2023 Booker Prize Nominations (Part 5)

 

I suppose most everyone has heard by now that Paul Lynch's Prophet Song was announced last Sunday as winner of the 2023 Booker Prize. If you've read it, congratulations. In the US, we are still waiting on Prophet Song's appearance because Atlantic Monthly Press completely flubbed the job by initially scheduling the book for publication on December 12 - more than two weeks after the Booker ceremony in London. Now, in a case of "too little, too late" Atlantic Monthly Press has moved publication to December 5. 

Since last week's Booker post, I've finished up and reviewed Pearl by Siân Hughes, and I've read all but the last forty pages of Paul Harding's This Other Eden, bringing my 2023 Booker Prize exposure up to eight of the thirteen nominees.

My ranking of those eight books, along with links to the ones reviewed, looks like this:

• The Bee Sting -  Paul Murray
• If I Survive You - Jonathan Escoffery
• Western Lane - Chetna Maroo 
• Pearl - Siân Hughes
• Old God's Time - Sebastian Barry
• This Other Eden - Paul Harding
• A Spell of Good Things - Ayòbámi Adébáyò
• The Ascension - Martin Macinnes 

This Other Eden has an interesting premise, but I get the feeling that Paul Harding is trying a little too hard to make it all politically relevant and correct for today's readers. The novel is set in 1912 on a tiny island off the coast of Maine that is populated by a hodgepodge of racial mixes that produce offspring considered to be Black (even though some easily pass for White and escape life on the island) by people on the mainland. It comes as no surprise when racist White do-gooders spring into action and ruin everything that's remotely good about life on Apple Island. 

After This Other Eden, I'll be down to five more 2023 Booker Books, including Tan Twan Eng's The House of Doors which I have on hand and plan to tackle next. Three of the other four ( are shown in my library system as "on order," so it could be a few weeks before I get to bring any of them home. In fact, I'm twentieth in line for one of only two copies of Prophet Song that have been ordered, third in line for one of the four copes of How to Build a Boat ordered, and first in line for one of the two copies of All the Little Bird-Hearts on order. Library processing can take forever, so I'm not expecting those three any time soon. But there are supposedly five copies of Study for Obedience already on the shelves somewhere in the library system, and I'm number six on that list - and likely to get that one relatively soon. 

I've got to remember to start this challenge earlier next year - and hope to get a little more help from my library and U.S. publishers.

True Crime for 2021

I make no secret of how big a fan I am of books published by The Library of America. The books are always of the highest quality, and especially considering the uniqueness of their compilations, they are always interesting in addition to being a bargain. So what better way to begin a new year than to highlight one of the last two LOA books I purchased in 2020, True Crime: An American Anthology.

Like a lot of people, I've been fascinated by true crime books for a long time. For me, it probably started way back with the publication of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, but I always thought of the genre as being something that only grew popular  around the time of that groundbreaking book. Obviously, I've been very wrong about that assumption.

This compilation is almost 800 pages long, and it includes the "true crime" writing of authors like Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, Nathanial Hawthorne, Abraham Lincoln, Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, Damon Runyon, H.L. Mencken, Theodore Dreiser, Edna Ferber, and James Thurber. Others included in the anthology are not so surprising, names like: Jack Webb, Dominick Dunne, Ann Rule, James Ellroy, Gay Talese, and Capote himself.

This one arrived in December, so I'm looking forward to dipping in and out of it a good bit during 2021. Most people, I think, believe that the Library of America only publishes the classics that established the publisher's reputation. That is far from the case because Library of America books include collections of science fiction classics, war reporting, baseball and other sports writing, classic detective fiction, etc. I add ten or twelve of their books to my shelves every year and now have 114 of them. If you don't know this publisher, do take a look at their catalog because I think they will surprise you.

