Conversations in the Book Trade: Books, art, art-books, and ... authorial movies.
Friday, April 17, 2009
RIP Derek Weiler
Derek Weiler, editor of Quill and Quire, passed away at the age of 40. Sincere condolences to Weiler's friends and family.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Jack David -- Publisher (ECW Press)
Jack David of ECW Press:
CBT: Recently there has been major restructuring at various publishing houses (for example, HarperCollins, now Harper, changes at Houghton-Mifflen, etc.), and changes as well at periodicals covering publishing (for example, Publishers' Weekly). In the midst of this recent round of restructuring and lay-offs, it has been common to blame the economic crisis of Sept/Oct. 2008, which led to dismal sales over the 2008 holiday season. Yet one season of poor sales does not usually lead to changes of this severity in an industry. Are there other factors behind recent shake-ups in publishing? If so, how far back do they go? Years? Decades?
JD: I think that a big part of the US large publishers' nervousness and consequent scale-backs have to do with Borders. You've got the second biggest retail chain in the States in trouble. Why? Especially when they used to be the best, in terms of ordering, stocking, and selling. Because they were good and profitable, and because the original owners got very good offers, they were sold--but not to bookstore people but to financial opportunists. And from there re-sold until all the profits were squeezed out and new investment was not made. So the big US publishers think to themselves, what happens if Borders goes under? That's 800 or so stores that disappear. A second factor is that the multiplicity of entertainment options has begun to carve into the book-readership market. Of course, that's been going on for a long time, but the big US publishers have a multitude of genres, including those that are losing out to online games and reference. If you made a lot of money from selling, say, dictionaries, and that market dried up, you'd have to lay off staff--as has OUP in Canada. But have Canadian trade sales declined? To the contrary, they were up last year according to Booknet Canada. In any case, there have always been shake-ups in publishing as publishers grow more optimistic and take on lots of projects, and then scale back. Is it worse now? It's a non-growth industry, and the new catch phrase is flat is the new up.
CBT: In the past few years, articles have appeared criticizing the pricing books. Are books -- particularly literary novels -- too expensive? Has this been a factor in reducing the size of the book-buying audience over the last twenty or so years?
JD: Perhaps. But you could say the same about movie prices which tend to march in lockstep with mass market paperbacks. $12 for a movie? And movies are booming. In the US, the price of hardcover novels is $24.95 and hasn't moved in many years. Publishers look at the graph of sales vs profit with price the moving factor. Sell 5,000 copies in HC vs 15,000 in trade paper. Where is the most profit? That's the issue. Lots of publishers have tried the original trade paper publishing routine, and that can work. But it depends on the book.
CBT: Staying with the same theme. Literary novels were once publishing in hardcover and then, several months later (and a spot on the best-seller lists willing), they were available as affordable pocket-sized paperbacks. Then, in the 1980s, this practice ceased and literary paperbacks were published in N. America as pricier trade paperbacks. Only genre fiction retained the pocket-book form. In retrospect, was this a prudent decision by publishers of literary fiction? Or should the literary pocket-book make a return?
JD: No good answer here. Whatever returns the greatest sales at the greatest margin, while leaving the door open for subsidiary rights. We now publish all our original mysteries in HC, then TP. The reason is that we're trying to sell US rights and if we publish initially in TP, the US mass market publishers believe that we've eaten up some of the market.
CBT: How much potential do you think e-ink and e-book technologies have? Do you see e-books catching on with the public? And do they provide a reasonable business model?
JD: Of course they do. We are publishers of intellectual content, and it doesn't matter to us how that content gets read by the public as long as our margins exist. Take away the cost of printing, and shipping, but not selling, and you have cut out a big chunk of your costs. We typically get about 30-35% of the list price back in our hands, after bookstore discount, distribution and selling costs. For a $20 book, that's $6 or $7. And from that we pay all our other costs, including royalties. If we get $10 from an ebook purchase, we're laughing.
CBT: Agents now have enormous power, effectively controlling which writers get access to acquisition editors at major houses. Furthermore, agents find themselves under enormous pressure, acting as the line of first readers who have to sift through avalanches of submissions. Is this tenable over the long run? Is it good for art? Or should large houses be accepting both agented and unsolicited submissions?
JD: The large houses can do whatever they want, but in our case (and we publish 50 books a year) many of our best books arrive unagented. It doesn't take long to decide whether a submission has some worth. Our philosophy is not to leave the unsoliciteds with an intern, but with the most senior people in the company.
CBT: Literary prizes have also grown in power. They have arguably replaced the glowing review as a marketing tool. But are they as effective as criticism in building a contemporary canon? After all, critics can express nuance, prizes can't. Do book prizes give the message: this book is worth reading and all these others aren't?
JD: Odd question. There are only three prizes in Canada that have a direct effect on sales--Giller, GG fiction, and Canada Reads. All others have virtually no tangible sales result. But think of the number of nominated books--hundreds. In Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Manitoba, there must be 200 books nominated every year.
CBT: Publishers often include "non-compete" clauses in the boilerplate contracts they offer to authors. Yet, as agent Kristen Nelson has argued, they can be unfair to authors. It is conceivable a committed writer will produce good work over a period of several years that is repeatedly rejected, leaving him or her with a surplus of manuscripts. If this same writer is to suddenly get two or three offers on two or three different manuscripts, why shouldn't he or she be allowed to publish more than one book with different publishers in a similar time-frame?
JD: The only non-compete clause I'm aware of is that the author is not allowed to compete with his or her own book. That is, if we published a biography of Leonard Cohen, the author wouldn't be allowed to publish a similar book with another publisher. Other than that, the author can do what he/she wants.
CBT. How will the current recession affect publishing? What are some realistic tactics and strategies for publishers to survive?
JD: The argument is that publishing is recession-proof. Whereas you wouldn't pay $20k for a new car or $1k for a new fridge, you would pay $15 for a new book. I guess this theory will be tested. Tactics for survival? Publish good books in niches.
CBT. Will the Internet -- including but not limited to the posting of online books -- become an increasing part of book distribution/audience-building? Or will it always remain an adjunct to the book?
JD: Both, I'd say.
Bio: Jack David is the publisher of ECW Press.
CBT: Recently there has been major restructuring at various publishing houses (for example, HarperCollins, now Harper, changes at Houghton-Mifflen, etc.), and changes as well at periodicals covering publishing (for example, Publishers' Weekly). In the midst of this recent round of restructuring and lay-offs, it has been common to blame the economic crisis of Sept/Oct. 2008, which led to dismal sales over the 2008 holiday season. Yet one season of poor sales does not usually lead to changes of this severity in an industry. Are there other factors behind recent shake-ups in publishing? If so, how far back do they go? Years? Decades?
JD: I think that a big part of the US large publishers' nervousness and consequent scale-backs have to do with Borders. You've got the second biggest retail chain in the States in trouble. Why? Especially when they used to be the best, in terms of ordering, stocking, and selling. Because they were good and profitable, and because the original owners got very good offers, they were sold--but not to bookstore people but to financial opportunists. And from there re-sold until all the profits were squeezed out and new investment was not made. So the big US publishers think to themselves, what happens if Borders goes under? That's 800 or so stores that disappear. A second factor is that the multiplicity of entertainment options has begun to carve into the book-readership market. Of course, that's been going on for a long time, but the big US publishers have a multitude of genres, including those that are losing out to online games and reference. If you made a lot of money from selling, say, dictionaries, and that market dried up, you'd have to lay off staff--as has OUP in Canada. But have Canadian trade sales declined? To the contrary, they were up last year according to Booknet Canada. In any case, there have always been shake-ups in publishing as publishers grow more optimistic and take on lots of projects, and then scale back. Is it worse now? It's a non-growth industry, and the new catch phrase is flat is the new up.
CBT: In the past few years, articles have appeared criticizing the pricing books. Are books -- particularly literary novels -- too expensive? Has this been a factor in reducing the size of the book-buying audience over the last twenty or so years?
JD: Perhaps. But you could say the same about movie prices which tend to march in lockstep with mass market paperbacks. $12 for a movie? And movies are booming. In the US, the price of hardcover novels is $24.95 and hasn't moved in many years. Publishers look at the graph of sales vs profit with price the moving factor. Sell 5,000 copies in HC vs 15,000 in trade paper. Where is the most profit? That's the issue. Lots of publishers have tried the original trade paper publishing routine, and that can work. But it depends on the book.
CBT: Staying with the same theme. Literary novels were once publishing in hardcover and then, several months later (and a spot on the best-seller lists willing), they were available as affordable pocket-sized paperbacks. Then, in the 1980s, this practice ceased and literary paperbacks were published in N. America as pricier trade paperbacks. Only genre fiction retained the pocket-book form. In retrospect, was this a prudent decision by publishers of literary fiction? Or should the literary pocket-book make a return?
JD: No good answer here. Whatever returns the greatest sales at the greatest margin, while leaving the door open for subsidiary rights. We now publish all our original mysteries in HC, then TP. The reason is that we're trying to sell US rights and if we publish initially in TP, the US mass market publishers believe that we've eaten up some of the market.
CBT: How much potential do you think e-ink and e-book technologies have? Do you see e-books catching on with the public? And do they provide a reasonable business model?
