Booklr Blog

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With the Kindle Fire, Nook, and e-readers constantly in the news, Booklr took a look at the prices in the Amazon Top 100 Kindle List and the Barnes & Noble Top 100 Nook List over the past week. The results might surprise you.  The price of ebooks from each retailer is not always uniform. Consumers should consider this important factor since once you choose a device, you're locked in to that retailer.

[booklrblog]

Davids and Goliaths face off in 21st century publishing: Will the ending be rewritten?

A small press (not to be confused with vanity press) commonly publishes fewer than 10 new titles per year OR nets less than $50 million in annual sales. AKA “independent presses” and affectionately as “indie publishers,” small presses are popping up like baby bunnies among the “hare-y” giant conglomerates. Keep an eye on these small but mighty warriors. As a collective, they might be one of the single most dynamic and influential forces in this new era of publishing. An army of many finds strength in numbers. The digital revolution has paved the way for a surge of new publishers entering the industry. And this is a harmonious existence, because small presses are rarely in competition with one another, and their proliferation simply allows for new niches to be served:

While the big publishing companies continually merge, now down to a critical mass of six major houses, 8,000+ new publishers emerge each year [Publishers Weekly].

78% of titles published are now coming from small presses or self-publishers.

Fostering refreshing oases and loving families. In adopting literary gems that don’t fit the blockbuster, big house parameters, small presses are sating hungery niche readers and building some seriously solid alliances:

Archipelago Books exclusively publishes English translations of classic and contemporary literature by non-U.S. authors and arranges for universities across the country to host and sponsor book tours for their titles, some of which become part of the university’s curriculum.

Ugly Duckling Presse, specializing in poetry, experimental prose, and art books, has partnerships with 24 bookstores across the U.S. that have standing orders for ALL the books this indie publisher releases.

Melville House’s bookstore is an event venue hub for a number of New York’s best indie presses, including Akashic, powerHouse Books, Archipelago, Ugly Duckling, Hanging Loose Press, and Umbrage Editions.

You can have your cake and eat it, too. Getting personal love and care from a small press family AND being the next “it” author–sound like a dream come true? Indie fairy godmothers are transforming Cinderellas left and right:

Paul Harding, winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize, published Tinkers with Bellevue Literary Press, a project of the NYU School of Medicine with a focus on science and medicine.

Austin Ratner’s The Jump Artist, also published by Bellevue Literary Press, won the 2011 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature in fiction–he walked away with $100,000, and the prestige, of course!

Melville House has published substantial works from Nobel Prize for literature winners Imre Kertész and Heinrich Böll.

The Royal Physician’s Visit by Swedish novelist Per Olov was published by Overlook Press. Simon & Schuster picked up the paperback rights for a cool $77,000.

Archipelago Books released the English translation of Elias Khoury’s Gate of the Sun in 2006 to rave reviews from the NYTimes and Publishers Weekly. Khoury went on NPR, embarked on a national book tour, and blew up on Amazon.

Money makes the world go round. And small presses are contributing to that cycle of life, slowly and steadily. Will they win the race?!

Most small press advances are between $3,000 and $7,500; with these parameters, they can generally turn a modest profit on 3,000 copies sold, as opposed to the 25,000-50,000 or so bottomline that a large house targets.

Hawthorne Press published Monica Drake’s Clown Girl in 2007; it sold out of it’s initial run of 6,000 copies in less than two months and quickly reordered another 5,000.

Chelsea Green, the leading publisher on the politics and practice of sustainable living, reported their best year ever in 2008, selling over 100,000 copies of New Organic Grower, 150,000 copies of The Straw Bale House, and 300,000 copies of The Man Who Planted Trees.

Authors are retaining up to 50% of sales revenue with most small presses through a combination of higher royalty cuts and the ability to keep the chunk of change that would normally go to compensating a behemoth house with thousands of employees.

Do you work at an indie press? Tell us about it. Email [email protected]

Love,

[booklrblog]

Dorothy Allison encapsulates the light, dark, and all the greys of the human psyche

Published in 1992 by Plume.

