Chasya Milgrom sees the new Kindle

Well, the wait is over. This morning, after months of buzzing and anticipation, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos introduced the new Kindle 2.0 at the Morgan Library & Museum here in New York. Techno bloggers the country over got their answer as to what the new Kindle will feature. (There is now a feature called Whispersync. I’m not entirely sure what the point of it is, but I’ll admit I like the sound of it.)

My own feelings about ebooks in general are mixed. We here use Sony readers to read manuscripts (and sometimes books). Rather than schlepping hundreds and hundreds of pages around in tote bags like in the old days (ok, it was just last year), we have a slim lightweight contraption no bigger than a half sheet of paper and no thicker than a Hershey bar. This is insanely and remarkably convenient for those in the publishing industry, but I’ve been wondering how many readers will happily spend a couple of hundred dollars on a similar device. As it turns out…a lot. The Kindle has done well, selling 500,000 units in the past year. The Kindle 2.0 is expected to do $1.2 billion dollars in sales.

All this has me a bit perplexed. You see, for me, when it comes to reading published books, I can’t help reaching for the real thing. I love to flip through the pages and scan the book; to hold it in my hands. The feel of it is part of the experience. I like to watch as the pages go by. I was talking to a friend and he agreed. He also made the interesting point that especially with mysteries and thrillers, part of the excitement of the book comes from seeing the page count get lower and lower because you know you’re nearing the end and the answer is finally coming. It all makes for a broader experience.

From the looks of it, ebooks are only going to become more popular, especially now that selections are getting larger and larger. Books that are published are now automatically published simultaneously in ebook form. We’ve all heard detractors forecasting the death of the printed book before. As for me, I hope that never happens, because despite the ease of carrying hundreds of pages in the palm of my hand, nothing feels as good as the weight of a book.

Then again, as long as people are reading, I'm certainly not complaining!

Language as virtual reality

Some of us bookworms already knew this, but interesting stuff nonetheless.

-- Miriam

Inspiration

Knowing that our books are inspiring readers makes it all worth it.

His life will soon resemble one of his novels

Oh, Stephen King.  I both admire and fear for you.  Be sure to read the comments!

- Michael

Why Michael Bourret loves Twitter

My officemates think I’m nuts. For the past few months, I’ve been (to greater or lesser degrees) addicted to Twitter. For those of you not in the know, Twitter is a microblogging site that allows users to post 140-character messages (the same length as a text message) for others to read. It’s pretty simple. I’m not the most prolific tweeter. Others are much more dedicated to posting. And, it’s those people who make Twitter such an important part of my day.

As my life become more hectic, I find it harder to stay on top of fast-breaking news. With all the reading and emailing, I find that I’m only visiting my RSS reader and favorite news sites a couple of times a day. But Twitter is always open, and the people I follow are always posting interesting things, like links to news articles or new blogs. More importantly, I found out more breaking news on the Mumbai attacks and the US Airways accident on Twitter than anywhere else – including an amazing photo of the plane rescue unfolding from Janis Krums, who took a picture with his iPhone (another obsession of mine, but I digress). While there can be a lot bad information to wade through, it’s worth it for me to have up-to-the-second reporting on current events.

It’s also a great, fun way to network with other publishing folk. When I was looking for a writer for a project, I sent out a message to the Twitterverse, and my authors and even other agents re-tweeted my original message. I wound up with several leads in just a few minutes. Even a self-professed Twitter-geek like myself was impressed. I also have fun learning what my authors are up to, whether it’s revising their novel or writing 140-character movie reviews. And, I like being able to share with my followers (that’s what they’re called – I’m not that narcissistic!) what I’m up to and thinking about, whether it’s the Time article on the future of publishing (so right, but also so wrong) or my bran muffin obsession. (I’m noticing an obsession trend here.) It’s a fast and easy way to keep in touch, and I recommend that authors at least give it a shot. It can be a great way to reach out to other authors, publishing folk and even fans.

You can find me at http://twitter.com/michaelbourret. But I’m not the only agent or publishing pro on Twitter. Editor Unleashed has a good, but not definitive, list here. Many of our clients are on Twitter, and it would be great if they would add their info in the comments.

And if you join, be sure to send me a Tweet!

Jane Dystel on "The Role of the Collaborator"

It would seem to me that in this economic climate, being a collaborator, especially when a writer isn’t working on his/her own book or articles, is the way to go. In the past months, though, I have increasingly found that people who say they want to collaborate don’t understand what their role is.

The most important thing the collaborator must do is support the person he or she is collaborating with. If the collaborator is working with someone as a writer (and that person is the celebrity or expert whose name will sell the book) then the collaborator needs to understand that s/he is not the main author. In many instances s/he won’t sign a publishing agreement; his/her role is a supporting one in every way.

I have found that collaborators can often forget what their roles are meant to be. They want the same decision-making power in terms of copy, design and even cover approval that the author has; sometimes they even want to receive greater than a 50% share of proceeds which, in my mind, is just wrong and indicates that the person making such a request really doesn’t understand his/her role.

Last year I had the experience of a collaborator actually trying to convince her partner, the Author, to break a contract -- something which was totally against the Author’s best interest. The collaborator had simply forgotten her role.

And I have experienced a collaborator actually asking for 60% of a project when the project would not exist but for the Author. Again, a mistake on the part of the collaborator.

