BEA Recap: Discovering a New Press

I don't tend to focus on the publisher of a particular book as I read, but when I do fall for a press, I tend to fall hard (Other Press, I'm looking at you). This year at BEA, I found a new-to-me publisher whose titles I will most definitely be tracking more closely: Tin House. In fact, I fell so hard for their catalog that I left with more galleys from Tin House than any other publisher, and I'm excited about all four of them:

The Celestials, by Karen Shepard (June 2013): A reimagined tale of a group of Chinese immigrant workers brought to Massachusetts to work in a factory town, without knowing they were working as strikebreakers. The publisher promises "wide appeal to readers of historical fiction, relating the shared sense that we're all aliens of some kind — at home in no place."

The Virgins, by Pamela Erens (August 2013): How could one possibly turn up a galley with such a daring title? The Virgins is set in an elite boarding school, with one classmate regaling readers with tales of the school's power couple and their sexual exploits. Sounds provocative, to say the least?

The Revolution of Every Day, by Cari Luna (October 2013): Apparently, in 1995, NYPD rolled an armored tank into the East Village to evict groups of squatters from buildings in the area. Author Cari Luna has imagined a group of five squatters from this time, promising to reveal to readers "a life that few people know about or understand." Seeing as I learned at BEA that there was--actually, is--a squatter building no more than 2 blocks from my old apartment in NYC, I'd say I'm definitely one of the ones that knows nothing about this lifestyle... and after reading the first 10 pages of Luna's novel, I'm more than intrigued.

This Is Between Us, by Kevin Sampsell (November 2013): Five years of a troubled romance, from whirlwind affair to family to divorce. Jess Walter calls the novel "wry and wistful, strange and sexy, humming with desire, quaking with vulnerability," and my new-found love of Walter is going to temporarily trump my disillusionment with author blurbs in general on this one.

Dear Santa: All I Want For Christmas is a New, Orange Car

Were you really, really, really good this year? Or are you itching to spend $30k on a gently used car? Does knowing the proceeds go to the New York Public Library help? What if I told you the car came loaded with 75 Penguin titles for your reading enjoyment (though not for your reading-while-driving enjoyment, of course)?

Penguin is selling off the bright orange, Penguin-logoed Mini Cooper used in the celebratory tour for their 75th anniversary. For a mere $30,000, you - or the bookloving driver on your Christmas list - can own this gently used (15,000 miles) vehicle, signed by 18 Penguin authors. The car is available via Autotrader.com, and as mentioned above.

$30k is steep for a used Mini, but it does go to a good cause, and it comes with about $1000 worth of new books. Think it's worth it? Would you even want to drive a bright orange car emblazoned with the Penguin logo?

The Help Proves Its Worth

According to Monday's issue of Shelf Awareness, Deadline.com has recently reported that Kathryn Stockett's break-out hit has been optioned for film. The movie will be done by Dreamworks, and written and directed by Stockett's long-time friend Tate Taylor. According to one of the comments on the original article (which I haven't been able to verify), Taylor's rights to the film adaptation expired soon after the book became widely popular, and in a very classy move, the author renewed the rights to her friend. If it's true, then good move Stockett.

The Help is currently ranked #2 on Amazon, and has been on the NY Times bestseller list for 48 weeks (the NYT book review of the book called it "button-pushing, soon to be wildly popular novel about black domestic servants working in white Southern households in the early 1960s, one woman works especially tirelessly"). It was also featured on the Today show's "10 must-read books for spring."

This is the first book published by Amy Einhorn books, which launched its first list in February 2009. Other titles from the publisher's first lists include The Postmistress, Kingdom of Ohio, an The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, all of which have garnered significant amounts of blog/book club/review outlet attention. Is there something special about this new publisher? What is Amy Einhorn doing so... right? Any theories? Any other Amy Einhorn books worth noting? This might prove fodder for a further post...

Tor Authors Speak on Amazon/Macmillan Debate, and Booksellers Support Macmillan

Simon Owen, over at Bloggasm (no, not the same thing as Bookgasm), recently sent me a link to his blog post on the Amazon/Macmillan debate. He had a chance to speak with a few Tor authors (a science-fiction and fantasy publisher that is part of Macmillan), and the article was pretty interesting. Great to get a different perspective on the ongoing discussions as well.

In relation to Tor authors, and other science-fiction and fantasy authors published by Macmillan, the Science Fiction Writers of America (SWFA) are removing any links to Amazon from their site, instead sending customers to Indiebound, Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Powell's. You can read the SWFA release, with their reasoning behind this decision, here.