JD: Of course they do. We are publishers of intellectual content, and it doesn't matter to us how that content gets read by the public as long as our margins exist. Take away the cost of printing, and shipping, but not selling, and you have cut out a big chunk of your costs. We typically get about 30-35% of the list price back in our hands, after bookstore discount, distribution and selling costs. For a $20 book, that's $6 or $7. And from that we pay all our other costs, including royalties. If we get $10 from an ebook purchase, we're laughing.
CBT: Agents now have enormous power, effectively controlling which writers get access to acquisition editors at major houses. Furthermore, agents find themselves under enormous pressure, acting as the line of first readers who have to sift through avalanches of submissions. Is this tenable over the long run? Is it good for art? Or should large houses be accepting both agented and unsolicited submissions?
JD: The large houses can do whatever they want, but in our case (and we publish 50 books a year) many of our best books arrive unagented. It doesn't take long to decide whether a submission has some worth. Our philosophy is not to leave the unsoliciteds with an intern, but with the most senior people in the company.
CBT: Literary prizes have also grown in power. They have arguably replaced the glowing review as a marketing tool. But are they as effective as criticism in building a contemporary canon? After all, critics can express nuance, prizes can't. Do book prizes give the message: this book is worth reading and all these others aren't?
JD: Odd question. There are only three prizes in Canada that have a direct effect on sales--Giller, GG fiction, and Canada Reads. All others have virtually no tangible sales result. But think of the number of nominated books--hundreds. In Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Manitoba, there must be 200 books nominated every year.
CBT: Publishers often include "non-compete" clauses in the boilerplate contracts they offer to authors. Yet, as agent Kristen Nelson has argued, they can be unfair to authors. It is conceivable a committed writer will produce good work over a period of several years that is repeatedly rejected, leaving him or her with a surplus of manuscripts. If this same writer is to suddenly get two or three offers on two or three different manuscripts, why shouldn't he or she be allowed to publish more than one book with different publishers in a similar time-frame?
JD: The only non-compete clause I'm aware of is that the author is not allowed to compete with his or her own book. That is, if we published a biography of Leonard Cohen, the author wouldn't be allowed to publish a similar book with another publisher. Other than that, the author can do what he/she wants.
CBT. How will the current recession affect publishing? What are some realistic tactics and strategies for publishers to survive?
JD: The argument is that publishing is recession-proof. Whereas you wouldn't pay $20k for a new car or $1k for a new fridge, you would pay $15 for a new book. I guess this theory will be tested. Tactics for survival? Publish good books in niches.
CBT. Will the Internet -- including but not limited to the posting of online books -- become an increasing part of book distribution/audience-building? Or will it always remain an adjunct to the book?
JD: Both, I'd say.
Bio: Jack David is the publisher of ECW Press.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Frank Wilson -- editor, critic (The Philadelphia Inquirer [retired])
Frank Wilson of The Philadelphia Inquirer (retired), Books Inq., and When Falls the Coliseum:
CBT: When I started this interview series it was already clear that publishing -- especially of literary fiction -- was in dire straits. At that time, one explanation that was fashionable was 9/11 was the reason people weren't reading as much literature (or as much anything) as they used to. Now we are living in a time when the long-term repercussions of 9/11 are still with us. But using 9/11 as a primary explanation for what ails literary publishing simply doesn't work. For one thing, we are now in the midst of a particularly serious recession, and for another, it is clear the general decline in reading is a widespread -- and possibly unstoppable -- phenomenon that has roots which go back decades.
What is your take on the current depressed state of literary publishing? Is it a passing phase (as the NEA's recent uptick of optimism implies)? Or is it an intractable problem -- in other words, it is the new normal? And if the latter, what can be done to counteract it?
FW: I can’t say that I take all this dire grousing about the decline in reading all that seriously. Doesn’t anyone remember that, when they were in high school – and I was in high school half a century ago – the kids who read a lot were … in a minority? This idea that, not so many years ago, everybody, including kids, were reading up a storm is fantasy, as is the idea that young people nowadays don’t read as much as young people used to. It’s probably about the same. Off the top of my head, I can name three young women — Caitlin Kelly, 15, of
For much the same reason I am wary of categories like “literary fiction.” Some kid reading Philip K. Dick back in the ‘60s would have looked down on as just a sci-fi nut. Now Philip K. Dick is included in the Library of America series. One can’t, on the one hand, complain that people don’t read, and then, on the other, up the ante by insisting that the only reading that counts is of the sort of books one approves of, or that critics approve of, or academics, or whomever.
The mention of 9/11 in connection with this is interesting. The idea that writers should be commenting in their fiction on major events of the day is a dangerous one. Events like 9/11 can be a kind of Medusa to writers, turning their imaginations to stone. If you want to comment on big current events, become a journalist or a historian. If you want to be novelist, pay attention to people, their foibles, their pathos, their sad dreams and high hopes, their small victories and large defeats. If some earth-shattering event happens to have some bearing on any of that, fine. But bear this in mind: Napoleon invaded
CBT: How much potential do you think the Internet has as a vehicle of publishing? It's clear that there is a place for online criticism; the lit-blogosphere is dominated by it. The blogger Dan Green has even coined a phrase for this form of critical writing: the crit-blogosphere. But the crit-blogosphere's logical partner -- the fic-blogosphere -- is marginalized. Not many people read short stories or novels online.
Will the Internet really become the medium in which serious people both publish and read fiction? Or is this a technological pipe-dream, and is it more a question of using the Internet as an effective means to sell and distribute printed books?
FW: I think the question that needs to be asked is whether the internet is a medium of expression or a transmission device. At present it is almost exclusively the latter, but it has the potential to be both. I ran a review a few years ago of The Daughters of Freya by Michael Betcherman and David Diamond. This was an email mystery. You subscribed and the emails were sent to you and you read as they mystery deepened and was eventually. The reviewer liked it and I thought this sort of thing might have a future. It still might. See Jill Walker’s list of email narratives.
Serialization, very short stories, poetry are already things well-suited to the web. But the web itself offers the potential for an entirely new kind of literature. Imagine a story told by means of hypertext, audio and video. Radio took drama and made it its own. So did television. The web needs to do the same. Is it not possible that someone will turn computer games into a form of literary art? In the meantime someone with limited resources perhaps, but with a talent for spotting talent, will start an online POD publishing house with quality design and editing and find himself … breaking even, turning a profit, competing with traditional publishers. It is bound to happen.
CBT: It is arguable the Internet isn't effective as a medium for publishing long works of fiction because very few people can stand looking at regular screens for the necessary length of time. But e-ink provides a solution to this. It eliminates eye strain.
How much potential do you think e-ink and e-book technologies have? Do you see e-books catching on with the public? And do they provide a reasonable business model?
FW: I already have a Kindle and I love it. Again, that online POD publisher mentioned above could well work in collaboration with Amazon (or Sony). People who travel a lot and commute are going to want a device that enables them to take a library with them. I’m no businessman, but I can’t believe a viable business model will not emerge from this.
CBT: In the past few years, articles and blog posts (for example, at LitKicks) have appeared criticizing the pricing of books. Are books too expensive? Has this been a factor in reducing the size of the book-buying audience over the last twenty or so years?
I think books have become too expensive. We’re talking about $25 for a hardback. That’s a lot if you’re talking about the latest in a mystery series. No wonder people wait for the paperback. On the other hand, I got Joseph Wambaugh’s latest on my Kindle for $9.99. Says it all, don’t you think?
CBT: Staying with the same theme. Literary novels were once publishing in hardcover and then, several months later (and a spot on the best-seller lists willing), they were available as affordable pocket-sized paperbacks. However, in the 1980s this practice ceased and literary paperbacks started being published in
FW: If you charge more for less of a product consumers will catch on (see newspapers). If you want to put out trade paperbacks, then skip the hardback. In the long run the hardback is going to be the keeper. What I mean is, people are going to want the books they treasure in hardback. But find out what books they treasure, books in general are going to have to be more affordable. Publishers have got it backwards. They want you to work your way down from a luxury item. Most people would rather work their way up to one.
CBT: Agents now have enormous power, effectively controlling which writers get access to acquisition editors at major houses. Furthermore, agents find themselves under enormous pressure, acting as the line of first readers who have to sift through avalanches of submissions. Is this tenable over the long run? Is it good for art? Or should large houses be accepting both agented and unsolicited submissions?
FW: Obviously, someone with an eye for quality that is also likely to sell is worth his weight in gold. What I see is a lot of agents peddling an imitation of the most recent success. Publishing has fallen victim to the same thing the art world has. If you go to the Phillips Collection in
CBT: Literary prizes have also grown in power. They have arguably replaced the glowing review as a marketing tool. But are they as effective as criticism in building a contemporary canon? After all, critics can express nuance, prizes can't. Do book prizes give the message: this book is worth reading and all these others aren't?
FW: Prizes are nice for the person who wins one. But have you read any Henrik Pontoppidan lately? Pontoppidan shares the 1917 Nobel Prize for literature with the ever-popular Karl Gjellerup. On the other hand, Conrad Richter won the National Book Award in 1961 for The Waters of Cronos, which is a masterpiece. And not many people may know the work of Pär Lagerkvist, who won the Nobel in 1951, but he is great writer. My point? Prizes are hit and miss, and insofar as they influence taste the influence is probably nefarious.