Drowning in Books on Not-So-Super Thursday

Tristram Fane Saunders

A little throwaway article by Tristram Fane Saunders in the Culture section of London's The Telegraph made me chuckle a little about the publishing industry's "Super Thursday" book drop in the U.K. According to Saunders, this is an annual event that happens every October there, but it came early this year. 600 books published on the same day, just in time for all the Christmas season marketing to kick in. What a nightmare that must be for publishers, critics, and retailers.

Arts critic Saunders reacted this way:

"I know, I know – every year book critics complain that there are just too many books. But this year, they might have a point. Won’t somebody think of the trees?

Burning the Books by Bodleian librarian Richard Ovenden (published today, and serialised as Radio 4’s Book of the Week) draws solemn lessons from conflagrations of the past. And yet, faced with today’s vast pile of reading-matter, its title sounds less like a warning than an alluring suggestion."

I imagine that publishing delays associated with the COVID-19 outbreak had a lot to do with so many books hitting the stores all at once, but I don't envy the professionals having to make sense of so many at the same time.

I know that we go through a similar marketing push in this country when dozens and dozens of new books all seem to hit the bookstores at the same time. I always find in amusing that so many books are hollering at the same time for a piece of my already-strained book-buying-money, but there they are anyway. I usually snap a picture of all the interesting ones that I know I won't be able to afford (or find the space for) so that I can request them from my library before too many others notice them first.

And the ones that I really want for my shelves, immediately go on a list of "bargain books" to watch for in the future. You can usually count on Christmas season books to be over-published, meaning that when the books reach the paperback stage of their life cycle, publishers will be practically giving away the hardcover remainders. Then I can celebrate as if it's Christmas all over again. 

Macmillan's War on Libraries and Library Patrons Moves to Absurd Stage

German-owned publisher Macmillan’s war on libraries and library patrons accelerated last week when the publisher went through with its plan to limit e-book sales to only one copy per library for the first eight weeks after publication. It matters not whether the library is serving a community of 5,000 patrons are one of hundreds of thousands – it’s one copy per library. So don’t bother getting in line to stream a new e-book anytime soon for anything published by Macmillan or any of its divisions, including Henry Holt & Company; Bloomsbury; Faarrar, Straus and Giroux; North Point Press; Picador; Metropolitan Books; Graywolf Press; St. Martins; Tor; and Forge, among others. 

Macmillan is apparently under the absurd impression that if library patrons are unable to get a free copy of an e-book from their local library they will run right out and purchase a copy of their own – at what many consumers consider to be the inflated price that publishers charge for e-books today. We all know that’s not going to happen. Personally, I read about 125 books a year on average, with approximately half of those 125 being books published in the year that I read them. Of those 60 or so books, maybe half of them are e-books that I get either from my county library system, directly from publishers as ARCs, from the Amazon First Reads program, or via Amazon purchases. Simply put, I read way more books than I can afford to read, and if I have to buy them they are not as likely ever to be read and reviewed or otherwise featured on Book Chase at all. I don’t kid myself into believing that what I do is all that important to the bottom line of a giant publisher like Macmillan. But I do know that there are hundreds of book bloggers out there and that, taken as a group, we are important contributors to the publicity that authors and publishers so desperately need if they are going to sell books in today’s market. 

I am just old school enough that I still much prefer a hard copy or quality paperback version of a book to its frailer e-book cousin. I often read an e-book that I end up loving so much that I add a hard back copy of the book to the permanent collection on my personal library shelves. E-books just don’t give me a sense of permanency, and I doubt that they ever will. I never know if I own them or if I’m just renting them long enough for a new format to come along, replace them, and make all my e-books obsolete. After all, music publishers have gotten away with that little trick for years, so can book publishers be far behind with some kind of “planned obsolescence” scheme of their own?

