Odd Twist for Hero
Of Popular Thrillers:
Women Like Him, Too
Jack Reacher Breaks Necks
As He Rights Wrongs;
Justice and Vicarious Lust
By JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG
June 10, 2006; Page A1
Jack Reacher, the tough-minded hero of a series of best-selling noir thrillers, has all the elements that have made this genre so popular among men for decades. He travels the country dispensing his own form of justice, often violently and without remorse. In one book, "Persuader," he leans over a man sitting in front of a computer monitor and snaps his neck. The man "started clawing at my wrists," he says. "I squeezed harder still."
But despite his brutish ways, Reacher is doing something surprising: winning the hearts of many women readers.
Of the 20,000 fans world-wide that have joined the Reacher Creatures fan club, an estimated 65% are female. Lorri Amsden, a saleswoman at the Poisoned Pen bookstore in Scottsdale, Ariz., said that when Lee Child, the author of the Reacher series, gave a reading at the store last month, 100 fans turned out, of which more than half were female -- far more than other thriller writers garner. Karen Corvello, a store manager at R.J. Julia Booksellers, an independent bookstore in Madison, Conn., that caters primarily to women, says she sells at least 60% of Mr. Child's Reacher books to women. "He's getting more popular with each book," she says.
Mr. Child's first nine Reacher novels have sold 10.3 million copies in 39 world markets, earning him an estimated $18 million before taxes and agent fees. His newest novel, "The Hard Way," is a best-seller and he recently signed a new four-book contract.
Booksellers believe Mr. Child may have tapped into the same audience that has devoured romance novels over the past 20 years, a genre that in recent years has increasingly included more violence and suspense. They say the 9/11 terrorist attacks, coupled with the war in Iraq, have changed what women are willing to read.
"This is not a safe, happy time," observes Vivien Jennings, owner of Rainy Day Books in Fairway, Kan. "Women say they want sensitive men, but in a violent time they don't want men taking a pea shooter to a gun fight."
David Thompson, a salesman at Murder by the Book, a specialty mystery bookstore based in Houston, says several writers are now benefiting from women who are embracing more violent thrillers. He cites Barry Eisler, whose main character is a professional assassin, and the books of Harlan Coben, whose latest title, "Promise Me," features a sports agent with a violent psychopathic sidekick.
"We now have as many women buying the thrillers of Lee Child and Barry Eisler as women buying the books of Agatha Christie and P.D. James," says Mr. Thompson.
Read the article in its entirety:
WSJ.com - Odd Twist for Hero Of Popular Thrillers: Women Like Him, Too
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Friday, June 09, 2006
Personalized erotica - bid on eBay
M.J. Rose, whose new erotic novel, Lying in Bed (Spice, $13.95, 0373605080), features a woman who writes love letters for clients, reports that in the interest of charity, she is auctioning off her services--writing services. Rose will write a 2,000-word custom erotic love letter for the highest bidder and donate her 90% share of the proceeds to Reading Is Fundamental.
Sage Vivant of Custom Erotic Source, which writes custom erotic stories for customers, is doing the auction on eBay. Sage Vivant commented: "Opportunities like this are rare indeed. You can actually get a tax write-off for getting turned on!"
Bidding has begun and ends on June 16.
What's in store for chick-lit lovers? Authors
Posted 6/7/2006 9:57 PM ET
By Carol Memmott, USA TODAY
Fiction is in fashion at DKNY — and at Chanel, Saks and other high-end stores that are hosting signings by chick-lit novelists.
More and more, publishers are finding retail store partners where authors — particularly novelists who write about fashion-conscious young women — can mingle with the kinds of people who publishers think will buy their books.
"For me, it's great exposure, because the kind of woman who wears DKNY clothes is the kind of woman who's going to like my book," says author Deborah Schoeneman, whose novel, 4% Famous (Shaye Areheart, $21.95), is about the world of gossip columnists in New York. She has been appearing at DKNY stores across the country.
DKNY spokeswoman Aliza Licht says Schoeneman was a perfect partner for DKNY because of the book's content and because "people love a happening. It's nice for customers already there, and it's a vehicle to get new customers."
It's happening elsewhere:
•Saks stores across the country hosted book signings for authors Jill Kargman and Carrie Karasyov for their novel, Wolves in Chic Clothing.
•Ellyn Spragins did events at Eileen Fisher stores in New York and New Jersey for her book, What I Know Now.
•Bergdorf Blondes author Plum Sykes appeared at Chanel, Ralph Lauren, Frederic Fekkai, Ferragamo, Neiman Marcus and Oscar de la Renta stores for The Debutante Divorcée.
It's paying off.
Cheryl McDowell of Los Angeles was shopping for a black party dress at DKNY at the Beverly Center in Los Angeles where Schoeneman was signing books.
"I came in to shop," McDowell says, "but I'm buying the book. I belong to a book club, and we're always looking for good books to read."
For publishers, McDowell is a dream come true.
"It's tough these days, especially in the major markets, to get a big turnout for bookstore events," says Joanna Pinsker of Broadway Books, which published Wolves in Chic Clothing.
"There are so many competing events, and unless you are a famous author, it's very hard to draw a lot of people to bookstore events," she says. "At these parties, there's a built-in list of people."
Many of these events send invitations to VIP customers.
"It hits our target market," says Marleah Stout of Harlequin. "They like hip clothes, cosmetics and shoes, and they may not go to bookstores."