CBT: Thinking of your own site, what sorts of changes do you foresee in it? Are blogs destined to become the new magazines? Will you start using a format (and possibly working with partners) in a magazine-type way? Or is blogging as it's currently defined how you want to keep posting work on the Net?
FW: Regrettably, I’m an old guy who only knows as much technology as he needs to get by. I hope to partner eventually with someone younger and more tech savvy than I (who also has some business acumen). Then maybe I can turn the blog into something really estimable. In the meantime it is an object lesson in doing something for the love of it.
bio:
Assiduously following the course of least resistance has been the key to Frank Wilson’s success. Admirers have attributed this to his mastery of existential jujitsu, detractors to indolence and inertia.
Either way, it has served him well. Faced in college with a choice between his principal interests, medieval history and English lit, he realized immediately that the former would entail a mastery of Latin and other languages that could be had only by an effort he was disinclined to expend, while the latter required only an already demonstrated facility with his native tongue. English lit won hands down.
Through a process of elimination he went from being book critic of his college newspaper to arts and entertainment editor to editor. He had a well-paying job as an editor lined up even before graduation. Things were looking grand. But then, thinking life as a college professor might suit his laid-back approach to life, Wilson decided he should put in some time in graduate school. Unfortunately — or perhaps not — he realized that the tedium and toadiness of academe were not for him.
Thus began his years as a kind of 20th-century Goliard, delivering a lecture here, placing an article there, editing books for the likes of Philadelphia’s venerable J.B. Lippincott Co. and others, even landing a column in a local weekly. It was not to last. Publishers began cost-cutting and editing contracts dried up. The weekly went belly-up.
Happily, a friend got Wilson a job at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Less happily, it was at the ground floor, doing things like the racing charts. But the pay and benefits weren’t bad, and the work was hardly onerous, leaving Wilson time to review books, write poetry, and pursue his lifelong interest in world-class partying.
The partying took its toll, however, and he was forced to give that up. At last he seemed as staid as everyone else, so naturally he was promoted, first to the copy desk, where he won a first prize for headline writing from the Society of Professional Journalists, then to book editor. He had come full-circle, doing what he had done in college, but also what he had always wanted to do. Unfortunately, it proved to be an ongoing — and eventually losing — battle with space cuts, budget cuts, and managerial obtuseness. In February 2008 he retired, after eight years as book editor. Now he just blogs away at Books, Inq.: The Epilogue and writes — articles, reviews, poems. Oh, and he also has time now for that best of all activities: life itself.
Wilson writes a weekly column for When Falls the Coliseum called That’s What He Said, published on Tuesdays, which features his riffing on quotations and following the train of thought wherever it leads.Sunday, March 01, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Recently Read
Dan Green announces the launch of TRE Prime.
Levi Asher continues with his memoir of working in the Net industry during the dot-com 90s.
Levi Asher continues with his memoir of working in the Net industry during the dot-com 90s.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Art and the leash
Note: I'm re-posting the following in light of the resumption of hostilities between Israel and Hamas. How long these military actions will continue is anyone's guess; however, I think it's worth seeing them as part of a larger continuum that includes the final foreign policy decisions of the Bush administration -- that administration's "echoes", so to speak -- and divisions within Israeli and Palestinian societies themselves, as militaristic and pro-negotiation factions vie for supremacy.
Obviously, this continuum could be extended outward much further still: to Arab/Israeli history, to the effects of British colonialism in its waning days in the Middle East, to the advent of Cold War politics and its effects on those states in the region (all, until the Iranian revolution) which found themselves acting, to some degree or another, as proxies whose actions either advanced or diminished the geopolitical interests of superpowers.
The Cold War is over now -- at least, as we traditionally understand that term. But its dynamics remain in place. And of course, art cannot "change" any of this. Nevertheless, it can still engage with some of the complexities of the world in an informed way; art does make differences.
One can apply this rule of thumb to many regions that have seen their fair share of suffering -- South Korean literature and cinema come to mind for me. Therefore, even though it's understandable that the last thing the world needs is another tritely written novel, short story or poem which tells us the bloodying obvious about politics at its least restrained ("war is bad"), contemporary literary art is culpable of a "virtual triteness" when it pretends -- this is the correct word -- that events Over There will not have an eventual effect Over Here.
p.s. If you'd like to see the original post with a pertinent comment by Zachariah Wells, please click here.
ART AND THE LEASH
I spend a lot of time -- perhaps an inordinate, shameful amount of time -- surfing the lit-blogosphere. This is partly the result of my living overseas and needing some way to keep in touch. It's also a reflection of a belief the lit-blogosphere matters, and that the Internet, despite its many short-comings, represents one of the best paths for literature to save itself.
One thing that has recently struck me, however, is the near-total silence surrounding the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I'm speaking of course of silence in the lit-blogosphere; there's no shortage of coverage -- and opinion-expressing -- elsewhere. And maybe this is partly the result of disaster-fatigue: a seemingly interminable state of strife between the Palestinians and the Israelis, the invasion of Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, the war two-and-a-half years ago between Israel and Hezbollah (in fact, a war whose territory covered most of southern Lebanon), and half-acknowledged "low-intensity" conflicts in Darfur, areas of the Congo, the southern Philippines and southern Thailand are now coated by the thick patina of domestic, economic disaster. Numbness is a natural response to this much in the way of interesting times.
But it's not simply numbness, I think, that inspires the litblogosphere's silence on politics; it's also a belief specific to the West that politics and art cannot, by their very natures, mix, and that to attempt to do so is to mark one as a tiresome ideologue at best, an artistic all-thumbs at worst. Furthermore, the argument of arguments -- the ur-argument of the institutions of the literary establishment -- is such engagement by artists is futile. This is a truth apparently discovered after the end of the Romantic Movement and during the bloody middle of World War One. Poetry can't change the world because it can't change human nature.
But what happens in a world without poetry? That is, what happens to a world that lacks politically aware poetry when the age itself is political? What happens to art in times when history, to use a paraphrase employed by Jan Kott, is "let off the leash"?
Obviously, this continuum could be extended outward much further still: to Arab/Israeli history, to the effects of British colonialism in its waning days in the Middle East, to the advent of Cold War politics and its effects on those states in the region (all, until the Iranian revolution) which found themselves acting, to some degree or another, as proxies whose actions either advanced or diminished the geopolitical interests of superpowers.
The Cold War is over now -- at least, as we traditionally understand that term. But its dynamics remain in place. And of course, art cannot "change" any of this. Nevertheless, it can still engage with some of the complexities of the world in an informed way; art does make differences.
One can apply this rule of thumb to many regions that have seen their fair share of suffering -- South Korean literature and cinema come to mind for me. Therefore, even though it's understandable that the last thing the world needs is another tritely written novel, short story or poem which tells us the bloodying obvious about politics at its least restrained ("war is bad"), contemporary literary art is culpable of a "virtual triteness" when it pretends -- this is the correct word -- that events Over There will not have an eventual effect Over Here.
p.s. If you'd like to see the original post with a pertinent comment by Zachariah Wells, please click here.
ART AND THE LEASH
I spend a lot of time -- perhaps an inordinate, shameful amount of time -- surfing the lit-blogosphere. This is partly the result of my living overseas and needing some way to keep in touch. It's also a reflection of a belief the lit-blogosphere matters, and that the Internet, despite its many short-comings, represents one of the best paths for literature to save itself.
One thing that has recently struck me, however, is the near-total silence surrounding the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I'm speaking of course of silence in the lit-blogosphere; there's no shortage of coverage -- and opinion-expressing -- elsewhere. And maybe this is partly the result of disaster-fatigue: a seemingly interminable state of strife between the Palestinians and the Israelis, the invasion of Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, the war two-and-a-half years ago between Israel and Hezbollah (in fact, a war whose territory covered most of southern Lebanon), and half-acknowledged "low-intensity" conflicts in Darfur, areas of the Congo, the southern Philippines and southern Thailand are now coated by the thick patina of domestic, economic disaster. Numbness is a natural response to this much in the way of interesting times.
But it's not simply numbness, I think, that inspires the litblogosphere's silence on politics; it's also a belief specific to the West that politics and art cannot, by their very natures, mix, and that to attempt to do so is to mark one as a tiresome ideologue at best, an artistic all-thumbs at worst. Furthermore, the argument of arguments -- the ur-argument of the institutions of the literary establishment -- is such engagement by artists is futile. This is a truth apparently discovered after the end of the Romantic Movement and during the bloody middle of World War One. Poetry can't change the world because it can't change human nature.
But what happens in a world without poetry? That is, what happens to a world that lacks politically aware poetry when the age itself is political? What happens to art in times when history, to use a paraphrase employed by Jan Kott, is "let off the leash"?
Monday, January 26, 2009
"How to Publish in a Recession"
Scott Esposito has started an interesting series of interviews with publishers entitled "How to Publish in a Recession". His second interview is with Fred Ramey (who was also interviewed at this site). His first, with New Directions' Declan Spring, is here.
Levi Asher -- author, lit-blogger, critic (LitKicks)
Levi Asher of LitKicks
CBT: When I started this interview series it was already clear that publishing -- especially of literary fiction -- was in dire straits. At that time, one explanation that was fashionable was 9/11 was the reason people weren't reading as much literature (or as much anything) as they used to. Now we are living in a time when the long-term repercussions of 9/11 are still with us. But using 9/11 as a primary explanation for what ails literary publishing simply doesn't work. For one thing, we are now in the midst of a particularly serious recession, and for another, it is clear the general decline in reading is a widespread -- and possibly unstoppable -- phenomenon that has roots which go back decades.