These things are unfortunate, in my opinion, because collaborators can achieve great success both financially and professionally if they have a good track record with those they work with and with editors. I have had many wonderful experiences with collaborations and I am hoping to have many more. But the best collaborators know when to set aside their egos and focus on making the project (and a smooth writing process) the priority.

Jessica Papin on "Vampires, New Years Resolutions, and Works in Translation"

One of my favorite moments of the 2008 holiday season took place in a local bookstore: it was shortly before closing, and as I waited for a clerk to check to see if a title I wanted was in stock, I watched her weary looking colleague at work constructing a Stephanie Meyer ziggurat. Red and black and several feet high, built in alternating layers of Twilight titles, it was a marvel of retail engineering.

“Wow,” I said, “that’s quite a tower.”

“Yes, she said—and they’ll sell out, too.”

“Every,” She placed a book. “Single,” she aligned another at a precise right angle. “One.” She surveyed her handiwork, then turned to me.

“God bless the vampires,” she said. “They saved Christmas.”

Further to the holiday theme, and in the spirit of New Year/New You releases, gym solicitations, my inaugural entry and that other Inauguration to come, I thought I might take as my subject New Year’s resolutions. Which, for most folks, are well on their way toward being forgotten. This need not be the case. My technique for cleaving to my resolutions is two-fold: make as few as possible—ideally only one—and then be certain it is a pleasure to accomplish.

That said, my resolution is as follows: to read more fiction in translation.

Funnily, works in translation are—by virtue of being foreign—considered about as suited to the mainstream American reader as a macrobiotic diet to fans of Texas Barbeque. Yet (with apologies to macrobiotic gourmands) there is nothing especially virtuous, seaweed-like, or indigestible about reading Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red, Haruki Murakami’s Wind Up Bird Chronicle, or Naguib Mahfouz’s Miramar.

I had always been interested in international literature, but while working as an editor in a predominantly commercial house, and then later representing overwhelmingly American clients, I’d not devoted much thought to the role of contemporary fiction in translation. This changed when I left to work for the American University in Cairo Press. For all intents and purposes, I was still agenting—albeit in a part of the world where literary agents don’t exist. Thus, whether I said I was an “agent” (what sort of agent?) or that I dealt in “International Rights” (surely international human rights?) few people seemed to have any idea what I did. Nevertheless, if the truth of my occupation was neither as clandestine nor as noble as my acquaintances imagined, selling a list of modern Arabic fiction to publishers in the U.S. and around the world was certainly fascinating. Both the nature of my work and its location, in Cairo—far from the epicenter of American publishing both in distance and outlook—were focused on the book business beyond the USA. It was an eye opening experience, not least because it became acutely obvious that the global world of letters is one in which my own country participates precious little.

Only three percent of the books published in the US are translations from other languages (and as it happened, only one percent of those were from Arabic;). To be sure, houses face no shortage of barriers to publishing translations; the expense of commissioning a translation, which is a cost above and beyond the advance, the fact that the author is probably unknown and possibly unable to promote in the US. In this, the age in which the ideal author is not only a fine writer but an articulate and persuasive promoter with a rolodex of media connections—language barriers, as well as sheer physical distance, can be especially problematic. Few trade publishers are willing or able to take on so potentially unrewarding a task. Indeed, in many cases it has fallen to small independent and university presses, whose print runs are small and expectations of profit modest (or nonexistent) to pick up the slack. They provide an invaluable service, but receive limited media coverage, and reinforce the idea that these books are somehow academic exercises, fit for the Ivory Tower and little else.

True, we are a big country, internally diverse and externally uninterested. It could be that we heeded too well the exhortations of the transcendentalists, those brilliant, bewhiskered granddaddies of American letters, who urged us to develop a literature uniquely our own. In his influential address, The American Scholar, Emerson complained that we have “listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe.” These days, few European muses, courtly or otherwise, get a hearing, let alone those from other continents. Some people posit that there are so many people writing in English that we need not look beyond our linguistic borders. This of all possibilities seems most absurd—indeed as pointless as deciding that “American cuisine” is sufficiently robust that we need never eat foreign foods. Indeed, reading literature in translation is perhaps as onerous as dipping into a subtly spiced curry, or a baklava sticky with syrup. Neither tastes like mac’n cheese or apple pie, but they are no less delicious.

Which is to say that my less-than-ambitious but happily anticipated resolution to up my intake of fiction in translation is as easily honored as my plan to return to the Persian restaurant whose albaloo pollo convinced me that cherries and chicken is a match made in heaven. As to what books are on my to-read list, I already have some ideas: Roberto Bolano’s 2666 is this season’s undisputed choice for Serious Readers of Serious Books, and I am curious to read his work. But I’m also interested in the books that have not been so anointed—and for that, I’ll have a look at Words without Borders and Three Percent, two wonderful on-line publications devoted to works in translation.

I’m also happy to hear reader recommendations.

And who knows: Perhaps next year, some weary bookseller will bless translators as the saviors of Christmas.

Miriam Goderich blogs on blogs

I’m not much for New Year’s resolutions but I think I need to address a problem that has started to get out of hand. I’ve been in denial about it but I think it’s time to face the issue head on. I’m addicted to blogs and they’re taking over all of my reading time.

It all started innocently enough. My friend Jim Donahue’s The Velvet Blog was as wryly funny as he himself is and I started checking in on his random musings regularly. He started TVB in June of 2004 before the blogging craze became the internet equivalent of Chia pets and rubber bracelets, but something about the seeming spontaneity of the format and the feeling that you’re privy to someone’s intimate thought process hooked me – after all, doesn’t the best fiction (and some narrative nonfiction) achieve that same effect?

