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Self-Publish And Be Doomed? UK Author Norman Giller Regrets Censoring His Book To Please Booksellers

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This article, by Norman Giller, originally appeared on the Sports Journalists Association (SJA) site on 2/27/09.

I sold my journalistic soul this week, and I am ashamed of myself. As a self-publisher, I over-ruled myself as the writer and agreed to allow my book, The Lane of Dreams, to be censored.

Before they would consider stocking the book, a history of White Hart Lane, Tottenham asked to see a copy. Back came the response: “In view of some of the content, we are unable to sanction it.”

I tracked down John Fennelly, their Head of Publications, who told me politely but firmly: “We do not consider it appropriate to offer for sale in our store a book that is critical of our chairman.”

Here’s just a little taster of what Tottenham objected to:

If in 2007 you were a reader of London’s only paid-for evening paper, the Standard, you would have discovered that the depth of feeling against the Daniel Levy-style of leadership could be measured in fathoms. It reached the point when the newspaper and all its reporters and photographers were banned from White Hart Lane after a series of searing columns by confessed Spurs fan Matthew Norman.

Armed with a lacerating vocabulary that would have led to many challenges back in the duelling days, Norman wrote in one Levy-levelling column: “He can act like an imbecile of a very rare order indeed.”

Now that is going for the jugular, and the sort of crippling criticism I dare not put my tongue or pen to. You must weigh for yourself if the criticism was justified, but one thing for certain is that Tottenham showed poor judgment in banning the newspaper.

For this old hack with traditional Fleet Street principles, freedom of speech and freedom of the press is much more important and vital to our society than anything that happens on a football field.

I think I deserve your applause and appreciation for being such a principled and noble defender of our hard-earned freedoms.

But you won’t find a word of it in the book.

The Norman Giller I used to be would have told Tottenham that there was no way in a million years that I would alter a single syllable. I would rather have faced a Dave Mackay tackle.

But I called a meeting with myself, and the publisher in me told the writer: “It will make no economic sense for us to have the book banned by Tottenham. We need the sales that the club shop will give us. Easing out about 100 of the 85,000 words will not devalue the book in any way.”

Weakly, meekly the writer in me gave in, and the book – the censored book – will go on sale in the Spurs store. Humble apologies to Voltaire (“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”). Don’t blame me. Blame my publisher.

Publish and be damned? (Duke of Wellington). Publish and be doomed, more like.

The Lane Of Dreams has become part of a great adventure that includes a head-to-head sales war with the redoubtable Harry Harris.

I have known, liked and respected Harry since his local newspaper days, before he developed into arguably the greatest football news gatherer of his generation. I was chief football reporter on the Daily Express when he first came into the business, and I am glad I had got out before he started shovelling scoops by the lorry load.

We have come out with identically themed books, and Harry launched his Down Memory Lane at a Mayfair bash on Wednesday. His Green Umbrella Publishers are orchestrating a vigorous promotion campaign, but I am going to try to hang on to their coat tails.

I tried to spike the launch by almost giving away my book as a £2.99 try-before-you-buy download, with everybody purchasing it getting my £18.95 book in electronic form before it’s traditional paper-and-ink publication at the start of next season.

Fighting dirty, I leaked gossip of the “book war” to another of the outstanding newsmen, Charles Sale at the Daily Mail. I was following the dictum of old boxing promoter Jack Solomons: “All publicity is good publicity, provided they get your name right.”

But Harry has got off to a flier, and his book is already showing in the best seller lists while I am still in the starting blocks.

For anybody out there interested in going down the self-publishing road, be careful, be diligent and plan every step well in advance of publication.

Read the rest of the article at SJA.

Indie Groundbreaking Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

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This piece, by Jim Barnes, originally appeared on Independent Publisher.

50 days. An offset-printed book, from concept to the street in 50 days. Unheard of, right?

Yes, it’s unheard of, but it happened. San Francisco-based Berrett-Koehler published Agenda for a New Economy, by David Korten, in just seven weeks and two days — just in time for the inauguration of President Obama.

The book questions the Wall Street bailout and argues that our hope lies not with Wall Street but with Main Street, creating real wealth from real resources to meet real needs, and returning to an economy firmly rooted in the long-term health of people and the planet.

How the Berrett-Koehler team accomplished this feat is a tribute to the energy and resourcefulness of a dedicated independent publisher, the expertise of a brilliant author, and the technical abilities of a cutting-edge book printer.