How could you possibly defend a mother who abandons her daughter to be with the man who raped that daughter? How could you possibly feel anything but disgust for this violent child-abuser? Read Dorothy Allison's incredible, semi-autobiographical novel Bastard Out of Carolina, and you will marvel at her insightful and boundless capacity for understanding the complexity of the human psyche and the fragility of human dignity.

Bastard is written through the eyes of Ruth Anne 'Bone' Boatwright as she remembers and tries to comprehend the events that led to her mother's abandonment. She unflinchingly narrates her life from the moment of her illegitimate birth into an impoverished, Southern "white trash" family through her violent rape at age 12, by her stepfather. But Bastard is not so much a coming-of-age story as it is a tribute to her wild, fierce family, and a treatise on the loyalties, conflicts, and betrayals that every family must grapple with. "I wanted [to take] people deep inside something they didn't want to know about. To put on the page a memorial to the family that I loved: a huge, violent, working class family that had problems with liquor and poverty and [were] generally thought poorly of..." And Allison does, with the most gravitating, rhythmic, subtle language. She belongs in the vaulted company of Southern writers like William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and Harper Lee, for her ability to articulate the complex lives and language of all humans. Dorothy Allison is probably one of the most warm-hearted and coolest living authors to "kick it" with. Her life story is the archetype of what the most gut-wrenching dramas are made of, and yet her courage, wisdom, and optimism shine through, unwavering, in her writing and in person. She is a feminist, a lesbian, and a humanist, and a staunch supporter of small press and independent bookstores.

"[Allison] relates Bone's struggles with intensity, humor, and hard-wrought rejection of self pity, rendering Bastard a rare achievement." –SF Review of Books "When I finished, I wanted to blow a bugle to alert the reading public that a major new talent has arrived." –George Garrett, NYTimes

Listen to Allison talk about Bastard:

Buy the Novel with IndieBound:

Watch a clip of the movie directed by Anjelica Huston:

Did you read Bastard Out of Carolina? Have thoughts to share? Tweet us @booklr or email [email protected]

Love,

[booklrblog]

In Conversation with Ricardo Maldonado, Managing Director @ the 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center, and Accomplished Poet in the N.Y.C.

Booklr caught up with Ricardo Maldonado, Managing Director at the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center, poet extraordinaire in his own right, and gem of a man. Over drinks at KGB Bar, where writers and booze mingle lovingly, we Romanced deodorant, talked baseball, and conceded the lovable sentimentality of humans.

Our conversation dabbled and brushed around these corners:

On sentimentality vs. digitalization: "I’m uncomfortable with e-readers. I feel like an octogenarian ... I guess as a writer I’m trying to find excuses not to like it ... But I do like that publishers are embracing this kind of technology; poetry isn’t just for the elite, and this technology is democratizing literature and art in a wonderful way ... I can’t even make up my mind about this; we’re all about to dive, and we just haven’t done it yet."

On a love of baseball: "Baseball seems to be a sport that welcomes all these metaphors from all camps and all kinds of literature. I can think of many writers that equate writing with baseball, and they all come from different schools ... I was really stunned by [baseball]--I just sit there and watch and ponder and think about the game as it has been played and my memories of the game ... It feels like the romantic sublime."

On intuitive writing: "Most of what I know about structure I’ve learned from fiction, not necessarily from poetry. But I rarely write prose, although I would love to. At this point I’m learning how things should unfold on the page--learning how to cultivate a sense of intuition or feeling towards [prose]."

For the full discourse, and the premiere of a new poem "My Book Report on Deodorant"...

My Book Report on Deodorant (a new poem by Ricardo Maldonado)

Welcome, vigor--and naked, dreaming of Eastern Parkway and the Palisades, 

we would welcome the scent of each other: plaid shirt, ice-pack, California wine red

and detergent fumes. Impotence will the young who are looking for guidance

in our sums and deviations, courting efficiency.

Flab is fault, is transient, is frail with its trends

and elastics, which shirts distribute. Reflux ushers fix, ushers levity and fervor.