Soon, however, the bug had spread and exhibitionist writers everywhere took to the Internet in droves. Agents and publishers got clued in and all of a sudden there were big book deals for everything from Stuff White People Like to our own Daily Coyote (based on the eponymous blog) and A Homemade Life. It was quickly obvious that blogging was not only here to stay but potentially a great source of untapped writing talent.

But then, the whole thing started to become institutionalized and fun sites like Daily Candy and Boing Boing became part of the media establishment. So now, aside from my print magazine habit, I started collecting blog bookmarks by the dozen justifying my addiction by telling myself that it was my business to be “ in the know.” There was PerezHilton (no, I’m not proud of it), Politico, The Onion, Gawker and all its spawn, Slate, Salon, etc. During the feverish election season, there was 23/6 (for comic relief), The Huffington Post, and Tina Brown’s heavy on flash, low on substance The Daily Beast, and, well, too many to list. Problem is that one link leads you to another and, well, a person could spend all day going from one site to another, down endless, exhausting pathways.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not giving up my blogs. We’ve found too many great authors by sending a fan letter in response to a particularly strong post or neat concept. But, I do have to rein it in before I find myself in a 12-step program for blog abusers. Otherwise, my reading piles will get dusty and yellow while I follow the saga of the lady who lost all her money to Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme or lose myself in the possible designs of Michelle Obama’s inaugural gown on Mrs. O. Losing weight? No problem. Cutting back on the cocktails? Okay. Giving up the blogs? This could take willpower.

What are your favorite blogs and are they taking over your life too?

(And, btw, what’s the correct usage for blog titles, do you italicize as you do titles of full-length publications?)

Lauren Abramo tells you what to buy!

If, like me, you’re a chronic procrastinator, you may not have bought all your holiday gifts yet! You’re in luck, because if you’re a writer, there couldn’t be a better time to support your own industry—particularly since books are a pretty affordable alternative to a lot of the pricier items we might not be getting this year (make-your-own Muppet, I’m looking at you.).

But that leaves the question of what to buy? After all, it’s not spending money in bookstores that’s the hard part for most writers, it’s buying not the book that you want, but the book that the recipient wants. Just a bit trickier! (In the interests of full disclosure, yeah, some of the below are represented by us, but I recommend them because they’re great and not because they’re ours! Promise.)

If you’re just looking for a really good read to share, see Jim’s previous entry—he read so many books this year, there’s bound to be something perfect in there. But what do you buy for…

Your critique partner or favorite beta reader? Of course, you probably know this person’s taste in narrative pretty well, so Jim’s entry would be a big help. But if you can never keep up with what your favorite reader already has on the shelf at home, try this new illustrated edition of my favorite grammar book or a relatively new fun and accessible addition to the category. If your friend doesn’t get excited about punctuation and subject-verb agreement, try preparing him or her for a successful career with one of the newer tools of the author’s trade, a guide to blogging from the folks at the Huffington Post.

Mentoring boss or devoted employee? Books make an excellent gift for a person who you maybe don’t know so well or for someone who you want to feel appreciated. Especially in these difficult times, it can’t hurt to let each other know we’re glad to still be working in one another’s company! Those with a head for business may appreciate some extra insight into how our minds work, how others’ planning works, how we decide what we buy, or how our financial industry got where it is. And those with no business sense but an excellent sense of humor might like some inspiration for telling a colleague how they really feel about them personally or the mess they left in the breakroom.

Cat lover or dog’s best friend? If you love cats and you love books, how could you not love the combination to be found in Vicki Myron’s Dewey—and with the runaway success and the news that Meryl Streep will be playing the lead in the movie, they may not have time to wait on the list at the local library! Of course the reigning king of dog books this Christmas is probably going to be Marley & Me, between the unbelievable success of the book to begin with and the movie coming out on Christmas day. If they’ve already got the original, there’s always the seasonally appropriate follow up. But if those choices are too obvious or their shelves are nowhere near so far behind, why not think outside the cat/dog paradigm and go for a coyote: Shreve Stockton’s The Daily Coyote (represented by our own Stacey Glick) just hit stores, and it should definitely appeal to the animal lovers on your list!

Twilight obsessed teen or sensitive realist? Has the teen in your life already devoured all that Stephanie Meyer has to offer? In that case (and hey, even if it’s not the case!), our own Richelle Mead for the YA crowd and Heather Brewer for the middle graders are excellent choices. Sick of vampires? Not to worry, Lisa McMann’s got you covered. And if the paranormal thing’s not doing it, look no further than Sara Zarr!

Politics junkie or history buff? Any politics junkie probably OD’d on coverage not long ago, but soon they’ll be in need of a new fix. If your friends and loved ones are full of hope and optimism these days (or were on November 5^th, at any rate!) but they haven’t yet read Dreams from My Father, it doesn’t disappoint. But if you’re sure they’re already ahead of the game, why not help them follow the lead of our leader-to-be and check out Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals? That not their style (or side of the aisle)? The New York Times: The Complete Front Pages: 1851-2008 (except, it seems, November and December of this year) is sure to offer plenty of information to peruse and pour over, not to mention a fascinating time capsule. And for a funnier take on political and historical life, try anything by Sarah Vowell.