It all began back in the fall of 2008, when best-selling author Korten, whose previous books, When Corporations Rule the World and The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community are considered must-reads for understanding our global economy, was asked by YES! magazine to write an article about the big Wall Street bailout. The piece argues that the bailout was a mistake, and calls out to President Obama for a “basic redesign of our economic institutions.”

Meanwhile, Steve Piersanti, president and publisher at Berrett-Koehler, found himself awaiting jury duty in his Contra Costa County, California courthouse, and having brought along some reading material, read Korten’s article. It must have had a big impact. By the next evening Piersanti and Korten had brokered an agreement — with one important stipulation – books had to be ready in time for a major presentation by Korten on January 23 at the Trinity Institute on Wall Street.
Agenda For A New Economy
“Here is one of the most important, most timely, and most exciting books on which I have worked during my 27-year career as a book editor,” Piersanti recalls thinking. "Would such a timeframe even be a possibility?"

In order to get the book from concept to finished product as quickly as possible, Piersanti knew he would need an extraordinarily fast printing schedule. Enter Malloy Incorporated, the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based, family-owned printer that offers a new express offset printing service for this kind of "rush job."

“We understand the value to Berrett-Koehler of getting this time sensitive book out when the new administration takes office” said Bill Upton, president of Malloy. “We saw this last year with a biography of Sarah Palin when she was picked by John McCain, and the overnight success last June of the memoir by former White House Press Secretary, Scott McClellan.”

“Publishers need to capitalize on sales opportunities that suddenly materialize due to events beyond their control. We introduced Express Service for the publisher who needs more than a few hundred books right away. They come out ahead going with offset printing at Malloy versus a digital printing solution.” [Publetariat editor’s note: POD is a digital solution]
 

Read the rest of the article at Independent Publisher.

Are Authors As Much To Blame For Publishing's Current Malaise As Publishers?

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This piece originally appeared on the Caffeine Nights Publishing blog on 2/14/09.

This may be difficult to read especially if you are an aspiring author, but are authors as much to blame for falling profits, closing bookstores and the current failure of the publishing world to embrace new digital media platforms?

Reading many forums, blogs and articles on various sites it becomes clear than many, many authors (aspiring or otherwise) wish to continue living in a cloud cuckoo land where the age old business model of paying advances and expecting a living wage on the basis of absolutely no sales exists.

The global economic crisis has led to a massive downturn in profits across the board which is striking the very foundations of companies that have been established for decades and in some cases hundreds of years.

The publishing industry has the reactive qualities of a dinosaur on diazepam and sadly it has instilled a culture of acceptance in generation after generation of authors that the only business model is one that was adopted by publishers in the 1900’s. Namely, large upfront advances based on nothing more than a hunch and a publisher’s marketing machine. Well, the world has moved on buddy and it is no longer the case that publishers can afford to continue going down this rocky road.

The Internet now exposes how authors expect this model to continue no matter what the economic climate says. I have read countless threads where authors appear to be viewing the world of publishing through rose coloured glasses. For example comments such as, “Well if they are not going to pay an advance they are just crooks, or they’re POD with no established route to bookstores.”

Yes, what a great idea, let’s just fill every bookstore across the country with hundreds of copies of books regardless of the demand and then see those books return in six months to be shipped off once more to a remainder shop or back to the printers for pulping. How environmentally sound and what a great business plan…not.

Let’s examine how well the world of publishing is coping with the current situation. Bookstores are closing, profits are shrinking, publishers refuse to look at new delivery platforms, and sales are in decline. Yet still I see unpublished authors bleating on about how a publisher is not a real publisher if he is not putting his hand into his own pocket and paying the author hundreds or thousands or even hundreds of thousands of pounds before a solitary sale has been made. Cuckoo!

Business cannot run this way any longer. In fact I don’t know of many other businesses which allow such a model to operate. Do you think Tesco or Wal-Mart would let you walk away with all their stock on the basis that one day you may be able to pay the bill?

Until we see a paradigm shift in thinking in both authors and publishers it may be that we have to face the fact that many established companies are going to collapse, never to rise. Authors, I appreciate you think your work is the best thing since sliced bread, that’s what I think with every novel I complete, but the truth is you are only as good as your sales and that is all the reward you deserve. It is the only sustainable business model, like it or not. Yes, there will always be exceptions and bidding wars. Good luck to the companies which want to get involved in that particular strand of madness.

My First Podcast!

