ENCYCLOPEDIA HANASIANA

UPDATE: 5 e-book sites anecdotally compared

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:15:35 -0500

It's been seven weeks since I first posted my unscientific findings about various e-book sites, gleaned from two and a half years of distributing Single. Now I have some updates, caveats, and one new experiment to relate. As mentioned before, I've been looking into this in order to determine where to release my new e-book, Cassingle, on November 16. It might also be useful to anyone else who is trying to choose among various sites when distributing their own work.

First of all, Single hasn't generated many additional downloads on Manybooks or Wattpad in the last seven weeks. Wattpad had more, with 33 views (not downloads), so these two are out of the trials for good. Scribd, meanwhile, remains an odd animal. Its community is huge and if you put things there, people will see them. Single has tallied another 150 views in the last seven weeks, but I still think the best use of Scribd--for my purposes anyway--is as a public archive of freelance clips.

That leaves Feedbooks, Bookglutton, and Smashwords--a new (to me) contender. Single continues to rack up about 50 downloads a week on Feedbooks, certainly the fastest rate of any site I've used. Bookglutton, meanwhile, has delivered about 8 "viewloads" a week since then. I also found out from Travis Alber at Bookglutton that the book has been downloaded via the Stanza e-book reader 529 times, which brings the site's total to 1348, close to Feedbooks' total but over more time. Feedbooks has been averaging 170 downloads per month, and is accelerating, while Bookglutton has been averaging 100 or so per month, and has been slowing--in part because a recent redesign has given less prominence to the featured author section where my book is housed.

After my last round-up appeared, I also got a note from Mark Coker at Smashwords, who observed that I'd left his site off my unscientific list. I was aware of Smashwords, but I hadn't gotten around to giving it a try. So, to give it at least a limited trial before making my decision about where to release Cassingle, I uploaded Single there last week. Ten days later, it's been downloaded 25 times. Not a bad start, but I'll have to see more to choose Smashwords over Feedbooks for the current project. (It's worth noting that, while still very small, these numbers are astonishing compared to the non-activity Single was getting just a few years ago. If we are still in the single-digit days of e-book adoption, how steep this curve could get in the next five years is cause for excitement.)

So let's make it official. I will release Cassingle--a collection of five stories that previously appeared in Fence, McSweeney's, and elsewhere--on Feedbooks on Monday, November 16. I'll also be blogging about the stories behind the stories, and I've got a fun collaboration planned with my friend James at Workbench Recordings. Stay tuned. (And if for some reason you'd like a copy a week or so in advance so you can write something about it, drop me a line.)

No NaNoWriMo for You Know Who

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 08:10:06 -0500

I resisted getting into writing for as long as I could. Literature, in particular, wasn't of interest to me until it became a tool of procrastination in graduate school, when reading fiction became a way of avoiding other work.

Much earlier than that, I practically broke my mother's heart when she presented me with a copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and I asked how long it would take me to read it. Evidently I had missed the point.

To this day, my writing is marred by such impatience. Having worked for a few handfuls of publications, I know that there are two kinds of writers: Those who turn pieces in long and those who turn pieces in short. I am of the latter type to such a degree that I find it difficult to imagine the look and feel inside the minds of the former. Are they gripped by such a flood of inspiration that they just keep running and running--like Forrest Gump--far past the finish line? I have no idea what that's like. Writing has always been tortuous for me--and thus I've sought to keep my exposure to it to a minimum, despite the fact that I've been paid to do little else for the past 15 years.

I can vividly remember the horror of writing assignments when I was a kid. The weekend would arrive with a sense of doom and desperation. I would plan to get started on Saturday, but of course this would not happen. I would watch MTV until the videos started repeating and I would feel sick to my stomach. After dinner, I promised myself, I would become a whirling ninja of productivity and churn this baby out like a daisy wheel printer. But then we'd go over to my aunt's and Love Boat would come on, then Fantasy Island, then Saturday Night Live. Then, ah well, tomorrow is another day.

Sunday morning: Bad sickness. Scheming sets in. Maybe I can get an extension. Maybe I can call-in sick tomorrow, or maybe I could just disappear. Not leave or die, just poof--cease to exist. I still get this feeling sometimes, and I always think of a line from "The Reflex" by Duran Duran.

Don't want to be around when this gets out.

Imagine Simon Le Bon wearing a majorette costume in your mind. That's what the fear of writing looks like to me.

Terrifying.

So while I wish you all luck during National Novel Writing Month, I'm afraid I won't be joining you. Simon just won't let me.