Men turn to romance in times without sport, with flair and slight miscalculations. ------------------------------------------------------

B: So what are you reading these days? RM: I'm actually reading eight books.

B: At the same time? Eight books? How do you do that? RM: Well (laughs) you dabble.

  B: And it never gets confusing? Like intertwining dreams? RM: No, well think about it. You’re working: you open your browser and you have eights pages in front of you and you switch back and forth between tasks.

  B: You make reading sound like work, and it’s supposed to be an escape of sorts...right? RM: As a writer, it’s both. It’s an escape, but also I like to think that every writer has something to offer in terms of craft or strategy. Of course I still enjoy reading a good yarn, but I’m more interested in how things are built. I derive a lot of constructive pleasure from reading about structure or thinking about structure or how things unfold. Most of what I know about structure I’ve learned from fiction, not necessarily from poetry. But I rarely write prose, although I would love to. At this point I’m learning how things should unfold on the page--learning how to cultivate a sense of intuition or feeling towards [prose].

  B: Do you think your personal intuition can be crafted and tweaked? RM: Yes, I think it’s more about developing an awareness to it--how it conducts itself; what underlies it; how psychology grapples with that motive being--and welcoming its quirks and colors and scents. Growing comfortable with it.

  B: So, what are these eight books that you’re reading? RM: I’m really loving Netherland, it’s kind of wonderful and sedate, but very exciting. I see some danger in it, like something is about to happen. And you know he’s reminiscing so you get the feeling that something triggered these memories, and I’m really interested in that [trigger] as a way of talking about experience. I’m really curious about it. I just read a book on quitting smoking, and I’m also reading a series of oral histories from baseball players who played in the 1920s, and the early 1900s.

  B: Is this a recent trend? Cricket fiction and now baseball fiction? RM: Well I haven’t read The Art of Fielding, but I had been watching the documentary on baseball by Ken Burns. After I was done, I was really stunned by the sport--the art of it and the grace of it. I used to play baseball when I was in high school, briefly, and I’m fascinated by the quietness of the sport. It’s a demanding sport--demanding of your time and your patience--and I’m not someone who is very patient, but for some reason I allow the sport to enter my world for a good four hours, and I just sit there and watch and ponder and think about the game as it has been played and my memories of the game. I went to college in Boston, so my experiences in Fenway were unique. (Pauses) Maybe not necessarily unique because I assume everyone who falls in love with baseball through the Red Sox assumes that their experience at Fenway is unique, but it’s like the sublime. It feels like the romantic sublime.

  B: In what way do you consume or analyze baseball in relation to literature? (RM indicates, with a lift of his eyebrows, that I clearly did not word a comprehensible question...) B: I mean, do you love it in relation to a particular genre or author or some facet specific to “baseball fiction”? I’m thinking of something like Infinite Jest that requires every ounce of its reader’s patience and focus--this strenuousness is a major component of the act of reading it... (RM: I’ve never read [it], partly because of the physical requirements of carrying that book around. B: Which is why we have e-readers!) 

RM: Baseball seems to be a sport that welcomes all these metaphors from all camps and all kinds of literature. I can think of many writers that equate writing with baseball, and they all come from different schools. It’s also just very American but at the same time, not necessarily American. It’s the national sport, and it seems to be very democratic now, as opposed to the 20s and 30s when it was bourgeois, white men on the field.

B: Speaking of change and democracy, how will the e-reading, e-publishing whirlwind affect poetry.