Harlequin has had success with such events and plans to do more. Last fall, Leeanne Banks, author of Feet First and Underfoot, did an event at the DSW shoe store in New York. This fall, Harlequin plans to hold an event for her new book, Footloose, during Fashion Week.
USATODAY.com - What's in store for chick-lit lovers? Authors
Saturday, May 27, 2006
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Why I like living in Boca Raton: Reason 1
As anyone who ever watched Seinfeld knows, everyone who lives in New York has to retire to south Florida, specifically, to Boca Raton. And they do - in droves.
Today a patron was checking out the new Philip Roth book, EVERYMAN. She told me that she went to high school with the famous author. I asked if he was very smart in high school, and she said,
"He was a big jerky nerd. I'm not kidding."
You heard it here first.
Signs of Turmoil as Publishing Industry Gathers for Annual Book Expo and Da Vinci Code Film Arrives in Theatres
May 19, 2006 - The life-expectancy of a bestselling novel has halved within the last decade, according to a long-term study of fiction bestsellers. It has fallen to barely a seventh of its level 40 years ago.
The findings of the 50-year study are announced as America's book trade gathers in Washington for Book Expo (May 18-21), its largest annual get-together, while the movie of "The Da Vinci Code," the mother of all recent bestsellers, goes on worldwide release (May 19). The study was conducted by Lulu.com (www.lulu.com), the world's fastest-growing source of print-on-demand books.
The average number of weeks that a new No. 1 bestseller stayed top of the hardback fiction section of the New York Times Bestseller List has fallen from 5.5 in the 1990s, 14 in the 1970s and 22 in the 1960s to barely a fortnight last year -- according to the study of the half-century from 1956-2005.
In the 1960s, fewer than three novels reached No. 1 in an average year; last year, 23 did.
"The blockbuster novel is heading the way of the mayfly," says Bob Young, CEO of Lulu.com, referring to the famously short-lived insect.
The plummeting life-expectancy of a fiction bestseller, says Young, reflects the way that the publishing industry is unravelling, in an age of over-production, plus media fragmentation and now disruptive new technologies such as the Internet and print-on-demand: "The publishing revolution is nigh."
Similar trends are happening in other sectors, from music to movies, adds Young. "It's part of a cultural shift."
The future of publishing, he continues, belongs to "niche-busters" -- books targeting a niche rather than mass market." Over 1,200 new niche-buster titles are now published on Lulu each week.
Although the latest annual book trade figures show the first fall in US book production for years, the period covered by Lulu's 50-year study saw a huge growth in the annual output of new titles. The number of books published in the US almost doubled between 1993 and 2004 -- from 104,124 to 190,078.
Blockbusters, of course, do still exist, concedes Young, who could not do otherwise in the week that the movie of "The Da Vinci Code" opens worldwide. Indeed, the biggest ones today sell more overall than their forerunners. But even uber-blockbusters like "The Da Vinci Code" fail to achieve the sort of unbroken dominance that was once routine.
The three novels to have topped the list for the longest stints during the 50 years studied were "Advise and Consent," a political thriller by Allen Drury, which hit No. 1 on Oct 14, 1959 and stayed there for 57 consecutive weeks; "The Source," an historical epic by James Michener, which reached No.1 on July 11, 1965 and stayed top for 43 weeks; and "Love Story," by Erich Segal, which, from May 10, 1970, bestrode the list for 41 weeks.
The longest unbroken spell that "The Da Vinci Code," by contrast, has topped the list was 13 weeks, between November 16 2003 and February 15 2004 -- or two months less than the average No. 1 bestseller in the 1960s. Dan Brown's novel first hit No.1 on April 6, 2003, but stayed top for just two weeks. It has since lost and regained the top spot over 15 times, for varying periods.
"The market today is more chaotic," says Young. "The churn rate is far higher."
A growing number of bestsellers, says Young, now spend just a single week atop the list. "The New York Times will soon have to publish its bestseller lists daily instead of weekly, in order to stay up-to-date."
_______
The Life Expectancy of Bestsellers:
Additional Data from the Lulu.com Study
THE LONGEST STINT AT NO. 1
FOR EACH DECADE STUDIED
1950s (1956--59) (Decade average: 16.4 weeks)
Advise and Consent by Allen Drury – 57 weeks
Hit #1 on Oct 14, 1959, and stayed there for most of 1960. Drury was a political journalist for The New York Times itself and Advise and Consent told the inside story of a fictional US administration. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1960 and is credited with inventing the genre of the political thriller.
1960s (Decade average: 21.7 weeks)
The Source by James Michener – 43 Weeks
Hit No. 1 on Jul 11, 1965 and stayed top until it was knocked off the #1 spot by Jacquelin Susann’s Valley of the Dolls on May 8, 1966. The story revolves around an archaeological dig in Israel/Palestine, and takes the reader on a colourful and epic journey through the history of the Jews.
1970s (Decade average: 13.9 weeks)
Love Story by Erich Segal – 41 weeks
Made No. 1 on May 10, 1970 and remained top for 41 consecutive weeks. It started life as a screenplay before a literary agent suggested that Segal make it into a novel. The following year, he turned it back into a script, which in turn spawned the hit 1971 movie of the same name.
1980s (Decade average: 7.2 weeks)
The Covenant by James Michener – 25 weeks
Reached No.1 on November 2, 1980 and stayed there almost six months. Another Michener historical epic, it tells the story of the birth of the Zulu nation.