Libraries, too, are a source of free publicity for publishers and their new books. It’s already bad enough that libraries are charged three to four times the price that consumers pay for e-books, even though that makes a little sense considering how many times the e-books are being read and that they never wear out. Many, if not all, publishers limit the number of times an e-book can be checked out before it has to be repurchased by the lending library; again, that makes some sense to me. But this new scheme of Macmillan’s is (I sincerely hope) going to backfire on the publisher and its authors. I doubt that the increase in sales is going to make up for the reduced number e-book copies that libraries are going to purchase for “older” books when they are finally allowed that privilege – books whose marketing buzz is already over. Libraries have limited budgets and they base their book purchases on expected demand from their patrons. So why would they buy books that no one is asking about anymore?

One final thought: How many bestsellers, do you think, were constructed largely out of sales to libraries? Libraries, taken as a whole, buy lots of copies of books and what they buy can be enough to catapult a book onto the bestsellers lists almost instantly. Perhaps even more important, library sales can mean the difference between an author working years for very little return and making a nice income for their efforts. I can’t imagine that too many Macmillan authors are happy about this misguided approach, so let’s hope someone at the top comes to their senses soon.

The Night Fire - Michael Connelly (Three Covers for Three Markets)

The twenty-third Harry Bosch novel will be hitting the bookstores on October 22 and I can't wait. But since this is also the second teaming-up of Bosch and his new partner Renée Ballard, Ballard fans might instead be calling The Night Fire the second book in the Renée Ballard series. Call it what you will, this is most definitely a win-win situation for Michael Connelly fans. (Personally,  even though I've already become quite a fan of the new Ballard character, this is a Harry Bosch novel in my eyes.)

Publisher Little, Brown and Company is going with different Night Fire covers for different parts of the world. When this happens, I usually prefer the version targeted toward the U.S. audience, but this time around I find myself preferring the middle cover shown up above, the one aimed at the U.K./Ireland market. What do you think?

Click on the image for a much larger view of the covers.

There's Still Something in the Water

I wonder what everyone is looking at.

I got to chatting with the guy working the Target book section this afternoon about all the similar book covers I've been noticing and was surprised at how quickly he agreed. Well, after I told him that I had posted a few pictures of the books last week, he got this great idea to display them together. As I was leaving the store, I saw him begin the process of moving all the tags so that they would match the new Mystery & Suspense display he had created. 

And there are more like this...many, many more.

(Click on the image for a larger version.)

There Must Be Something in the Water

There must be something in the water.

I keep stumbling upon books featuring the World War II experiences of women: books about Jewish women trying to escape occupied Europe, books about female resistance fighters, books about female spies who worked behind enemy lines, etc. There is even one slightly different book about the inspiration a female Afghanistan War veteran finds by reading about a woman who disguised herself as a man in order to fight for the Union during the American Civil War. The plots are so similar that it's becoming harder and harder to keep track of which title goes with which plot.

But publishers aren't satisfied just to flood the market with plots I can barely keep straight. Take a look at the covers of these same books. Does anyone really believe that it's a coincidence that even the covers are hard to keep straight? My theory is that publishers realize there is probably a good market for two or three of these books at the same time at most so they are counting on the confusion to sell a few thousand copies of the also-rans at the same time.

And these are only the ones I've seen in the past couple of weeks; I spotted four of them at Target just this afternoon, in fact - and Target has a very limited number of books on their store shelves. The problem is that I find the plot lines generally appealing but  only have time to work one or two of them into my reading schedule. How do I choose? Any recommendations? 

(The only one of these I've already read and reviewed is The Lost Girls of Paris and I found that one somewhat disappointing.)

Naomi Wolf Learns the Hard Way That Cutting Corners on Research Can Be Costly - and Embarrassing

Naomi Wolf

Naomi Wolf is no stranger to being challenged on the supposed "facts" around which she has based some of her bestselling books. But this time, it looks like she may have really stepped in it because her publisher (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) is delaying the release of her latest, Outrages, and recalling the copies it has already delivered to retailers around the country.

