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Published April 12, 2012

Midweek Miscellany

A.S. Byatt by reviews Peter Carey’s latest novel The Chemistry of Tears for the Financial Times.

Also at the FT: Jennie Erdal, author of The Missing Shade of Blue, on philosophical novels:

The more novels I read at university, the more I felt that fiction was where truth was to be discovered. I seemed to experience Melville’s “shock of recognition”; which is to say re-cognition, for it was there already, waiting to be reawakened – the knowledge that some things, not least what it is that makes us human, can never be adequately expressed in conventional philosophical prose.

Scheduling Time to Stare Out of the Window — Clay Shirky on boredom (via Nicholas Carr):

It was only later that I realized the value of being bored was actually pretty high. Being bored is a kind of diagnostic for the gap between what you might be interested in and your current environment. But now it is an act of significant discipline to say, “I’m going to stare out the window. I’m going to schedule some time to stare out the window.” The endless gratification offered up by our devices means that the experience of reading in particular now becomes something we have to choose to do.

No Friends But Empty Chairs — Michael Dirda on Philip Larkin for The New Criterion:

As Alan Bennett observed, the poet acted sixty all his life and made a profession of it. Larkin certainly had absolutely nothing going for him physically, being tall and stooping, bald, deaf, overweight, with an occasional stammer, multiple chins and inch-thick spectacles. As if this weren’t enough, he generally wore dark, ill-fitting suits or—when on holiday—prissy shorts or a checked tweed sport coat. (A famous picture shows him in such a coat, sitting primly next to a sign that says “England.”) He wasn’t joking when he said, “Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.”

And finally…

Generation Intern — Tim de Lisle on the appointment of 37 year-old Lawrence Booth, “the youngest [editor] in living memory”, to the helm of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack:

Today’s young journalists have become Generation Intern, condemned to do one not-quite-job after another. Lawrence’s story offers hope, and some lessons. Be professional and adaptable. Embrace both print and web. Don’t fret if you get laid off. Hold your nerve and keep your voice. Write a piece as crisply as you write an email.

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Published July 7, 2010

Midweek Miscellany

The Good, The Bad… — design:related‘s Karen Horton (also Art Director at Little, Brown and Co.) interviews Paul Buckley, Creative Director of Penguin US, about his new book Penguin 75: Designers, Authors, Commentary (The Good, The Bad…):

Everyone was asked to keep their comments to 100 words or less, and though there are a few exceptions that I let run long, my own included, most contributors stuck to my request. As to the sarcasm, there are plenty of good natured jabs throughout the book as I was very clear with the participants that this was a true opportunity to let it all out – if you hate your cover, please by all means tell us about it; that is the point of this book.

You can read my interview with Paul from September last year here, and I’m hoping to chat with him and designer Christopher Brand about Penguin 75 soon. Fingers crossed.

Rewound and Remixed — Tom McCarthy, author of Remainder and C, interviewed in The Times:

If McCarthy… presents a radically fresh prospect for the future of the novel, it is probably, paradoxically, because he has instinctively ignored contemporary literature almost completely. He would argue, in fact, that it is only by immersing oneself in all that has gone before that any contemporary novelist has even the faintest chance of coming up with something new. “I don’t think most writers, most commercial middlebrow writers, are doing that,” he says. “I think they’ve become too aligned with mainstream media culture and its underlying aesthetic of ‘self-expression’. I see what I’m doing as simply plugging literature into other literature. For me, that’s what literature’s always done. If Shakespeare finds a good speech in an older version of Macbeth or Pliny, he just rips it and mixes it.”

See also: My Q & A with Peter Mendelsund and Tom McCarthy about the cover design of C.

Paywalls vs. Potential — Clay Shirky interviewed in The Guardian. This has been much linked to elsewhere because of Shirky’s comments about the online “paywall” at the aforementioned The Times, but I actually Michael Wolff’s Vanity Fair article on Rupert Murdoch from October last year is more interesting on this point. See also: John Gapper’s op-ed “Murdoch must become an elitist” in the Financial Times (registration required).

