The Collage of Books and Life

Groundhog Day

Naomi — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:47:00 -1200

I've decided to blog eight times a year, on the days that traditionally mark the changing seasons: Groundhog Day, Vernal Equinox, May Day, Summer Solstice, Lammas, Autumnal Equinox, All Saint's Day and Winter Solstice.

If you want more, then please tell me.

Today I'm sticking my nose out into 2012, and predicting that the book marketing power attributed to social media will plateau this year. Has your agent been yacking to you about getting on Twitter or starting a Facebook page? The truth is, neither suggestion will hurt you. But guess what? it's not going to make or break your book either.

Remember the email newsletter craze from seven or eight years ago? We learned that when everyone has an e-newsletter, no one has an e-newsletter ... because there are so many that no one opens them anymore. When everyone has a "cool new video" on Facebook, no one will look at yours — they'll be too busy looking at all their friends'. Of course some videos may yet "go viral." At least, after the 2012 election. Of course, if your book is ABOUT the 2012 election, go for all publicity channels and make hay while that sun shines.

For whatever it's worth, my twitchy groundhog nose is smelling the coffee, not the kool aid. If you want to sell a book there's nothing like: 1. writing a really good one, copyedits and all; 2. believing in it, sharing it, transferring your excitement; 3. hiring a respectable publicist and getting media reviews; 4. getting TV spots and radio interviews from same publicist; 5. getting good Amazon and B&N reviews; 6. getting into libraries through services like Overdrive and Early Word; and if you've been able to do that — why not share it on social media? It can only help you.

Just make sure there's something worth helping to begin with ...

Wishing for Books

Naomi — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:55:00 -1200

At Book Expo in 2011, I learned several surprizing facts: recent BISG stats revealed that indie bookstores are faring better than large chains in the US; literary fiction is making a come-back, while adult non-fiction struggles. And, refugees from Darfur who live in camps in Eastern Chad wish for books. This last revelation didn't come from BISG, but from a gracious, petite woman I met at another seminar. Afterwards, we found ourselves heading to the cafeteria for one of the Javitz Center's over-priced sandwiches, speaking about the organization that she and her son founded, The Book Wish Foundation. Their mission is to build libraries in Chad's 12 refugees camps.

"I've never thought of refugees wanting books," I told her. "I imagine that their lives would revolve around food and medicine." But I've never been to such a camp, and Lorraine has. She told me that, for many refugees, books represent education and the means to a better life, as well as an opportunity to heal and grow, to imagine, to be entertained. It then occured to me that my own childhood was filled with stories and books, and my life would have been unthinkably different without them. I suspect the same is true for anyone reading this blog.

I immediately offered to send books to the camps. Lorraine thanked me, but told me that such shipments are typically intercepted by the government in these African states. Books must be accessible from within the country's borders.

In order to help Book Wish raise funds to build libraries, the Penguin Young Readers Group just published an anthology of short stories and poems by renowned, bestselling writers. What You Wish For: A Book for Darfur weaves stories and poems with photographs from the camps, blending many dreams and wishes into one rich volume.

On Monday evening, October 17, Books of Wonder in New York will host a signing at which seven of these authors will read. This event is free and open to the public. Come by if you can and if not, check out this incredible book whenever possible. Buy it as a gift that keeps giving, as each purchase benefits the literacy and education of Darfuris. The stories, by writers like Joyce Carol Oates, Meg Cabot, and Ann M. Martin, and the poems, drawings and photographs keep giving, too.

Lots About Whit Hill

Naomi — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 04:06:00 -1200

Not About Madonna: My Little Pre-Icon Roommate and Other Memoirs by Whit Hill makes good on the title’s promise. The beautifully written memoir made me laugh and cry. It held my interest and made me think twice — or more. And, along the way, Whit presented a more real, likeable and vulnerable aspect of Madonna than we tend to see in media.

Back "in the day" Whit — or Anne, as I knew her — was one of the ‘perfect’ girls in 4^th and 5^th grade: she was upbeat, mature, resilient (“not in math,” she now claims) while I was the “artist” and jester. Our P.S. 59 class reconnected on Facebook decades later. I had no idea that a wonderful and unique book was going to come of it. Please check it out and let us know your response, on this blog or on our Facebook page for Not About Madonna. I promise it will be time well spent.

Make Way for Harold

Naomi — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 16:44:00 -1200

“Maybe we’ll merge with (smarter–than-human intelligences) to become super-intelligent cyborgs, using computers to extend our intellectual abilities the same way that cars and planes extend our physical abilities...”

— Lev Grossman, 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal, Time Magazine (Feb. 21, 2011)

“Who would have imagined that the computer … could fly a plane and guide a missile before it could ride a bike? … As computers have mastered rarified domains once thought to be uniquely human, they simultaneously have failed to master the ground-floor basics of the human experience: spatial orientation, object recognition, natural language, adaptive goal-setting…”

— Brian Christian, Mind vs. Machine, The Atlantic Monthly (March 2011)

“With all due respect, Hare, you’re a sent. Not my doctor, or my wife, or my mommy!” — Jake Anderson, Harold the House

In the last months, magazines like Time and The Atlantic Monthly have featured cover stories about artificial intelligence.

