to con people," he said.

Whatever Young's opinion, industry insiders doubt that the book or Apple's retaliatory move will alter how Jobs is viewed in Silicon Valley.

"It is not possible, aside from things unimagined, to damage his reputation," said Mitchell Kertzman, a partner at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners in San Francisco. "Steve is on such a roll in both of his companies, he's earned the right to do whatever he wants."


Steve Jobs's review of his biography: Ban it | CNET News.com

All I can say is...YIKES!

Possible Gay Book Ban in Alabama
April 26, 2005
Gfn.com News

A republican lawmaker in Alabama has introduced a bill that will ban books with gay characters or by gay authors.

Gerald Allen’s push is based on his opinion that homosexuality is an unacceptable lifestyle that should be insulated from Alabama’s children.

Under his bill, public school libraries could no longer buy new copies of plays or books by gay authors, or about gay characters.

"I don't look at it as censorship," says State Representative Gerald Allen told CBS News. "I look at it as protecting the hearts and souls and minds of our children."

Books with gay characters or by any gay author would be withdrawn including classics by Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal. The restrictions of the bill are so drastic that it would include Alice Walker's novel "The Color Purple" has lesbian characters.

Allen has been a vocal critic of gay marriage.




gfn.com - Featuresa

We'll Map Manhattan
By RANDY COHEN

I propose to create, with the help of the Book Review's readers, a literary map of Manhattan -- not of its authors' haunts but those of their characters, a map of the literary stars' homes.

I began thinking about this map years ago while reading Don DeLillo's ''Great Jones Street.'' Bucky Wunderlick gazes out the window of his ''small crowded room'' at the firehouse across the street. I realized: there's only one firehouse on that street and few buildings that contain tiny apartments rather than commercial lofts. I know where Bucky Wunderlick lives. Or would live if he existed. He's got to be at No. 35. Knowing this made walking around the neighborhood like walking through the novel. But I walked without a map. Shouldn't there be a map of imaginary New Yorkers?

It would be a lush literary landscape -- the house on Washington Square where Catherine Sloper waited and yearned, the coffee shops where the characters of Ralph Ellison and Isaac Bashevis Singer quarreled and kibbitzed, the offices where John Cheever's people spent their days, the clubs where Jay McInerney's creatures wasted their nights, the East 70's and Upper West Side avenues where the Glass family bickered (Salinger gives several addresses), downtown where Ishmael wandered the docks.

This first map will display fiction set in Manhattan (in the future, I can imagine maps of Brooklyn, Chicago, London and more). It could include novels, poems and stories from all eras (from Hart Crane to James Baldwin to Michael Chabon to William Gibson) and all genres -- literary fiction (Truman Capote, the Roths, Henry and Philip), pop fiction (Bertice Berry and Sophie Kinsella), Ed McBain mysteries, Ira Levin thrillers, children's books (Faith Ringgold's ''Tar Beach,'' E. B. White's ''Stuart Little''). It will be a kind of Global Positioning System for the characters of Dawn Powell, Han Ong, Meg Wolitzer, Mario Puzo, Colson Whitehead, Tom Wolfe and Thomas Pynchon (from ''V.'' -- ''This alligator was pinto: pale white, seaweed black.'' Where is that alligator? Where is the sewer where Benny Profane hunted it down?)

Since nobody is widely enough read -- I'm not widely enough read -- to know the haunts and houses, the offices and bars and subway stops of so diverse a population, I appeal to Book Review readers to send in their favorites. The graphic artist Nigel Holmes and I will put them on the map and credit the first person to submit a site we use.

Sometimes that information is explicit. ''In my wallet was a supply of engraved cards reading Archie Goodwin, With Nero Wolfe, 922 West 35th Street.'' (In other books, Rex Stout gives the street number as 506, 618 and 938.) Curiously, the 900 block of West 35th Street would be in the Hudson River -- it's a non-address, the real estate equivalent of those 555 telephone numbers used in movies.

Locating other houses requires close reading or at least alert looking. Bernard Waber places Lyle, Lyle Crocodile for us: ''This is the house. The house on East 88th Street.'' But where on East 88th Street? The clue comes in an illustration: the amiable reptile stands on his front stoop looking at a house to his left marked No. 234. That puts Lyle's own house at No. 236. Alas, a visit to the block shows not the charming brownstone where Lyle lolled but an ordinary tenement. Lyle's house, like Lyle, is a fiction. As it happens, Harriet the Spy lives in the same neighborhood, in a house on East 87th. You'd think someone as clever as she would have noticed a crocodile around the block.