RM: It definitely will, but I’m uncomfortable with e-readers. I feel like an octogenarian who has just encountered this new technology sent over by Martians. I guess as a writer I’m trying to find excuses not to like it. I like the idea of books. I like that books and literature and words exist. I don’t necessarily feel that’s true of an e-reader...But I do like that publishers are embracing this kind of technology; poetry isn’t just for the elite, and this sort of technology is democratizing literature and art in a wonderful way. As someone who works in a literary center, I’ve seen people of all races, all economic backgrounds engaging in poetry--whether they are wiling to spend $20 or $9.99 for an e-book, people are reading (yay!). I think people are afraid to engage with non-novel forms of literature and call it reading. We read blogs, we read The New York Times, and we read all kinds of listings via the Internet. This digital age has seen the creation of many online journals that are really great, and they exist on the Internet. My work, most of it has been published on the Internet and will be out there forever. For someone to discover them many years from now, there’s something very humbling about that. And it’s fantastic that someone in Argentina can read my works and engage with it or even think about it for five minutes. I don’t necessarily need someone to produce a book on my behalf for this type of interaction to occur. But for me, most of my reading has been either in book form or with a computer, not an e-reader. That said, I just came across the most recent Amazon product (Kindle Fire), and the fact that it allows you to read not only literature, but other kinds of writing, watch films, browse the web, etc. makes me very curious. I’m curious about the technology, but I hesitate to embrace [it] because I’m also afraid I might get addicted.

  B: So do you think that maybe some of the hesitation people have toward e-readers is not necessarily a product of literary elitism but literary sentiment? RM: Exactly. Maybe you have noticed that I can’t even make up my mind about this (ha, perhaps). I think that we’re all about to dive, and we just haven’t done it yet. Something is keeping us, me. Maybe it’s a little thing, but as a writer, I would like to have a book to send to my mom--something physical.

 B: How do you feel about being one of New York’s premier emerging poets? RM: Whether I’m one of New York’s emerging poets or not (he IS), it’s very humbling that people have read my work and liked it, not because I don’t think it deserves to be read, but because a large percentage of it is solitary. It’s just you and the page. It’s not like we write to communicate things directly, but it’s great when you realize someone has read your work, or they know it, or that a line meant something to them.

  B: How do people convey that experience of kinship to you? RM: Emails, Facebook messages. It’s funny, we create these personas through Facebook, and it’s almost like that becomes part of the artistic process: presenting ourselves as a certain individual online. It’s always surprising when you get messages online about your work; it makes you realize, wow, I do exist to them and for them and because of them. But at the same time you don’t...This funny tension between writers and readers in which your legitimacy as a writer exists because of readers’ engagement, but you don’t produce your art or craft for the readers. As a writer, you have a responsibility to your experience. Sometimes you write poems that end up pissing people off or causing harm, but is that always relevant to you? Isn’t this a historic struggle that writers ultimately face? But it’s been a fun experience writing for the past ten years. This is my life, and it’s how I consume the world. We’re all consumers: if anything, the Internet has revealed that.

  B: When did you feel your career taking some sort of turning point? Or a sense of success? RM: Probably the day I started publishing, oh, three or four years ago. Or maybe when I was admitted to Columbia’s MFA program...or even before that when I realized that I could engage with the world as a writer, in a specific writerly way--constructing sentences in a structured way. When that clicked, my life turned. In terms of success and or being recognized, every writer will say, “That’s not what I do it for,” and that’s true, but we all like to be recognized. The need to be loved, which every human suffers or enjoys or indulges in. But how to measure that? I don’t know. This year I have been very lucky. I’ve had many publications, a grant, and hopefully something great will happen in the next year. (contemplates) A book would be great, but I don’t know if I’m ready for it yet...