Don DeLillo's Last Day

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:11:24 -0500

You always hear that Don DeLillo worked in advertising before he became a writer, but you never hear if he was any good at it--or about what happened on his last day. Did he give the appropriate notice? Did the office manager circulate a card in a manila envelope with "For Don DeLillo" written on the tab, and if so, what was the title of the highest ranking company official who signed it?

What did they write?

Was there an exit interview during which Don DeLillo explained how the emptiness of consumer culture--which he had just been promoting earlier that day--would inform his future work? Could we see that, please?

Was there an awkward send-off party in the office kitchen? How many people were there? Was Don DeLillo embarassed? Was there cake? Cupcakes? Whiskey? (This was a very long time ago.) Did they go out for drinks after Don DeLillo's last day in advertising? What did Don DeLillo order?

What did he do when he got home? And the next day? Did he sleep in? And the day afer that?

I ask only because I guess we'd like to think that Don DeLillo was either phenomenally good at writing advertising (at Ogilvy & Mather, for Sears) or incredibly bad at it, but for virtuous reasons. He was too good and too smart for advertising. He could see right through it.

But what if we was just plain bad at it, and not in an interesting way? Imagine that his copy was--far from being too subtle, complex, or clever--was too clumsy, jokey, and broad. Not ironically or due to any lack of interest. Imagine, if you will, that despite the persistent and earnest application of whatever creative talents Don DeLillo possessed, he was the corniest, schlockiest copywriter in the history of advertising.

How would that make you feel about Don DeLillo? About the nature of talent?

Explain.

Christian and Me

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 08:42:41 -0500

For those of you who couldn't make it to the latest installment of Adult Education—either because of time or geography—here is a re-creation of my talk, "Christian and Me," in which I consider the respective fortunes of myself and my astrological twin Christian Slater. You can also view my previous lectures, "You Are Not Going to be Famous" and "On Metatourism."

Christian and Me from Jim Hanas on Vimeo.

A Brunch Date with Hate

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 13:18:04 -0500

When I first heard that the wingnuts from the Westboro Baptist Church--the "God Hates Fags" people--were going to be picketing a synagogue in our neighborhood, I assumed it was because they thought it would be where they would meet with the most confrontation. After going to the counter-rally this morning, however, I think they chose Park Slope because they knew it would produce the most user-generated content.

The iPhones and camcorders were out in force at 9:45 to oppose and record the anemic demonstration, which consisted of 20 signs but only five souls. Shirley Phelps-Roper, seen here (ironically) on the far left, was decked out with her usual "wings" of signage. I would say the protestors were outnumbered by videobloggers by at least five to one. (Guilty: Here are a few clips of video I shot with my phone. Alexandra shot the pics.) The counter-rally, all in, consisted of several hundred people--and at least one dog (above).

I know you're supposed to ignore these people. Not even Fox News likes them, since they also like to protest at soliders' funerals, claiming that God is killing our troops because we're soft on gays. But it was six blocks away, and it's hard to beat the feeling that we always say that on the left. Ignore them and they'll go away. It's also hard to beat the feeling that, whether Fox News likes them or not, these Westboro wingnuts are just an expression of the right wing's ugly id. People who compare Obama to Hitler are on a continuum with these people, and so are the folks who take guns to town halls. (You could make the case, on the other hand, that WBC and their ilk are just distractions, drawing the left's attention away from more moderate and viable threats--but in the current over-heated political environment, why take a chance.)

This was the rabbi's message, basically, when he came out and addressed the crowd--silencing the demonstrators, whose presence was suddenly and completely ignored: if we can come together for this, we should come together for other things, too. Say what you want about extremists, they show up. They show up at the polls and at election commissions and at town hall meetings. I don't show up that often--but then six blocks isn't very far to walk.

Are DVDs the real e-books?

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 11:59:26 -0500

A lot of discussion about e-books centers around pieces of hardware--like the Kindle--that offer new ways to deliver old narrative. While these delivery systems will obviously alter narrative conventions--there's nothing narratively inevitable about 80,000 words; it's a convenient amount of paper to carry around--enough attention isn't being paid to the possibility (grim for me and other writers) that old narrative is already dead, not because it didn't work, but because it has been replaced.