Babies or the (very) young at heart? While How the Grinch Stole Christmas will always be my favorite Christmas classic, no baby could ever go wrong with the work of Mo Willems at any time of year. Whether you’re preventing pigeons from driving a bus or tracking down a dearly missed Knuffle Bunny, no contemporary childhood is complete without these fun new friends. Whether for your own kid or someone else’s, the work of Mo Willems is a treat worth reading and re-reading—if the baby’s not old enough to thank you, his or her parents’ certainly will!

Nerds, dorks, or the irrepressibly curious? There’s a breed of books that is varied in subject that I like to think of as everything you’ve never known you needed to know. This is the sort of book that I put on my holiday wish list, and if you know someone who gets as lost in Wikipedia as I do (seriously, never send me a link to there—I’ll never get out), they’ll be happy to check these out. What would happen to the world if we disappeared? What happens to our bodies after we die? What were my high school science teachers trying to explain to me? Is there really enough to write about walking for there to be a whole book on it? And what the hell is going on in John Hodgman’s brain?

Do you have a favorite book that makes a great gift? Let us (and your fellow shoppers know) in the comments!

Jim McCarthy lets you know that agents do read...for fun!

A lot of people ask me how I ended up in publishing. The answer is kind of simple: I tripped into it. I needed an internship during college so I applied to about 40 places. Stacey Glick was the first person to call me back. Voila!

The more important question, of course, is why I stayed. Another relatively simple answer: I love books. How trite is that? But it’s true…

I’ve said before (probably on this blog) that most people end up working in publishing simply because they’re readers, plain and simple. It’s certainly not about fame and fortune, two things that (on an industry level at least) are not in abundant supply.

Agenting is a reading intensive job. We receive over 2,000 queries a month and dozens of manuscripts cross our desks at a regular clip. But there is a difference between work-reading and pleasure-reading. When I read for work, I’m looking for editorial inconsistencies, thinking about marketability, categorizing and re-categorizing in my head, and trying to identify the audience. When I read for pleasure, I can let those issues go and focus on a book as its own entity focusing on my own personal response. They’re different types of reading, but I’ve always felt that they only enhance each other.

Some people seem surprised that I read a book a week (roughly) for myself. But I’ve never been sure how I could do my job if I didn’t. If I was all critical eye, it seems that I would start to objectify books. But if I read only for personal gratification, I’d…well, I’d be really bad at my job.

What do I read for pleasure? Well, let’s take a look at my reading list for 2008 to date (of course I keep a list!). These are the books I read exclusively for pleasure. I haven’t included anything by my own clients or other clients at the agency, anything I read in order to understand a market better, or anything that I disliked enough to stop reading before I was finished. One book only made it on here because I was on a plane and hadn’t packed alternatives…grumble.

LATER, AT THE BAR by Rebecca Barry

This was a charming little novel about the lives of a bunch of regulars at a small town bar. It didn’t blow me away, but it was an auspicious debut.

THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO by Junot Diaz

What DID blow me away was this book. Junot Diaz does so many things in this novel that I find annoying (interspersing another language to give a novel flavor and liberal use of footnotes were the two most obvious), but the thing is—he’s just so damn good. I would have hated this book because of his stylistic choices if it was anything less than brilliant. It wasn’t. Bravo.

THE SPELLMAN FILES by Lisa Lutz

What a fun mystery novel this one was. The first few pages felt a little gimmicky, but once she got going, Lutz won me over with some seriously charming characters and an abundance of wit.

REMAINDER by Tom McCarthy

No relation. That said, I’m tempted to call him Uncle Tom just because it’s wrong. The book? It will totally mess with your mind. I mean that as a compliment.

BEASTS OF NO NATION by Uzodinma Iweala

I had originally intended to read this book after I had finished WHAT IS THE WHAT, another novel about the Lost Boys of the Sudan, but I decided to take an emotional break before getting back to the subject. Good thing. This book is devastating.

RUNNING WILD by J.G. Ballard

J.G. Ballard is a super-prolific though perhaps not extremely successful author; I read about one of his books a year because they’re all engaging, even when they’re not all that successful. Like this one.

THE ALIENIST by Caleb Carr

I know, I know. Everyone else read this ten years ago and fell in love with it then. Understandably. It’s a fabulous historical thriller. Though for me (and I know some would have me crucified for saying this), THE INTERPRETATION OF MURDER did the same sort of thing more successfully.

THE SOMNAMBULIST by Jonathan Barnes

Another weirdo little book, this one. It’s a historical thriller by way of urban fantasy with a healthy dose of British comedy and one of the most surprising narrators I’ve ever encountered. I didn’t love the book, but Barnes is certainly one to watch.

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh

I’m still working through 1,001 BOOKS YOU MUST READ BEFORE YOU DIE (and likely will be until, well…y’know). It was such a delight to dive into this novel. And now I really want to go check out the miniseries!

THE SUMMER OF NAKED SWIM PARTIES by Jessica Anya Blau

Have you ever read something perfectly pleasant right after you read something brilliant and just felt distressingly underwhelmed? It’s not your fault, Jessica. Sorry.

DISGRACE by J.M. Coetzee

Crikey! No wonder this guy won the Nobel. I started and stopped this novel twice before committing to it. The beginning feels a little familiar (an affair between a professor and his student again? Really?), but he takes it where I least expected and does so brilliantly. You’ll notice Coetzee pop up more below. He got me!

REASONS TO LIVE by Amy Hempel

I know I should love this book as many people have raved to me about how extraordinary Hempel’s short stories are. Well, I can’t love everything.

WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS by J. M. Coetzee

He does it again! Fascinating to go from a relatively recent novel by an author back to something from a long while back. Allegory is possibly the toughest thing to pull off, but he does it!

THE CRYING OF LOT 49 by Thomas Pynchon

No comprende! No comprende! Okay, I actually enjoyed reading this even if it was an incredibly tough little book that kept turning in on itself and revealing new aspects of what it was. Ask me in a year whether I liked it. I’ll still be trying to figure it out.

BEL-AMI by Guy de Maupassant

Here’s one that I never would have picked up minus my “must read” book of books. So glad I did. It felt a bit derivative, certainly, but it was such a charming, entertaining novel if not outstanding.

THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES by Tom Wolfe

So much fun! I took this book everywhere and was reading on the subway, in elevators, waiting for lunch dates, and (one clumsy afternoon) walking down the street. Ignorning anything else, Wolfe is a damned fine storyteller and this was super-involving.

THE 39 STEPS by John Buchan

Buchan is long gone, so can I just admit that I hated this book? I finished it because it was short. That is the only reason.

NIGHTS IN ARUBA by Andrew Holleran

Holleran wrote two of my favorite novels, GRIEF and DANCER FROM THE DANCE. The first chapter of this one was brilliant. I hate to admit that after that, he lost me.

UNACCUSTOMED EARTH by Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri is just an amazing writer of short stories. I actually didn’t love her novel, but this book and INTERPRETER OF MALADIES are just stunning.

ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Russians are seriously bleak. This novel depressed the heck out of me, but like all great literature, it ended with a sliver of hope. It was just such a small sliver!

GENERATION LOSS by Elizabeth Hand

This dark novel set in the Maine wilderness made me want to run out and take photographs and talk to strangers. It did not, unfortunately, make me want to read more of the novelist’s work.

GOODBYE, COLUMBUS by Philip Roth

Philip Roth makes me stupidly happy. Going back and reading his first book was an enormous treat, not because it’s the greatest thing he has done, but because it allowed a peek at the seeds of a genius that would present itself later.

ATTACK OF THE THEATER PEOPLE by Marc Acito

Marc Acito made me snarfle a Diet Coke on the subway. The bubbles hurt my nose. I have forgiven him for that pain because he was damn funny enough to make me snarfle in the first place.

SLOW MAN by J. M. Coetzee

Ever start reading a book, get halfway through, and then have the rug pulled out from under you? Then get knocked over, rolled up in the rug, and left for trash collectors? Yeah…this book gave me the weirds.

THE TORRENTS OF SPRING by Ivan Turgenev

Even the happy Russians are tragic and sad. This reminded me a bit of MADAME BOVARY stylistically. It’s not as good, but hey, what is?

THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE by Dave Wroblewski

Note to self: don’t read Oprah book club picks any more. Ever.

THE WHITE TIGER by Aravind Adiga

Note to self: DO read Booker Prize winning fiction. Holy moses, this book knocked my socks off. I’m going to put it in a two way tie for my favorite book of the year. Immediately upon finishing it, I handed it off to someone else to read. There have been some negative reviews recent that state that Adiga somehow failed to bring the entirety of India to realistic life. As though that would have been the point. Or possible. I don’t care what anyone says, this book is brilliant. Violent, amoral, hysterical, disturbing, fresh, thrilling. I could go on for far too long.

THE PIANO TEACHER by Elfriede Jelinek

Sigh. It’s so hard to know what I think about this book because I saw the movie first. And it became one of my favorite movies. And while I’m inclined to say that the novel is superb (as it likely is), I feel like I need to re-read it before I really know what I think about it.

LITTLE KINGDOMS by Steven Millhauser

This blog entry seemed like a much better idea when this list was single-spaced. This is a collection of novellas, one of which I loved, one of which I hated, and one of which fell in the middle. It’s worth it for the first of the three.

GILEAD by Marilynne Robinson

My second pick for favorite book of the year. I didn’t expect to relate too much to a seventy-something pastor in Iowa at the turn of the last century. That didn’t even begin to matter. Robinson took my breath away. The depth of her characters humanity, the fullness of her understanding, and the astonishing beauty of her simple, straightforward writing were captivating. I loved this book. I can’t wait to jump into her next, HOME.

THE MONSTERS OF TEMPLETON by Lauren Groff

What a fun book! It has monsters, murder, adultery, drug addicts, ghosts, and a charmingly screwed up heroine mapping out her very complicated family history. A blast to read even if I have some quibbles about certain choices.

A MERCY by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison is a goddess. That is all.

WORKING STIFF by Grant Stoddard

Some people can make sex boring. Moving right along…

HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND ALIENATE PEOPLE by Toby Young

Heh. I still chuckle even thinking about this book, which I read at the beginning of last year. Toby Young is a nutjob, but he’s also hilariously self-aware. I think his memoir is most interesting if you care about NY media. And I do.

INTO THE WILD by Jon Krakauer

Here’s a book that didn’t suffer at all from my having watched the movie first. Jon Krakauer can pretty much do no wrong. This is superbly researched, wonderfully written, thoughtful investigative journalism. But everyone else already read it and knew that, it seems. Sometimes I’m late to the game!

THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY by Jean-Dominique Bauby

A memoir dictated by the one blinking eyelid the author had that was the only part of him not paralyzed. Reading it felt like having someone pressing weight against my chest. Absolutely devastating but so richly inspiring without being saccharine.