  B: How often do you publish? RM: I had two poems taken in the summer and published in August, but it comes and goes. The thing with most publishers is they accept work and then it can take awhile for the work to come out. A year where I don’t get anything published is then followed by a year where five or six poems are published. I don’t usually submit queries anymore, but if I do, it’s mostly like applying to a job cold: You have a small introduction, “Hello my name is Ricardo. I’ve been working on this project for the last few months, and here are some poems.” And then you wait. Every journal is a bit different, which goes to show that research is essential. You need to be sure that the journal will be open to what you send, not only thematically but also stylistically. It’s a little insulting to the editor to send work that’s blatantly not suited for the journal. I make hundreds of submissions for every one taken. I’m trying to think of all the competitions I participate in yearly. I would say 30, at the very least. Essentially, I have two jobs: my main job, I work from 10-6, and when I get home, I work for one to three hours and then start sending. If you’re a serious writer, you owe it to yourself.   Ricardo Alberto Maldonado was born and raised in Puerto Rico. A recipient of a 2011 Poetry Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, he is the Managing Director at the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center in New York City. He loves hearing from people at [email protected].   A selection of his published poems: 1. “Where we are. Sometimes” published in Sidebrow  2. “Love Poem” published in Diagram  3. “America! America!” published in Boston Review 4. “Aquatics” and “Self-Criticism as an Act of Love” published in LATR: Love Among the Ruins 5. “Selenography” and “Envoi” published in Perihelion    A selection of his current reading list: 1. Netherland by Joseph O'Neill 2. The Glory of Their Times: The Story of Baseball Told By Men Who Played It by Lawrence S. Ritter 3. The Summer Game by Roger Angell 4. On Murder, Mourning, and Melancholia by Sigmund Freud 5. Poemas Humanos by César Vallejo 6. Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

[booklrblog]

Today is abuzz with awesome events. How to choose?

(For the Artist in you) FRANCESCO CLEMENTE: MADE IN INDIA with SALMAN RUSHDIE An Italian traveled to India in 1973 and fell in love. Clemente, who now divides his time between homes in New York, Italy, and Madras, talks with Rushdie about the deep enchantment that Indian art and culture cast upon him, his work, and Western civilization as a whole. Made in India is his love letter to the country--a compilation of hundreds of drawings, collages, and notebooks from the past few decades. The book features text by Rushdie, Jyotindra Jain, and Stella Kramrisch, and conversations with Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. Time: 7–8pm Location: Rare Book Room, Strand Book Store, 828 Broadway Admission: Buy a book or a $10 Strand gift card (admits two) 

Francesco Clemente is well-known for his collaborations with artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, and poets like Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, and Rene Ricard. Salman Rushdie is a one of New York City's most renowned authors and is chairman of the PEN World Voices Festival.

(For the Humanist in you) DON DELILLO & PAUL AUSTER on HORROR Horror is pervasive–in cinema, in fiction, in real life. Long-time friends, colleagues, and sometimes co-authors, Don DeLillo and Paul Auster discuss the latest horror-themed issue of the cutting-edge literary journal Granta.  Time: 7pm Location: Barnes & Noble, Union Square, 33 East 17th Street Admission: Priority seating with purchase of Granta 117; otherwise, first-come-first-seat

Don DeLillo is an author, playwright, and essayist whose work paints a detailed portrait of American life in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In 1994, he co-wrote "Salman Rushdie Defense" with Paul Auster following the proclamation of a fatwa upon Rushdie, after the publication of The Satanic Verses. Paul Auster is known for works blending absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction, and the search for identity and personal meaning. He dedicated In the Country of Last Things and Leviathan to his amigo Don DeLillo.

Granta magazine was founded in 1889 by students at Cambridge University. It published the early work of many writers who would later stake their claim in the literary world, such as A.A. Milne, Ted Hughes, and Sylvia Plath, and has since featured the world's finest writers. Full stop. Granta believes in the power and urgency of the story, both fictional and non-fictional, to describe and illuminate.

(For the Poet in you) SLIPPING in BETWEEN GENRES Meghan O'Rourke and Philip Schultz in conversation with Darin Strauss on their unique experiences as memoirist poets ... or is it poetic memoirists ... Time: 7pm Location: WORD, 126 Franklin St., Brooklyn Admission: FREE; Facebook RSVP appreciated

Meghan O'Rouke was formerly a fiction editor at The New Yorker and poetry co-editor at The Paris Review and now contributes to Slate magazine. She has written about horse racing, gender bias in the literary world, politics of marriage and divorce, and the place of grief and mourning in modern society. Philip Schultz is a poet and founder/director of The Writers Studio. His collection of poems Failure co-won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

(For the Cook in you) GET YOUR EDIBLE BROOKLYN Rachel Wharton won a James Beard food journalism award for her writing in Edible Brooklyn, the food-porn magazine for foodies serious about sustainable chowing in the BKLYN. The Cookbook pays tribute to delicious recipes from sensational eateries in Brooklyn neighborhoods. Time: 7pm Location: Barnes & Noble, Park Slope, 267 7th Ave., Brooklyn Admission: FREE

Rachel Wharton is a deputy editor of Edible Manhattan and Edible Brooklyn magazines. She focused her master's degree in Food Studies from NYU on sustainable agriculture and food culture, with a minor in tacos. She will eat street meat with abandon–sustainability be damned.