Last month a BBC reporter questioned Wolf's "interpretation of historical records" during an on-air interview in which he revealed that she had not taken the time to learn the correct meaning of a legal term first used in 1823 Britain, "death recorded."  Wolf made the mistaken assumption that the term meant that a prisoner execution had been carried out, when in fact the term meant exactly the opposite - that the prisoner had been pardoned.  The author apparently relied on the terminology as evidence that "several dozen executions" had been carried out in nineteenth century Britain of men accused of having had sex with other men. 

Wolf was obviously embarrassed to be called out so publicly on her sloppy research, and promised to look into the matter.  She agreed that it was an important question, but at the time she promised only to correct future additions if it turned out that she had used the term incorrectly.  Apparently more will be required of her.

According to a June 13 New York Times article:

"But the errors in 'Outrages' appear to be more grave, given that Ms. Wolf's publisher is taking the costly step of recalling finished copies, a rare measure that is usually only undertaken for books that contain fatal factual flaws or other more serious transgressions."

[...]

"It's unclear whether 'Outrages'will also be recalled in Britain, where it was released in May by the publisher Virago."

[...]

"Publishers often rely on authors to verify material in their books, and if fact checkers are used, it is typically at the author's discretion and expense." 

The Book in Question

This kind of thing is not, of course, a new problem.  But we live in a time in which the credibility of real news has in so many ways been destroyed by easy access to internet sources that don't just make mistakes, but actually purposely lie for financial gain or the destruction of some perceived enemy.  Perhaps this makes it easier for lazier or cheaper authors to justify to themselves a habit of rushing to print without doing the kind of fact checking that would have been second nature only a decade or so ago.  Some writers may figure that the likelihood of being wrong - or caught out by a reader or editor - is unlikely enough to justify taking a chance.  After all, it's all about making money, isn't it?  

The same New York Times piece quoted a publisher spokeswoman as saying, "As we have been working with Naomi Wolf to make corrections to 'Outrages,' new questions have arisen that require more time to explore."  However, as evidenced by the book recall, this is a problem that time alone is unlikely to solve.

First printing of Outrages was set at 35,000 copies.  That's a whole lot of paper to pulp and recycle. 

Hong Kong Book Store Employees Are Disappearing

It appears that a Hong Kong publisher/bookstore owner is learning the hard way that it is not at all smart to publish books about the sex lives of Chinese leaders. According to Quartz.com, the still unpublished manuscript about Xi Jinping's "six women" is directly linked to the disappearance of five men connected to the bookstore:

It is unclear whether the book alleges Xi had an extramarital affair. As part of his crackdown on corruption since he took office in 2012, Xi has led an anti-corruption campaign that made adultery grounds for banishment from the Communist Party. This past October, those rules were changed to forbid “improper sexual relationships with others,” a tweak that state-run news agency Xinhua said makes “the regulation stricter.”

[...]

Last week’s disappearance of Lee Bo, an employee at the Causeway Bay Bookstore, has brought international attention to mysterious case of the five missing men. Hong Kong democratic politicians including Ho believe they have been abducted by mainland Chinese security officials. 

[...]

China’s state-backed tabloid Global Times said in an editorial this week that the bookstore sells books that contain “maliciously fabricated content,” which enter the mainland, become the source of political rumors and “have caused some evil influence to some extent.” A Chinese-language version of the same editorial also accuses the bookstore of harming the “harmony and stability” of mainland society. 

Chinese officials are playing hardball on this case of censorship taken to the extreme and is warning foreign countries to keep all opinions to themselves. Freedom of the press is not an issue in Hong Kong these days; it simply does not exist.

NIU Professor"s Claim: Children's Books Send Message That "To Be White Is To Be Better"

At the risk of sounding like some conservative radical, I have to tell you guys that I am utterly sick of the political correctness that dominates the world in which we all live today.  Everyone is "offended" about something...and everything is bound to offend someone.  It's a lose-lose situation for all of us.

So what set me off this afternoon?  Only this professor who is on a vendetta to prove that children's books, taken as a genre, are RACIST.  Melanie Koss has dropped this bombshell on the world all the way from Northern Illinois University where she made her argument this way:

Seventy-five percent of human main characters (in children's picture books) were white; blacks were protagonists in 15 percent of the books while other cultures combined for less than 6 percent of lead characters.