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Kael, creator of the always-entertaining, and somewhat unconventional Unpublishednotdead.com, has graciously allowed me to invade his space and do an Unpublishednotdead Podcast!

I had a great time recording it, and got in some practice with the recording equipment and audio software. (One thing I realized, I still have a lot to learn!)

In the podcast, I talk some about the Squaw Valley Fiction Writers Workshop, which Kael and I both attended last summer, as well as my plans for going independent in order to get my stories out in the world.

Oh, and I also describe my extremely high-tech recording studio.

You can find it by searching for Unpublishednotdead on itunes (my episode is Podcast 11, but while you’re there you should check out the others as well) or by clicking here.

Happy listening!

Advertise On Publetariat

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Publetariat is the premier online news hub and community for indie authors and small imprints.  Publetariat went viral within its first week of launch and has consistently ranked in the top 5% of traffic for all websites worldwide ever since according to websitegrader, which gets its traffic figures from Alexa.  You can verify Publetariat’s current traffic rank by running the URL www.publetariat.com through websitegrader.

Publetariat is open to targeted advertising only: advertising for products and services directly or indirectly related to books, authorship, author services, publishing and self-publishing.  Ads for self-published books and indie imprints are also welcome. 

Animations are acceptable within the body of the ad graphic, but drop-downs, zoom-outs, gatefolds and any other form of animation that will enlarge the size of the ad or otherwise obstruct adjacent site content are not acceptable.  Sound is not acceptable.

Two 150×200 ad slots are available in the left-hand column of the front page and each department page.  The first is immediately beneath the left-hand navigation menu and the second is between the two sitewide RSS news feeds (see front page of the site to see exactly where the two ads are located).   

Front Page – home page of the site

1 week – US$350, 2 weeks US$650, 3 weeks US$900, 4 weeks US$1200

All Departmental Pages (excluding Terms of Use page and Contact Us page, which carry no paid advertising):

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Note that while the right-hand column of the site contains a random-rotator ad box, ads in the left-hand column are static and exclusive—once a given ad slot is purchased, only the purchaser’s ad will display in the purchased spot for the paid period.   

Publetariat reserves the right to take the site offline for scheduled maintenance for up to two hours in any week (though in practice, site maintenance is generally only necessary once every few months), and advertising will not display during that time.  Such maintenance is always scheduled for times when site traffic is lowest.

Advertisers must provide artwork sized to 150×200 with a filesize no larger than 1200kb, as well as the desired alternative text to display when site visitors mouse over the ad and the full text of the hyperlink to be embedded in the ad. 

Please contact ads@publetariat.com for more information or to book an ad.

Signing in from Colorado

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Hey all,

My name is Doyce Testerman and I live near Denver, Colorado.

 

At this point I have not been part of any self-published fiction, though I have work as an editor on a number of gaming-related books that have been released through Lulu and a few other PoD sites.  I currently have an agent representing one of my novels (a mystical realism story called Hidden Things) to traditional publishers, though I’ve grown weary of feedback that says "we love it, it’s so tight and focused and fun; we’d like to talk about a sequel or series… but can you add first 25 pages — we don’t know… somewhere?"  Grr.

 

I’ve also had several short stories published in anthologies with traditional publishers and online fiction mags.

 

I’ve been involved with the indie press revolution in the roleplaying game industry (where, like rock and roll and art, ‘indie’ is actually a positive thing) and I’m starting to see that kind of movement in fiction publishing, which excites me.
 

I just need to jump in the water and figure out this ‘swimming’ thing.

IT'S FINALLY PUBLISHED!

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BLUE LINE PUBLISHING HOUSE, INC. has done it!

THE EXECUTION OF JUSTICE by MICHAEL PHELPS is now available in Hardcover – First Edition for just $27.95!

It can be bought at:

www.MichaelPhelpsNovels.com

www.amazon.com

www.barnesandnoble.com

www.Target.com

And soon at other fine outlets.

 

 

Book publishers, R.I.P.?

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This piece, by Novella Carpenter, was originally published on sfgate.com, the online arm of The San Francisco Chronicle, on 2/24/09.

In this bad economy, it’s tougher than ever to sell books

I had always thought that books were recession-proof…

…that most people facing a night at home due to budgetary constraints would gladly curl up with a mug of hot water, put on extra socks to keep the nip of their unheated apartment at bay, and read. While the rest of the world frittered away money on outings to movie theaters and bars, surely the frugal-minded (whose numbers are increasing) would choose to spend pennies on the hour soaking up the pages of a good novel?

