Apartment Therapy has a pretty decent project for turning an old drawer into a new bookshelf/nightstand. But like my old stand, you still can’t hide much in it.
Category: books
A poetry reading and jazz show on the Roof Garden of the Battery Park Hotel
Rooftop Poets
Barbara Gravelle, Matthew Mulder, Brian Sneeden
with music by Vendetta Creme & Aaron Price
1 Battle Square, Asheville, North Carolina
Friday, October 22 · 8:00pm – until
doors open at 7:30pm — event begins at 8:00pm
In celebration of the publication of Barbara Gravelle’s latest book, Poet on the Roof of the World, join the Rooftop Poets under a full moon on the Roof Garden of the Battery Park Hotel for a Prohibition-era poetry reading, book-signing and jazz show.
Local poets Barbara Gravelle, Matthew Mulder and Brian Sneeden will perform alongside the French jazz music sensations Vendetta Creme and Aaron Price at the Roof Garden of the illustrious Battery Park Hotel.
Tickets are $10 and include a signed and numbered, limited-edition, 64-page book of poems featuring the work of all three poets, as well as complimentary light refreshments and hors d’oeuvres.
Few people have access to the Battery Park Hotel’s Roof Garden. Join us for a fine evening of poems, songs and full-moon revelry.
Space is limited. Reserve your tickets today by emailing: info@coffeehousejunkie.com
The evening’s cast of characters include:
Barbara Gravelle, author of several poetry books including, Keepsake, Dancing the Naked Dance of Love, and her latest collection of poems, Poet on the Roof of the World.
Matthew Mulder, one of the original members of the Traveling Bonfires, his poetry and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in Crab Creek Review, Small Press Review, The Indie, H_NGM_N, and other publications.
Brian Sneeden has produced, designed or written for more than a hundred theatrical performances. He is the current director and MC of Asheville Vaudeville.
Cabaret singer Vendetta Creme (aka Kelly Barrow) and Aaron Price (piano, guitar) perform lesser-known songs from yesteryear. This duo scour the globe for their songs including material from five continents weaved into a seamless, unforgettable show.
Are you more interested in coffee or books?
Last night I enjoyed a conversation around the kitchen table with friends from out-of-town. At one point in the conversation a parent told a story about a neighborhood child joining their family for an evening meal. As mastication commenced the mother noticed all her children had a book they were reading while the neighborhood child looked about awkwardly. The mother told her eldest not to ignore their friend, maybe offer the friend a book. Her eldest puts the book down and asked the friend, “Do you like reading?” The friend replied, “Not much.”
This story reminded me of something I read recently regarding “aliteracy” — being able to read and write, but choosing not to — and the decline of reading whole books — in other words, reading a book cover to cover versus reading world literature condensed to 140 characters or less (see Twitterature for an example). In a recent article published in The Chronicle, Carlin Romano writes:
Destructive cultural trends lurk behind the decline of readerly ambition and student stamina. One is the expanding cultural bias in all writerly media toward clipped, hit-friendly brevity—no longer the soul of wit, but metric-driven pith in lieu of wit.
Link: Will the Book Survive Generation Text?
This isn’t a new trend. I recall Socrates faced similar “cultural trends” in his age. When a culture has the immense wealth of knowledge and wisdom but choses to vapid soundbites and emotionalism, the “destructive… trends” are established like a rut society finds difficult to escape. Almost twenty years ago, The New York Times published an educational article with the following lead paragraph:
Illiteracy is primarily a problem of the third world. But it is the United States that appears to be leading the way in aliteracy — the rejection of books by children and young adults who know how to read but choose not to.
Link: The Lost Book Generation
This past weekend I attended a local poetry reading. An Irish poet lamented that a second-hand bookstore closed and now he has to go to Barnes & Noble to purchase books. He commented that Barnes & Noble is a place where people seem more interested in coffee drinks than books.