I think non-fiction and documentary films have already supplanted certain kinds of naturalistic fiction--and even some kinds of fantastic fiction. Would you need to write The Jungle in a world that already has Who Killed the Electric Car? What would Edgar Allen Poe have found to write about in a world where Intervention and Hoarders air back to back? (Think I'm exaggerating? Meet Sonia and Julia.) Word fans--and I am one--will scream that there are stories only words can tell, and that might be true. But which ones are they, and is it changing?

Lately, I've been enjoying this great story. It has dozens of compelling characters and exhibits an incredible attention to detail. It's a commentary on society with leitmotifs of greed, desperation, and hope. I take in a few chapters at a time, put it down, then pick it back up later. I'm almost to the conclusion, and I'm kind of bummed about it. The story is so good, I don't want it to end.

I'm not talking about a novel, which functions in one's life exactly like this. I'm talking about The Wire. The advent of DVDs, DVRs, and video-on-demand has allowed episodic TV to compete with books like never before. Looking back, it was silly to think that something like Bonanza or Quincy could pose an artistic threat to book-length fiction. It might lure away the more distractable members of the audience, but for texture and narrative complexity, it was no contest. Now TV has come for the rest of us. Freed from the one hour (and even the two hour) frame--and from the idea that audience members might have missed episodes--TV is undergoing a renaissance and fulfilling its full promise. (Paddy Chayefsky, in the medium's first decade, believed TV was uniquely suited for detailed, naturalistic drama, and it has only taken a half century for him to be right again.)

The other day, I asked Alexandra why anyone would write a naturalistic novel about the urban drug trade after The Wire. Her (completely correct) answer was: interiority. Then last night we saw The Informant! So much for that.

Ernie Anastos, Explained

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 11:45:42 -0500

While there might be more reasonable explanations, here's how I think this happened. The year is 1968. The location: a rundown studio apartment in the Fenway. 25-year-old high school drop out Stan Aeronesi is anxiously waiting for two wise-ass Northeastern students to get the hell out of his apartment. They got their weed. He smoked them out. Now they won't leave. They just keep going on and on about hippy bullshit--the bourgeoisie and the Man--although as far as Stan can tell, these two kids are the bourgeoisie.

One of them is talking about some stupid play he's just seen called Paradise Now, and how it changes everything by taking the audience out of their comfort zone, and by now Stan is pretty well far out of his comfort zone and he blurts out, without even thinking about it--as a sort of childish attempt to bring everything around him to a halt--"Keep fucking that chicken!"

Suddenly the kids, who have totally forgotten that Stan is even there, stop talking about Brecht and Artaud, and they look at Stan like he is crazy and (worse) like he is stupid, which Stan has always sort of suspected is true anyway.

"What?" one of them says, giggling. "What did you just say?"

"Keep fucking that chicken," Stan says slowly, biding time, as the eyes turned on him suddenly make him feel self-conscious and paranoid, as if the kids can now see the fact that he already knows: that they are students, going somewhere--their futures ahead of them--while he is an uneducated low-life, washed-up at 25. In other words, he is overcome by the need to say something smart.

"Want to shake up the Man?" he says, rolling the words out like Dylan. "You can't do that in a theater. You gotta say 'Keep fucking that chicken' on the live nightly news.'"

The kid laughs so hard he chokes, his big pampered face flush with adrenaline.

"How you gonna do that, man?" he says. "That's stupid."

In 1971, a clean-shaven young man presents himself for employment at WABC-TV in New York. He has spent several years rehearsing his South Boston accent away and he claims to hold a degree from Northeastern, where he has never attended. He gives as his name an anagram of his former one. He calls himself Ernie Anastos.

Years and decades pass as Aeronesi earns the trust of his employers at WABC, WCBS, WWOR, WCBS again, and finally at WNYW. He spends nights awake struggling with the timing, trying to decide when his taboo-shattering phrase can be released for maximum impact and subversion. No moment seems perfect enough--not even during an interview with Fidel Castro--and for years at a time Aeronesi finds himself hopelessly paralyzed. Sometimes he fears that he has lost himself and his life's work completely in Anastos--in the million dollar contracts and the hard-earned respect of a great American city--and he laments that he will ever complete his provocative performance.

And then, on Wednesday, it just happened. A mission launched so many years ago out of resentment and striving was completed, effortlessly and flawlessly.

Congratulations, Stan Aeronesi. I hope you get the recognition you deserve.

Fastest to a Thousand: 5 e-book sites anecdotally compared

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 07:25:08 -0500

While I didn't get in as early as the sci-fi crowd, I was a relatively early adopter of e-books, both as a reader and distributor. I was reading Cory Doctorow and F. Scott Fitzgerald off an Audiovox SMT5600 long enough ago that I shocked publishing industry acquaintances simply by admitting I read this way. E-books were experiencing one of those periodic re-deaths they've undergone during the last 15 years, and publishers were happy to leave them dead.