1990s (Decade average: 5.5 weeks)
The Client by John Grisham – 23 weeks
Reached No.1 on March 21, 1993, staying top for 23 weeks – no other book this decade even got close to this.
This Grisham thriller tells the story of a kid who discovers a terrible secret and finds the Mafia and others on his tail, before a lawyer comes to his aid.
The 2000s (2000--2005) (Decade average: 3 weeks)
Blow Fly by Patrician Cornwell – 16 weeks
Hit No.1 on November 2, 2003. This suspense/crime novel is about a familiar Cornwell character, the forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta and her ex--FBI friends, here dragged from retirement for a further assignment.
By the 2000s many No. 1s spend just a single week at the top of the list.
AVERAGE ANNUAL NUMBER OF NOVELS
TO REACH NO. 1 PER DECADE STUDIED
50s (1956--59): 3.8
60s: 2.8
70s: 4.4
80s: 7.6
90s: 10.0
00s (2000--05): 18.2
The number of bestsellers per year has increased by over 700 per cent since the 1960s, more than doubled since the 80s and almost doubled since the 90s. If present trends continue, they will have doubled in the 00s compared to the 90s.
LIFE--EXPECTANCY OF NO. 1 BESTSELLERS
PER DECADE STUDIED
50s (1956--59): 16.4
60s: 21.7
70s: 13.9
80s: 7.2
90s: 5.5
00s: 3.0
Life Expectancy of Bestselling Books - Lulu.com
Friday, May 26, 2006
Joe Finder at Levengers
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
A day off. One of my favorite authors in town. Doing a signing at one of my favorite stores. Kismet!
Joe is personable, funny and a very smart guy - graduated from Yale, taught at Harvard, and is a former intelligence officer of the CIA. He spoke a bit about the NSA and the CIA and what is going on today and didn't hold back at all, which was rather refreshing in this day and age, let me tell you. But he mostly talked about the not-quite-glamourous life of a touring author, kiddingly likening it to being a rock star, only his groupies are all librarians! He spoke about the research he does, interviewing CEO's and CFO's and visiting their offices and their warehouses and learning what goes on the various industries he writes about, like the plasma TV business for KILLER INSTINCT. His next book is set in the aeronautical industry and you can bet that one is well researched too. But we have to wait about a year for it!
Meanwhile, run out and get KILLER INSTINCT, (or order it from Amazon and support my site.) If Joe is doing a signing in your neck of the woods, do stop by, he is well worth the visit. Check out his website for a tour schedule.
Monday, May 22, 2006
BookExpo America builds buzz for upcoming titles
By Carol Memmott, USA TODAY
Thousands of booksellers and publishing professionals gathered in Washington, D.C., over the weekend at BookExpo America to look ahead to the big books for fall. Three titles that had the most buzz at the annual convention:
•For One More Day by Mitch Albom, best-selling author of Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Albom says his new novel "focuses on the relationships between mothers and sons." It's about a man who loses his mother and years later is given the chance to spend one more day with her. In stores: Sept. 26.
IN SEARCH OF GOOD READS: More from BookExpo
•Thirteen Moons, Charles Frazier's first novel since 1997's Cold Mountain. Set in the 19th century, Moons is the story of a young white man adopted by members of the Cherokee nation. Publication date: Oct. 3.
•The Innocent Man: A True Story, the first non-fiction title from John Grisham. It's about Ronald Keith Williamson, a second-round draft pick of the Oakland Athletics in 1971 who was convicted in the late 1980s of raping and killing a waitress in Oklahoma. Williamson was five days away from execution in 1999 when he was exonerated by DNA evidence. In stores: Oct. 10.
Robert Taecher, a buyer for the Borders bookstores, says Frazier's novel is one of many "upcoming books by established authors who haven't published new novels in a long time." Taecher says fans of Anna Quindlen, Jane Hamilton, Richard Ford, Jennifer Egan and William Boyd also can expect to find their novels in stores this fall.
Other fiction titles talked up at BookExpo:
•The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld. Historical thriller that imagines what happened when Sigmund Freud visited America in 1909. September.
•The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. A mystery revolving around a woman who is invited by a reclusive author to write her biography. It will "be as big as The Historian and The Rule of Four," says Bob Wietrak, vice president of marketing at Barnes & Noble. September.
•After This by Alice McDermott. Follows an American family dealing with the changing world of the mid-20th century. September.
•One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson. Jackson Brodie, protagonist in the author's successful 2004 novel Case Histories, is back. October.
Other hot non-fiction:
•The Audacity of Hope: Reclaiming the American Dream by Barack Obama. The senator from Illinois lays out his vision for the country's political future. October.
•Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivial Pursuits by Ken Jennings. The author, a certified brainiac - he won on Jeopardy! 75 weeks in a row - writes of his game-show stardom. September.
•The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon. Publisher Hill and Wang is calling this the "most accessible version" of the report.
BookExpo America builds buzz for upcoming titles - Yahoo! News
Monday, May 15, 2006
Scan This Book!
By KEVIN KELLY
Correction Appended
In several dozen nondescript office buildings around the world, thousands of hourly workers bend over table-top scanners and haul dusty books into high-tech scanning booths. They are assembling the universal library page by page.