Best I can tell, The New York Times story may be the first mainstream publication to cover aliteracy (if you find others, please share them in the comments section or email me). George Orwell published an essay in the 1940s on a similar theme (Books v. Cigarettes) and in the 1930s Aldous Huxley presented a society without books in Brave New World. Toward the end of Brave New World, World Controller Mustapha Mond tells John the Savage:
Our world is not the same as Othello’s world… The world’s stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get… But that’s the price we have to pay for stability. You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art.
I can’t help but wonder what we as a culture trade for happiness?
Essay: When the lights go out
Many aspects about web ‘zines and journals I enjoy. However, publications that still do things the old way (i.e. print only, no web version) really resonate with me and maybe you as well….
[read more]
UPDATE: This blog post is available as part of an audio podcast.
Listen now:
Or listen on:
PodOmatic: coffeehousejunkie.podomatic.com
SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/coffeehousejunkie
E-book: This blog post will be featured in a forthcoming e-book. More details coming soon.
Advice to authors regarding indie bookstores and Amazon.com
The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) offers advice to authors seeking to work with indie books stores:
- Know the Marketplace
- Know Who And How To Contact
- Know the Terms (i.e. your business arrangement with the bookstore)
- Don’t shoot yourself in the foot (avoid mentioning that you book is available on Amazon.com)
This is good advice for authors when working with indie booksellers. The operative words are “with indie booksellers.” Truth be told, the majority of the sales for books I’ve helped publish come from Amazon.com. The reason for this, I suspect, is that Amazon.com is where the masses go to buy books.
Know that I am a big supporter of indie bookstores. But I’m also practical and know that indie bookstores attract a niche audience of readers. Some book titles do better at indie bookstores than others. For example, if you’re a local writer with a book on regional hiking trails or you’re a local poet with a book, you may do better at an indie store than on Amazon.com. That being said, Amazon offers a 45/55 terms of sale (a smidge better than indie stores offering a 40/60 terms of sales). That may not seem like much, but if you’re a small publisher, that 5% difference may cover cost of shipping products to bookstores which directly impacts breakeven numbers for book titles.
As an author (or small press publisher), know that you have sales options. And avoid mentioning Amazon.com when working with indie booksellers — it gives them ulcers.
Strange, like fiction
I’m reading an anthology of steampunk essays and fiction titled, well, Steampunk. It’s a sub-genre of science-, speculative-, historical-fiction. What’s intriguing to me is the hard-boiled speculative science with smartly dressed Victorian, British fashion. For those of you serious about Steampunk, would you believe there is a Steampunk Emporium (providing clothing and other accessories) and Clockwork Couture (another purveyor of fine clothing and accessories).
Last night I stood in a bookstore transfixed
Last night I picked up some art supplies downtown. The staff at True Blue is not only helpful, but offered me a cup of water after I coughed a couple of times. For some reason the pollen this year is especially irritating to my throat. It’s not often that staff voluntarily offer a cup of water to store customers, and that kind of service is why I plan to return often.
Being downtown, I couldn’t resist dropping by Malaprop’s for a visit to one of my favorite booksellers. Wandering through the book aisles I came across two book titles that caught my attention. The first book is by Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation. I haven’t read much of Merton’s writings. But as I was flipping through pages of New Seeds my eyes fell upon the following passage:
If I am supposed to hoe a garden or make a table, then I will be obeying God if I am true to the task I am performing. To do the work carefully and well, with love and respect for the nature of my task and with due attention to its purpose, is to unite myself to God’s will in my work. In this way I become His instrument.
The work ethics idea in this passage seems so foreign in today’s culture that it caused me to stand, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, and ponder the question: am I true to the task I am performing? However menial the task, do I accomplish tasks with due attention to its purpose?
The other book that caught my attention while I walked through the book aisles at Malaprop’s is The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard. Here’s a passage that arrested my attention:
And whereas philosophical reflection applied to scientific thinking elaborated over a long period of time requires any new idea to become integrated in a body of tested ideas, even though this body of ideas be subjected to profound change by the new idea (as is the case in all revolutions of contemporary science), the philosophy of poetry must acknowledge that the poetic act has no past, at least no recent past, in which its preparation an appearance could be followed.
