November 8, 2005

Tastemakers: Literature - Forbes.com:

t is common to think the world is becoming increasingly illiterate and inattentive. The many media that compete for our attention are louder, brighter and faster than books. Libraries, bookstores and publishing houses are swallowing budget cuts and layoffs. The National Endowment for the Arts says that literary reading is in dramatic decline.

At the same time, truly interesting and original literature continues to be published–and not all of it is languishing in the sale bins at Barnes & Noble (nyse: BKS - news - people ). J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books fly off the shelves just as fast as they are printed (the most recent in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, has generated over $200 million in sales since its release in July). Elmore Leonard’s best-selling mysteries keep us up at night. And whether the authors are old lions, such as Philip Roth, or young ones such as Jonathan Safran Foer, serious literature still sells. In fact, in 2004, Americans spent an estimated $8.8 billion on adult trade books, $3.1 billion on juvenile trade books, and $2.9 billion on mass-market paperbacks, according to the Book Industry Study Group, a trade organization based in New York City. In fact, U.S. consumers will spend nearly 5% more on books in 2005 than they did in 2004, BISG predicts.

Slide Show: Tastemakers In Literature

A slideshow on Tastemakers in Literature? Ouch.

Now that retailers can track books sales speedily and efficiently with point-of-sale technology, the entire publishing world knows when an author’s commercial performance takes a dive. For these unfortunate scribblers, such a sales record makes it hard to get good advances and big orders from bookstores. So some are adopting an unusual strategy: adopting an alias — even one of the opposite sex.

Two decades ago, the book industry largely relied on guesswork as it decided what to publish and sell. Editors could keep promoting promising authors, even if sales were weak. When they finally wrote a “breakout” title, their catalog of older books would become valuable.

These days, publishing veterans talk about “the death spiral” of authors’ careers. A first novel generates terrific reviews and good sales, but with each succeeding book, sales get weaker and the chains cut their orders until they don’t stock any at all.

“You’re only as good as your last book’s sales to much of the retail market,” says New York literary agent Richard Pine, a principal in Inkwell Management LLC.

This entertaining color article in today’s Wall Street Journal never goes beyond anecdote. I expect more from the Journal. They have the resources to use BookScan to run the numbers so that we would learn exactly how many fiction authors are affected by this downward spiral phenomenon.

Publishers Marketplace:

Joe McGinniss’s book about the bizarre murder in Hong Kong of Merrill Lynch investment banker Robert Kissel, for which his wife was recently convicted (she argued self-defense), along with the indictment of his older brother Andrew on charges of financial fraud, with an ensuing battle over custody of Kissel’s children and their inheritance, to David Rosenthal at Simon & Schuster, for publication in fall 2007, by attorney Dennis Holahan

Joe McGinniss has written some terrific books including the classic THE SELLING OF THE PRESIDENT and FATAL VISION. But he’s been gone a long time. Will he be able to summon up the old magic? The Kissel story is a terrific one, but it will be old news by 2007…

After a Death by Cancer, a Reporter’s Life Force Glows in New Book - New York Times

A classic inside-the-Beltway story.

Rosa Parks in WaPo:

For many, Rosa Parks’s story began on December 1, 1955, when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Ala., bus — setting off a 381-day boycott of the city bus system. But she was already 42 when she quietly said no to Jim Crow. Douglas Brinkley’s recently reissued Rosa Parks: A Life (Penguin; paperback, $13) describes how Parks, who died in October at the age of 92, got to that definitive point. From her birth in 1913 in a plywood shanty in Tuskegee, Ala., and her education at Miss White’s Industrial School for Girls in Montgomery, Parks was taught, she said, “that I was a person with dignity and self-respect and I should not set my sights lower than anybody just because I was black.”

The Rosa Parks funeral was a huge big deal in the Detroit Metro area.

I was very proud of son Parker who came home from kindergarten with a very strong impression that Rosa Parks was a great woman. He really got it.

Hurricane Katrina Survivor Tells Story in New e-Book “KATRINA…In the Aftermath of a Killer”:

Hurricane Katrina Survivor Tells Story in New e-Book “KATRINA…In the Aftermath of a Killer”

Arlington, TX (PRWEB) November 8, 2005 — In August of 2005, while the southern region of the United States braced for the impact of Hurricane Katrina, Dunbar began writing, giving birth to his book release, KATRINA…In the Aftermath of a Killer.” Little did he know that Katrina would develop into a category 5 hurricane before slamming the city of his birth, New Orleans, totally devastating the Crescent City.

An interesting new category of instant book: My Disaster Diary

All you have to do to master the genre is sit and wait for the disaster to hit you. Brilliant!

Paperback Mysteries That Bring the Pulp Back to Fiction - New York Times:

Thanks to Mr. King, the best-seller status of “The Colorado Kid” makes it breakout time for the Hard Case Crime scheme.

These books are the brainchildren of two friends, Charles Ardai and Max Phillips, who met through investment and technology circles. Mr. Ardai had the foresight to become the chief executive of Juno, an Internet service provider, before embarking on this inspired but risky publishing venture. The first titles appeared last year.

The New York Times catches on to Hard Case Crime.

This is the most important books story in the mainstream media today, November 8, 2005 because Hard Case Crime is the pure quill, the real deal: books with great style brought to life as a labor of love.

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 8 /PRNewswire/ — Guinness World Records has officially recognized L. Ron Hubbard, acclaimed author and the founder of Scientology, as the world’s most translated author. This new world record, officially verified as 65 languages, exceeds the previous record of 51 languages set in 1997 by American author Sidney Sheldon. It also tops the unofficial count of 63 for “Harry Potter” novelist J. K. Rowling and the 64 languages translated for “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Dutch teenager Anne Frank.

As a book-lover I have somewhat conflicted feelings about L. Ron Hubbard. I feel a sincere admiration for L. Ron Hubbard the pulp science fiction author, who transcended the limitations of the book to create something much bigger than himself. It’s a shame that what he created was a pernicious mixture of pseudo-science and pseudo-religion.

New Orleans Is Still Grappling With the Basics of Rebuilding - New York Times:

In rebuilding, timing and proportion are everything. Unlike New York officials, who seized their moment of national sympathy to nail down $20 billion in specific appropriations from Congress after Sept. 11, Louisiana delegates asked for a hefty $200 billion. After that amount was shot down, there was little clarity in the state’s request, and two-thirds of the $60 billion approved by Congress for the Gulf Coast has not been spent.

“Louisiana lost its credibility by asking for everything,” said Walter Isaacson, the former chairman of CNN, who serves as vice chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, a new state entity appointed by the governor to coordinate the reconstruction effort. “Now it is our job to say, we have some reasonable priorities for spending and we are going to be sensible and frugal about it.”

Whoops.