The dream is an old one: to have in one place all knowledge, past and present. All books, all documents, all conceptual works, in all languages. It is a familiar hope, in part because long ago we briefly built such a library. The great library at Alexandria, constructed around 300 B.C., was designed to hold all the scrolls circulating in the known world. At one time or another, the library held about half a million scrolls, estimated to have been between 30 and 70 percent of all books in existence then. But even before this great library was lost, the moment when all knowledge could be housed in a single building had passed. Since then, the constant expansion of information has overwhelmed our capacity to contain it. For 2,000 years, the universal library, together with other perennial longings like invisibility cloaks, antigravity shoes and paperless offices, has been a mythical dream that kept receding further into the infinite future.
Until now. When Google announced in December 2004 that it would digitally scan the books of five major research libraries to make their contents searchable, the promise of a universal library was resurrected. Indeed, the explosive rise of the Web, going from nothing to everything in one decade, has encouraged us to believe in the impossible again. Might the long-heralded great library of all knowledge really be within our grasp?
Brewster Kahle, an archivist overseeing another scanning project, says that the universal library is now within reach. "This is our chance to one-up the Greeks!" he shouts. "It is really possible with the technology of today, not tomorrow. We can provide all the works of humankind to all the people of the world. It will be an achievement remembered for all time, like putting a man on the moon." And unlike the libraries of old, which were restricted to the elite, this library would be truly democratic, offering every book to every person.
But the technology that will bring us a planetary source of all written material will also, in the same gesture, transform the nature of what we now call the book and the libraries that hold them. The universal library and its "books" will be unlike any library or books we have known. Pushing us rapidly toward that Eden of everything, and away from the paradigm of the physical paper tome, is the hot technology of the search engine.
1. Scanning the Library of Libraries
Scanning technology has been around for decades, but digitized books didn't make much sense until recently, when search engines like Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN came along. When millions of books have been scanned and their texts are made available in a single database, search technology will enable us to grab and read any book ever written. Ideally, in such a complete library we should also be able to read any article ever written in any newspaper, magazine or journal. And why stop there? The universal library should include a copy of every painting, photograph, film and piece of music produced by all artists, present and past. Still more, it should include all radio and television broadcasts. Commercials too. And how can we forget the Web? The grand library naturally needs a copy of the billions of dead Web pages no longer online and the tens of millions of blog posts now gone — the ephemeral literature of our time. In short, the entire works of humankind, from the beginning of recorded history, in all languages, available to all people, all the time.
This is a very big library. But because of digital technology, you'll be able to reach inside it from almost any device that sports a screen. From the days of Sumerian clay tablets till now, humans have "published" at least 32 million books, 750 million articles and essays, 25 million songs, 500 million images, 500,000 movies, 3 million videos, TV shows and short films and 100 billion public Web pages. All this material is currently contained in all the libraries and archives of the world. When fully digitized, the whole lot could be compressed (at current technological rates) onto 50 petabyte hard disks. Today you need a building about the size of a small-town library to house 50 petabytes. With tomorrow's technology, it will all fit onto your iPod. When that happens, the library of all libraries will ride in your purse or wallet — if it doesn't plug directly into your brain with thin white cords. Some people alive today are surely hoping that they die before such things happen, and others, mostly the young, want to know what's taking so long. (Could we get it up and running by next week? They have a history project due.)
Read this article in its entirety:
Scan This Book! - New York Times
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Critic of No Child Left Behind Was Disinvited From Meeting
By SUSAN SAULNY
Published: May 13, 2006
Patricia Polacco is a popular author of children's books, known for her cuddly tales of loving grandmothers and precocious tots. She is also known for her less than comforting critiques of the No Child Left Behind Act and its emphasis on high-stakes testing.
Now she says a leading publisher found her dual roles incompatible and disinvited her from speaking at the International Reading Association's annual meeting this month in Chicago because she would not agree in advance to stay away from her views on testing in her talks.
Ms. Polacco says the publishing house, McGraw-Hill, a sponsor of the convention, canceled her contract for two appearances because of its dual role as book and test publisher. McGraw-Hill says it only sought to stop an author with an agenda from turning its exhibit at the reading convention into a political platform.
"I see teachers across the country, and they come up to me with tears in their eyes and say we used to be able to do creative things" before the emphasis on testing that came with No Child Left Behind, Ms. Polacco said, explaining why she wanted to talk about the law. She accused McGraw-Hill of trying to benefit from her popularity yet censor her views. "If they want someone to stand up and say how wonderful No Child Left Behind is, then hire someone who feels that way," she said.
McGraw-Hill denies that it sought to censor Ms. Polacco, stating, rather, that it wanted to enforce a contract she signed in February, listing two specific themes that she would cover at the convention: "The Heroes of My Life" and "Tales and Talk," speeches that were supposed to bring into play the real life stories that inspired her books.
In the contract, the company gave Ms. Polacco direction: "gear message to directly connect with the audience (predominantly teachers) by focusing on how they too are heroes and encourage them." It also asked her to provide "inspiration and tips" about breaking into publishing. The contract does not mention testing or anything related to education law.
Ms. Polacco said she told the company in late April that she could not talk about either topic without referring to what she considered the negative impact of No Child Left Behind on education. "That's part and parcel of what I believe," she said yesterday in a telephone interview from her home in Union City, Mich., adding that she told a representative of the company, "I would be remiss if I didn't bring this up."
One week before the convention, which drew 22,300 attendees, McGraw-Hill took back its invitation via e-mail message. Ms. Polacco was to be paid $5,000.
"We respect her right to express her ideas," said Steven H. Weiss, a spokesman for McGraw-Hill Education. "Since our presentation was focused on reading and children's books, we didn't believe that our exhibit was an appropriate forum to make a public policy speech."