Necessary Agent — Jofie Ferrari-Adler, senior editor at Grove/Atlantic, on literary agents and their relationship with book editors in Poets & Writers Magazine. It’s an interesting article, although — just for the record — not everything that goes pear-shaped in the publishing process is the fault of the Sales & Marketing department…

And finally…

Cats Without Dogs — At some point I will shut up about Jason… Until then, you might be interested to know he has just started a blog…

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Published June 25, 2010

Something for the Weekend

The Betamax of Printing — A lovely post on medieval block books posted at The Catologuer’s Desk:

Block books were a sideline in the world of early printing, appearing concurrently with Gutenberg’s invention in the 1450s and 60s. Movable type and the printing press had their origins in metalworking and wine pressing. Block books, on the other hand, developed from the use of wood engravings to cheaply and quickly print fabrics, devotional items, and playing cards. Each block book was composed of individual prints that were produced by rubbing a wood engraving against paper, and they were often hand-coloured. What little text was included was usually incorporated directly into the engraving, a delicate and time-consuming process, but worthwhile because the prints could be mass produced without the capital outlay required for type.

(Is that actually a relevant, non-spurious mention of Gutenberg in a post about books and publishing? That must be a first!)

Drowning in an Ocean of Slush — Laura Miller on reading when everyone can publish for Salon:

What’s most striking… about the many, many conversations I’ve had about e-books, innovations in self-publishing and the emergence of publicity venues like social networking is how difficult it is to stayed focused on what all of this means for readers. No matter how hard you try, within five minutes the talk turns inexorably back to how agents, editors and publishers will suffer in the coming cataclysmic change — and, above all, how gloriously liberating it will be for authors… How readers feel about all this usually gets lost in the fanfare and the hand-wringing… Readers themselves rarely complain that there isn’t enough of a selection on Amazon or in their local superstore; they’re more likely to ask for help in narrowing down their choices. So for anyone who has, however briefly, played that reviled gatekeeper role, a darker question arises: What happens once the self-publishing revolution really gets going…?

You and Sonny Mehta — Another reminder from Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody and Cognitive Surplus (and who is sounding terribly pleased with himself these days), that we are all fucked:

The interesting clash to me is between you and say, Sonny Mehta… You’re both in the same industry, but from his point of view if he can just hold it together 10 more years, he’s fine. He can retire. But you know that if you stay in the book industry 30 more years, there’s no way that things will be anything like today. Sonny Mehta’s incentive is to postpone—even if it makes things worse—the moment of shock to right after he retires. But you don’t have that option. I’m interested in young writers and editors entering a system that is plainly structured around the vestiges of a world fast draining away.

Meanwhile, from the other end of the spectrum…

…Distracted — An interview with Nicholas Carr, who has followed up his essay ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid?’ with The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, at Open Culture:

The Web is now about 20 years old. Up until recently, we’ve been dazzled by its riches and conveniences – for good reason. Now, though, I think we’re becoming more aware of the costs that go along with the benefits, of what we lose when we spend so much time staring into screens. I sense that people, or at least some people, are beginning to sense the limits of online life. They’re craving to be more in control of their attention and their time.

Nicholas Carr also discusses his new book with Norah Young on this week’s Spark on CBC Radio.

And finally (just in case you’re wondering)…

Here’s the latest from cartoonist James Sturm on life without the internet at Slate:

In the two months since I’ve been unplugged, I have been experiencing more and more moments of synchronicity—coincidental events that seem to be meaningfully related. Today, after finishing the first phase of a graphic-novel project that is based on the life of a fictional member of the Weather Underground, I received in the mail an unsolicited copy of a graphic novel about teaching written by William Ayers. Earlier in the week, at the exact moment I started working on a drawing of a monkey (see above), Michael Chabon started talking about Planet of the Apes… I know this type of magical thinking is easily dismissed, but I keep having moments like this. So how do I explain it? Are meaningful connections easier to recognize when the fog of the Internet is lifted? Does it have to do with the difference between searching and waiting? Searching (which is what you do a lot of online) seems like an act of individual will. When things come to you while you’re waiting it feels more like fate. Instant gratification feels unearned. That random song, perfectly attuned to your mood, seems more profound when heard on a car radio than if you had called up the same tune via YouTube.

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9780393072228/?a_aid=optimist
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Published May 26, 2010

Midweek Miscellany

Caustic Soda — James Morrison AKA Caustic Cover Critic talks about five great covers (and a few terrible ones) at Flavorwire. The great ones include Charlotte Strick‘s design for 2666 by Roberto Bolaño. Charlotte talked about this cover and boxed set with FaceOut Books a while back.

The Case of Abundance — The formidable Clay Shirky interviewed at Publishing Perspectives:

We are already in a world where most books are incomprehensible to most people –- whether that be content comprehension or the question “why would anyone publish that?” — but we don’t notice that anymore.

What has happened with the web is that there is so much content that we have broken all the old filters. And for now, we are experiencing it as the completely overburdened and chaotic environment that it is. But that doesn’t mean people should stop publishing online. It just means that we need better filters. Because in fact, the over-publishing of content has been a normal problem since the invention of the printing press. It’s just that we had ways of ignoring things we didn’t care about. The problem isn’t getting people to shut up, the problem is creating filters to help people find their way to things they want.