 

That’s what I thought, but if you believe panicked grumblings about the book publishing industry, I must be totally wrong: Holiday book sales were abysmal, and most of the major publishing houses have announced job losses in recent months.

One publishing behemoth, HarperCollins, lost 75 percent of its operating income during the first six months of 2008. Over all, the publishing industry has struggled as bookstore sales — and the economy — have slowed drastically.

I feel terrible for those who have lost their jobs in publishing, and I fear for bookstores. But to be honest, the reason I’ve been watching the slow demise of book publishing with an ever-increasing sense of dread has to do with my own personal circumstances. You see, almost two years ago, in the flush of a strong economy, I booked a flight for New York and sold my first book to a major publisher. I remember looking at the publication date: June 2009, and thinking it was impossibly far away. Now, with June just around the corner and galleys of my book out to reviewers and book buyers, IÕm sure my book (my baby!) will suffer horribly.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been investigating the damaged state of publishing, seeking out advice from a wide spectrum of editors, authors and bookstore owners to gauge whether my fears of failure are substantiated. Their advice does not bode well.

"There’s a lurking fear here," said Kate, an editor at a mid-sized publishing house in New York who asked to remain anonymous. "Big accounts aren’t taking as many books. What we’re seeing is people don’t impulse buy books anymore. There’s less pleasure buying now."

Slower book sales mean less money for publishing houses, who then may be forced to downsize the company, laying off editors who acquire books and other positions that aren’t deemed crucial for day to day functionality. Kate, who has worked in book publishing for eight years now, has friends who work for Random House, one of the hardest hit houses. "They have been holding their breath," Kate said, "worrying about whether the axe will come down on them."

Kate went into publishing because she loves books, sharing ideas and working with eccentrically intelligent editors. The pay — she started at $28,000 — is notoriously lousy, especially after factoring in the high cost of living in New York City. But the economic crisis has made her "very glad to be employed," she said.

And yet, her anxiety is unmistakable: She knows that if her books don’t sell, her job security may be compromised. She is confident other cost-savings will be implemented before job cuts take place. Instead of hours-long lunch meetings at high-end restaurants, for example, editors, authors and agents now settle for coffee or in-office meetings. As for the future, Kate’s publishing company isn’t going to be acquiring any frivolous titles.

"None of us know when the market will recover," she said. "But right now, I’m very worried about my books — books that I believe in. They are going to be selling into a terrible climate."

I shyly mentioned my own (probably doomed) book, and asked her for advice.

"The best advice for today, and really in any financial climate, is to be fanatical and motivated to promote your book," she said. "Do as many events as possible. Become a shameless self-promoter."

Read the rest of the article at sfgate.com.

 

Andrew Keen Could Learn A Thing Or Two From Us Monkeys

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In his book, The Cult of the Amateur: how today’s internet is killing our culture, author Andrew Keen argues that Web 2.0 (content for media consumers created by media consumers) will soon spell the death of Western media culture as we know it. I don’t disagree with him, but unlike Mr. Keen, I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

Mr. Keen likens the worldwide community of bloggers and indie artists to "infinite monkeys…typing away". He says that where the web and media are concerned:

"…democratization, despite its lofty idealization, is undermining truth, souring civic discourse, and belittling expertise, experience and talent…it is threatening the very future of our cultural institutions."

"Moreover, the free, user-generated content spawned and extolled by the Web 2.0 revolution is decimating the ranks of our cultural gatekeepers, as professional critics, journalists, editors, musicians, moviemakers, and other purveyors of expert information are being replaced (‘disintermediated’, to use [an O’Reilly] term) by amateur bloggers, hack reviewers, homespun moviemakers, and attic recording artists. Meanwhile, the radically new business models based on user-generated material suck the economic value out of traditional media and cultural content."

Mr. Keen is apparently unaware of the possibility that the public at large doesn’t feel our culture, or access to it, requires “gatekeepers”. He also fails to acknowledge the reality that those “gatekeepers” have abused our collective trust with such regularity, we no longer recognize their status as arbiters of anything other than what stands to make their industries and corporate backers the maximum quantities of money in a minimum quantity of time. Whether we’re talking about big publishers with their ‘celebrity novels’, journalists with their ‘infotainment’, or TV executives with their so-called reality programming, the gatekeepers are now known to us primarily as experts in misdirection, hype and obfuscation.

It goes without saying that there are many honest, hardworking people in all branches of media who are doing their level best to deliver accurate, incisive content, but these are the minority voices in the cacophony of a vocal majority with less lofty goals.