I'm not disputing her numbers.  What I do find interesting, however, is how closely the percentages she quotes correspond to the overall racial mix in the United States today.  Will this country cease to be "racist" only when minorities are over-represented in every aspect of life to the point that the majority becomes the new minority?  And will even that shut up the professional whiners out there?

And remember this: book publishing is a For Profit industry.  No profit, no books; it's as simple as that.  Even the NI Newsroom (the NI stands for Northern Illinois) seems to understand that the number of minority oriented books printed will be dependent on how many of them sell and actually make a little money for the publisher:

Because publishers don’t expect big profits from diverse books, few are made available. And because few are for sale, few are sold, creating an endless supply-and-demand conundrum. “If the books aren’t out there, no one can buy them,” Koss says.

 ...and Ms. Koss, if no one buys the ones that are out there, why should publishers market them in the numbers that YOU might finally approve.

It's a PC world, and it's beginning to remind me of the fable in which the little boy cried "Wolf!" one too many times.  I'm starting to tune out the babble now.

Classic Literature as Pulp Fiction

Pulp! The Classics, an imprint of London book publisher Oldcastle Books Group, has come up with a clever way to sell copies of classic literature that are almost guaranteed never to be read.  That's because, you see, the books are being bought for their covers - not for what's inside those covers.  

Some of the finest representations of classic literature are being "reimagined" as if they had been published in pulp fiction's heyday, resulting in covers like these:

I really, really, really hope that at least a few of these are being purchased by gullible young readers who don't recognize the titles -  because their reactions would be rather priceless, I think.

If you are interested in acquiring any of these (or others in the line), Pulp! The Classics can be contacted at this British link.

The books go for 6.99 GBP each - about $11 US.  They would make great gifts for the right person...or for yourself.

Free Previews of Future Bestsellers

Good news for fans of e-books...

Starting tomorrow, the major online booksellers (Amazon, Apple, and others) will be offering free downloads of two compilations featuring long excerpts from books that are to be published later this year.

Buzz Books 2015 Fall/Winter is said to feature new work from the likes of Geraldine Brooks, Mitch Albom, and Alice Hoffman.  In addition, YA readers will be able to download Buzz Books 2015: Young Adult Fall/Winter.  All told, the two compilations are said to include excerpts from 54 forthcoming releases of fiction and nonfiction.  

I downloaded the 2014 catalog about this time last year and really enjoyed browsing the work of a bunch of new-to-me authors.  I suspect that this kind of thing appeals largely to avid readers who are forever adding to their TBR lists.  If you're one of those, tomorrow is the day to get your free copy.

(Tip:  Those of you with NetGalley accounts can download the compilations right now.)

LOA List: Top 10 Story of the Week Selections in 2014

The Library of America, my favorite publisher, has posted a "Story of the Week" for a long time, most of them new to me.  I'm a relatively recent convert to the art of the short story (having really only started reading them regularly in the last six or seven years), so the stories posted have served as quite an "education" for me.

Please take a look at this list of the most most popular stories posted by The Library of America folks last year...read a few of them if you want, and if you like what you see, be sure to sign up for the LOA email service that will send you a link to each of 2015's stories as they are posted throughout the year.

Sam

(The Library of America is a nonprofit publisher dedicated to preserving the best American writing from the past and into our future.  I am a big believer in what they do and have collected 74 of their  beautiful books so far, with, I hope, many more in my future.)

Library of America Website

========================================================

The Top 10 Story of the Week Selections in 2014

1. “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”
James Thurber
While on a shopping trip with his wife,
Walter Mitty daydreams of exciting and heroic adventures.

2. “The First Seven Years”
Bernard Malamud
Feld, a shoemaker living in New York City,
seeks a suitable husband for his daughter.