In addition to its literary publishing, McGraw-Hill is one of the market leaders in providing testing materials to help its clients — states and school districts — meet the requirements for annual accountability required by No Child Left Behind. Test publishing is estimated to be a $1.4 billion industry.
Ms. Polacco, whose primary publisher is Penguin Putnam, said she accepted the invitation only because she mistakenly believed it came directly from the International Reading Association, a nonpartisan professional group. Although she signed the contract with SRA/McGraw-Hill, whose name appears many times on the document, she said that did not initially register. Further complicating matters, most correspondence and calls about the event came from a media relations firm for McGraw-Hill, not the company itself.
As for the confusion, Mr. Weiss, the publisher's spokesman, said, "That's impossible."
The International Reading Association is not taking a side. "This was a private for-profit arrangement between Ms. Polacco and a publisher and has nothing to do with IRA," Alan E. Farstrup, the group's executive director, said yesterday in a statement.
Still, the disagreement was fodder for comment on the Internet, after Ms. Polacco posted personal messages on her Web site, and bloggers took up the conversation. Ms. Polacco urged her fans not to direct anger toward McGraw-Hill, but rather toward "the tyranny of the No Child Left Behind mandate."
While Ms. Polacco found much support on the Web, particularly among librarians, one blogger, Roger Sutton, editor in chief of The Horn Book Inc., a small publishing house in Boston, said: "I can't agree that this is a case of censorship. Speech you get paid for rarely is."
Critic of No Child Left Behind Was Disinvited From Meeting - New York Times
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Gumshoe Awards 2006
The 5th Annual Gumshoe Awards are given by Mystery Ink to recognize the best achievements in crime fiction. This year's nominees were chosen from books first published in the United States in 2005.
Best Mystery:
Laura Lippman - To the Power of Three (William Morrow)
The Nominees:
As Dog Is My Witness by Jeffrey Cohen (Bancroft Press)
The James Deans by Reed Farrel Coleman (Plume)
Savage Garden by Denise Hamilton (Scribner)
The Wheelman by Duane Swierczynski (St. Martin's Minotaur)
Best Thriller:
Joseph Finder - Company Man (St. Martin's Press)
The Nominees:
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
The Only Suspect by Jonnie Jacobs (Kensington)
Falls the Shadow by William Lashner (William Morrow)
Creepers by David Morrell (CDS Books)
Best European Crime Novel:
Robert Wilson - The Vanished Hands (Harcourt)
The Nominees:
The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde (Viking)
Kiss Her Goodbye by Allan Guthrie (Hard Case Crime)
Jar City by Arnaldur Indridason (St. Martin's Minotaur)
Have Mercy on Us All by Fred Vargas (Simon & Schuster)
Best First Novel:
Randall Hicks - The Baby Game (Wordslinger Press)
The Nominees:
The Color of Law by Mark Gimenez (Doubleday)
Tilt-a-Whirl by Chris Grabenstein (Carroll & Graf)
Sacred Cows by Karen E. Olson (Mysterious Press)
Beneath a Panamanian Moon by David Terrenoire (St. Martin's Minotaur)
Congratulations to all!
Mystery Ink: Gumshoe Awards 2006
Sunday, April 30, 2006
On Books: Why some fail
By Scott Eyman
Palm Beach Post Books Editor
Sunday, April 30, 2006
I thought I'd share a hilarious story that ran in the London Guardian. Basically, a reporter went around asking various publishers about books they published last year that for one reason or other lay down and died.
A common reason was a lack of reviews, for publishing is a review-driven business.
Frankly, some of the books struck me as extreme long shots under any circumstances. One, titled London Born, was dictated by an author who was illiterate. "We had great hopes for this," said the publisher, "but sold only 1,200 copies. I don't know why it didn't work."
Then there was the publisher of Profile books, who bewailed the demise of Rich Cohen's The Record Men, about Chess Records. "It did nothing, selling just under 2,000 copies."
Why?
"We did a crap job."
Finally, a publisher who tells the truth.
Natasha and Pierre...
Say this for Tolstoy: He had confidence in his powers.
Viking's new translation of War and Peace by Anthony Briggs seems to get to the considerably elaborated point a little faster than previous translations — I've only made it all the way through the Rosemary Edmonds translation, which dates from the 1950s. Viking has packaged the book in attractive hard covers, and included some scholarly apparati in the back of the book: a note from the translator, notes on the battles dramatized in the book, an afterword by Orlando Figes and some textual notes, as well.
There is also a listing of summaries of the chapters that reads like something Woody Allen might have written for The New Yorker. Volume III, Chapter 16: "Natasha's illness. The absurd and expensive ministrations of doctors.
"Chapter 17. Natasha and Pierre. She takes communion. A slight improvement."
Quote Unquote...
"What obsesses a writer starting out on a lifetime's work is the panic-stricken search for a voice of his own."
— John Mortimer
On Books: Why some fail
The endangered joy of serendipity
The modern world makes it harder to discover what you didn't know you were looking for
WILLIAM MCKEEN, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
Published March 26, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's an art to finding something when you're not looking for it.
In my freshman class at the University of Florida, I require the 240 students to subscribe to the New York Times Monday through Friday. I haven't even finished announcing this in class the first day, when the hands shoot up. "Can't we just read it online?" they ask, the duh? implicit.
"No," I say and the eyes roll. They think I'm some mossback who hasn't embraced new media.