I first published my own e-book--Single, a collection of two previously-published stories--in July 2006, and first posted it to a site other than my own two and a half years ago. I did this, on the one hand, to extend the lives of the stories. They had been published by nice, respectable journals--but even (and perhaps especially) nice, respectable journals have small runs and limited shelf-lives. On the Internet, meanwhile, you never know what could happen. A Bulgarian woman moving to Memphis (where you used to live) might turn a friend onto your blog. That friend, in turn, might turn another friend onto it, who might post something from it on Metafilter, where an editor from the New York Post might see it and pay you to re-print it. I believe in making work available and seeing what happens.

But I also posted it because I wanted to have a test balloon. In social media, especially, you've got to do it to get it. You've got to blog to understand that bloggers communicate with referrals. You've got to Twitter to understand how chips of ephemera become a mosaic of information and anecdote. I wanted to put out an e-book so I could see how that distribution channel flowed, like dropping a paper boat in a stream to see where it winds up.

Since then, I've posted Single to most major e-book sites as they've appeared on the scene and collected some information about how well it's done on each. I'm putting out another small collection of previously published stories, Cassingle, next month, so I was thinking about where I should post it. Maybe this information will also help others decide where to post their own work. My unscientific analysis of five sites--in the order I found them--is after the jump. These results aren't exemplary and are the result of ordinary promotion. Lots of e-books get many more downloads. Still, Single has been viewed 7,500 or so times as an e-book--more than the circulation of either One Story or the Land-Grant College Review, where the stories in it originally appeared.

[continued]

Happy New Year

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 21:20:17 -0500

The Tuesday after Labor Day is New Year's Day in New York. Half-empty subway cars fill back up with tanned, disappointed commuters, and long-unanswered emails miraculously yield enthusiastic (if brief) replies. It is a new beginning. Time to take short stories that have timed out--neither accepted or rejected--at one set of print journals and send them to other journals, where they will, in all likelihood, reach the same non-conclusion. (New year or not, print's coming demise has done little to speed the operation of literary magazines, which instead seem to pride themselves--like "slow food" restaurants--on providing terrible service.) And it is time also, I'm thinking, to start blogging again.

I don't know how long it's been since I blogged regularly--a while--but I know that I've developed a bad case of what I will call "blog shyness." I used to get "phone shyness" when I was reporter in Memphis (when reporters used phones), and it was pretty uncomfortable--watching a deadline roll toward you and feeling helpless to pick up the phone and get the quotes. It was like a bad dream. I haven't decided what, exactly, I will blog about. I have some ideas for topics, and some ideas for sprucing up the site. That will all come. I just know that now that I've been working full-time, I've been itchy for an outlet for stray ideas that I'm no longer under pressure to sell, which is what blogs used to be about before they all got optimized and SEO'd within an inch of their lives. (My pledge: I will never make you click through to the rest of a post unless that post is very, very long.)

Nevertheless, one of the most uncomfortable moments in life is that moment--at a party or a wedding, especially--where you walk onto the dance floor and begin to dance. It feels ridiculous--the moment right before you start--and you hope no one is looking. So if you could all just look away for one second, that would be great, because that moment is coming up.

Take "The Arab Bank" Challenge

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 08:55:01 -0500

As some of you know, I recently serialized a short story called "The Arab Bank" during the Cannes Film Festival, where the story is set. I mashed the whole thing up with Google Maps and Street View and some people seemed to like it. (Somebody I'd never met even interviewed me about it.) But while I was building it, I found that Google Street View does not offer a clear view of the Arab Bank or its ATM, which are crucial to the storyline. (The ATM I'm using on the ebook cover, above, is stock.)

This is where I'm hoping my ad people will help me out. I got to know Cannes in the first place because I covered the International Advertising Festival, which is taking place this week, for three years for Advertising Age—so I know that the town is about to be overrun by Web 2.0 ad types armed with iPhones. Here's the challenge: Take a picture of the Arab Bank and/or its ATM and post it somewhere, Twitpic seems good, and tag it @jimhanas on Twitter (so I can find it.) At night would be best, given the storyline—after you leave the Carlton, say, but before you go to the Gutter Bar. (After the Gutter Bar, you will not remember to do this.)