What is your take on the current depressed state of literary publishing? Is it a passing phase? Or is it an intractable problem -- in other words, it is the new normal? And if the latter, what can be done to counteract it?
LA: Actually, I can't agree with the premise that there is a general decline in reading. As a parent, I've seen my kids become just as obsessed with books as I did when I was their age. Literature retains the same appeal it always has. If there's a decline in reading, how do you explain the success of JK Rowling, Dan Brown, Stephanie Meyer? Why would there be a thriving literary blog scene if books did not excite people? Why are so many popular Hollywood movies -- today, I'm thinking of "The Reader", "Revolutionary Road", "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", not to mention John Krasinski's upcoming adaptation of a David Foster Wallace novel -- made from literary sources? I could go on and on. There is no decline in reading.
CBT: How much potential do you think the Internet has as a vehicle of publishing? It's clear that there is a place for online criticism; the lit-blogosphere is dominated by it. The blogger Dan Green has even coined a phrase for this form of critical writing: the crit-blogosphere. But the crit-blogosphere's logical partner -- the fic-blogosphere -- is marginalized. Not many people read short stories or novels online.
Will the Internet really become the medium in which serious people both publish and read fiction? Or is this a technological pipe-dream, and is it more a question of using the Internet as an effective means to sell and distribute printed books?
LA: I'm afraid my answer here will offer no surprise. I think the Internet has all the potential in the world as a vehicle for publishing. It is certainly the most relevant medium for reading, probably already more relevant than the physical. And I remain hopeful that people will read short stories or novels online -- perhaps in serial form.
Remember, many of the greatest novels of all time were published and popularized not as books but as newspaper or magazine serials. Henry James, for instance, became popular because his stories and novels appeared in magazines. Modern publishing is way too obsessed with the pristine and perfect book, but the book is not the only fount of great literature.
CBT: It is arguable the Internet isn't effective as a medium for publishing long works of fiction because very few people can stand looking at regular screens for the necessary length of time. But e-ink provides a solution to this. It eliminates eye strain.
How much potential do you think e-ink and e-book technologies have? Do you see e-books catching on with the public? And do they provide a reasonable business model?
LA: Again, I'm afraid I may sound like a chirping optimist, but I believe electronic publishing will soon dominate the publishing field -- though physical books will always exist as well, since readers like them -- and I'm excited about the latest trends.
CBT: In the past few years, articles and blog posts (for example, at LitKicks) have appeared criticizing the pricing of books. Are books too expensive? Has this been a factor in reducing the size of the book-buying audience over the last twenty or so years?
LA: Yes, unfortunately the commercial book publishing industry suffers from a tradition of catering to an elite audience. You can see a movie or download a record album for about ten bucks. That's the correct price point. New books come out with price tags between $24 and $30 -- and then they wonder why the whole industry is suffering. Somebody's out of touch with the consumer here ...
CBT: Staying with the same theme. Literary novels were once publishing in hardcover and then, several months later (and a spot on the best-seller lists willing), they were available as affordable pocket-sized paperbacks. However, in the 1980s this practice ceased and literary paperbacks started being published in North America as pricier trade paperbacks. Only genre fiction retained the pocket-book form. In retrospect, was this a prudent decision by publishers of literary fiction? Or should the literary pocket-book make a return?
LA: I love smaller paperback books. Because I am an urban person who walks a lot, it is very important to me that a book can comfortably fit into my pocket. Most paperbacks can, but the larger formats are a tight fit. I would like to see smaller paperbacks make a comeback, yes.
CBT: Agents now have enormous power, effectively controlling which writers get access to acquisition editors at major houses. Furthermore, agents find themselves under enormous pressure, acting as the line of first readers who have to sift through avalanches of submissions. Is this tenable over the long run? Is it good for art? Or should large houses be accepting both agented and unsolicited submissions?
LA: I'm sure it's good when it works. I'm currently signed to a literary agent, and I'm happy to not have to shop my proposal around directly to publishing firms. Since I'm not sure how important the major book publishing firms will be in the future, though, I don't know if it matters so much whether or not they often publish unsolicited manuscripts.
CBT: Literary prizes have also grown in power. They have arguably replaced the glowing review as a marketing tool. But are they as effective as criticism in building a contemporary canon? After all, critics can express nuance, prizes can't. Do book prizes give the message: this books is worth reading and all these others aren't?
LA: I get instinctively annoyed when I read extravagant coverage of this prize or that prize, and I've made it a practice not to cover the regular run of literary prizes (I make an exception for the Nobel Prize, because I like their healthy international style). But, there is probably more crankiness than substance to my position here. Prizes help writers and they help publishers. Hopefully, they help readers too. I don't pay much attention to prizes, but I have to admit they are probably a force for good in the lit scene.
CBT: Thinking of your own site, what sorts of changes do you foresee in it? Are blogs destined to become the new magazines? Will you start using a format (and possibly working with partners) in a magazine-type way? Or is blogging as it's currently defined how you want to keep posting work on the Net?
LA: It's funny that many of your questions have danced around the project I'm currently doing on LitKicks. I'm attempting to write a serial memoir -- the chronicle of my fifteen years in the internet industry, both as the founder of a literary website and as an employee in the online departments of entertainment companies like Time Warner and A&E Network -- by posting each chapter as a blog post. I'm very excited
about this, and I have been getting great responses from readers.Because I am writing this "book" as a series of blog posts, I find myself writing with a "blogger" sensibility -- keep it short and punchy, don't lose the reader -- and I believe this will help me write a better, more audience-responsive memoir than if I churned it out in isolation and then sent the whole thing to an agent. This "memoir-in-progress" is the LitKicks project of the moment.
Bio: Levi Asher is the founder and a co-writer (primarily with Jemalah Earle and Michael Norris) of LitKicks. He has been one of the primary voices of the lit-blogosphere since its inception. He is also a novelist, whose work can be found online. He is currently working on a memoir.
CBT: When I started this interview series it was already clear that publishing -- especially of literary fiction -- was in dire straits. At that time, one explanation that was fashionable was 9/11 was the reason people weren't reading as much literature (or as much anything) as they used to. Now we are living in a time when the long-term repercussions of 9/11 are still with us. But using 9/11 as a primary explanation for what ails literary publishing simply doesn't work. For one thing, we are now in the midst of a particularly serious recession, and for another, it is clear the general decline in reading is a widespread -- and possibly unstoppable -- phenomenon that has roots which go back decades.
What is your take on the current depressed state of literary publishing? Is it a passing phase? Or is it an intractable problem -- in other words, it is the new normal? And if the latter, what can be done to counteract it?
LA: Actually, I can't agree with the premise that there is a general decline in reading. As a parent, I've seen my kids become just as obsessed with books as I did when I was their age. Literature retains the same appeal it always has. If there's a decline in reading, how do you explain the success of JK Rowling, Dan Brown, Stephanie Meyer? Why would there be a thriving literary blog scene if books did not excite people? Why are so many popular Hollywood movies -- today, I'm thinking of "The Reader", "Revolutionary Road", "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", not to mention John Krasinski's upcoming adaptation of a David Foster Wallace novel -- made from literary sources? I could go on and on. There is no decline in reading.
CBT: How much potential do you think the Internet has as a vehicle of publishing? It's clear that there is a place for online criticism; the lit-blogosphere is dominated by it. The blogger Dan Green has even coined a phrase for this form of critical writing: the crit-blogosphere. But the crit-blogosphere's logical partner -- the fic-blogosphere -- is marginalized. Not many people read short stories or novels online.
Will the Internet really become the medium in which serious people both publish and read fiction? Or is this a technological pipe-dream, and is it more a question of using the Internet as an effective means to sell and distribute printed books?
LA: I'm afraid my answer here will offer no surprise. I think the Internet has all the potential in the world as a vehicle for publishing. It is certainly the most relevant medium for reading, probably already more relevant than the physical. And I remain hopeful that people will read short stories or novels online -- perhaps in serial form.
Remember, many of the greatest novels of all time were published and popularized not as books but as newspaper or magazine serials. Henry James, for instance, became popular because his stories and novels appeared in magazines. Modern publishing is way too obsessed with the pristine and perfect book, but the book is not the only fount of great literature.
CBT: It is arguable the Internet isn't effective as a medium for publishing long works of fiction because very few people can stand looking at regular screens for the necessary length of time. But e-ink provides a solution to this. It eliminates eye strain.
How much potential do you think e-ink and e-book technologies have? Do you see e-books catching on with the public? And do they provide a reasonable business model?
LA: Again, I'm afraid I may sound like a chirping optimist, but I believe electronic publishing will soon dominate the publishing field -- though physical books will always exist as well, since readers like them -- and I'm excited about the latest trends.
CBT: In the past few years, articles and blog posts (for example, at LitKicks) have appeared criticizing the pricing of books. Are books too expensive? Has this been a factor in reducing the size of the book-buying audience over the last twenty or so years?
LA: Yes, unfortunately the commercial book publishing industry suffers from a tradition of catering to an elite audience. You can see a movie or download a record album for about ten bucks. That's the correct price point. New books come out with price tags between $24 and $30 -- and then they wonder why the whole industry is suffering. Somebody's out of touch with the consumer here ...
