Category Archives: Bookselling

Bookselling

Making Money Within Book Culture

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I can’t say I fully understand this point of view, but it does seem respectable. Ron Hogan talks about making money from your book reviews and promotions in light of the paid promotions done through the #FridayReads hashtag on Twitter. I suppose it’s all about the appearance of promoting something because a publisher asked you to, not because you actually like it, but if a publisher asks you to potentially promote something you would likely not have discovered on your own and that you do, in fact, like, the problem seems only one of appearance.

Maybe I’m just not a member of the anti-commercial club.

Bookselling, Fiction

Snippet One, Troll Valley

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[To whet your appetite for my new novel, which I hope (but can’t promise) to have out by Christmas, here’s a snippet. I’ll post them here from time to time until the book is released. Every Friday, and possibly more if I’m feeling generous. lw]

PROLOGUE:

THE PRESENT.

Shane Anderson woke up in a room he didn’t recognize. He had no idea where he was, and no idea who was with him.

This was not unusual for him.

Never before, however, had he awakened in an attic room (he could tell by the slanted ceiling) in what was clearly a very old house, with no company but a very big Native American in a gray sweat suit, sitting in an armchair and reading a Bible.

“Where am I?” Shane asked. The bed he lay in didn’t go with the room, which had old-fashioned figured wallpaper and carved woodwork around the doors and windows. It was a modern adjustable bed, with some kind of control panel on a side rail. A hospital bed.

The Native American looked up from his reading and said, “You’re home. Or it will be your home someday. At least legally. If you don’t O. D. or break your neck.”

“The big house in Epsom? What the—ʺ

“No profanity, son. I have your mother’s instructions to wash your mouth out with soap if you speak profanities or curse. It’s one of the things in your life she’s particularly concerned about.” Continue reading Snippet One, Troll Valley →

Bookselling, Publishing

The Worst Business in the World

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“As early as 1896, Publisher’s Weekly wondered whether the book business was ‘A Doomed Calling’—a question that, by the late nineteenth century, had already become a cliché.”

Ben Tarnoff says people in the book business have been complaining about it’s final curtain drop for over a century. Back in Mark Twain’s day, they worried the subscription model would ruin everything. Today, it’s e-books. Tomorrow, it will be holographic gaming galleries.

Authors, Bookselling

Nobels and Americans

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D.G. Myers believes Philip Roth is the greatest living novelist, and he hasn’t gotten a Nobel for Literature. Does he or any American deserve one?

American novelists, according to Nazaryan, have only themselves to blame for not winning a Nobel since 1993. And he knows exactly what American literature needs:

America needs an Obama des letters [sic], a writer for the 21st century, not the 20th — or even the 19th. One who is not stuck in the Cold War or the gun-slinging West or the bygone Jewish precincts of Newark — or mired in the claustrophobia of familial dramas. What relevance does our solipsism have to a reader in Bombay? For that matter, what relevance does it have in Brooklyn, N.Y.?

Bookselling, Publishing, Reading

Remarkable Legacy of Banned Books Week Founder, Judith Krug

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scream and shoutThe NY Times has an eye-opening overview of Judith Krug’s crusade against content filtering in their 2009 obit. She claimed, “Library service in this country should be based on the concept of intellectual freedom, of providing all pertinent information so a reader can make decisions for himself.” She eventually applied that concept to her arguments against filtering internet access for children using library computers and against the federal government looking into a person’s library borrowing record (The USA Patriot Act still allows “the Justice Department to conduct searches of library and bookstore records, in the investigation of suspected terrorist activity.”)*

Miss Krug credits her parents for inspiring her to stand up for readers of the world. That story comes at the end of the obit. With crusaders for immorality like this in the world, it’s no wonder parents want to pull books out of school libraries or pull their kids out of public schools.

How can moral parents raise moral children in an immoral world? Continue reading Remarkable Legacy of Banned Books Week Founder, Judith Krug →

Authors, Bookselling

Two National Book Awards

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The National Book Awards will be announced November 14, and John Ashbery and Mitchell Kaplan will receive lifetime achievement awards. Poet John Ashbery has given us verses like these from “The New Higher”:

“You meant more than life to me. I lived through

you not knowing, not knowing I was living.

I learned that you called for me. I came to where

you were living, up a stair. There was no one there.”

Mitchell Kaplan is the creator of the Miami International Book Fair, “the largest community book festival in the United States and a model for book fairs across the country,” notes the National Book Foundation.

Blogs, Socials, Bookselling, Publishing

Ripping Yarns in Highgate

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Here’s a nice review with photos of Ripping Yarns, a bookshop of the type every city should have. Jen Campbell, the shop manager, is the one with that book, you know, that book about things folks say in shops like her’s. It’s not yet available in the States, but I’m sure President Obama will work out that diplomatic offense.

Bookselling, Publishing

NJ School Takes Book Off Reading List; Outcry Ensues

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Here’s the news straight from the publisher:

On August 24, 2011, a New Jersey school district announced that it was removing from it’s summer reading list the novel Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, published by Vintage Books in 2000. Citing objections from parents about inappropriate language and graphic sex, the school board withdrew its original approval of the novel, which had been placed on the list by its own committee of area teachers, librarians, and school administrators.

In response to this action, Knopf has issued the following statement: Continue reading NJ School Takes Book Off Reading List; Outcry Ensues →