Keen says, "The value once placed on a book by a great author is being challenged by the dream of a collective hyperlinked community of authors who endlessly annotate and revise it, forever conversing with each other in a never-ending loop of self-references."

And the problem here is…what? As an author of both fiction and nonfiction, I would be very happy to have an audience so engaged in what I’ve written that they’re moved to discuss it in groups. Isn’t that what literary study and criticism is all about? Keen seems to be suggesting that once a manuscript is bound between two covers, it should be laid to rest with no further analysis or study on the part of its readership. But isn’t it—and hasn’t it always been—the mission of great literature and nonfiction to spark thought, public discourse and debate?

Keen implies the author should always have the final word where his work is concerned, but I disagree. In my view, the author gets to open the discussion, but readers get to have the discussion. And that’s not a bad thing.

Keen goes on to talk about how free online content is stealing the very money out of the pockets of hardworking businesses and corporations. For example, Encyclopedia Brittanica has steadily lost marketshare to online compendia such as Wikipedia. But lest we feel little sympathy toward corporate behemoths like Brittanica that have been slow to get on the technology bus, or perhaps even feel some of those behemoths are about due for extinction, Keen trots out the story of the archetypal ‘little guy’:

"Then there’s Guy Kawasaki, author of one of the fifty most popular blogs on the internet…And how much did Kawasaki earn in ad revenue in 2006 off this hot media property? Just $3,350. If this is [Wired founder] Anderson’s long tail, it is a tail that offers no one a job. At best, it will provide the monkeys with peanuts and beer."

As it turns out, Guy Kawasaki is no ‘little guy’ at all. Keen neglects to mention the fact that Kawasaki has 10 bestselling nonfiction books in print. Hmmm…you don’t suppose Mr. Kawasaki’s blog has increased his book sales at all, do you?

The central failure of Mr. Keen’s book is his base assumption: that our culture needs gatekeepers and professional arbiters of quality in media, that people need to have their tastes, thoughts and opinions carefully formulated and shaped for them, that we lack the ability to make intelligent choices for ourselves. In addition to the snobbery inherent in his arguments, Keen’s scorn for the common man is evidenced by his repeated references to bloggers and indie artists as “monkeys”.

 
If Mr. Keen and his compatriots among the media elite knew anything about history, they’d know that every major step forward in human culture has been brought about by the dismantling of—wait for it—the then-powerful media elite.  From the French Revolution to the American Revolution, from Martin Luther pinning a note on a church door to Martin Luther King Jr. leading a march on Washington D.C., from the literature and art of The Age of Enlightenment to the Cinema Verite movement of the 1970’s, whenever the controlling forces in our culture overreach or come to scorn the very public they claim to serve, that public will rise up in an overthrow and the outcome will be cultural progress.

 
Mr. Keen, the cheese has moved. You are welcome to join the cheese in its new location or to seek out new cheese on your own, but it’s pointless to keep demanding that all the people you think are beneath you bring the cheese back to you, because they are all quite happy with the cheese in its current location and you haven’t done anything to earn their affection or respect. Your whining diatribe of a book may be very popular among your peers in the media elite however; you might be able to launch a cheese-finding expedition with them, were it not for the fact that they have no idea how the cheese got away either, and like you, are not terribly welcome in the monkey house.

Overcoming Writer's Block

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“You just can’t get there from here.”

How many times have you heard that direction-giving joke? But often that line describes a type of writer’s block. You’ve written up to a certain point. You know where you want to go up ahead. But what do you write in between? Personally, I have wasted hours, days, even weeks, trying to figure out what to write next, so I can get to that future scene I already have in my head.

But wait. Who says you have to write in a linear fashion? What if you write out of sequence? Aha! Now, you’ve given yourself permission to write the scene from your head and it flows wonderfully. Another Aha! Questions and solutions actually appear about how the character might have arrived here from there. You’re not stuck any more.

As a writing instructor once explained, to build a bridge, one first needs to erect a scaffold. It’s not a lot different in writing. You have several important scaffold scenes in your story or novel that have to take place (there will probably be more than one of each of these scenes in your book):

  1. The Introductory Scene where the reader meets your main character.  
     
  2. A Meeting Scene, where the main character meets another character (maybe the love interest or maybe his nemesis) This is another form of Introductory Scene.  
     
  3. A Conflict Scene where two characters battle it out, whether physically, verbally, or in a match of wits. Or where the character battles himself.  
     