CBT: Staying with the same theme. Literary novels were once publishing in hardcover and then, several months later (and a spot on the best-seller lists willing), they were available as affordable pocket-sized paperbacks. However, in the 1980s this practice ceased and literary paperbacks started being published in North America as pricier trade paperbacks. Only genre fiction retained the pocket-book form. In retrospect, was this a prudent decision by publishers of literary fiction? Or should the literary pocket-book make a return?
LA: I love smaller paperback books. Because I am an urban person who walks a lot, it is very important to me that a book can comfortably fit into my pocket. Most paperbacks can, but the larger formats are a tight fit. I would like to see smaller paperbacks make a comeback, yes.
CBT: Agents now have enormous power, effectively controlling which writers get access to acquisition editors at major houses. Furthermore, agents find themselves under enormous pressure, acting as the line of first readers who have to sift through avalanches of submissions. Is this tenable over the long run? Is it good for art? Or should large houses be accepting both agented and unsolicited submissions?
LA: I'm sure it's good when it works. I'm currently signed to a literary agent, and I'm happy to not have to shop my proposal around directly to publishing firms. Since I'm not sure how important the major book publishing firms will be in the future, though, I don't know if it matters so much whether or not they often publish unsolicited manuscripts.
CBT: Literary prizes have also grown in power. They have arguably replaced the glowing review as a marketing tool. But are they as effective as criticism in building a contemporary canon? After all, critics can express nuance, prizes can't. Do book prizes give the message: this books is worth reading and all these others aren't?
LA: I get instinctively annoyed when I read extravagant coverage of this prize or that prize, and I've made it a practice not to cover the regular run of literary prizes (I make an exception for the Nobel Prize, because I like their healthy international style). But, there is probably more crankiness than substance to my position here. Prizes help writers and they help publishers. Hopefully, they help readers too. I don't pay much attention to prizes, but I have to admit they are probably a force for good in the lit scene.
CBT: Thinking of your own site, what sorts of changes do you foresee in it? Are blogs destined to become the new magazines? Will you start using a format (and possibly working with partners) in a magazine-type way? Or is blogging as it's currently defined how you want to keep posting work on the Net?
LA: It's funny that many of your questions have danced around the project I'm currently doing on LitKicks. I'm attempting to write a serial memoir -- the chronicle of my fifteen years in the internet industry, both as the founder of a literary website and as an employee in the online departments of entertainment companies like Time Warner and A&E Network -- by posting each chapter as a blog post. I'm very excited
about this, and I have been getting great responses from readers.Because I am writing this "book" as a series of blog posts, I find myself writing with a "blogger" sensibility -- keep it short and punchy, don't lose the reader -- and I believe this will help me write a better, more audience-responsive memoir than if I churned it out in isolation and then sent the whole thing to an agent. This "memoir-in-progress" is the LitKicks project of the moment.
Bio: Levi Asher is the founder and a co-writer (primarily with Jemalah Earle and Michael Norris) of LitKicks. He has been one of the primary voices of the lit-blogosphere since its inception. He is also a novelist, whose work can be found online. He is currently working on a memoir.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Kassia Krozser -- writer, critic (Booksquare)
Kassia Krozser of Booksquare:
CBT: When I started this interview series it was already clear that publishing --
especially of literary fiction -- was in dire straits. At that time, one
explanation that was fashionable was 9/11 was the reason people weren't reading
as much literature (or as much anything) as they used to. Now we are living in a
time when the long-term repercussions of 9/11 are still with us. But using 9/11
as a primary explanation for what ails literary publishing simply doesn't work.
For one thing, we are now in the midst of a particularly serious recession, and
for another, it is clear the general decline in reading is a widespread -- and
possibly unstoppable -- phenomenon that has roots which go back decades.
What is your take on the current depressed state of literary publishing? Is it
a passing phase? Or is it an intractable problem -- in other words, it is the
new normal? And if the latter, what can be done to counteract it?
KK: I'm actually quite enthusiastic about the prospects for books, if not the publishing business as we know it. If you look at it from the outside, the way publishing works is quite unsustainable, from the way they sell books to the fact that they admittedly don't have a clue how to determine what books will become big sellers. That being said, lots of books are being written and lots of books are being published. And there are a lot of smart people out in litland thinking of ways to get books and readers together -- from continuing to publish novels to thinking beyond the book.
There are always a lot of scare stories about the loss of young readers -- omigod! they don't read when they're in high school, when they're in college, when they're new graduates -- but think about it. Those years that people seemingly don't read are the very same years when they are immersed first in educational reading (it's just awful that we've turned reading into a solely academic exercise; way back when I was a kid, we actually had time to read for pleasure while in the classroom) and then establishing themselves in first careers. Not to mention, there are a lot of wild oats being sown. The readers of those groups come back to books later.
Not everyone is a reader, not like I'm a reader. We forget that. I remind people that I know people who only "read" audiobooks. It's a time thing for some, it's a personal preference for others. Some people are slow readers, some people only read one author (I have a sibling who is this fussy...and her mother's a librarian!), some like only fiction published in hardcover (yep, I have a friend who won't read paperback), some only read biographies. Before we worry about the loss of readers, we need to take stock of what reading means.
I think if we go back through reading history, we'll see the same sad stories. Think about it. When did this nation, this world, reach widespread literacy? How many people had the luxury of sitting around reading all day? Had the money to spend on lighting (candles, for example) to illuminate pages of books after a long day of work. We have a romantic notion of reading. I like it personally because it suits me; I'm not sure it reflects reality.
Literary publishing -- if we define it as novels considered "literary" -- is a small genre in a big publishing field. Genre fiction is and has always been (in my opinion) a more widely read category. Even so, far too many books are published every year. It's impossible to keep up. It might not be a bad thing to let readers catch their breath and it might not be a bad thing for the business to publish in a way that minimizes returns while maximizing exposure of readers to books.
KK: The Internet is *already* a medium in which serious people both publish and read fiction. I don't think the online environment lends itself to long-form reading, per se, but that doesn't mean it isn't being done. I'm sure it is, just not by me (which is not to say I haven't, nor is it to say that I don't read Very Long Stuff online).
We like to confine our vision of books to "books", those booky things. But when we expand our vision of books to "story", then we have a future. Books are new to us as a species. Story, however, has captivated us since the first campfire. What we want as humans -- I truly believe -- is great story, interesting story, story that takes us outside our ordinary worlds (be it silly story, fluffy story, gory story) for a time. How story gets to us is a matter of personal preference coupled with the format the artist chooses. The Internet, if we bookish people allow it, provides us a chance to expand our stories into different modes of telling.
KK: I own a Kindle and iPhone (I also owned a Rocket eBook, way back when), and both are great for reading. For various reasons, I prefer long-form reading on my Kindle, though if the iPhone screen were just a little bigger... I have never been convinced that the world is clamoring for a dedicated e-reading device. We already carry too much stuff around with us on a daily basis. If I could pare down my accessories (laptop, phone, Kindle, real life stuff), I would jump for joy.
When I take my Kindle out, I get a lot of questions, a lot of interest. I'm most surprised by the level of awareness among ordinary people (people who aren't part of our relatively small online lit community). The flight attendant on my London plane said, "Oh, you have one of those, too. I'm thinking of getting one." A guy at the nail salon (my nail salon seems to get a lot of male customers) said, "I've heard about those." When I was shopping, I passed by a woman sitting in a courtyard, reading her Kindle. Had I not been late, I would have approached her. Consumers are very interested in e-readers. Right now, price is a deterrent, availability is a deterrent, and I think for a lot of heavy readers, it's going to take some hand-selling to convince them that this is a "real" book.
Personally, if there were a way to get e-readers into the hands of more college/high school kids, I think the market would explode. Not only would have a native audience going into adulthood, but their parents and parents' friends would get a chance to interact with the device. Further down the road, these devices must have color/high resolution to really be of benefit. Right now, they really only work for text-based items (books, newspapers). Add in other types of publications, and you have the makings of robust market!
CBT: In the past few years, articles and blog posts (for example, at LitKicks)
KK: Wow, touchy subject. Let me put it this way: for the holidays, I purchased three copies of the same (hardcover) book. One for me, two for friends. This book, this format had a lot of value to me. But the automatic printing of "literary" fiction as hardcover, I think, really limits the potential for the book. Once you get into the $20 range for a new author, particularly, a lot of readers hesitate. It's a risk, and while twenty-plus dollars doesn't seem like that much money for some, for others, it's a good chunk of change (or two to three other books). I feel cheated when I shell out that kind of money -- not to mention time -- on a book that is "meh." So prices absolutely depress sales.
I know a lot of readers who, for financial or personal reasons, will skip the hardcover release and wait for the paperback (some for trade, some for mass market). If I were a publisher, I'd worry about this. So much can happen in that year between releases, not the least of which is negative word-of-mouth. You peel off readers right off the bat. Then readers forget -- sure some people keep detailed book shopping lists. They're the exception. And, of course, there are soooo many books, so little time. It makes no sense to me that publishers would willingly shave off so much potential audience.