"Why not?" Challenging, surly, chips on the shoulders.
"Because then you would only find what you're looking for." Appropriately weird, elliptical, professor-like response.
I'm just doing my job: being baffling and obtuse, trying to make people think. By the end of the semester, I hope they get it. An online "front page" offers maybe a half-dozen stories and teasers for a few more - all in all, a poor substitute for the splendor of a good daily newspaper. Readers need someone to sift through the news and decide what's significant enough to go on the front page. That's how editors earn their big bucks. But it's the other stories, the secret stash in the business section, the sports section or on the obituary page, that stop you and make you read.
Nuance gives life its richness and value and context. If I tell the students to read the business news and they try to plug into it online, they wouldn't enjoy the discovery of turning the page and being surprised. They didn't know they would be interested in the corporate culture of Southwest Airlines, for example. They just happened across that article. As a result, they learned something - through serendipity.
Serendipity is a historian's best friend and the biggest part of the rush that is the daily magic of discovery. It's one of those small things that make life worth living, despite all the torment, pain, tragedy and stifling Interstate traffic.
Serendipity is defined as the ability to make fortunate discoveries accidentally. There's so much of modern life that makes it preferable to the vaunted good old days - better hygiene products and power steering leap to mind - but in these disposable days of now and the future, the concept of serendipity is endangered.
Think about the library. Do people browse anymore? We have become such a directed people. We can target what we want, thanks to the Internet. Put a couple of key words into a search engine and you find - with an irritating hit or miss here and there - exactly what you're looking for. It's efficient, but dull. You miss the time-consuming but enriching act of looking through shelves, of pulling down a book because the title interests you, or the binding. Inside, the book might be a loser, a waste of the effort and calories it took to remove it from its place and then return. Or it might be a dark chest of wonders, a life-changing first step into another world, something to lead your life down a path you didn't know was there. Same thing goes with bookstores. We can shop online so easily, but there's still the shipping thing for those of us who are impatient, and so a lot of bookstore traffic is made up of those who can't wait for UPS. Or heck - maybe it's the coffee. Those modern book supermarkets bring coffee and pastries into the equation, something Amazon.com hasn't quite figured out how to duplicate, though I suspect they're working on it.
It's all about time. So many inventions save us time - whether it's looking for information, shopping for clothes try www.llbean.com) or checking what's on television. Time is saved, but quality is lost. When you know what you want - or think you do - you lose the adventure of discovery, of finding something for yourself.
In another context, Thomas Paine once wrote: "The harder the conquest, the more glorious the triumph. 'Tis dearness only that gives everything its value." Too true, Tom. You may have been talking about the struggle for basic human rights and maybe I'm talking about sorting through the bargain table for boxer shorts that don't ride up and instead finding socks with Stratocasters embroidered on the ankle, but we are on the same philosophical page. Looking for something and being surprised by what you find - even if it's not what you set out looking for - is one of life's great pleasures, and so far no software exists that can duplicate that experience.
Technology undercuts serendipity. It makes it possible to direct our energies all in the name of saving time. Ironically, though, it seems that we are losing time - the meaningful time we once used to indulge ourselves in the related pleasures of search and discovery. We're efficient, but empty.
Except for matters of life and death - and shopping at Wal-Mart - there's an emptiness in finding something quickly. (We all want to minimize time in Wal-Mart, don't we? Life is too short to spend too many of its precious moments in that particular hell.)
Serendipity has enriched my life intellectually and emotionally. It's even stepped in and surprised me, giving my career new trajectories. Years ago, when I was a part-time Ph.D. student, writing a historical dissertation on campus riots after the Kent State shootings, I was focusing on a particular antiwar demonstration at the University of Oklahoma. Interviewing my sources nearly 20 years after, I found some of their recollections sharp and others uncertain. I was talking this over with a couple of friends when our conversation was interrupted by a rarely seen colleague who happened to drop into the lounge at that moment. "Say," he said. "Excuse me for interrupting, but that riot you're talking about - did anyone tell you that I filmed it?"
And indeed he had, as a young photojournalist. He gave me a copy of his film, and it confirmed those memories and gave me a sense of the scope of the event. (Modern historians are a lucky tribe. What if Edward Gibbon had a home video of Caesar's assassination when he was writing The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? Maybe it wouldn't have taken him 12 years to finish the damn thing.)
Serendipity has continued to play a part in my work. A few years back, I got a publisher's contract for a book, Highway 61, to be based on a long road trip I planned to make along the famous highway that runs from from the Canadian border to the French Quarter. I kept meaning to spend the months before the trip doing research, getting prepared, efficiently setting up interviews with people along the road. But life intervened. I was busy with work and falling in love. So when my grown son and I hit the road with no plan at all, I was terrified. What if nothing happened? What would I write about? We took our free-fall trip, following the path of the Mississippi River, and serendipity intervened. People walked up and introduced themselves, as if part of a cast of lunatics required in the telling of a good road story. And the plot also presented itself, quite by accident: a long-distance divorced father helping his son bid goodbye to childhood. We were both a little startled by the moments of truth we shared in the front seat.
We made another discovery on that trip. The world of music - a world so important to both of us - suffers from a lack of serendipity. My son is a member of the download generation, which finds its music online. I grew up in a world dominated by that great and subversive force of the 20th century: radio. Fifty years ago, when we were just beginning to cast off the elements of American apartheid, it was relatively easy for our society to enforce racial barriers - separate schools, separate stores, separate neighborhoods. But the music that traveled in the air, via radio waves, did not observe Jim Crow boundaries. White kids, alone in their rooms, tuned their radios at night and heard the music of black America. Black kids found The Grand Ole Opry and learned for themselves about that old, weird America.