These articles explore a turning point in human history in which A I figures even more prominently that it does already — a turning point that many contend we are quickly approaching. What might such a time portend, what are its implications? Will the “human era” end, as Lev Grossman ponders, or might humanity assert itself yet more compellingly, as Brian Christian suggests?

Author Jake Anderson envisions a future when A I lords over our homes and private desires. I was not only gob-smacked by this astonishing (and plausible) tale, but I felt Harold the House should be illustrated and presented as a serialized graphic novel. And I knew just the person to bring it to life: Angela Bocage, friend of my youth and underground comic artist extraordinaire.

The next step is for you, gentle reader, to weigh in. Please use this blog to post any comments about the world that you see unfolding in this hot bot drama. Would you be as "chummy" with Harold as our hero Mark? How many years in the future do you think this story is set?

Helping Stories to Unfold

Naomi — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 16:53:00 -1200

My commitment is to story-telling, however it happens.

I'm sitting here leafing through bound galleys of one of our forthcoming books.

Even in these electronic times we hold fast to bound galleys, or uncorrected page proofs.

We circulate them (often in spiral binding) to people who've agreed to read the manuscript months before it's published, and perhaps review or endorse it.

That's how we garner comments on the back covers or first pages of a book.

I'm set to hand-deliver our galleys to a well-known personage who kindly agreed to read this zesty memoir that you'll hear more about soon.

But first, I call a literary agent with whom I'm working on another project — selling a timely medical self-help manuscript about statin drugs.

My agent mentions the Borders bankruptcy debacle, quoting that Borders now owes publishers 141 million — or something outrageous like that.

As if our fragile industry needs another hit!

Still, I trot to midtown on this blessedly warm day, deliver bound galleys into welcoming hands and then head over to a production studio.

We've just taped two Shakespeare plays for a special project that combines words and images, and will be announced soon.

I sit with the director and my co-producer, who's managing the splices with an expert in Avid.

Watching colorful actors on screen, I think of typed words in the bound galleys I just handed over.

I think of all the ways to convey stories and sequences.

This is my passion, why I've stuck with this crazy publishing industry, even as it founders and sputters.

There's almost nothing so thrilling as helping a story to unfold.

Blogging: Pros and Cons

Naomi — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 13:20:00 -1200

Thanks to the intriguing personaes who've seen fit to comment here!

You might be interested to know that I've been mildly scolded for expressing a "negative opinion about blogging" in my last post. An anti-opinion.

I'll take the occasion to clarify, and express the 'pro' side of this coin: I often find blogs about current events quite useful — when they're written by those who know what they're talking about, and have something to say.

Blogs barometer the moment more immediately than any book could.

Books have a built in lag time, since they need editing and development and even eBooks must be manufactured. Print books require the additional time of shipment and distribution, to say the least for being marketed in a catalog and promoted in stores by a sales force.

Time works to potentially enrich a book, but the race to provide time-sensitive information effectively is on.

And who wins? The short, pointed blog that answers to the moment — or the more extensively researched book?

As I've written before on this blog, it's a good time in the history of information dissemination to avail ourselves of simultaneity ... and perhaps not expect an apple to taste like an orange.

Last Blog Entry of the Year

Naomi — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 14:40:00 -1200

An apology to anyone who's actually read these posts and wondered why there aren't more.

I seem to have divined genuine commentary from among the bots and strippers, and thank you!

While I'm a devoted writer, editor and publisher, I'm not much of a blogger.

I find myself popping onto various blogs and reading under-the-radar opinions that are occasionally insightful, but confess to a preference for vetted and edited material.

And I confess to being more interested in shaping books than in this uncertain act of blogging.

I've been advised to do it more often and more succinctly than I have this year — it is the Omega 3 Fish Oil of social media publicity — and will take this recommendation to heart in 2011.

Still, I'm wary of people in our industry who blog too often. It's worth knowing whether they actually are doing their jobs.

Vook of the Month: Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin

Naomi — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 04:53:00 -1200

“If your idea spreads, most everything else is going to take care of itself.”

—Seth Godin, Unleashing the Super Ideavirus

1. When Is a Cigar Just a Cigar?

And when is it a brand, or an idea — in the Seth Godin sense of idea, per Unleashing the Super Ideavirus, the vook that derived from his 2001 bestseller Unleashing the Ideavirus? An idea, in this sense, can be a complex formulation argued in a book, or it might be a new technology, a song, or even a vegetable peeler. Godin declares, “When you first see the OXO Peeler, you instantly understand the idea behind it. You just know it will work better and cut you less often. If you’ve ever peeled a vegetable, you want an OXO.” Yet, improving upon existing products and technologies has been part of human life for centuries. Godin poses the key question of our times, using his infectious disease analogy: “Is the OXO going to get viral?” And herein lies his critical contribution — a new model of marketing, based on respect for consumers.

2. Your Mouth IS The Money

According to Godin, there’s little need to put our money where our mouth is these days … because our mouths are fast becoming “the money.”