  4. A Realization Scene—the moment the character realizes something about herself that is a turning point. Or realizes her “enemy” is really her friend.  
     
  5. A Resolution Scene, where a problem is resolved (not necessarily the main one, but a problem nonetheless).  
     
  6. A Final Scene, which may or may not be your actual ending. An interesting exercise is to write a scene in which your main character(s) are old and looking back at what happened, what he/she/they learned, how they’ve changed, what they would’ve done differently, etc. That can give you an insight to “fill in the blanks.”  
     

Another interesting exercise is to write a letter from your main character to yourself, as if this person has just learned you are writing a book about her, how she feels about that, any advice she might have for you, etc. This can be quite revealing. Sometimes you learn that you have a reluctant character, one who doesn’t want her story told. So you have to figure out how to win her over.

A recent article in The Writer magazine talked about writing out of order. The author made similar suggestions to the ones above, such as:

  1. Write a scene in which the main character enters a new place.
     
  2. Take a minor character you’ve introduced and write a scene where he/she appears later in the story.
     
  3. Choose a character other than the main character—someone you’d like to know more about, and write a monologue in which she explores or explains herself.
     
  4. Write a scene where your main character has a dream that advances the story.
     
  5. Make a list of at least five crucial scenes that you think will be important for the story/novel (see “scaffold scenes above.)
     

Any one or all of these scenes may or may not appear in your final draft, but they will help you keep writing and develop ideas.

Have fun, write on and defeat that Writer’s Block! (Now, I just have to take my own advice.) 

Who Is Grady Harp? Amazon's Top Reviewers And The Fate Of The Literary Amateur.

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This article, by Garth Risk Hallberg, was originally posted at Slate on January 22, 2008, but is no less revelent to the world of Amazon reviews today.

Full disclosure: It was late at night, in a fit of furtive self-Googling, that I discovered the first Amazon customer review of my debut book of fiction. "Superb," wrote Grady Harp of Los Angeles. "Fascinating … addictive." Not to mention "profound." Such extravagance should have aroused suspicion, but I was too busy basking in the glow of a five-star rave to worry about the finer points of Harp’s style. Sure, he’d spelled my name wrong, but hadn’t he also judged me "a sensitive observer of human foibles"? Only when I noticed the "Top 10 Reviewer" tag did I wonder whether Grady Harp was more than just a satisfied customer.

After a brief e-mail exchange, my publicist confirmed that she’d solicited Grady Harp’s review.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I had imagined Amazon’s customer reviews as a refuge from the machinations of the publishing industry: "an intelligent and articulate conversation … conducted by a group of disinterested, disembodied spirits," as James Marcus, a former editor at the company, wrote in his memoir, Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.Com Juggernaut. Indeed, with customers unseating salaried employees like Marcus as the company’s leading content producers, Amazon had been hailed as a harbinger of "Web 2.0"—an ideal realm where user-generated consensus trumps the bankrupt pieties of experts. As I explored the murky understory of Amazon’s reviewer rankings, however, I came to see the real Web 2.0 as a tangle of hidden agendas—one in which the disinterested amateur may be an endangered species.

On the surface, Grady Harp seems just the sort of enlightened consumer who might lead us out of Web 1.0’s darkness. A 66-year-old gallerist, retired surgeon, and poet, he has reviewed over 3,500 books, CDs, and movies for Amazon. In turn, he has attained a kind of celebrity: a No. 7 ranking; a prominent profile on the Web site; and, apparently, a following. In the week after his endorsement of my work appeared, more than 100 readers clicked on a button that said, "I found this review helpful." His stated mission is to remain "ever on the lookout for the new and promising geniuses of tomorrow." At present, Dr. Harp’s vigil runs to about 500,000 words—a critical corpus to rival Dr. Johnson’s—and his reviews are clearly the product of a single, effusive sensibility. Jose Saramago’s Blindness is "A Searing, Mesmerizing Journey" (five stars); The Queer Men’s Erotic Art Workshop’s Dirty Little Drawings, "A Surprisingly Rich Treasure Trove" (five stars).

Absent the institutional standards that govern (however notionally) professional journalists, Web 2.0 stakes its credibility on the transparency of users’ motives and their freedom from top-down interference. Amazon, for example, describes its Top Reviewers as "clear-eyed critics [who] provide their fellow shoppers with helpful, honest, tell-it-like-it-is product information." But beneath the just-us-folks rhetoric lurks an unresolved tension between transparency and opacity; in this respect, Amazon exemplifies the ambiguities of Web 2.0. The Top 10 List promises interactivity—"How do I become a Top Reviewer?"—yet Amazon guards its rankings algorithms closely.