The result in my childhood was a serendipitous exposure to music that no amount of downloading can duplicate. As a kid, I'd turn on the radio and hear Frank Sinatra, followed by James Brown, followed by the Beatles, followed by the Supremes - and lots of other people. Music could astonish me. But now, with downloading, it has lost that ability. We miss the element of the chance encounter with musical genius. We have to be told of such genius or hear about it second-hand. One effect is that it's balkanized the audience. We don't have the sense of community. My older children, in their 20s, envy my generation. "We'll never get to fall in love to the great music you had," my oldest daughter once told me.
It's an odd paradox. The audience today is larger and the choices are enormous - and yet more turns out to be less. We have hundreds of choices on television, but will we ever feel the moment of global community we felt staring at that box, watching a man named Armstrong walk upon the moon? Or will we ever, en masse, have a moment like that time the world met the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show? Will the world ever shed so many tears as we did watching the funeral of President Kennedy? We had three choices then and have 300 now. Likewise, in music: We are so formatted now that stations stratify the market, making it unlikely you will ever hear music you do not expect to hear.
The modern world is conspiring against serendipity. But we cannot blame technology. I've met this enemy, and it is us. We forget: We invented this stuff. We must lead technology, not allow technology to lead us. The world is a better and more cost-effective place because of technology, but we've lost the imperfections inherent in humanity - the things that make life a messy and majestic catastrophe.
We must allow ourselves to be surprised. We must relearn how to be human, to start again as we did as children - learning through awkward and bungling discovery. Otherwise, when it's all over and we face the Distinguished Thing, we will have led extremely efficient but monstrously dull lives.
Some years back, Tom Wolfe came to my university and I hosted him for a week. I don't drop his name merely for effect (though it's only two syllables and shouldn't hurt much). It's just that I'll never forget something he told me. On the last night of his visit, we found ourselves alone together at dinner, talking about our children. Though he's 20 years older than me, we were at the same stage: ushering our children into adulthood. I told him that I didn't really understand the profound depth of love until I became a father. And he said that he had married late (at 50) and had children soon after. He said, "And I think, "My God, I could have missed this.' They opened up a door in my heart that I didn't even know was there."
And I realize that serendipity has also been lost in matters of the heart. Now, we plug a list of characteristics into a Web page in search of our True Love. We no longer allow for the chance encounter at the bookstore (we're shopping online, remember?) or sitting next to someone new in church or simply looking into someone else's eyes and feeling the eureka of discovery. We check off the qualities of this idealized other half, as if ordering from a Chinese menu. Matchmaking Web sites have replaced human conversation. (I tried the online thing once, and all I got in return was a stalker. She even wore camouflage.)
Not long after that conversation with Tom Wolfe, a door opened in my heart. I was living my dull, directed and orderly divorced-guy life and one day looked up and was struck by the thunderhammer of love. I wasn't looking for her, but I found her. I had long since given up on the concept of remarriage. Yet, five years later, I am remarried and I am again waist-deep in the adventure of fatherhood. I now have a messy, aggravating and utterly inefficient life - and every day is a bouquet of surprises. I wake each morning, put on my socks and shoes, and face a new day of wonder and discovery. Why deny or refuse such a gift? If I had been looking for it, I would not have found it. It was serendipity, that ability to make fortunate discoveries accidentally, that opened that door in my heart.
And to think: I could have missed this.
William McKeen is chairman of the University of Florida department of journalism.
Yes, I have a lot of books. No, you can't borrow one
WIT'S END
ROBERT MCNEIL
WHO read all the books? Not, I hope, the same person who ate all the pies. Unlike pies, books are meant to be good for you but I think mine are killing me. Well, that's an exaggeration. They're just giving me the occasional duffing up.
Can't blame them really. They've been neglected. I love them still, but have nowhere to put them and don't spend enough time with them any more.
Most of my late teens, twenties and thirties were spent reading and writing. Now, I'm lucky if I get three pages read in bed last thing at night when I drop off after a huge dram and a vanilla slice (crumbs from which will often irritate me in the night).
I have tried, recently, to make more of an effort. "Make time for reading" was once an excellent slogan put out by Edinburgh's libraries. I don't watch much television, beyond football and repeats of Are You Being Served?, and I rarely go on the internet, which strikes me as a paradise for cranks, bullies and perverts. Even so, I still don't like it.
It's not that I've a limited attention span but ... I've forgotten what I was just going to say. No: it's not that I've a limited attention span - didn't I just say that? - it's that I buy too many books. I want to have them all, except perhaps Oprah Winfrey's Guide to the Cosmos.
I love Edinburgh's second-hand bookshops, and will happily browse in them until told to leave. I always feel obliged to buy something, too, being one of those sad sorts who believe that, once you've crossed a shop's portal, you're contractually obliged to purchase something. How I regret the day I inadvertently blundered into Leather and Lace (though that codpiece did eventually make an excellent cloot).
But I will also visit Waterstone's, endlessly being conned into buying three for the price of two: "I'll have Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, please. And The Trial by Franz Kafka. And, er, The Viz Book of Humungous Hooters." And, on the few occasions I wander on to the internet now, I shop like billy-oh at Amazon, not to mention Abebooks (first-class second-hand site).