Have an event you want us to share? Tweet us @booklr or email [email protected] Love,

[booklrblog]

Think you're too cool for love stories and romance? Think again:

(The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard, Published in 2003 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

We hope you're "great" Thanksgiving with more "eat Turkey" and less "eat Fire," ha...

If you married all the antiquated character and plot clichés of romance–the damsel in distress; the older, gentleman "white" knight; a meddling, distasteful family; love disrupted by time and traversing continents–with diaphanously luminous and modern language and style, their literary brainchild would be Shirley Hazzard's novel The Great Fire.

After the bombing of Hiroshima, Major Aldred Leith travels to Kure, Japan, during the occupation. He falls in love with the brilliant and dainty daughter (his girl-woman damsel) of the odious overseer of his barracks (you saw that coming). And so begins the familiar dance: Leith braves the determined opposition of her parents, endures an enforced separation from Helen, and suffers a rivalry for her hand from a dashing American, all before the predictable lovers' reunion. Ok, so you're not reading this for the narrative, but in setting her novel within the structure of the archetype "romance," Hazzard is able to focus you immediately on the complexity of her characters, and you'll discover just how much there is to know about a character. Her writing is meant to make you work a little, and it's worth it. She seamlessly weaves the personal story threads of The Great Fire within their gargantuan historical context, leaving you feeling swept up in something much larger than a simple love story.

Shirley Hazzard left college in 1946 to work for the British Intelligence in Hong Kong, and later for the United Nations. She has also published a number of non-fiction books based on her experiences in Australia, Italy, and at the U.N. 

"Hazzard's prose is one of the glories of English literature. She makes us realize [how] little we settle for in other novels." --Charles Taylor, Salon

"This novel takes on the very notion of what it means to be civilized." --The New Yorker

Listen to Richard Ford's rare and retrospective interview with Shirley Hazzard at 92Y. Forward to 45:20 for a reading from The Great Fire:

Buy the novel at Amazon:

Did you read The Great Fire? Have thoughts to share? Tweet us @booklr or email [email protected]

Happy reading! Love,

[booklrblog]

A car crash. A dead girl. And the Kennedys: A fictionalized retelling of a Camelot scandal by an American literary icon

Published in 1992 by E. P. Dutton  

One minute you're on cloud nine, flirting with the most powerful, respected, charismatic man you've ever met, and the next, you're skidding off the road--hurtling violently into murky, rushing black water--fighting for your life as he abandons you with the sinking car. What would you be thinking? ... Feeling? ... Screaming? Joyce Carol Oates imagines just that in her short but stunning sleeper novella Black Water based on Senator Ted Kennedy and the Chippaquiddick scandal.

What begins as a starry-eyed chance encounter between 26-year-old Kelly Kelleher and The Senator quickly spirals into a nightmare: The Senator drunkenly crashes the car into the swamp and abandons Kelly to drown. As she suffocates alone, Kelly takes us on a psychotic autobiographical flashback of her life--her relationships, her fears, her hopes--while The Senator nonchalantly abandons her to her fate in the sinking car. It is a story told by a wide-eyed, eager young woman, but about a larger-than-life public figure who gets away with flippantly throwing away an innocent life. Black Water's 160 short pages will chew you up and spit you out. With a soft flick of her pen, Oates castigates two Republican presidents, chastises a Democratic dynasty, passes thinly-veiled judgment on a senatorial Goliath, and gives one "fictional" victim a timeless voice. Joyce Carol Oates needs no introduction. One of America's most respected contemporary writers, she published her first novel when she was 26-years-old and hasn't stopped writing since. Oates has taught at Princeton University since 1978.