While some houses are an author's creation, others are authentic New York landmarks, akin to the actual historic figures who appear in period fiction. The Plaza Hotel is home to Kay Thompson's Eloise; Woody Allen and F. Scott Fitzgerald characters also checked in. The El Dorado at 90th and Central Park West is where the parents of Herman Wouk's Marjorie Morningstar dwelt in the bourgeois splendor she was so eager to escape.

Houses are not the only sites that merit a place on the map. There is also the lagoon at the southeast corner of Central Park that Holden Caulfield frets over (where do the ducks go when it freezes?), and the beautiful St. George's Church on Stuyvesant Square where ''Kay Leiland Strong, Vassar '33, the first of her class to run around the table at the Class Day dinner, was married to Harald Petersen, Reed '27'' in ''The Group,'' by Mary McCarthy.

Some addresses can only be approximated. In Edith Wharton's ''House of Mirth'' Lily Bart drifts toward Lawrence Selden's apartment in the Benedick without quite meaning to. ''As she reached 50th Street . . . she decided to walk across to Madison Avenue.'' Midblock, she notices ''the Georgian flat-house with flower boxes on its balconies. . . . A few yards ahead was the doorway they had entered together.'' Even though we know only Selden's block, we'll map it.

Then there are the truly elusive. Melville obscures the address of the faceless office building where Bartleby works -- or prefers not to. The unnamed narrator declares, ''My chambers were up stairs, at No.---- Wall Street.'' The view gives no hint; the windows face an airshaft: ''Within three feet of the panes was a wall.'' Ingenious readers are encouraged to pinpoint this building.

Easier to deduce is the workplace of Vladimir Girshkin in ''The Russian Debutante's Handbook'' by Gary Shteyngart. ''His story begins in New York, on the corner of Broadway and Battery Place, the most disheveled, Godforsaken, not-for-profit corner of New York's financial district. On the 10th floor, the Emma Lazarus Immigrant Absorption Society greeted its clients.'' But which corner? Simple. To the south is Battery Park and the Custom House. Bowling Green is on the northeast. Thus, the office can only be in the handsome 10-story building on the north-west corner, at 1 Broadway -- although in the real world there is nothing disheveled about it. Of course Shteyngart's No. 1 Broadway, like all these addresses, is imaginary architecture, as fictional as the characters who inhabit it. But it's no less real, and no less mappable, for that.

To submit an entry: send an email to bookmap@nytimes.com

Randy Cohen writes ''The Ethicist'' for The Times Magazine.



The New York Times > Books > Sunday Book Review > Essay: We'll Map Manhattan

Woman finds wad of cash in library book

Associated Press
Apr. 27, 2005 07:50 AM

NATCHEZ, Miss. - Who said reading isn't enriching? Michele Anderson recently discovered more than just a great story when she opened a library book. She also found a wad of cash.

The former employee at Armstrong Library pulled a mystery novel off a shelf and noticed a bulge in its dust jacket. She opened the book and discovered what library officials termed was a "substantial" sum of money.

"I felt something in there, and from my time working here, I just had to straighten it out and felt in there and pulled it out," Armstrong said. "I thought, 'Whoa, wait a minute.' "

Library officials declined to say how much money was discovered, or what the title of the book was, so they could locate the money's rightful owner.

The book hasn't been checked out since March 2004, when the library switched its system of tracking books. Before then, the book had been checked out 45 times, but the library's record-keeping system doesn't track previous checkouts.

Susan Cassagne, the library's director, said she believes if the money isn't claimed, it should belong to the library.


Woman finds wad of cash in library book

'Kite Runner' catches the wind
By Craig Wilson, USA TODAY

GARFIELD, N.J — It's a long way from Kabul, Afghanistan, to The Venetian, one of those cavernous party houses with crystal chandeliers and sweeping staircases where brides and bar mitzvah boys make their grand entrances. But Khaled Hosseini made the journey last week, along with about 800 suburbanites who paid $55 to eat boneless breast of chicken and broiled salmon and listen to this most unlikely of literary stars.

Hosseini, an unassuming, gracious and boyish-looking doctor from California's Silicon Valley, is the author of The Kite Runner, the tale of an improbable friendship between two boys more than 30 years ago in Kabul.

Almost as improbable is the enduring popularity of his book.

After an initial printing of 50,000, The Kite Runner is now in its 17th printing with more than 1.4 million books shipped. It began hitting best-seller lists last September and has remained there ever since. It was No. 7 on the USA TODAY Best-Selling Books list last week.

Don't expect it to go away any time soon. A movie script is being worked on at DreamWorks. Stage adaptations are being planned at high schools from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. And there are the book clubs.