3. “The Ice Palace”
F. Scott Fitzgerald
A young woman, hoping to escape the sleepy town of Tarleton, Georgia,
travels north to visit the home of her fiancé.

4. “Playing Courier”
Mark Twain
The narrator assumes the responsibilities of tour guide for an “expedition”
through Europe—with disastrous results.

5. “No Room in the Cemetery”
Anonymous
[reprinted from the Baltimore Afro-American]
In 1966 officials in Wetumpka, Alabama, refused to permit
the burial of the city’s first Vietnam War casualty in a
segregated cemetery—except in the paupers section.

6. “You Can’t Tell a Man by the Song He Sings”
Philip Roth
The narrator recalls the high school class in which he met Albie Pelagutti,
recently released from a reformatory, who had decided “to go straight.”

7. “The Story of an Hour”
Kate Chopin
Louise Mallard learns that her husband was one of the casualties
in a horrible railroad disaster.

8. “Dear sister I must leave this house”
Dolley Madison
The First Lady and her staff evacuate the White House
as British troops storm the city.

9. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”
Ambrose Bierce
A Confederate sympathizer, condemned to die, recalls the encounter
that set him on the path to the gallows.

10. “Tyrants of the Shop”
Fanny Fern
America’s first woman newspaper columnist
(and, by the 1850s, the highest paid of any columnist)
describes how some “shop-girls” are treated by their employers.

Enhancing the E-Book Experience: Long Way to Go

Publishers are actually doing a little better job these days when it comes to the "covers" they attach to their e-books, but seeing a cheesy, cheap looking cover on an e-book is still one of my biggest turnoffs.  

So let's take it one step further, publishers because, let's face it, reading an e-book is not nearly the experience that reading a physical book is.  There's just too much about physical books that cannot be replicated.  But...there are a couple of things you can do easily and cheaply to bring the two experiences a little bit closer to being the same:

• Emphasize the cover art by taking as much care with it as you do with your physical book covers - front AND back.  Have the cover appear at logical break points in the e-book presentation, be it at the beginning of chapters or, at least, before already-designated section breaks.  Those books that are written to be presented in multiple parts now generally use nothing to emphasize the section breaks other than two or three blank pages.
• Take advantage of chapter breaks, especially in books that don't have more than a dozen or so chapters.  Show the cover between chapters or, at the very least, have a separate page between chapters that show the chapter number - and maybe put the cover there every three chapters, or so.

Pelican Books is one publisher that gets it:  

"When reading a book in print, we interact with the cover every time we open and close the book – we see it all the time, it reinforces our perception of the book in our minds," Pelican book designer Matt Young told Creative Review. "Whereas when reading an ebook, the cover often has a much smaller role to play – reduced to a thumbnail, and sometimes never seen again once the book has been purchased. With Pelican, the cover is echoed throughout the entire book: each chapter begins with a full-page/full-screen chapter opener, acting as an important visual signpost and echoing the cover, reinforcing the brand and the series style."

This is a great marketing tool that should create some brand consciousness for e-books, Pelican.  And here's hoping that other publishers take your ideas and run with them.  

U.S. Book Sales Up 5.7% Over 2013

According to figures just released by the Association of American Publishers, book sales are doing surprisingly well these days, thank you.  ( I say "surprisingly" because of all the doom and gloom associated with most all of the recent projections having anything to do with publishing.)

Granted, the numbers are only through August 2014 sales, but a comparison with the same eight months in 2013 shows book sales having grown by almost 6% year over year.  Some genres, and some formats, are doing better than others, of course, and that's what makes the numbers interesting.