AUDITION by Barbara Walters

I already blogged about this. I love me some Baba Wawa.

BEAUTIFUL BOY by David Sheff

Some memoirs… Well, some authors should… Maybe if David Sheff weren’t… Ummm…a lot of other people liked this. Moving on…

DANDY IN THE UNDERWORLD by Sebastian Horsley

Ugh. Maybe it was memoir fatigue. Moving on again…

WHEN WE ARE ENGULFED IN FLAMES by David Sedaris

Whee! When you’re David Sedaris, your lesser efforts are still a joy and wonder to read. So congrats to him on this fabulous lesser effort.

PSYCHE IN A DRESS by Francesca Lia Block

Okay, so this book was sold as YA, and I spent most of my time reading it cross-referencing Greek gods on Wikipedia. So either teens are way more knowledgeable about this stuff than I realized or this might have been poorly categorized. That said? Breathtaking.

ECSTASIA by Francesca Lia Block

I found this one in a remainder bin at a used bookstore and dove right back into Block’s writing with wonder. She is so. So. Good.

THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins

When I first heard about this novel, which is about a group of teens forced to battle to the death on live television, I thought it sounded horribly derivative of such movies as Series 7 and Battle Royale. I also couldn’t understand how it would work as a young adult novel. Finally, I broke down and bought it. Color me impressed. If aspects of the story are familiar (and they are), it’s entirely besides the point. Collins throws inhibitions to the wayside and tackles a ferocious plot with verve and talent to spare.

LOOKING FOR ALASKA by John Green

The first half of this young adult novel is stellar. It went off the rails for me slightly in the second half, but I didn’t especially mind. I was still tremendously moved and impressed by Green’s work.

LIVING DEAD GIRL by Elizabeth Scott

Ever rush through a book to get past how painful it is? I’m not talking bad painful. I’m talking novel about a teenage sex slave painful. Yeeouch.

THE ALCOHOLIC by Jonathan Ames

I’m determined to learn more about graphic novels, so I’ve picked a few up to find out more about the market. This is the first time I sought one out just out of the desire to read it. I’ve already shared it with friends. A quick read, it’s also amazingly honest and open, deeply tragic, and laugh-out loud funny. If this is what graphic novels have to offer, it’s no wonder they’re doing so well right now.

It has been a really good year! I’ve read some amazing books, worked through some more of my must-read list, and discovered some new authors who I’ll follow in the future. With a few weeks left to go, I’m about halfway through THE BLIND ASSASSIN by Margaret Atwood, am overly excited about Carrie Fisher’s upcoming WISHFUL DRINKING, and (as ever) am prepared to push aside whole piles of to-be-read books if something astonishing catches my eye.

I’m also prepared for my next entry on this blog to be much shorter than this one!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Chasya Milgrom on why we rejected Moby Dick

We really enjoy reading the responses we get to our blog posts and finding out what our readers have to say about our ruminations and rambling on everything from book cover design to the state of the current market. These comments can also be excellent jumping-off points or topics that might be of interest the rest of our readers.

For instance, a couple of weeks ago, Miriam waxed romantic about the lack of sweeping, escapist fare in today’s book market; books that would allow us to get our collective minds off an awful economy and other goings-on in the world.

One of our readers responded, making the point that in today’s market a novel the length of Gone with the Wind or The Thorn Birds would get rejected immediately for being too long. The truth is we do consider submissions of various lengths including those that have a heftier word count, because, at the end of the day, a compelling novel is a compelling novel. Witness the most buzzed about debut this fall, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. At upwards of 560 pages, this doorstop of a book surpasses your average page count. Despite that, it has been an enormous success, and as Stacey pointed out last week, it was a bestseller way before Oprah got her hands on it. People were moved by the story and bought the book in droves. Another example that instantly comes to mind is Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke, a 624 page tome which came out last year and shot up the bestseller lists. Our own Jacqueline Carey’s first novel Kushiel’s Dart comes in at 695 pages. Her most recent book in the series, Kushiels’ Mercy, is no slouch at 650 pages.

We absolutely crave the sorts of stories that grab hold of us whether they take 250 or 500 pages to tell. We would be remiss in tossing something aside simply because of its length. One of my own personal favorite books, Wally Lamb’s I Know This Much Is True comes in at a staggering 928 pages. I’ve read this one a few times and still get that sad feeling as I near the end.

Along similar lines, another reader pointed out an interesting practice – mock submissions, in which cheeky authors take the first ten pages of a classic and send it off to an agent and then wait for their form rejection to come in the mail. The implication here is that a) agents are idiots who often don’t know that what they are looking at is a classic piece of literature and b) agents wouldn’t know a good piece of fiction even if it was staring them in the face.

We aren’t going to lie. A couple of years ago one of our agents rejected Moby Dick (yup, you heard me). The agent admitted this to me freely. Thing about that is, this agent also pointed out that he hated Melville and absolutely loathed Moby Dick. So, just because the book is a classic, does not mean we are going to change our minds about liking it or not. And just because a form rejection comes in the mail, doesn’t necessarily mean that the agent does not know what is being rejected. Often the agent does recognize the work and sees it for what it is, a prank, and sends a form rejection as a courtesy response.