I just can't resist buying books. I go out for trousers, I come back with books. I go out for a wardrobe, I come back with books. I go out for books, I come back with a hatstand. You know how it is.
And so the books pile up. The desk in front of me, as I write, groans with higgledy-piggledy piles of reference books and dictionaries. At least I don't have to read these from start to finish. Indeed, I rarely see any book through to the end in one go, without starting half a dozen others in the meantime. It is the restless mind, the questing head, the imperial imagination. One thinks: "There must be something out there that will mean something, cheer me up or make everything seem clear." But, as you get older, you realise this ain't going to happen. Tolkien comes closest, but everybody reads him in their teens, and it's all downhill thereafter. Eventually, you just read for diversion or occasional strokes of beauty.
I've bookmarks in around 250 books. The main ones I'm flirting with at the moment are Saint's Getaway by Leslie Charteris (wonderfully arch writer), Traditions of Trinity and Leith by Joyce M Wallace, Overcoming Social Anxiety and Shyness, The Miss Marple Omnibus, Nature Cure by Richard Mabey, and Rubicon by Tom Holland. I've also lined up Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong, Manda Scott's Boudica and Allan Guthrie's Two-Way Split; oh, and I've just started my regular re-reading of The Hobbit.
The last books I finished were Boris Johnson's Seventy-Two Virgins and, before that, Who Will Comfort Toffle?, a Moomin picture book by Tove Jansson.
Surprisingly, one of these books is contemporary. Generally, it takes years for a book to settle and mature before I'll buy it, and I never believe these end-of-year newspaper features where famous people lie about all the recently published books they've allegedly just read.
I should get rid of some more books (I did offload some obscure ones recently), but it goes against the grain. I don't even loan them out, as people never return them. The refusal may offend, but these books have my name in them and a little shorthand note of where I bought them. Sometimes, if they were a real find in a second-hand shop, the whole day comes back to me. How dare borrowers take that away from me and ruin my entire life!
I've lugged my books in scores of boxes through a dozen different flittings. I'm not giving up on them now. Not for all the hatstands in the world.
Scotsman.com Living - Books - Yes, I have a lot of books. No, you can't borrow one
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Publisher spurns Harvard sophomore apology
HILLEL ITALIE
Associated Press
NEW YORK - Teenage author Kaavya Viswanathan has acknowledged taking material from fellow novelist Megan McCafferty, but says the borrowing was an accident. McCafferty's publisher doesn't believe her.
"We think there are simply too many instances of `borrowing' for this to have been unintentional," Steve Ross, senior vice president and publisher of the Crown Publishing Group, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
Viswanathan's publisher, Little, Brown and Company, issued a statement later Tuesday, defending the author.
"We do believe Kaavya. She has apologized, publicly and profusely, for any difficulties that may have come from her actions," Little, Brown publisher Michael Pietsch said in the statement. "We believe that this is an unfortunate but honest mistake, and we intend to give Ms. Viswanathan every opportunity to correct the situation."
Viswanathan, a 19-year-old sophomore at Harvard University, was just 17 when she signed a reported six-figure, two-book deal with Little, Brown. Her first novel, "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life," came out in March to widespread publicity. DreamWorks has already acquired film rights.
But readers of McCafferty who had read Viswanathan spotted similarities to McCafferty's books, which include "Sloppy Firsts" and "Second Helpings," and alerted McCafferty, who in turn notified her publisher. Examples of questionable passages were published Sunday on the Web site of the Harvard Crimson.
Viswanathan released a statement Monday apologizing for her borrowings, saying that she was a "huge fan" of McCafferty and "wasn't aware of how much I may have internalized Ms. McCafferty's words." She promised to revise her book, a process Little, Brown says has already started.
Ross said lawyers representing the two publishers have been discussing the controversy and suggested that Little, Brown pull the novel until changes have been made. But Pietsch said that while the publisher would not reprint any more copies of the current version, there were no plans to withdraw it.
"She will revise her novel to remove any inappropriate similarities, and we will reissue it with those changes at the earliest opportunity," said Pietsch, who has previously acknowledged that several weeks will be needed just to print the new copies.
Viswanathan's novel tells the story of Opal, a hard-driving teen from New Jersey who earns straight A's in high school but who gets rejected from Harvard because she forgot to have a social life. Opal's father concocts a plan code-named HOWGAL (How Opal Will Get A Life) to get her past the admissions office.
McCafferty's books follow a heroine named Jessica, a New Jersey girl who excels in high school but struggles with her identity and longs for a boyfriend. McCafferty is a former editor at Cosmopolitan
In a recent interview with The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., Viswanathan was asked about books that might have influenced her novel. "Nothing I read gave me the inspiration," she responded.
On Tuesday, Crown issued a statement saying that Viswanathan's apology was "deeply troubling and disingenuous.
"We have documented more than 40 passages from Kaavya Viswanathan's recent publication ... that contain identical language and/or common scene or dialogue structure from Megan McCafferty's first two books. This extensive taking from Ms. McCafferty's books is nothing less than an act of literary identity theft."
Little, Brown gave Viswanathan's novel a first printing of 100,000, the publisher said. According to Crown, McCafferty's books have more than 400,000 copies in print. Her third novel, "Charmed Thirds," was released two weeks ago.
"This has been an enormous distraction for Megan," Ross said. "It's been a very, very difficult and devastating couple of weeks for her."
AP Wire | 04/25/2006 | Publisher spurns Harvard sophomore apology
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