What's in it for you? The best picture will become the new cover of "The Arab Bank" ebook, and its author will receive a probably authentic signed copy of Luke Sullivan's Hey Whipple, Squeeze This. (No kidding. My wife found it at a used bookstore and I believe the signature is legit.) Two runners-up—should there be more than one entrant—will receive (much less valuable) signed copies of my One Story short story "The Cryerer." And all entrants will get to participate in this crazy new era of "two-way conversation" that you spend all day trying to sell to your clients. Am I saying you'd have to be a hypocrite to refuse "The Arab Bank" challenge? No, but that's an interesting point.

So bring 'em on and, please, try to get some sleep this week. The Arab Bank's address is 44/47 Boulevard de la Croisette, which I think puts it in the same cluster of stories as Fendi, shown here:

View Larger Map

Video: "You Are Not Going to be Famous"

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 09:52:57 -0500

On November 11, 2008, the topic of Adult Education—the Brooklyn-based "useless lecture series" I help curate—was "Lies and Liars." I tried to debunk America's Big Lie by arguing—in part with statistics—that fame will ultimately elude us all. I'm as disappointed as you are. You can also view my previous Adult Ed talk—"On Metatourism"—from the January 2008 program.

You Are Not Going to be Famous from Jim Hanas on Vimeo.

We're Hosting a Book Drive

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 07:41:11 -0500

The Leadership Institute, a public high school in the Bronx, needs a library collection, so Alexandra is helping to gather gently used (or new) books for grades 9 through 12.

We'll be receiving donations at our apartment in Park Slope on Saturday, March 28, from 2 p.m. til 5 p.m. We would love to see you then, but if you can't make it, consider mailing book(s) straight to the school (address below). Or maybe Windsor Terrace would be more convenient—see below for information about that drop-off spot, which will be open earlier in the day. Here are details about our drop-off and the other location:

Our drop-off:
Saturday, March 28, 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.
532 Fifth St., Apt. 2R, Brooklyn, NY (Park Slope between 7th and 8th Aves., closest subway stop is 7th Ave. on the F)

The buzzer often doesn't work so if no one responds, please call: 917 207-2290.

The Windsor Terrace drop-off:
Saturday, March 28, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
94 Prospect Park Southwest, Brooklyn, NY (near 11th Avenue and Prospect Park)

Guidelines:
- If you enjoyed a book in high school and can bear to give it away or buy a used copy to donate, we'd love to have it.
- If you have nonfiction to give away, please make sure that it is up to date because the students will be using these books for their schoolwork.
- Please do not donate books with underlining.

More about the school:
The Leadership Institute has limited facilities—a tiny gym, no lockers, one office to house the counselors and coordinators—yet the faculty and administrators are committed to providing a library for the students. They have emptied a spare classroom as a Student Success Center, and they will house the books there. To learn more about the school, go to: http://schools.nyc.gov/SchoolPortals/09/X276/default.htm

Mailing books:
If you are unable to get to our place or the Windsor Terrace location on Sat., you can mail books directly to the school at this address:

Leadership Institute
Attn: Amanda Devecka-Rinear
1701 Fulton Avenue
Bronx, NY 10457

(The least expensive way to send books is Media Mail rate.)

Hope you can drop by!

On Aging

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:22:56 -0500

When I was younger, I thought this passage from Nietzsche—about a man who teaches the way of sleep—was a hilarious send-up of bourgeois values. Now I think it sounds like an awesome lifehack. I would totally read this guy's blog. Or as Zarathustra says, "if life had no sense, and had I to choose nonsense, this would be the desirablest nonsense for me also."

'Suggested Retail Value'

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 10:49:07 -0500

Our friend Heidi Cody sent us this slideshow of her solo show, Suggested Retail Value, at the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette, LA. I've always liked Heidi's work, which has all sorts of fun with corporate iconography—from "spokescritters" to logos. The current exhibit includes her new collection of "Spokescritter Hats"—which A. and I saw in her studio a few years ago—plus lots of other great stuff.

Going Public

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:40:39 -0500

Variety reports today that We Live in Public, Ondi Timoner's documentary about Web 1.0 entrepreneur Josh Harris, will debut at Sundance next month. I profiled Harris earlier this year for Radar (may it rest it peace), when Timoner also gave us permission to post the film's concept trailer. It will be interesting to see how the final product turns out. So interesting, apparently, that Harris himself—who has been in self-imposed exile in Ethiopia for the past year—tells me he plans to make the trip to Park City for the premiere.