"Taut, powerfully imagined, and beautifully written, Black Water ranks with the best of ... Joyce Carol Oates's achievements. It can be read in a single afternoon ... but it continues to haunt us." --NYTimes

Buy the Novel at Amazon:

Did you read Black Water? Have thoughts to share? Tweet us @booklr or email [email protected]

Happy reading and Happy Thanksgiving! Love,

[booklrblog]

How many books have you and the President read in common? This Booklr Pick will make it at least one:

Published in 2004 by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux

GILEAD just might be one of the best contemporary novels to have slipped by you. And Marilynne Robinson just might be one of the most extraordinary contemporary authors that you've never heard of. You'd better amend this literary quandary, ASAP. If you thought waiting nine years for Jeffrey Eugenides's The Marriage Plot was excruciating, imagine how fans of Marilynne Robinson must have pined and pined ... and pined. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson's second novel, was published in 2004, nearly a quarter-century after her début novel Housekeeping. For those who hadn't given up hope and all but forgotten about this extraordinary writer, Gilead proved entirely worth the wait and worthy of the Pulitzer. In the year 1956, in the town of Gilead, Iowa, Reverend John Ames, a 76-year-old Congregational pastor, nears the end of his life and the conclusion of the autobiographical letter he is writing to his seven-year-old son. Although a fictional town, Gilead is based on the real town of Tabor, Iowa, a city that played an important role during the abolition movement as a key stop on the Underground Railroad. Through Ames's memories, Robinson deftly weaves together American's past and present, and individual human lives and the progress of humanity with prose that is at once humble and brave, and as spare and as spiritual as you may ever encounter. Marilynne Summers Robinson is an American novelist and essayist who has written for Harper's, The Paris Review, and The New York Times Book Review. She currently teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

"[Robinson's] is a mind ... in which silence is itself a quality, [and] the space around words may be full of noises."  --James Wood, NYTimes I mean, basically he's saying she's a freaking magician. And she is. President Obama lists Gilead as one of his favorite books, in the company of Shakespeare's Tragedies, Lincoln's Collected Writings, and The Bible.  It's serious, people.

Listen to an audio sample, courtesy of YouTube:

Buy the novel, courtesy of Amazon:

  Did you read Gilead? Have thoughts to share? Tweet us @booklr or email [email protected]

Happy reading! Love,

[booklrblog]

This Week's Book Events

Check out this week's cool literary happenings. Have an event you want us to share? Tweet us @booklr or email [email protected] Michael Uslan Speaks! Comic Con may be over, but never fear! The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) is here to the rescue with this chat with Michael Uslan. Catch a talk from the man who originated the Batman movies and was the first instructor to teach "Comic Book Folklore" at Indiana University's Experimental Curriculum. He might also be the first man to compare Superman with Moses. The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art's (MoCCA) documents Uslan's story of how a comics-obsessed kid conquered academia and Hollywood and brought the dark knight to the silver screen. Check out the corresponding exhibition that includes memorabilia and documents spanning his career as a college professor to becoming the producer of the Batman films franchise.

Date: Monday, November 21, 7–9pm Location: MoCCA, 594 Broadway, Suite 401 Admission: $5, Free for MoCCA Members and Children 10 and under

Oscar Hijuelos Reads Hijuelos, recipient of the Pulitzer for his second novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, reads from his memoir Thoughts Without Cigarettes--an honest and personal account of growing up "not quite Cuban, tentatively American" in the vibrant and unpredictable decades of mid-20th century New York City.  Click here for a preview of the book. Date: Tuesday, November 22, 8pm Location: National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park S.