This took me a couple of readings to unpack the idea in this passage, and I’m not sure if I agree with it or disagree with it. My initial thought is not to agree with it simply on the basis that there is nothing new under the sun. However, counterpoint to my initial thought is a recollection of Jane Hirshfield’s thoughts on creativity and originality in poetry.
I wish I could have purchased these books last night, but I spent my money at True Blue and will have to wait until new funds arrive to purchase these titles.
Publishers, present a reason to buy your artifact
“Consumers need powerful emotional & psychological reasons to buy your books rather than just grab the nearest free e-book,” says Audry Taylor, creative director of Go! Comi. Earlier this month, Robot 6 announced that Go! Comi closed shop “due to a combination of economic downturn and digital theft.” In a recent article she offers five suggestions for publishers who want to avoid going out of business due to digital piracy:
- Make a story available world-wide simultaneously in all major languages.
- In a digital format.
- With perks for pre-orders.
- And goodies that digital pirates can’t reproduce. (And yes, that’s possible. Goodies they can’t compete with, like author chats.)
- Rip off business model 4 pirate sites & one-up them. They offer a Wii raffle for a subscription to a d/l site, u offer author-signed Wii
Though this is written primarily for a manga/comic publishing audience, I think this is good advice for any book publisher.
I’ve said this before, but books need to be designed in way that compels consumers to buy a souvenir, dead-tree product (maybe in a decade a book will be called an artifact). In light of Audry Taylor’s comments, I plan to amend that note to encompass a broader reach than well-designed, dead-tree products. She continues by saying, “My dream pub company is multimedia + print + Etsy + Cafepress + Goodreads + Facebook + fan community.” I agree. The more you compel readers/content users to make emotional and psychological investments in your content, the better the relationship your brand will have with your loyal followers (dare I say, your brand’s evangelists?).
To ruminate, or to tweet, that is the question
“For some kinds of thought, especially moral decision-making about other people’s social and psychological situations, we need to allow for adequate time and reflection,” said… author Mary Helen Immordino-Yang.
(via Tweet this: Rapid-fire media may confuse your moral compass) (hat tip: monkeytypist and azspot)
This seems to contradict the premise of the best-selling book, Blink. The article continues:
The study raises questions about the emotional cost… of heavy reliance on a rapid stream of news snippets obtained through television, online feeds or social networks such as Twitter.
My take away: maybe it is best to marinate and ruminate than to tweet.
Poets Teaching Poets, part 2
The advanced poetry class in which I am enrolled, began last night. Two of the four predictions I made regarding the class are right (the other two will be determined later):
1. 25 percent of the students are male
2. 16 percent of the students are under the age of 40
The first night of class was an amiable experience and it seems as if several of my classmates know each other from other writing classes. I’m bracing myself for an onslaught of confessional lyric poems about grandchildren or childhood or something along that line. A good gardening poem would be preferable, in my humble opinion.
One of the poetry books I am reviewing collects poems about the decline of the working class in America. It is a fantastic subject and book. Can’t wait to see what the editor thinks of my review. It’s that type of material I want to tackle in poetry; some subject that changes peoples life or at least causes a physical reaction. The editor of Main Street Rag once said that the poems he likes the most are ones that make him react physically; meaning he laughs or cusses or throws the book across the room. A few years ago, I witnessed someone shed a few tears after I read one of my poems. That’s the stuff I want to write (and hopefully publish); the stuff that creates a place for the reader to inhabit. The teacher told the class last night that the word “stanza” is Italian for “room.” If that is the only thing I learn from this class, it will be enough; the composition of inhabitable poems. Maybe that’s why I like today’s featured poem at Writer’s Almanac; I can get into its space.
