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Published March 18, 2009

Midweek Miscellany, March 18th, 2009

The Bomb — Alison Forner‘s cover design for Stephen M. Younger’s history of nuclear weapons (Ecco June 2009), seen at Book Covers Anonymous.


Has the computer democratised design? — Designer Peter Saville (perhaps best known for his iconic designs for Factory Records) at D&AD President’s Lecture earlier this month (above). More interesting snippets from the talk are available here (via The Strange Attractor).

Reminder — Writer Charlie Stross on why there isn’t a tipjar on his blog (via Times Emit):

If I put a Paypal tipjar on this blog to take conscience money from folks who’ve downloaded a (cough) unauthorized ebook or two, the money would come to me, not to the publisher. And without the publisher those books wouldn’t exist: wouldn’t have been commissioned, wouldn’t have been edited, wouldn’t have been corrected and marketed and sold in whatever form filtered onto the unauthorized ebook market. (Yes, they commission books, and pay authors for them up-front — a vital part of the process, because most of us can’t afford to take a year to write a book on spec and then hope somebody liked it enough to buy it…)

“We publish books and give them away – free” — Concord Free Press (via Scott Pack):

All 1,500 copies of our first free book, Give and Take, are circulating through the world—from New England to New Zealand, Soho to Slovakia. Our readers are making voluntary donations to charities or people in need. We ask them (nicely, of course) to give, then pass the book on, so that every time it changes hands, it generates more contributions.

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Published March 6, 2009

Something for the Weekend, March 6th, 2009

Abecediary — Steven Heller on alphabet books (Die Flucht Nach ABECEDERIA by the French comic artist Blexbolex pictured above).

Imprints in the 21st Century — Admittedly HarperCollins new Imprint It Books is an easy target (NB use of “tap into the zeitgeist” in a sentence = fail), but Mike Shatzkin does a good job of explaining why their strategy is past its sell by date (and beginning to smell):

General trade publishers need to see, and apparently don’t,  that their legacy brands are B2B [business-to-business]. They should be exploited that way. They need brands that can work B2C [business-to-consumer], but it will require discipline, focus, and an audience-first picture of what to publish to accomplish that.

Writing for a Living — Luminaries such as Will Self, Joyce Carol Oates, and AL Kennedy (quoted below) discuss whether writing is a joy or a chore in The Guardian:

“The joy of writing for a living is that you get to do it all the time. The misery is that you have to, whether you’re in the mood or not.”

Hugh at BookOven is angry this week.  He wants to know why publishers are not selling directly to customers from their website and why they make e-books so complicated. I think Hugh underestimates the time/money/skill-deficit obstacles publishers face in regard to both problems. I suspect Hugh thinks I’m an apologist and will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.


Book Design Made Easy — cartoonist Tom Gauld is making his genius cartoons from The Guardian available on Flickr (via Drawn!, source of so many life-improving things).

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Published January 28, 2009

Midweek Miscellany, Jan 28th 2009


John Updike (pictured) has died at 76. The Guardian and the New York Times look back at his life and career in pictures. Designer Observer points to ‘Deceptively Conceptual’ Updike’s astute 2005 essay on book covers for the New Yorker:

Publishing forms a minor branch of the entertainment industry, and book design is increasingly a matter of fashion—that is, of attention-getting. In the visual clamor of a bookstore, the important thing is to be different; a whisper becomes a shout, and the ugly becomes beautiful if it attracts attention. Yet an utter flaunting of conventional expectations may baffle and repel the public; when the title and the author’s name are left off the front of the book… it sends a subliminal message of contempt for the written word, the product being packaged.

Batman as jazz– Brad Mackay wins top prize for funniest headline of the week for his look at the reinvention of the Dark Knight and the genius of BatManga! in the Globe and Mail.

“Content is Free… But Curation is Sacred” — Peter Collingridge at Times Emit considers the implications of the Google settlement and what happens if/when we are flooded with unmediated free “stuff”:

[A]s the amount of content we are exposed to increases, without any discernible gauge of quality, it is the trusted curators of that content to whom we will choose to give our attention, time or money, rather then trying to filter it all out personally… the curator may be the bloke in the record shop who knows my music collection and recommends something new, the staff in my local wine merchant, or a particularly good blog I follow, my newspaper – anything. However, it is not Amazon’s recommendation algorithm; it is decidedly human, and, over time, a relationship of trust is built up. If it works, that trust leads to action, purchase, attention, refinement and more trust.