A spokeswoman for the company would explain only that a reviewer’s standing is based on the number of votes labeling a review "helpful," rather than on the raw number of books reviewed by any one person. The Top Reviewers are those who give "the most trusted feedback," she told me, echoing the copy on the web site.

Read the rest of the article on Slate, here.

Publishing Industry – Change or be Damned?

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This article, by Mick Rooney, was originally posted on his POD, Self Publishing and Independent Publishing blog on 10/10/08.

 

Over the past month, there has been considerable debate about the current state and future of the publishing industry across the internet on writer’s forums and blogsites. Some of the discussion was sparked by Boris Kachka’s recent article in the New York Magazine.

A lot of the criticism of Kachka’s article seems to centre on his depressing analysis expressed from speaking with industry insiders about the current predicament in publishing across the globe. One of the key quotes he uses in his article is from statistician, Philip Roth;

“…there were at most 120,000 serious readers—those who read every night—and that the number was dropping by half every decade.”

Many avid readers will naturally disagree with the Roth quote, and, in fact, I also disagree, but with this caveat. There are perhaps more people reading now, than at any point in the history of mankind. It is time that the publishing industry started to more accurately look at ‘what’ is being read, and more to the point, ‘where’ and ‘how’ it is being read.

Let me digress for just a while before returning to Mr. Roth’s quote.

I think before we can access what state the publishing industry is in right now, we must first look at where it has been and the reasons why it has reached such a pivotal and directionless state. It is not surprising that the industry, like many, has pedalled along and mirrored the rises and falls in the standard of living and economic recessions.

Let us not forget that some of us still living can remember when competent literacy was not always the accepted given that it is now. Let us also not forget that the vast amount of information we take in on a day to day basis is through the written word. Whether that is reading the morning newspaper; the billboards and road signs on the way to work in the car or train; opening our work emails; reading countless memos, reports; studying the lunchtime menu in the cafeteria; browsing the evening newspapers; the recipe for our dinner in the evening; our favourite websites and blogsites; not to mention the countless text messages we receive every day on our mobiles; right to the very point when we fall into bed with the latest bedtime read; they all confront us as part of everyday life.

The fact is, day in, day out, we are reading to overload point. Much of it may be seen as a chore, and some of it may be seen as pleasure. True, pleasurable reading, whether it is Barbara Cartland or James Joyce, Raol Dahl or Stephen Hawkins, will always have the common denominator of shared experience and the identification of a writer to his true reader, and the reader to their favourite writer.

You cannot accurately define the relationship of author/reader in any theoretical form or publishing model. This is even beyond the best publisher’s entrepreneur or even the greatest and most entertaining of writers, because it is fluid, ethereal, and constantly affected by public trends and the personal moods of mankind.

This is not to say that the publishing industry cannot set itself up in a way that gives it the best chance of flourishing, rather than floundering aimlessly amid its printed words and marketing blurbs.

I do not think it is a coincidence that the industry inherently began to seriously change in the economic recession of the 1980’s. The book publishing world followed the mark of the newspaper empires of Murdock and Maxwell, where a handful of media companies controlled the entire national world newsprint output. Throughout the 1980’s, large commercial publishers consumed smaller commercial and independent publishers. We watched large publishers dance around like politicians, desperate to tell us all how different they were from each other, yet, all the while, the centre stage became evermore crowded and the publishing model they used became steadily narrower.

The following are the reasons why I believe the publishing industry has reached its current state of being.
 

Read the rest of the article at Mick Rooney’s POD, Self Publishing and Independent Publishing blog.

Why Can't A Woman Write The Great American Novel?

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This book review, by Laura Miller, was originally posted on Salon.com today.

Every few years, someone counts up the titles covered in the New York Times Book Review and the short fiction published in the New Yorker, as well as the bylines and literary works reviewed in such highbrow journals as Harper’s and the New York Review of Books, and observes that the male names outnumber the female by about 2 to 1. This situation is lamentable, as everyone but a handful of embittered cranks seems to agree, but it’s not clear that anyone ever does anything about it. The bestseller lists, though less intellectually exalted, tend to break down more evenly along gender lines; between J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer alone, the distaff side is more than holding its own in terms of revenue. But when it comes to respect, are women writers getting short shrift?