Or our noses are —which is to say, if we’re a “promiscuous sneezer” or a “powerful sneezer.”

This vook clarifies such terms and others, like “vacuums,” “hives,” “velocity” and “smoothness,” with which Godin illuminates his new approach to advertising. He doesn’t leave us at sea with those concepts, but applies them directly to case histories of businesses from Gmail, Twitter, and Starbucks to Martha Stewart, Mary Kay, Audi, and 3M Post-Its — many others.

Such references are a valuable part of his ideavirus argument. They are brought to life in the vook with video interviews of innovative CEOs and company founders.

3. “It is a good divine that follows his own instructions…”

In one of the vook’s 18 videos, Godin states that he fully intends to take his own advice.

He advocates a willingness to not only sell an idea, but to live it with integrity. “If your boss says, ‘Just go market it,’ it may be time to get a new job,” he suggests.

And true to his spirit, Unleashing the Super Ideavirus is its own case in point. Over the last decade this idea has leapt from being a Word attachment, offered gratis over email, to being the most downloaded ebook in history, to being an Amazon bestseller in print — and now, to being a vook, which can be heard and watched as well as read — a full expression of the “wow, zing and magic” of our times.

If you want proof that the medium is the message … don’t miss Unleashing the Super Ideavirus.

Doing It Ourselves

Naomi — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 10:40:00 -1200

"Publishers provide a huge resource to authors who don't know who reads their books," said Mr. Godin in an interview. "What the Internet has done for me, and a lot of others, is enable me to know my readers." — Seth Godin, "Author to Bypass Publisher for Fans," Wall Street Journal, August 24, 2010

In a recent Wall Street Journal article Seth Godin was quoted, proclaiming his intentions to forego publication with Penguin and sell his forthcoming books directly to his follower base.

For anyone who has either published or tried to get a manuscript published, Godin’s indomitable spirit strikes a raw nerve. Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, author of this article, writes: “One of (Godin’s) many concerns about the current publishing market is that the process often takes 12 months or more to get a new title into the hands of his readers.”

Indeed, this concern pertains especially to time-sensitive material.

Another concern is the conceits of literary agents and acquisition editors.

J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, for example — an outstanding bestseller — was initially rejected by 12 publishers. Meanwhile, numerous books that are less popular are returned to warehouses by the hundreds and eventually destroyed.

This thick-headedness on the part of publishing decision-makers inspired writers before Seth Godin, like Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Rudyard Kipling, Anais Nin, Benjamin Franklin, T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Leo Tolstoi and other literary giants to publish their own works … in times when self-publishing was far more costly and difficult than it is today.

Yet another concern is an author’s ROI. Seth Godin probably would command a substantial advance from his publisher. But Godin must perceive greater earning opportunities from the self-publishing and self-marketing that he now plans.

Will other top-selling and midlist authors follow his lead? Few of them probably have Godin’s interest and expertise in marketing. So I would guess that some might, while most will prefer to remain with their publishing houses.

Perhaps the greatest loss to corporate publishing will be fresh voices — of every age group — who are weary of the wasted time and skewed, derisive opinions exacted by inept literary agents and publishers. It wouldn’t surprise me if the most talented and passionate writers wiped those obstacles from their paths and carried on in Godin’s footsteps

Publishing: A World of Simultaneity

Naomi — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 05:49:00 -1200

“… nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.”

—James Baldwin

And nothing is more imponderable, once we sense it, than eternity.

As a child learning about the universe, I gripped my mother’s arm and said, “Forever never stops!”

Our lives are finite, but life is infinite.

A popular way to resolve this tension is to create false “end times,” when the world as we know it will “come to an end” — and “forever” will stop. The latest of these fads is 2012, but other “ends of the world” have included 30 C.E., 1000, 1843, 1844, 1914, 1919 and 2000.

Since these promises of apocalypse have yet to be fulfilled (and I personally wouldn’t hold my breath) the next best way to “kill eternity” is through fad and fashion: “THIS style,” people declare, “Is over.”

Modernism is “over; “ even post-modernism is “over.”

Yet, people pay huge sums of money to acquire art of the modernist era, and students continue to read and love modernist literature.

When Apple introduced its first model in the mid 1980s, the artsy hoi polloi cried: “Painting is dead!”

Yet everyone I know either owns an original painting or a poster reproduction of one.

In the early 2000s the music industry arguably transformed. But still, my teenage nephews love the Beatles as I did.

The latest death cry has come from our own industry, publishing.

A pretentious ex of mine declared: “Soon every book will be an executable file!”

Two weeks later, I attended Book Expo and saw miles of paper books displayed.

Last week, best-selling author Seth Godin wrote in The Wall Street Journal about his plans to produce and market books directly for his readers. And yesterday, the New York Times weighed in on the presumed battle between ebooks and paper books.

To me, such avowals don’t foretell the end of paper books and traditional publishing so much as the introduction of choice and simultaneity.

Perhaps my prognosis is less dramatic than “Book Publishing Apocalypse Now.”

In the blog posts that follow I will explore the more subtle and perhaps likely implications of these changes in our industry.