I see the next question also relates to this, so one more thought: the value publishers place on their product is not necessarily the value readers/consumers place on this product. I read really fast, and spending hardcover prices would bankrupt me (not literally). I'm lucky that books don't compete with other necessities in my budget -- let's consider for a moment that the biggest consumers of fiction are women. You can safely assume that a good number of those women have families, kids, houses, pets. With those expenses, suddenly the seeming bargain of $25 dollars isn't such a good deal. These readers wait, borrow, or buy used.
I often think it would help if NY publishers spent a little ore time speaking to real, book-buying customers.
KK: Bring back the literary mass market! For the reasons I cited above. Let's be honest: publishers don't go to trade or hardcover for prestige reasons -- though those do factor in to a certain degree; trade is seen as more "literary" than mass market -- these are business decisions, and business decisions often involve dollars and cents. So my question back at the publishers is this: have you ever done a serious study to quantify the sales you've lost due to the decision to release these books in more expensive formats? Not just due to price, but due to loss of consumer awareness. Think about it: if your marketing push comes at the expensive price point, how do you recapture those interested readers who stayed on the sidelines until the net price point down?
KK: There are always ways past the gatekeepers: conference meetings, chance run-ins. If you pay attention, you can get past the agent gauntlet. Of course, agents -- and I'm convinced that it's sometimes harder to get an agent than to be published -- do a lot more than match authors and editors. These editorial relationships are like gold, of course, so let's start there. A good agent will know the right editors for your work. Sure, you can hit the slush pile and hope the right person for your story picks it up; a good agent knows the editorial map. They know who likes snarky voices, who loves dark, angsty stuff, who is looking for new authors.
Your agent also helps negotiate the best possible deal for you. I've been working with royalty-type accounting (Participations, actually, which makes standard royalties look like child's play!) for most of my professional career. I know these contracts, these clauses, these calculations like I know my cat. I know what I want in a deal, what I can give. Most importantly, I know I am the worst possible advocate on my behalf. I am a marshmallow. I am a wimp. I want an agent out there fighting on my behalf. It's worth every cent of that commission, in my opinion.
That's the author perspective. From the publisher perspective, I'll go for diplomacy. Not everyone who can write a book, should write a book. And most authors really don't have a good perspective on their talent, their story. While there are gems out there, it takes a lot of time and effort to find them. I'm not sure I'd like to be the author read after a particularly bad example from the slush pile. And given the amount of work placed on the shoulders of acquisition editors, you can molder in that slush pile for a long time. It never seems to get smaller.
KK: Have they really grown in power? I'm not sure there is as much general consumer/reader awareness as the press coverage/litblog coverage suggests. Certainly some prizes have a cachet, but overall and generally? Not quite convinced. If you don't know anything about the award, can it really influence you? What amazes me is that the only real imprimatur of excellence is Oprah Winfrey. How is that one talk show host carries more weight with the reading public than all the critics and prizes in the world?
The answer to that is quite simple: people trust Oprah. They've developed a relationship with her. They believe she will steer them right. Most critics don't have that kind of relationship with readers -- why should I trust Jane Doe writing for the New York Times Book Review? Does she have an agenda? Does she know the editors? Do the editors know she'll write the review they can't, for political reasons perhaps?
Literary criticism is a different animal than a review, though they do sometimes seem interchangeable. You need, in my opinion, to be familiar with a work to appreciate critical analysis of it. A review should help you decide whether or not to pick up that book.
KK: I am, I think, a natural blogger. I work well in a long essay format (though I have been known to be pithy when forced!). I am not in a position to market myself far and wide as a freelancer, nor am I as interested as I should be in writing what someone else wants me to write.
That being said, I'm always thinking ahead. I've changed the blog, the voice, the focus over time. I'd bore myself and my readers if I didn't. I am a bit in love with new ways to publish online. I see blogging tools as personal content managements systems, some being capable of doing so much more than publish entries in date order. I'm always exploring new ways to expand this, but that time thing seems to be a limiter. As this current project winds down, I plan to devote more time to new ideas. The magazine thing is a format I keep in mind, though, obviously, one designed for the web world, not print world.
Bio: Kassia is a founding partner of Medialoper, where she applies her natural love and skepticism to the ever-changing world of entertainment media. The daughter of a librarian, she finds dissecting and discussing books is like breathing — her insightful reviews appear at Paperback Reader. She was a member of the now-defunct LitBlog Co-op and is a columnist for Romancing the Blog. She’s also published in a variety of other venues, and has, shockingly, received awards and accolades for her work. But she rarely mentions this as it seems like bragging.
CBT: When I started this interview series it was already clear that publishing --
especially of literary fiction -- was in dire straits. At that time, one
explanation that was fashionable was 9/11 was the reason people weren't reading
as much literature (or as much anything) as they used to. Now we are living in a
time when the long-term repercussions of 9/11 are still with us. But using 9/11
as a primary explanation for what ails literary publishing simply doesn't work.
For one thing, we are now in the midst of a particularly serious recession, and
for another, it is clear the general decline in reading is a widespread -- and
possibly unstoppable -- phenomenon that has roots which go back decades.
What is your take on the current depressed state of literary publishing? Is it
a passing phase? Or is it an intractable problem -- in other words, it is the
new normal? And if the latter, what can be done to counteract it?
KK: I'm actually quite enthusiastic about the prospects for books, if not the publishing business as we know it. If you look at it from the outside, the way publishing works is quite unsustainable, from the way they sell books to the fact that they admittedly don't have a clue how to determine what books will become big sellers. That being said, lots of books are being written and lots of books are being published. And there are a lot of smart people out in litland thinking of ways to get books and readers together -- from continuing to publish novels to thinking beyond the book.
There are always a lot of scare stories about the loss of young readers -- omigod! they don't read when they're in high school, when they're in college, when they're new graduates -- but think about it. Those years that people seemingly don't read are the very same years when they are immersed first in educational reading (it's just awful that we've turned reading into a solely academic exercise; way back when I was a kid, we actually had time to read for pleasure while in the classroom) and then establishing themselves in first careers. Not to mention, there are a lot of wild oats being sown. The readers of those groups come back to books later.
Not everyone is a reader, not like I'm a reader. We forget that. I remind people that I know people who only "read" audiobooks. It's a time thing for some, it's a personal preference for others. Some people are slow readers, some people only read one author (I have a sibling who is this fussy...and her mother's a librarian!), some like only fiction published in hardcover (yep, I have a friend who won't read paperback), some only read biographies. Before we worry about the loss of readers, we need to take stock of what reading means.
I think if we go back through reading history, we'll see the same sad stories. Think about it. When did this nation, this world, reach widespread literacy? How many people had the luxury of sitting around reading all day? Had the money to spend on lighting (candles, for example) to illuminate pages of books after a long day of work. We have a romantic notion of reading. I like it personally because it suits me; I'm not sure it reflects reality.
Literary publishing -- if we define it as novels considered "literary" -- is a small genre in a big publishing field. Genre fiction is and has always been (in my opinion) a more widely read category. Even so, far too many books are published every year. It's impossible to keep up. It might not be a bad thing to let readers catch their breath and it might not be a bad thing for the business to publish in a way that minimizes returns while maximizing exposure of readers to books.
CBT: How much potential do you think the Internet has as a vehicle of publishing?
It's clear that there is a place for online criticism; the lit-blogosphere is
dominated by it. The blogger Dan Green has even coined a phrase for this form of
critical writing: the crit-blogosphere. But the crit-blogosphere's logical
partner -- the fic-blogosphere -- is marginalized. Not many people read short
stories or novels online.
Will the Internet really become the medium in which serious people both publish
and read fiction? Or is this a technological pipe-dream, and is it more a
question of using the Internet as an effective means to sell and distribute
printed books?
KK: The Internet is *already* a medium in which serious people both publish and read fiction. I don't think the online environment lends itself to long-form reading, per se, but that doesn't mean it isn't being done. I'm sure it is, just not by me (which is not to say I haven't, nor is it to say that I don't read Very Long Stuff online).
We like to confine our vision of books to "books", those booky things. But when we expand our vision of books to "story", then we have a future. Books are new to us as a species. Story, however, has captivated us since the first campfire. What we want as humans -- I truly believe -- is great story, interesting story, story that takes us outside our ordinary worlds (be it silly story, fluffy story, gory story) for a time. How story gets to us is a matter of personal preference coupled with the format the artist chooses. The Internet, if we bookish people allow it, provides us a chance to expand our stories into different modes of telling.
CBT: It is arguable the Internet isn't effective as a medium for publishing long
works of fiction because very few people can stand looking at regular screens
for the necessary length of time. But e-ink provides a solution to this. It
eliminates eye strain.
How much potential do you think e-ink and e-book technologies have? Do you see
e-books catching on with the public? And do they provide a reasonable business
model?
KK: I own a Kindle and iPhone (I also owned a Rocket eBook, way back when), and both are great for reading. For various reasons, I prefer long-form reading on my Kindle, though if the iPhone screen were just a little bigger... I have never been convinced that the world is clamoring for a dedicated e-reading device. We already carry too much stuff around with us on a daily basis. If I could pare down my accessories (laptop, phone, Kindle, real life stuff), I would jump for joy.