Yes, ultimately agents are business people. We have to take on what we think will sell, and something that sold in 1851 probably isn’t going to top the charts in 2008. Let’s face it, the whaling industry is not really booming in this day and age, and one must take into consideration that classics are born of a specific age and place. In order to be successful, we do need to address what contemporary readers want to read. And perhaps if we’re very, very lucky, we can have the opportunity to represent a modern day classic.

Stacey Glick asks, "Will Books Survive and Thrive?"

There’s a lot of talk everywhere these days about the doomed economy and what it means for all businesses, large and small. No doubt the climate is grim, and people are worried. There have been discussions within the confines of book publishing that speak to all sides of the issue, and reports that book publishing is “recession-proof” given the relatively low price point for books and the fact that people are staying home more, and looking for inexpensive alternatives to entertain themselves. The holiday season will soon show if people will be buying more books, and less of other things, but we are all hoping for good news.

But what about outside of the consumer level – agents selling books and publishers buying them? Will there be a slowdown there, will publishers be buying fewer books and spending less money on them? That debate has been going on through the years and continues through this downward economic cycle with great concern from authors, agents, editors and publishers alike. But really, midlist and backlist books at the big houses have taken a back seat to front list titles for years already, so that’s not really new news. So far, the market seems to be cautiously conservative in some ways and grandiose and lavish in others with a mixed bag of returns. For every gloom and doom story out there, there’s another that’s equally as uplifting and encouraging.

Doubleday just announced a number of layoffs in part because of disappointments like paying over $1 million for Andrew Davidson’s first novel, The Gargolye, and recent reports like New York Magazine’s article by Boris Kachka about the end of publishing as we know it continue to spread pessimism about the future of books (see Michael Bourret’s blog from September 30). But there are still success stories both large and small that make us optimistic about the future of books. All of the recent press about a literary first novel The Story of Edgar Sawtelle which has sold well over 500K copies in hardcover at 576 pages is by anyone’s standards a huge hit, and would have been even before it was picked as an Oprah book. And what about the amazing little Randy Pausch book, The Last Lecture, which Hyperion spent mightily on in the hopes it might become another Tuesdays with Morrie, and it’s actually worked on that scale, resulting in a very happy publisher, not to mention a wonderful, lasting legacy for the author’s family. Then there’s Dewey, another big ticket item from Grand Central which they paid seven figures for and has been hovering near the top of the New York Times bestseller list the last few weeks reminding all of us that animal books are still working (I’m keeping my fingers crossed that my upcoming The Daily Coyote by Shreve Stockton, which is getting very nice advance notices and response will follow the lead). And there are smaller success stories too. Like Michael Bourret’s children’s book, I Love You Through and Through by Bernadette Rossetti-Shustak, that Scholastic paid a tiny advance for and it’s sold over a million copies.

So while there will always be disappointments and books that publishers paid too much for, they seem to keep spending aggressively on the books that their staffs and p&l statements say will break out as a “big” book and continue to make money for everyone for years to come. So far, we don’t really see that changing, and we all continue to search high and low for that next great book, the one that we can fall in love with, and that hopefully can make us all lots of money, too, whether the advance is seven figures, or just a small fraction of that.

Miriam Goderich wants to be swept away

So, I’ve been trying to come up with blog topics and feeling really uninspired. All I seem able to focus on these days is how far the stock market will tumble before mining equipment needs to be used to bring it back up and how much the media is ruining our political process (along with politicians who don’t seem to think it’s necessary to know anything about, well, anything before they decide they want to lead the free world). Problem for us in the publishing business is that everyone else is obsessing about the same things and as far as I can tell, we don’t have the book equivalent of Dancing with the Stars to take our minds off the harsh realities we’re faced with.

We need a new The Bridges of Madison County (never thought I’d say that!), a new The Thorn Birds or, for those of us who remember the ‘80s, a new Hollywood Wives to provide thoroughly escapist water cooler talk and the impetus to turn off CNN and be transported by great (if cheesy and farfetched) storytelling out of our everyday reality. Edgar Sawtelle just isn’t doing it for me, frankly.

My point is that it’s been a while since the whole country was talking about (and actually enjoying) a book that was not canonized by Oprah, written by James Patterson, or featured a vampire. Good yarns with big romance, big conflicts, and lots of cliffhangers are certainly not unheard of on the bestseller lists, but the kind of superlative trashy fiction that got people talking, created trends, and provided hours of mindless, titillating escapism is in short supply these days. Everything is put into a category – YA, mystery/thriller, paranormal, literary, etc. – and it often seems that readers are increasingly putting themselves into categories as well.

The beauty of those wonderful escapist novels (Gone with the Wind, anyone?) is that everyone read them regardless of whether they were considered “women’s” or “historical” or “commercial” fiction, everyone talked about them, and despite their literary shortcomings, they changed the publishing landscape. A look at the bestseller lists right now features a little of everything but nothing for everyone. Am I crazy or do you all agree? What great trashy fiction do you wish we were all reading again?

Lauren Abramo on books remembered

Not long ago I had a conversation with an author at a writer’s conference about the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, which I mention in my essay on our website were much beloved by me as a child. In spite of her otherwise completely sensible attitude, this woman had the nerve to suggest that Farmer Boy was a valuable part of the series, rather than just a distraction to be skipped over. I was distressed to discover my mother also counted it as a favorite. That I could be related to one so foolish is simply shocking!