“Literature in the 21st Century” by Ronald Wallace
Sometimes I wish I drank coffee
or smoked Marlboros, or maybe cigars—
yes, a hand-rolled Havana cigar
//read more
book publisher crowds the short head
This is amazing. From Publishers Weekly:
After scrambling to meet the overwhelming demand for its Sarah Palin biography… indie Epicenter Press has signed an exclusive distribution deal with Tyndale House. Tyndale has gone to press for 250,000 copies of the paperback about the newly minted Republican vice-presidential candidate and will begin shipping the books on September 10. Link
The little indie publisher I work with would love to secure a deal like that with our published authors. Oh, wait… it get’s better. Again from Publishers Weekly (just a few days later):
Tyndale House has ordered a second printing of 100,000 copies for Sarah: How A Hockey Mom Turned the Political Establishment Upside Down… Link
Here’s a dirty little publishing reality; how many of those books that ship to retailers will be returned to the publisher? Somewhere between 28 to 40 percent of books published return to the publisher (98,000 to 140,000 copies to return and recycle.). Unless, of course, you have a Dan Brown or Sarah Palin on your frontlist. But even then, consider the crowded head of publishing a best-seller versus a long tail best-seller like The Hobbit (selling, on average, over 1 million copies annually for more than 70 years). Working for an indie publisher, the hope is that I discover a long tail book that increases in value and enriches the world with beautiful literature and not waste the company’s efforts on immediate sales gratification.
*Further reading on the long tail here, here and here (notice that none of the links are to Wikipedia).
Writing book reviews
The nice thing about writing reviews of poetry books is the ongoing education I am receiving by reading contemporary poetry.
Often I am mistaken as a student on the bus. Last week an older woman asked me if I was a student at UNCA. I told her no and that I was reading a book to write a review of it. Later that week, a man on the bus asked me if I was in college. Again, I told him no and that I was reading a book (a different book of poems (I read two books last week)) to wrote a review about it. He then began to tell me about a book he read that absolutely amazed him. It was a narrative nonfiction book about Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition. The conversation was amiable.
I came away thinking that must I look like a student. I suppose there are worse things to look like.
This week at Malaprop’s
Time: Friday, September 5, 2008 7:00 p.m.
Location: Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe
Title of Event: Jonathon Flaum-A Fable of Leadership
Local author and CEO of WriteMind Communications,Inc., Flaum will read from his new book, How the Red Wolf Found Its Howl: The Internal Journey to Leadership
Time: Sunday, September 7, 2008 3:00 p.m.
Location: Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe
Title of Event: Poetrio- 3 Readings by 3 Poets
Join us every first Sunday for Poetrio, poetry readings by three poets. This month’s featured poets are Scott Owens, author of The Fractured World, Beverly Jackson, author of Every Burning Thing, and Pat Riviere-Seel, author of No Turning Back Now (New Women’s Voices Series, No. 30)
From the Editor’s Desk
“May the wind take your troubles away…”
—Son Volt, “Windfall” from the Trance album
A hiatus from blogging was needed and taken. Many reasons exist for disconnection from the matrix—the blogosphere—which I may detail later. The primary reason is that I could not maintain the luxury of blogging and accomplish work-related tasks.
After Christmas, and during the following six months, I released seven projects to the market: this book
A respite was needed. So I took off three and a half weeks. I pointed the auto to parts unknown and hit the road in search of coffee houses and lost threads. Three thousand miles were traveled. For five nights during the journey, I slept in a different bed each night. For four nights, I spent in a cabin miles from the nearest phone and six miles from the closest town which is not marked on most maps. Three times I got lost. Twice it was my fault. Once it was not, but that once was a beautiful distraction.
I don’t know if the wind really “takes your troubles away.” I don’t know if I found those lost threads. I did find a couple excellent coffee houses (remind me to tell you where to find a Boris Latte). I’m back in Asheville now. I guess it is time to reconnect and get back to work.
B.I. – a poem sketch with photo
before the internet
i often read
books or magazines
during breaks and lunches
at the office —
then i ate
at my desk and surfed
web pages or placed
orders on amazon.com
for books i didn’t read
and remain in storage.
i often read
books or magazines
during breaks and lunches
at the office —
then i ate
at my desk and surfed
web pages or placed
orders on amazon.com
for books i didn’t read
and remain in storage.
now i read
books and magazines
during work breaks and lunches —
while someone else
in some other office
sells his/her x-men comic
collection and some other
digital fetus in another office
far far away
buys a x-men comic collection
during lunch hour
and later sells it
because he/her
didn’t make time
to read it.