Amazon/Macmillan

Almost a week since my last post, and I've been quiet through the entire Amazon/Macmillan debacle... dear, dear. To recap for those of you who missed it, the e-book pricing war seems to have come to a head this weekend, when publisher Macmillan proposed a new pricing structure for e-books to Amazon, and Amazon responded by removing all Macmillan titles - e-books and p-books - from the Amazon listings. They also removed any Macmillan title from users' wishlists, and deleted sample chapters downloaded onto Kindles.

Needless to say, customers were... not happy. But interestingly enough, some customers were unhappy with Macmillan, calling them the bully, claiming that they are forcing Amazon into an agreement Amazon should not be required to participate in. Well, it seems to me that Amazon forced the issue with their absurdly monopolistic reaction, and as Macmillan owns their books, they should be able to set the prices for the books... not Amazon.

24-Hour Book, Continued

Following up on a comment left on the post regarding the 24-hour book project:

Despite incredible Googling skills, I haven't been able to dig up much more on the outcome of the project other than the fact that it was completed within the allotted time frame, and the launch party for the book was this evening in London. Hopefully there will be more information on the book post-launch (some publishers like to keep things hush-hush until after the release, even if that is only for a period of 12 hours or so...).

As to seeing a project like this on our side of the pond, thanks for the reminder! There was actually something similar conducted during Book Expo this year: Book: The Sequel. This was slightly different as it was not actually a novel, as in the 24-hour book, but it was created in the same vein. Perseus dedicated part of their booth at BEA to Book: The Sequel, with a workstation equipped for editing, design and layout, and promotion. Members of the book world were polled at BEA (what better place to pick the brains of book nerds galore?), and submissions were taken online as well. The whole process began Friday morning, and the book had a launch party on Saturday afternoon. You can see some samples of sequels on the book's webpage, and the schedule of publication is available here.

Here's to creative thinkers!

Super Thursday!

Well, guys, today is the day. It's the first day of October. It's also a Thursday. But not just any Thursday - today is the day that the publishing world has started to refer to as "Super Thursday," referring to the unofficially declared launch of all the titles us publisher have been stockpiling for better holiday placement.

Today is the day that 800 new - yes, NEW - titles go on sale. Eight. Hundred.

According to the Guardian article, this is three times the number of titles usually published for the beginning of the holiday season. Does this strike anyone else as a bit desperate? I can almost picture the editors and sales people getting together and saying, "Ok, if book sales are down by 50% percent (that's a made-up number, for the record), we just have to double the number of titles on sale to make our budget for the holiday season." Right?

Well, maybe not. My concern is that with so many new titles, too many will be glossed over and eventually forgotten. If you see ads/reviews/displays of 4 books you want to buy for yourself and for holiday gifts, for example, I would argue that there is a pretty decent chance that you would by at least 3, if not all 4, of these titles. If you see ads/reviews/displays of 12 books you want, well, now we're looking at a lot more money in a much more uncertain time. Even if the 8 unpurchased books go on the "to-read-later" list, well... we all know how quickly that grows and how stubbornly it refuses to shrink.

What is more, there is a significantly lower chance of any consumer actually seeing any publisher's advertising and publicity efforts, because the whole holiday market has suddenly become so overrun with titles that unless you are Dan Brown, JK Rowling, or Mackenzie Phillips (hey, she had a 10-year affair with her dad, and sadly, that's what sells), you don't have much of a chance of making a splash.

I certainly hope that this is overly doom-and-gloom on my part, and that this mad rush of books brings in so many people to bookstores that sales are up and everyone is in the black and books are booming. Only time will tell. In the meantime, prove me wrong and buy everyone on your Christmas list a book this year. Everyone.

A Glimmer of Hope in the Ebook Apocalypse

First off, now that I've dubbed it the ebook apolocalypse - or should it be the Ebook Apocalypse, for emphasis? - I'm sticking with it. I like the implications.

Just a follow-up on yesterday's doomsday post: last week, following the chaos surrounding the pricing of ebooks on Amazon, Sony, etc., Robert McCrum of the Guardian stepped back and found some positives in our transitioning publishing world. Margaret Attwood, Jeanette Winterson and Alaine de Botton (what did you expect from a British journalist?) add up to proof that we haven't changed all that much, really. Read his article here.

It gives me hope that even as we change our mediums, or prices, or argue over DRM and all that jazz, someone can find ways in which the literary world is forever stagnant. Because isn't that why we read books, because they are permanent, unchanging and yet ever-adapting?