The question is horribly fraught, and has been since the 1970s. Ten years ago, in a much-argued-about essay for Harper’s, the novelist and critic Francine Prose accused the literary establishment — dispensers of prestigious prizes and reviews — of continuing to read women’s fiction with "the usual prejudices and preconceptions," even if most of them have learned not to admit as much publicly. Two years before that, Jane Smiley, also writing in Harper’s, alleged that "Huckleberry Finn" is overvalued as a cultural monument while "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" is undervalued, largely because of the genders of the novels’ respective authors; the claim triggered a deluge of letters in protest. Alongside the idea that women writers have been unjustly neglected, there has blossomed the suspicion that some of them have recently become unduly celebrated — an aesthetic variation on the conservative shibboleth of affirmative action run amok.

Onto this mine-studded terrain and with impressive aplomb, strides Elaine Showalter, literary scholar and professor emerita at Princeton. Showalter has fought in the trenches of this particular war for over 30 years, beginning with her groundbreaking 1978 study, "A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists From Brontë to Lessing," and culminating in her monumental new book, "A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers From Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx." Billed as "the first comprehensive history of American women writers from 1650 to 2000," "A Jury of Her Peers" has to negotiate the treacherous battlefield between the still-widespread, if fustian insistence on reverence for Great Writers and the pixelated theorizing of poststructuralists hellbent on overturning the very notion of "greatness."

Showalter is certainly the woman for the job. One of the founders of feminist literary criticism, she has also written about television for People magazine and confessed her penchant for fashion in Vogue. Unquestionably erudite, she has always striven to communicate with nonacademic readers, and her prose is clear, cogent and frequently clever. She has insisted that themes central to women’s lives — marriage, motherhood, the tension between family and individual aspirations — constitute subject matter as "serious" and significant as traditionally masculine motifs like war and travel. Yet she rejects the preference of many feminist literary scholars for emphasizing "culture importance rather than aesthetic distinction," and she doesn’t hesitate to describe some of the writers discussed in "A Jury of Her Peers" as artistically limited, if historically interesting.

Read the rest of this article at Salon.

From Little Ventures Small Wonders Emerge

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This piece was originally posted on The Age on 1/24/09.

If you want to publish stylish and unique books, you don’t have to be a big concern, writes Simon Caterson.

IF SMALL is beautiful, as the economist E. F. Schumacher asserted, then Melbourne may boast of having a micro-publishing scene that is very attractive. Dozens of tiny publishers are producing everything from handmade recipe books, fiction and poetry to popular non-fiction and even book-like objects that defy classification.

According to the publishers, the diversity and eclecticism are just the points. Micro-publishing, they say, is all about the freedom to publish anything you want, whenever you want, in any form you like. There are as many different approaches to micro-publishing as there are publishers themselves, though the freedom gained via low overheads and small print runs does not exclude the possibility of producing books that appeal to a wide range of readers.

At the more entrepreneurial end of the micro-publishing spectrum is Arcade Publications, which has identified a gap in the market for short, inexpensive, carefully designed books covering aspects of Melbourne’s hitherto unexplored history.

Arcade made its publishing debut in 2007 with Lisa Lang’s pocket-sized biography of eccentric millionaire and philanthropist E. W. Cole and its next book, due in March, is about the equally colourful figure of Madame Brussels, the notorious brothel-keeper who accommodated the rich and powerful during the era of Marvellous Melbourne.

Arcade’s Rose Michael says that "the whole enterprise is a very close-knit ‘familial’ affair", which means that publishing decisions can be made quickly and that each person involved has a say in all aspects of the publishing process.

"Having worked in larger companies, you have so many decisions made by committee, and things are owned by so many different areas. In micro-publishing, you are able to just kind of do stuff around an island bench."

For Michael and her business partners, Dale Campisi and Michael Brady, publishing is just one aspect of the firm’s expanding operations. Arcade also produces walking tours with Hidden Secrets Tours, including the popular Melbourne by the Book walking tour of literary Melbourne.

Campisi regards literary events and communication as complementing one another. "We all love a good event, and the purpose of our public activities is mostly about creating community around our publishing output. Storytelling is not a solitary activity."

 

Read the second half of the article here.

Shout Out From Canada

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Hello from the still mostly frozen north!

 

I’ve long been a firm believer in the successful future of indie publishing, and as a writer on the verge of taking the leap, this certainly seems to be the place for me.

 

Now, off to read and learn.

Vive le self-publishing!