And finally…

I’m probably the last person on the interwebs to discover Erik Heywood’s blog on books, bookshelves, bookstores, and libraries (etc.), but it really is quite lovely (via The Silver Lining).

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Published May 26, 2009

What’s Next For Publishers?

An unforeseen consequence of the “New Think for Old Publishers” debacle at SXSW in earlier this year is that I will be a participant in a session on the role of the publishers in the digital age at Book Camp Toronto on June 6th.

140 Character Assassination

The now infamous SXSW panel was supposed to discuss “what’s going right and what’s going wrong in publishing, assess success of recent forays into marketing digitally, digital publishing, and what books and blogs have to gain from one another.”

As has been well documented elsewhere, things did not go according to plan.

Despite the presence of heavyweight panelists (including the venerable Clay Shirky), new ideas were in short supply. Audience frustration overflowed on to Twitter and an array of 140 character bullets (identified by a #sxswbp hashtag) ripped into the panel, with what was perhaps the kill-shot fired by a writer in the audience:

“If, as an author, I can design it myself, write it myself, publish it myself, why would I bother going to a publisher at all? What purpose do you serve?”*

Existential Crisis

The old answer to this question was that publishers offered technical expertise and mass distribution.

But, nowadays, digital technology has made it easy for writers to publish, distribute and market their own books independently. And whilst professional editing, design, production, distribution, and marketing may still be valuable and sought-after services, it’s become very apparent that the perceived gap between self-publishing and traditional publishing is narrowing.

The battering that the SXSW panel took inadvertently revealed what we have long-suspected — publishers need to change the way they think about themselves, the decisions they make, and the services they offer, or cease to exist.

Fine Filtering

One idea that gained some currency in the aftermath of SXSW was that publishers are — or could be — ‘cultural curators’, a role made only more important by the explosion of content created and distributed by digital technology.

In a world where it is impossible to read everything that is emailed, texted, tweeted, posted, uploaded, or printed, there is an opportunity for publishers to become trusted advisers who sift through the vast digital slush-pile and present only the best, most interesting work. Or so the argument goes.

Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that publishers haven’t proved to be very effective at curating in the past, and it’s precisely this kind of pretension that gets them in trouble at events like SXSW.

A rap sheet of opportunistic publishing, self-indulgence, costly blunders, and generally too much poor product means that publishers (not to mention the mainstream media) have squandered any cultural authority they may once have had, and have been superseded by an informal network of curators connected online.

Furthermore, curation doesn’t really explain what publishers actually do for authors. If it’s just filtering (by set a of cultural criteria I may or may not agree with), why bother going to a publisher at all?

Strengthening the Signal

Not long after after SXSW I sat down in Toronto with Book Camp TO organizer Hugh McGuire to discuss these crumbling cultural hierarchies and the implications for publishers.

Expressing my dissatisfaction with the idea of publishers as curators  — and trying to take into account Hugh’s reader-centric approach — I suggested that perhaps we’d stand ourselves in better stead if we thought of ourselves more as ‘advocates’.

More proactive than curation, advocacy takes into account that publishers do more than find completed works of art and present them to the public. And it goes at least part way towards explaining what publishers do for authors, whilst offering a model for how they can interact meaningfully (and honestly) with readers.

Perhaps, just as crucially, it also means being able to effectively publish and promote books that we believe in, without making any of the claims of cultural authority or superiority that are attached to curating — the framework of advocacy works whether you are publishing literary fiction or genre, poetry or humour.

Admittedly, there are probably minimal and maximal versions of what ‘publisher as advocate’ means. On the minimal side, publishers promote (and defend if necessary) their books in the public forum. A more maximal version — which is probably where my thinking lies — would not simply limit advocacy to marketing a finished product. It would begin with the commissioning editor championing the work in-house, and continue through the production of the book to the publicist who is pitching it to reviewers, and beyond. It would also mean publishing less and publishing better.

So…

These ideas are not definitive. In fact they’re a rather hurried formation (at the prompting of Sean Cranbury) of a jumble of ideas that I’ve had kicking around my head that need more time, but also more air and more discussion.

The Book Camp Toronto session about the role of publishers is on Saturday June 6th at the University of Toronto’s iSchool. Please come along and share your ideas. If you can’t make it, please feel free to leave your feedback, ideas, and links in the comments section or send me an email or a DM.

Over and Out.

* For the record, this quotation is from panelist Peter Miller‘s account of #sxswbp

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