"It's the darling of the book clubs," says Walter Boyer of Bookends, an independent bookstore in Ridgewood, N.J., who was selling Kite Runner here at the Friends of the Ridgewood Library's annual author luncheon. "We've sold as many already this year as we sold all last year."

He and his wife, Pat, also at the luncheon, say that of the 50 book clubs they supply in northern New Jersey, 40 have selected The Kite Runner.

And it all has happened almost entirely through word of mouth, according to Hosseini's publisher, Riverhead Books. A mother tells a daughter. A friend calls a friend. Another paperback is bought.

Hosseini, 40, has taken a year's sabbatical from his practice as an internist to continue promoting Kite Runner, his first novel, and finish his second. He's on the road most every week in addition to helping raise money for Afghan causes through various Kite Runner evenings.

Colleges, from Michigan State and Rutgers to Villanova and Duke, have put the book on the summer reading list for incoming freshmen.

Perfect timing

Hosseini, who concedes he has become something of a poster boy for his native land, says he's surprised by it all. "I thought it would find a niche with people who are interested in that part of the world. But it's not a niche anymore."

Indeed not.

"I read it, my mother-in-law read it, my husband read it and my niece read it, and we were all moved by it," says Barb Vedder, a Hosseini fan who attended the Ridgewood Library event.

The Rev. Ashley Harrington of Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish in Tenafly, N.J., joined parishioners, all Kite Runner fans. He likes that the book is about redemption, about making a wrong right. "You need someone to tell the truth, and that can happen in Tenafly, N.J., as well as in Kabul, Afghanistan."

Even the Afghan ambassador to the United States, Said Tayeb Jawad, jumped on board. "This book generates a tremendous amount of goodwill for Afghanistan," he said at a Kite Runner evening at the New York Ethical Society last week. "It's being channeled into knowledge of our country."

Riverhead has maintained all along that the book's timing was near-perfect with interest in Afghanistan rising since Sept. 11, 2001.

Although the hardcover was out in 2003 (Hosseini had a solitary fan show up for a book signing early on), Kite Runner's popularity didn't really begin to soar until last year when the paperback edition came out, which is when book clubs began picking it up.

Cindy Spiegel, Hosseini's editor, is one of the few people who isn't surprised by the success: "I was just impatient for it to happen."

Sharon Yacura, a co-chair of the Ridgewood Library luncheon, signed up Hosseini last September and realizes now what a coup that was. "We've never had this number of guests before," she says. The annual event had to be moved to the larger venue, and 200 people still had to be turned away.

At the luncheon, Hosseini addressed the question he gets asked several times daily: Is Kite Runner autobiographical?

Well ... yes and no.

Yes, he grew up in Kabul in the '60s. Yes, his father was a diplomat, had servants and lost it all when the Soviets moved in. The family eventually landed in northern California, where Hosseini lives with his wife and two young children, Haris, 4, and Farah, 2.

"When I say some of it is me, then people look unsatisfied," he says. "The parallels are pretty obvious, but ... I left a few things ambiguous because I wanted to drive the book clubs crazy."

His father, who dies in the book, is very much alive, however, and "a shameless promoter" of Kite Runner, according to Hosseini.

His initial spark to write the book was from a CNN report that said the Taliban had banned kite flying. "I thought it unusually cruel."

Initially a short story, Kite Runner was rejected by the likes of Esquire and The New Yorker. Then, in 2001, a friend suggested he expand it into a novel. Spiegel helped him rework the last third of his manuscript, "which isn't all that unusual with a first novel," she says.

Last week, the book got its debut as a stage presentation in New York as part of American Place Theatre's "Literature to Life" program.

Actor Aasif Mandvi gave a moving monologue of some of the more poignant sections of the book and afterward called it "amazing storytelling. ... It's about human beings. It's about redemption, and redemption is a powerful theme."

From book to stage to screen

The book's stage adaptation is scheduled for schools in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Cleveland and Tucson; other schools can get more information at the American Place Theatre's Web site (www.americanplacetheatre.org).

As for the DreamWorks movie, Hosseini has read the script and likes it, and has made only a few suggestions. A production date and cast are yet to be announced.

His next novel, Dreaming in Titanic City, also based in Afghanistan, is the tale of a 30-year friendship between two women, a story of "how human beings behave ... how they can be great and how they can be horrible."

He's happy with the way it's "rolling along" (he should be finished next spring) and happier that the protagonists are women.

"That should put the end to the autobiographical question once and for all."


USATODAY.com - 'Kite Runner' catches the wind