See the Web Site, Buy the Book: J. Courtney Sullivan looks at author web sites and book trailers for the New York Times.

Sara Nelson, editor in chief of Publisher Weekly has been fired is “leaving as part of a companywide restructuring”. The indefatigable Sarah Weiman has a extensive round-up of the reactions in the blogosphere.

The fabulous Book Cover Archive have recently add a couple of lovely minimalist cover designs by Gabriele Wilson (pictured above). Nice.

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Published November 3, 2008

Monday Miscellany, Nov 3rd, 2008

The extraordinarily cool binding for Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi (Ubu the King), a collaboration between bookbinder Mary Reynolds and Marcel Duchamp, as seen at blog.rightreading (pictured).

Editor Chuck Adams interviewed in the November Poets & Writers Magazine. A very interesting–albeit very commercial–perspective:

“For too long, in New York, we’ve been in this culture of publishing what we like and not what readers want. Hopefully, we’ll come around to trying to understand what people really want to read so we can interest them in reading in the first place.

He also makes a very telling point about the problem of homogeneity of publishing:

“We don’t encourage a diversity of people in the business. We don’t. We just want more of the same because they’re the ones who can afford to work in it.”

I couldn’t agree more…

Not content with Bastards With Bookshops , Bastards With Bookshops 2,  and Yet More Bastards With Bookshops , Bookride has gleefully provided guidelines to help aspiring bastard-booksellers achieve their dream. Like they need the help… My personal favourite:

“Greet the customer with a glower, a scowl or a look of deep mistrust. If you are feeling generous a frosty ‘Good Morning! will suffice.”

Following Chapters-Indigo in Canada, Barnes and Noble have launched a social networking site ‘My B&N’ in the US.

Agent Kate Lee interviewed at HarperStudio’s 26th Story:

“I think the building or seeding of buzz online is important–as with film, music or TV, word of mouth is invaluable.  That buzz can come through building relationships with bloggers, writing posts that you then try to get linked to, starting up a social network or “fan” group, and/or creating original online content.  The main thing is just to be out there–be writing, be posting, be Twittering, be engaging in conversation with other people in the blogosphere.”

A fascinating half-hour interview with novelist John Le Carre from BBC Radio 4’s Front Row.

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Published October 21, 2008

On Being Skipped

GalleyCat pointed me in the direction of  a refreshingly frank essay by Andrew Wheeler, Marketing Manager for John Wiley & Sons, about books that are passed over, or  ‘skipped’,  by a bookstore:

“bookstores are businesses, not public conveniences. No store has the responsibility to carry every book published… I market books for a living, so I can tell you an unpleasant truth: the order for any book, from any account, starts at zero. The publisher’s sales rep walks in the door with tipsheets and covers, past sales figures and promotional plans, to convince that bookseller’s buyer to buy that book. In many categories… the chain buyers say “yes” the overwhelming majority of the time. But not all the time. Sometimes, that buyer is not convinced, and the order stays at zero.”

None of what Andrew says will be news to any one working in publishing — skips are an accepted, if unpleasant, part of the business — but, as Andrew notes, authors on the receiving end of skips are outraged by them, and I’m sure more than a few debut authors will be shocked to discover that there is such a thing and that it happens frequently enough to have its own terminology.

In most cases agents or publishers don’t discuss the possibility of skips with their authors before they actually happen — no one wants to be that pessimistic about a book’s chances! But that is not to say we should be less than forthright about the realities of business, or pretend that this doesn’t happen.

I recently had an exchange with a freelance publicist who told me with all confidence that he was going to book his client-author on national radio and television. Knowing the book, and having had some experience of the challenges of book publicity, I just about spat out my coffee. Charitably he was naively optimistic. Uncharitably, he was bullshitting me, and probably his client, to justify his hourly rate.

A publicist, however good he or she is, cannot guarantee an author publicity any more than the greatest sales rep can guarantee sales or prevent the dreaded ‘skip’. You can charm and you can twist arms,  but ultimately the decision lies with someone else — a producer, a book review editor, or a buyer — with a set of priorities different to your own. To pretend otherwise, leaving things unspoken  or offering overconfident assurances is a disservice to your author, and will probably bite you in the ass in the long run as a publisher (or freelance publicist).

Authors, unsurprisingly, have a tendency to be smart people. By and large they don’t want to be left in the dark, or have their hopes unrealistically raised. Sure they should take some responsibility — ask questions and educate themselves  — but we should  be honest and upfront about how the book business works, putting books in their proper context and giving an author a realistic sense of what is possible.

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