As measured in sales dollars (total sales of $10.7 billion):

• Children's / YA e-books             Up 56.5%
• Adult e-books                            Down 0.1%

• Children's / YA board books      Up 47.1%
• Children's / YA paperbacks       Up 21.2%
• Children's / YA hardcovers        Up 18.3%

• Adult paperbacks                      Down 0.7%
• Adult hardcovers                       Down 7.2%
• Mass Market                             Down 3.4%

• University press hardcovers     Down 3.5%
• University press paperbacks    Down 4.7%
• University press e-books          Up 14.0%

• Physical audiobooks                 Down 13.4%
• Downloaded audiobooks          Up 27.7%

I suppose the best news is that, while adults may be buying fewer books for themselves, they have increased what they are spending on books for their children at a healthy clip.  As you can see from the numbers, all of the "Down" categories are in adult books - and all of the children's categories are "Up."

I find interesting, too, the obvious trend away from purchasing physical audio books to downloading them.  And, in the category of "very good news," the percentage gain on downloaded audio is more than twice the amount lost on physical sales of the books.

(For those who really enjoy number-crunching: combined sales of  "children's" categories were $1.08 billion, leaving $9.62 billion for all other categories.  Of this $9.62 billion, $0.014 billion is for audiobook sales and $0.007 billion for University Press sales.  So, despite being a mix of good news and bad news, the takeaway here is that Total Sales are up almost 6%.  And that's a good thing.

E-Books and Backlists

Backlist Books (Massillon, Ohio)

I've made it pretty obvious that, for the most part, I am not a big fan of e-books.  My biggest gripe about them involves the outrageous ownership restrictions placed on e-books by major publishers, including the ridiculous use-restrictions placed on the world's public libraries.  And then, of course, I find reading an e-book to be an immensely inferior experience to reading a printed book...not even close.  But that is old news here on Book Chase.

There is, however, one use of e-books for which I enthusiastically applaud e-book publishers - publishing from backlists.  Thousands and thousands of wonderful books, many of which probably never saw even close to 10,000 printed copies, disappear every year.  Unless a reader stumbles upon them in used-book bookstores or during eBay searches, they remain dead to the world.  Not every great book is written by an established, or commercially popular, author.  Generally, the best books are buried by enormous piles of  the same popular trash that covers the shelves and floors of used-book stores everywhere.  James Patterson books, most of which are worthy of little more than doorstop-duty, are everywhere.  Good books are the needles lost in the James Patterson haystack.

Most publishers are sitting on backlist goldmines if they will just wake up and mine them.  Publishers already doing so don't seem to be doing enough to get the word out about their efforts.  Dedicated readers will jump all over the chance to discover the books they missed from the eighties, nineties, and oughts.  If - and this is a big if - publishers will price them reasonably.  After all, publisher cost will be minimal because readers will not demand major formatting changes (they will probably prefer seeing the original formatting, actually) other than to fit them to the electronic page.  Authors should be happy to accept the windfall this represents, so royalty negotiation could be relatively easy.

This can be a win-win situation in which all sides benefit.  I would love access to noir mysteries from the fifties and sixties, literary fiction from the last fifty years, and out-of-print science fiction.  The possibilities are endless.

The Guardian newspaper's book section mentions two publishing ventures that are already moving in this direction: Bello a Macmillan imprint and the Bloomsbury Reader imprint.  I suspect there are others, hopefully some of them by American publishers, but I have yet to find them.  Holler at me, publishers...I'm listening.

I'll buy a ton off the backlists at $3 to $5 a pop.  Let's do it.

Seriously, Barnes & Noble?

Seriously, Barnes & Noble and Little, Brown?  You don't see anything wrong with pricing an e-book at $18 when the real thing sells, brand, spanking new for $21?

Click on image for larger version

One More Reason I Still Don't Buy E-Books

Unless e-book and e-music purchasers have shopped very carefully, they do not really own the vast majority of the content they have downloaded to all those e-readers and mp3 players out there.  Rather, they own a license to use the products.  Unfortunately for them, very few of the benefits of true ownership come with those licenses, and that is precisely why I refuse to spend a whole lot of money on digital content.

Now, the Wall Street Journal, via its Market Watch page, gives me one more reason not to invest any money in e-books.  The article explains just what might happen at a collector's death to all the cash he has invested in digital content over his lifetime.  True, as the old saying goes, you can't take it with you, but if you are not prepared ahead of time it will all be gone with the wind anyway.