Lost in translation
Considering that I just read a few books of French prose (translations), I find this vaguely interesting.
“Did you know that in America we publish less literature in translation by far than any other industrialized democracy (in America 1% while in France 60%)?” Link
Based on my reading habits, I am a minority among most American.
Targeting your book’s demographic? Or manufacturing your book’s audience?
Positioning one’s book in an already cluttered publishing arena is essential. Niching-down is another way of targeting a reader audience. Consider horror novels with all the sub genres: macabre, goth, post-apocalyptic, mystery, Victorian, etc. Authors and agents understand that before a manuscript is finished it needs to fit a market. Genre-defying books tend to be a challenge to position and are often avoided by major publishers. Is it a mystery or romance or high literature?
Cory Doctorow appears to either be a happy capitalist or a guerrilla marketeer by taking advantage of his online prominence (secure, soft market) and publishing leverage (200-copy give-aways are not cheap if one considers obscene postal rates) to penetrate a teen reader market.
“Since this book is intended for high-school-age kids, my publisher has agreed to send 200 advance review copies of the book to school newspaper reviewers, along with the same press-kit… (actually, the school kit has even more stuff — it also includes a signed personal letter explaining why I wrote this book and why I hope kids will read it).” (via Boing Boing) Link
Strategically this is a smart move—even for smaller, independent publishers. The best marketing device is the actual product. However, I wonder if offering a free downloadable preview—or entire book—would be more effective. Why bother with book reviewers? The actually end-user, the reader, is the one who will purchase the product—not the high school book reviewer.
“Independent bookstores do everything big corporate bookstores do, with only one significant difference: Independents do it better.”
“I thought Europe was a country”
“Ms. Jacoby… said, something different is happening: anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way. Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.” Link “I thought Europe was a country”
Books that… Take Your Breath Away
It is all about packaging, whether one likes it or not. The British design/publishing company knew that when they released their catalog of books produced in cigarette packaging.
When browsing bookstore shelves the standard trade paperback size becomes overwhelmingly boring. Packaging matters. Cover design matters. Page layout matters.
Anyone who has ever been in a bookstore knows that you’re not browsing books; you’re browsing covers. To have a chance in a sea of covers, you’ve got to have a compelling visual that grabs people.
(via Andre Brocatus) Link.
If a designer can make a book’s packaging and cover attract a reader, the page layout and text should create a literary (and art) experience with an archaic technological device–a book.
When the coffee runs out (or, where did all the books go?)
There’s a difference between greatest or best and most beneficial books. But if no one is going to visit the library to discover them, will they truly be great, best or beneficial? Some people must be reading those odd artifacts called books. Otherwise a self-published novelist with a great book deal would have remained in the shadows of the literary landscape.
Oh, bother… maybe I need to switch from coffee to chai.
The naming of books
From Seth Godin:
I was talking to someone yesterday about naming books, and I realized that there are three useful schools of thought here.
Link.
Wanna be a groupie?
This fits/agrees with the post about audio quality of MP3 files.
From Seth Godin:
The thing is, when you dumb stuff down, you know what you get?
Dumb customers.
And (I’m generalizing here) dumb customers don’t spend as much, don’t talk as much, don’t blog as much, don’t vote as much and don’t evangelize as much. In other words, they’re the worst ones to end up with.
Link.
You want quality customers/fans/groupies, give them quality schtuff. For example, the books I design are carefully crafted. A book is a book is a book, you may say. But in this info age, a book needs to be packaged as a souvenir in much the same way an album is packaged as a CD. Why is this important? Regarding the books I design, they are lifestyle objects. When people buy a copy of one of the books I design I want them to emotionally and intellectually connect with the book as one might connect with a new friend. My desire is that these book buyers invite/introduce other people to the experience. This translates to quality customers/fans/groupies.
Coffeehouse Junkie 