A month or so later, I attended a baby shower at which fantastic books—including Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs; Caps for Sale; and The Giving Tree—were put in baskets as centerpieces. The baby-to-be also received two Dr. Seuss collections, featuring some star-bellied Sneetches; poor little Bart Cubbins; and a pair of stubborn Zaks, who I believed as a child had stopped in their tracks near Yankee Stadium, where you can find the sort of circular ramp-like roads that the story’s final illustration shows built above their heads.

These events set me off thinking of remembered treasures from childhood, including Jerry Spinelli’s Maniac Magee which I borrowed from the classroom library of the fifth graders I tutored my freshman year of college, just to see if the magic had held up. It had.

Another book that made a huge impression was Katherine Paterson’s Jacob Have I Loved, which even as a kid I recognized was heartbreaking, powerful stuff. The title often pops into my mind out of nowhere, but it’s only just now that I realized that it was written by the same author as the phenomenal Bridge to Terabithia. The latter is one of my all-time favorite books, which prompted me and my friend Meredith to create our own secret world.

Then there was Little Women, which took me a long time to come around on. I was so angered when Jo spurned Laurie and ended up with the old German guy, and then to make matters worse, Laurie pretended to love the insufferable Amy. I used to hate the book (and Louisa May Alcott for ruining it), but in retrospect, I’ve decided that I love the book except for the minor issue of the abysmal ending. When I last re-read, I just stopped reading at the point where everything goes downhill. That said, if any of my friends or family members disagree that things went horribly awry, then I don’t want to know about it, because I’d hate to have to cut them out of my life.

I also couldn’t get enough of Lurlene McDaniel’s various tales of terminally ill children coming to grips with life and loss. I finished reading a particularly heartbreaking one at field day in the sixth grade and cried through the end as the friends who’d already read it gathered around to rehash it. A similar book, though even more sad for being a true story, was Robyn’s Book: A True Diary by a young woman named Robyn Miller who died from cystic fibrosis at 21. It saddens me to discover that this appears to now be out of print, but I’m glad to have stumbled across a secondhand copy of it in my early teens.

And just as my mind began to wander from these memories, guess whose name keeps coming up! Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret taught me what a period was before that 5^th grade girls-only puberty lecture got around to it. Deenie made me realize that posture was important and helped me remember to sit up straight.

And then there’s Forever. In the sixth grade, a friend sat in the cafeteria reading a book covered in brown paper, so naturally I harassed her till she told me what it was and promised to let me borrow it. (I can’t help wondering if that sort of secrecy about reading risqué books is a relic of the past, now that so many young girls are reading the “aspirational” tales of the Gossip Girl crowd.) I also clearly remember a year later sharing the “dirtiest” parts of the book (did it take me a year to work up the courage?) with a bunch of friends who hadn’t read it. Oh how we laughed! And yet, the book made an impression, and I think secretly everyone read it after I did and didn’t laugh quite so hard on their own. Years later, when I worked at Barnes & Noble, concerned fathers would come into the store looking for copies for their daughters, asking in hushed tones if it was age appropriate.

If it hadn’t been for books like the above, I probably wouldn’t love reading as I do today, so I owe some big thank yous to all of the above. (Even Louisa, but don’t get me started on what she did to poor Beth!)

Which books do you remember from childhood that made a lasting impression? Are there books that you use as a test to see if someone’s really worth knowing? And most important, are any of you among those loathsome folks who actually like the ending of Little Women? On second thought, don’t answer that last one!

Michael Bourret talks Doom and Gloom

There’s an awful lot of negativity going around. Wall Street is suffering through a financial crisis heretofore unimaginable, the elections seems to be more about lipstick, pitbulls and insults than about real issues, and New York magazine says that publishing as we know it is dead.

It’s pretty easy to get caught up in all of the drama. The economic news is distressing. The whole election cycle has been difficult to watch. And then I was told that publishing had come to an end. Well, crap. Honestly, the headline was more doom-and-gloomy than the article’s actual content. Much of the information it contained was already available, but the piece brought it together quite nicely. And it was interesting to hear what publishing vets think about the changes we’re going through as an industry. It’s funny – we have this election that’s all about change, supposedly, and people are really excited about it. “Washington is broken, change it!” With publishing, we all know the system is broken, but everyone seems afraid of changing it. And, I don’t think it’s simply because people are afraid of losing their jobs.

Change is inherently frightening, especially in a business as old and conservative as publishing. Publishers discovered the web long after most industries, because they didn’t see a way to monetize it. I often worry that we’ll end up like the music industry, focusing on bogus issues (piracy) while the real issues (distribution) are ignored. So it heartens me that experiments like Vanguard Press and Bob Miller’s Harper Studio seem to be getting people’s attention. Both look to turn the publishing relationship into more of a partnership in which the publisher and author take shared responsibility for a book’s success. In their model, either no advance or a smallish advance is paid against a much higher royalty (their 20% - 25% instead of 15%). Risk is then assumed by both the author and publisher, but the reward for the author, should the book succeed, is much higher. Authors in these sorts of deals are expected to come to the table with a much larger platform, however, making this situation ideal for previous bestsellers and celebrities.

But beyond the publishing-as-partnership ideas, we need to fix the system of returns that is the bane of the industry; we need to figure out ebooks, including how to distribute, price and market them; and we need to look at how we can compete in a media saturated world. It’s not like I know the answers to these questions, but it’s a good sign that we’re talking about them.

There are more changes to come in publishing, and I refuse to be depressed about them. In fact, I look forward to being around to take the challenges head-on and to figure out, with unbelievably smart, creative and talented industry colleagues, how to bring publishing into the future.