Someone who owned 10,000 hardcover books and the same number of vinyl records could bequeath them to descendants, but legal experts say passing on iTunes and Kindle libraries would be much more complicated.

And one’s heirs stand to lose huge sums of money. “I find it hard to imagine a situation where a family would be OK with losing a collection of 10,000 books and songs,” says Evan Carroll, co-author of “Your Digital Afterlife.” “Legally dividing one account among several heirs would also be extremely difficult.”

[...]

According to Amazon’s terms of use, “You do not acquire any ownership rights in the software or music content.” Apple limits the use of digital files to Apple devices used by the account holder.

“That account is an asset and something of value,” says Deirdre R. Wheatley-Liss, an estate-planning attorney at Fein, Such, Kahn & Shepard in Parsippany, N.J.

But can it be passed on to one’s heirs?

Most digital content exists in a legal black hole.

 That's probably enough to make most of you at least a little nervous, but the article does go on to explain one or two reasonable workarounds to the problem.  Of course, the easiest fix is to pass legislation keeping digital content from being sold with all these absurd restrictions in the first place.  And until that happens, I'm not buying - especially at the crazy high prices some publishers demand for their books.

Thankfully, a few publishers have already come to the realization that it is bad faith to restrict usage of the books they sell.  They are out there.  Support them and maybe the rest will finally come around.

This is a good place to start looking for DRM-free e-books.

How Do Books Make YOU Feel?

From Hachette Australia comes this celebration of some of the Hachette authors:



 I'm not sure how many of these are available in North America, but I suspect it's quite a few of them because they look very familiar...although they do go by pretty quickly.

Our Disappearing University Presses

University of Missouri, Columbia MO

Some of my very favorite books were published by university presses.  What other publishers produce as many books about minor historical figures, obscure Civil War battles, literary criticism, quirky memoirs, minority studies, women's studies, poetry, regional histories, and the like?  I've learned that when looking for a book about any relatively obscure subject or person, it is always most efficient to start the search by browsing a few university catalogs and websites.

But in the last few years, those catalogs have become harder and harder to come by.  Now, I understand why.  According to this June 19 article by Jeffrey R. Di Leo in Inside Higher Ed, university presses are rapidly disappearing.  That bothers me as much as what is happening to bookstores around the country. Times are changing, for sure, and not for the better - absolutely not for the better.

One of the measures of a great university is the strength of its press. Press strength is determined by its catalogue, and its catalogue by the choices of its editors and the impact of its authors. 

[...]

University presses are nonprofit enterprises. Though these presses may reach a level of financial self-sufficiency in their operation, they are by and large underwritten by their host universities. This is part of the investment of higher education.

Most of the monographs produced by scholars have a limited audience — and very few make their publishers any money. However, their publication is still an important aspect of scholarly activity and knowledge dissemination.

[...]

How does one compare a football season to a publishing season? Is an 8-5 season more valuable than 30 books published? Is running a press worth losing an assistant coach or two?

The reason Mr. Di Leo throws out the question just above is because it seems to take about $400,000 per year to subsidize a good-sized university press.  The latest university to announce a looming shutdown of its press is the University of Missouri, one that was founded in 1958 and enjoys a reputation as one of the best university presses in this country.  According to Di Leo, $400,000 is just a little more than what the University of Missouri pays to the men filling the roles of assistant head coach and defensive co-ordinator.

But we know which program is a profit center for the school, a recruiting tool that keeps all that money flowing into the school coffers to pay all those so "critically needed" university administrators, don't we?  It is a sad day (and the Houston area school I'm proudest of, Rice University, is among those having made the same decision) when our best universities forget what their purpose really is and decide to place a higher value on athletics than on the prestige to be gained from running a successful university press.

Read the rest of this article for all the disheartening details.  The dumbing down of America is preceding at an ever accelerating pace, friends.