When I take my Kindle out, I get a lot of questions, a lot of interest. I'm most surprised by the level of awareness among ordinary people (people who aren't part of our relatively small online lit community). The flight attendant on my London plane said, "Oh, you have one of those, too. I'm thinking of getting one." A guy at the nail salon (my nail salon seems to get a lot of male customers) said, "I've heard about those." When I was shopping, I passed by a woman sitting in a courtyard, reading her Kindle. Had I not been late, I would have approached her. Consumers are very interested in e-readers. Right now, price is a deterrent, availability is a deterrent, and I think for a lot of heavy readers, it's going to take some hand-selling to convince them that this is a "real" book.
Personally, if there were a way to get e-readers into the hands of more college/high school kids, I think the market would explode. Not only would have a native audience going into adulthood, but their parents and parents' friends would get a chance to interact with the device. Further down the road, these devices must have color/high resolution to really be of benefit. Right now, they really only work for text-based items (books, newspapers). Add in other types of publications, and you have the makings of robust market!
CBT: In the past few years, articles and blog posts (for example, at LitKicks)
have appeared criticizing the pricing of books. Are books too expensive? Has
this been a factor in reducing the size of the book-buying audience over the
last twenty or so years?
KK: Wow, touchy subject. Let me put it this way: for the holidays, I purchased three copies of the same (hardcover) book. One for me, two for friends. This book, this format had a lot of value to me. But the automatic printing of "literary" fiction as hardcover, I think, really limits the potential for the book. Once you get into the $20 range for a new author, particularly, a lot of readers hesitate. It's a risk, and while twenty-plus dollars doesn't seem like that much money for some, for others, it's a good chunk of change (or two to three other books). I feel cheated when I shell out that kind of money -- not to mention time -- on a book that is "meh." So prices absolutely depress sales.
I know a lot of readers who, for financial or personal reasons, will skip the hardcover release and wait for the paperback (some for trade, some for mass market). If I were a publisher, I'd worry about this. So much can happen in that year between releases, not the least of which is negative word-of-mouth. You peel off readers right off the bat. Then readers forget -- sure some people keep detailed book shopping lists. They're the exception. And, of course, there are soooo many books, so little time. It makes no sense to me that publishers would willingly shave off so much potential audience.
I see the next question also relates to this, so one more thought: the value publishers place on their product is not necessarily the value readers/consumers place on this product. I read really fast, and spending hardcover prices would bankrupt me (not literally). I'm lucky that books don't compete with other necessities in my budget -- let's consider for a moment that the biggest consumers of fiction are women. You can safely assume that a good number of those women have families, kids, houses, pets. With those expenses, suddenly the seeming bargain of $25 dollars isn't such a good deal. These readers wait, borrow, or buy used.
I often think it would help if NY publishers spent a little ore time speaking to real, book-buying customers.
CBT: Staying with the same theme. Literary novels were once publishing in
hardcover and then, several months later (and a spot on the best-seller lists
willing), they were available as affordable pocket-sized paperbacks. However, in
the 1980s this practice ceased and literary paperbacks started being published
in North America as pricier trade paperbacks. Only genre fiction retained the
pocket-book form. In retrospect, was this a prudent decision by publishers of
literary fiction? Or should the literary pocket-book make a return?
KK: Bring back the literary mass market! For the reasons I cited above. Let's be honest: publishers don't go to trade or hardcover for prestige reasons -- though those do factor in to a certain degree; trade is seen as more "literary" than mass market -- these are business decisions, and business decisions often involve dollars and cents. So my question back at the publishers is this: have you ever done a serious study to quantify the sales you've lost due to the decision to release these books in more expensive formats? Not just due to price, but due to loss of consumer awareness. Think about it: if your marketing push comes at the expensive price point, how do you recapture those interested readers who stayed on the sidelines until the net price point down?
CBT: Agents now have enormous power, effectively controlling which writers get
access to acquisition editors at major houses. Furthermore, agents find
themselves under enormous pressure, acting as the line of first readers who have
to sift through avalanches of submissions. Is this tenable over the long run? Is
it good for art? Or should large houses be accepting both agented and
unsolicited submissions?
KK: There are always ways past the gatekeepers: conference meetings, chance run-ins. If you pay attention, you can get past the agent gauntlet. Of course, agents -- and I'm convinced that it's sometimes harder to get an agent than to be published -- do a lot more than match authors and editors. These editorial relationships are like gold, of course, so let's start there. A good agent will know the right editors for your work. Sure, you can hit the slush pile and hope the right person for your story picks it up; a good agent knows the editorial map. They know who likes snarky voices, who loves dark, angsty stuff, who is looking for new authors.
Your agent also helps negotiate the best possible deal for you. I've been working with royalty-type accounting (Participations, actually, which makes standard royalties look like child's play!) for most of my professional career. I know these contracts, these clauses, these calculations like I know my cat. I know what I want in a deal, what I can give. Most importantly, I know I am the worst possible advocate on my behalf. I am a marshmallow. I am a wimp. I want an agent out there fighting on my behalf. It's worth every cent of that commission, in my opinion.
That's the author perspective. From the publisher perspective, I'll go for diplomacy. Not everyone who can write a book, should write a book. And most authors really don't have a good perspective on their talent, their story. While there are gems out there, it takes a lot of time and effort to find them. I'm not sure I'd like to be the author read after a particularly bad example from the slush pile. And given the amount of work placed on the shoulders of acquisition editors, you can molder in that slush pile for a long time. It never seems to get smaller.
CBT: Literary prizes have also grown in power. They have arguably replaced the
glowing review as a marketing tool. But are they as effective as criticism in
building a contemporary canon? After all, critics can express nuance, prizes
can't. Do book prizes give the message: this books is worth reading and all
these others aren't?
KK: Have they really grown in power? I'm not sure there is as much general consumer/reader awareness as the press coverage/litblog coverage suggests. Certainly some prizes have a cachet, but overall and generally? Not quite convinced. If you don't know anything about the award, can it really influence you? What amazes me is that the only real imprimatur of excellence is Oprah Winfrey. How is that one talk show host carries more weight with the reading public than all the critics and prizes in the world?
The answer to that is quite simple: people trust Oprah. They've developed a relationship with her. They believe she will steer them right. Most critics don't have that kind of relationship with readers -- why should I trust Jane Doe writing for the New York Times Book Review? Does she have an agenda? Does she know the editors? Do the editors know she'll write the review they can't, for political reasons perhaps?
Literary criticism is a different animal than a review, though they do sometimes seem interchangeable. You need, in my opinion, to be familiar with a work to appreciate critical analysis of it. A review should help you decide whether or not to pick up that book.
CBT: Thinking of your own site, what sorts of changes do you foresee in it? Are
blogs destined to become the new magazines? Will you start using a format (and
possibly working with partners) in a magazine-type way? Or is blogging as it's
currently defined how you want to keep posting work on the Net?
KK: I am, I think, a natural blogger. I work well in a long essay format (though I have been known to be pithy when forced!). I am not in a position to market myself far and wide as a freelancer, nor am I as interested as I should be in writing what someone else wants me to write.
That being said, I'm always thinking ahead. I've changed the blog, the voice, the focus over time. I'd bore myself and my readers if I didn't. I am a bit in love with new ways to publish online. I see blogging tools as personal content managements systems, some being capable of doing so much more than publish entries in date order. I'm always exploring new ways to expand this, but that time thing seems to be a limiter. As this current project winds down, I plan to devote more time to new ideas. The magazine thing is a format I keep in mind, though, obviously, one designed for the web world, not print world.
Bio: Kassia is a founding partner of Medialoper, where she applies her natural love and skepticism to the ever-changing world of entertainment media. The daughter of a librarian, she finds dissecting and discussing books is like breathing — her insightful reviews appear at Paperback Reader. She was a member of the now-defunct LitBlog Co-op and is a columnist for Romancing the Blog. She’s also published in a variety of other venues, and has, shockingly, received awards and accolades for her work. But she rarely mentions this as it seems like bragging.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Daniel E. Pritchard -- poet, essayist, critic (The Wooden Spoon, David R. Godine, Publisher)
Daniel E. Pritchard of The Wooden Spoon and David R. Godine. Publisher:
CBT: When I started this interview series it was already clear that publishing -- especially of literary fiction -- was in dire straits. At that time, one explanation that was fashionable was 9/11 was the reason people weren't reading as much literature (or as much anything) as they used to. Now we are living in a time when the long-term repercussions of 9/11 are still with us. But using 9/11 as a primary explanation for what ails literary publishing simply doesn't work. For one thing, we are now in the midst of a particularly serious recession, and for another, it is clear the general decline in reading is a widespread -- and possibly unstoppable -- phenomenon that has roots which go back decades.
What is your take on the current depressed state of literary publishing? Is it a passing phase? Or is it an intractable problem -- in other words, it is the new normal? And if the latter, what can be done to counteract it?
DEP: I think that the 9/11 explanation was always a red herring—it never made any sense to me, at least. The best explanation, beyond it being simply random (which is possible but people like to feel they have control, so this explanation is also unpopular), is that there was a shift in American culture over the last 40 years, in which the public perception of elitism has become drastically negative. When you look at culture in the 1940s—60s, broadly speaking, being an member of the elite was a positive role; you had Trilling and Eliot, for example, and each of them was openly elite in their attitudes -- although on different sides of the political equation -- but nevertheless respected.
In the sixties and seventies, something changed: the kids didn't want to be like their parents, "real knowledge" became something antithetical to what it took to be a member of the elite. Instead of Trilling, you had Kerouac; instead of Auden, you had Ginsberg. The academy, as it had been, fell out of favor. Now it's a real insult to be called an elitist; it's one of the more common smears that conservatives use against liberals and something that liberals desperately try to deflect—neither side wants the label, but we obviously do want the best possible people in charge, and anyone would admit that, so this is purely a shift of image. You have to mimic Joe Sixpack but think like a member of the elite to be successful.
Literary fiction has felt the effects of that shift because literature, I think, is perceived as something just for "smart people", for elites. My family (all working-class) can't bear to buy me just books for Christmas, say, because it isn't "fun" and books are "boring." I have to laugh. The reading landscape probably looks much more like the early twentieth century, with most people reading popular books if anything and a few people delving into up-market an literary titles. There's nothing to be done to counteract this, not systemically. Although, I think it is changing among younger people who have had "coolness" and "fun" sold to them all their lives; who saw the catastrophic stupidity of that culture in the 1980s (hair bands and such).
But really: focus on the work at hand, as a publisher, author, critic, etc.—that's the best course of action. Make something worthwhile, by whatever standards you hold, and be brutally honest about it to yourself at least. That's the way.
CBT: How much potential do you think the Internet has as a vehicle of publishing? It's clear that there is a place for online criticism; the lit-blogosphere is dominated by it. The blogger Dan Green has even coined a phrase for this form of critical writing: the crit-blogosphere. But the crit-blogosphere's logical partner -- the fic-blogosphere -- is marginalized. Not many people read short stories or novels online.
Will the Internet really become the medium in which serious people both publish and read fiction? Or is this a technological pipe-dream, and is it more a question of using the Internet as an effective means to sell and distribute printed books?
DEP: The more studies I see that are done on the way that people read online, the more I think that it is a medium better suited to fact and information distribution than for literature. So maybe non-fiction books, criticism, history, etc., have a permanent place on the internet. The more successful digital readers all mimic the folio as much as possible, and that's where literature seems to be gaining ground. Now, whether this is essential to the way we think and engage with the folio versus the screen is still uncertain. I tend to believe that newspaper- and magazine-length work is completely viable online, and it will eventually put an end to those previous types of short-shelf-life, disposable print media; no reason to fight that. Newspapers don't last on a shelf, so in the long-term we're just losing the waste. Publishers just have to make the internet work economically now, that's where the block seems to be.
CBT: It is arguable the Internet isn't effective as a medium for publishing long works of fiction because very few people can stand looking at regular screens for the necessary length of time. But e-ink provides a solution to this. It eliminates eye strain.
How much potential do you think e-ink and e-book technologies have? Do you see e-books catching on with the public? And do they provide a reasonable business model?
DEP: Right, I also believe e-ink (I'd never heard that term before) is the future for longer work. You still lose the ease of accessibility and note-taking aspects of the folio (flipping back and forth still has an edge in the sense it is a easy act to perform), among other things, but most readers don't need or want that. E-books might have a future, they just don't really have a present. The cost of buying an e-reader and then buying the individual books is still much greater than buying two hundred used paperbacks, and there will always be the public library where books are free. It's a technology for the rich right now, for people who travel constantly and can't carry books around, maybe for teachers if textbooks are available. Something big has to change about the economics for the e-reader to really take hold among general readers.
CBT: In the past few years, articles and blog posts (for example, at LitKicks) have appeared criticizing the pricing of books. Are books too expensive? Has this been a factor in reducing the size of the book-buying audience over the last twenty or so years?
DEP: I do read Litkicks, and Levi is a really good guy who cares a lot, so his input is always welcome; I totally disagree with him about the price of books being unreasonably high though. The list price of books has risen far, far more slowly than other media, especially movies, so is more of a personal complaint than a viable explanation. I complain about it as well, but I complain about a lot the things I buy. If I went to the movies a lot, I'd complain about that, too. Books like the Harry Potter series have sold at least as well, if not better, than any album or dvd. They were priced more or less the same as any other book, and they sold a ton of hardcovers, so maybe the average cost of a book isn't so high if the book is worth owning.
Having worked in publishing for a while now, and at a small up-market publisher for the last two years (David R. Godine, Publisher), I think that an increase in price would actually have been more realistic until this depression, downturn, recession; whatever it's called. Small and mid-sized publishers make a pretty slim margin on the books they sell (never mind the returns). There are a lot of variables at play: cost of production, market for the title, length of the print-run, author royalty, design, shipping costs, illustrators, translators. It isn't arbitrary at all, and making books cheaper isn't something publishers can just will to make happen. It will have to be either a major production innovation or a restructuring of the economics of bookselling.
CBT: Staying with the same theme. Literary novels were once publishing in hardcover and then, several months later (and a spot on the best-seller lists willing), they were available as affordable pocket-sized paperbacks. However, in the 1980s this practice ceased and literary paperbacks started being published in North America as pricier trade paperbacks. Only genre fiction retained the pocket-book form. In retrospect, was this a prudent decision by publishers of literary fiction? Or should the literary pocket-book make a return?
DEP: I love the pocket format, because I always have books with me and it usually necessitates a backpack or briefcase. But those affordable pocket paperbacks fall apart: cheap acidic paper; poor binding; wide spines. They're difficult to read sometimes. There are hardly any thumb margins. They're not drastically cheaper to produce for their appropriate list price. Unless it's for one or two bucks in a used book cellar, I'd rather toss in the extra fin for something that I can put on my shelf and keep there pretty much forever. If I don't feel like I need to own a book, I go to the library. It's the long dime over the short nickel, so to speak. Small format is great but it just isn't realistic for most books.
CBT: Agents now have enormous power, effectively controlling which writers get access to acquisition editors at major houses. Furthermore, agents find themselves under enormous pressure, acting as the line of first readers who have to sift through avalanches of submissions. Is this tenable over the long run? Is it good for art? Or should large houses be accepting both agented and unsolicited submissions?
DEP: Agents are a tough subject. They're case-by-case, I think. Some are probably great, others are out there just to make a buck I'm sure. Large houses are just as tough a subject, though. I think that it's the business model, more than the agents or the issue of submissions, that's the biggest problem here; I've been saying that for a long time.
Now, what is good for art?—you're just trying to get me to say something silly. Because nothing really intelligent can be said about what may or may not be good for art. As soon as you say "these conditions are best" or "this type of person is best", some world-changing writer comes along and proves you exactly wrong. What's good for art are good artists. If you say more than that, you're just filling column inches.
CBT: Literary prizes have also grown in power. They have arguably replaced the glowing review as a marketing tool. But are they as effective as criticism in building a contemporary canon? After all, critics can express nuance, prizes can't. Do book prizes give the message: this books is worth reading and all these others aren't?
DEP: Prizes are almost as good as reviews as a marketing tool—but then you have the Nobel secretary saying something like he did about American authors, and it really undermines the authority of a prize to a lot of readers. A positive review from a respected critic like James Wood, Adam Kirsch, or William Logan—because they take heat for what they write and are so independent-minded (bull-headed some might say)—is still just phenomenal.
On the other hand, time is the only thing that makes the canon. Critics can help, certainly, and there are examples of critics making a huge impact, but there are plenty of examples where the critics were totally wrong and a book's importance was only realized in retrospect. Prizes make a tidy list, sure, but they're just as hit-and-miss as critics. Occasionally you have a book that's so obviously important and capital-G Great that there's no question, but only persistence over time, and influence, make the canon. And authors aren't in the canon: titles are. Everything so-and-so wrote doesn't have to be great for one book or story or poem or essay to be among the best ever. In all our egotism, I think we've lost sight of that fact.
There are other issues, like royalty rates for anthologies and textbooks, which have a much greater effect on the "modern canon" than the Man Booker or the National Book Awards are having. Millions of students all over the country are taught certain books and poems — for a good author, that's worth more than any award.
CBT: Thinking of your own site, what sorts of changes do you foresee in it? Are blogs destined to become the new magazines? Will you start using a format (and possibly working with partners) in a magazine-type way? Or is blogging as it's currently defined how you want to keep posting work on the Net?
DEP: My blog, The Wooden Spoon, is a way to filter some of the things that I find online and to work out some of my thoughts on books, authors, and literary/cultural issues. I post some reviews there, and I'd like to do that more, but it's really there to open a discussion. I love comments. Even when they're adamant about how completely wrong and foolish I am, as long as they're cogent and pertinent, I love them. Because it's as close to the coffeehouses that we get, or I get, at least; I'm not wealthy enough to just sit around and be fabulous and literary all day in Athans (our local coffee place) and I don't work in academia. Those comment discussions are sustaining.
I'm founding a literary review site that is separate from my blog, The Critical Flame (www.criticalflame.org), that will be as serious as any print journal. We'll have reviews and criticism that, at least, will make up for the loss of so many book review sections in print media. I have a few editors who will be working on it with me, all bright young people, and we're taking review and critical essay submissions now for this first few issues. There is no essential difference between print and the internet except the seriousness with which we approach these projects. The next Partisan Review or Paris Review will be online only. It might be already.
Bio: Daniel E. Pritchard is a poet, essayist, and publishing professional from Boston, Massachusetts. He works at David R. Godine, Publisher, during the day, has a regular blog of literature and culture, The Wooden Spoon, and in the spring of 2009 Daniel is launching an online journal of book reviews and criticism, The Critical Flame.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)