Thalia Book Club: Joan Didion's Blue Nights In conversation with her nephew Griffin Dunne, Didion discusses her deeply moving new memoir about her daughter Quintana Roo Dunne, and her own fears and thoughts about growing old. Blue Nights is her first book since The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion's National Book Award-winning account of grief and mourning following the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. In her new memoir, as with her previous one, Didion confides and confronts her fears and sorrows as she looks back and offers her quiet optimism and wisdom looking forward. Date: Wednesday, November 23, 7:30pm Location: Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway (@95th St.) Admission: $25; Member $21; 30 & Under $15: Buy tickets

Have a great literary week! Love,

[booklrblog]

RIP Dewey Decimal? Are you ready to move on?

News Flash: Libraries are going digital. Is there nothing you can't do online these days? Gone are the days of sifting through drawers and drawers of Dewey Decimal cards--yellow with age, the most popular entries worn soft and supple, and weary at the edges. I remember learning (and loving) how to use the classification system during my first pre-K visit to the school library. And here's the thing: I Am NOT That Old! (I am far too modest to tell you my exact age, but trust me, pre-K was not so long ago for me.) It is simply mind-bending, how far and fast the ritual of reading has come.

One of the latest developments in the literary world is digital lending. Sounds pretty cool, right? Booklr thought so, too, so we did a little research at the New York Public Library (NYPL). Here's the lowdown:

Books may be "downloaded-out" for 14-21 days

Books may be read via any ebook-compatible device

35,000 titles are currently available

Logistics of e-borrowing are still somewhat traditional:  The availability of an e-book is still constrained by the number of e-copies on hand. (Ex. NYPL has 22 e-copies of 1Q84, Haruki Murakami's latest novel, all of which are currently "downloaded-out", and there are 265 patrons waiting to download the e-book.)

Many publishers have been wary of selling e-books to libraries, fearing drastic effects on commercial sales, but considering that public libraries make up 10% of books sales in the U.S. each year, publishers can't afford to not work out a compromise.

Would you subscribe to a digital library? 

Add a comment, tweet us @booklr, or email [email protected].

Love,

[booklrblog]

To self-publish or not to self-publish? Act I.

Act I. Setting the scene and introducing some players

Scene I. The lay of the land

If you aren’t aware of the self-publishing tempest that is taking the literary industry by storm, you aren’t even living under a rock--you must be deeply ensconced within Earth’s inner core! Let me drop you some (figurative) lines:

By 2009, 764,448 titles were produced (worldwide) by self-publishers and micro-niche publishers. This number comprises 76% (!!) of all books published that year, and output is rising at an exponential rate [PublishersWeekly; Bowker].

The number of self-published titles in the U.S. nearly tripled to 133,036 in 2010, from 51,237 in 2006 [Wall Street Journal].

Scene II. Introducing some self-publishing (super) successes Be in good company with these past and present self-published authors and books:

Ezra Pound self-published his first book of poetry A Lume Spento (with Tapers Spent) which sold 100 copies. But it's ok: he only became one of the most influential poets and critics ... well, ever.

Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style was privately-published for in-house use at Cornell University in 1919. 92 years later, Time magazine listed it as one of the 100 best and most influential books written in English since the beginning of Time (... magazine). 

Joy of Cooking, one of the backbones of American kitchens with more than 18 million copies sold, was self-published in 1931 by Irma S. Rombauer. 

What Color is Your Parachute? by Richard Nelson Bolles was initially self-published in 1970. The self-help book has since been updated and revised annually and translated into 14 languages. To date, it has sold over 10 million copies.

Amanda Hocking self-published her first e-books in April 2010. By March 2011, she’d sold over a million copies, earning two million from sales, and averaging 9,000 sales a day [Huffington Post, NYTimes].

John Locke, a self-published author of the Donovan Creed thriller series (not the Father of Liberalism), became the eighth person to sell over one million Kindle books, and the first ever self-published author to do so [Amazon].

Scene III. The plot thickens, harmoniously I know the news is full of the tempestuous Capulet-vs-Montague-esque rivalry between self-publishers, traditional publishers, niche publishers, e-publishers, POD (print on demand) publishers, and Amazon (all right, maybe full-on Henry VI-esque war), but forget about that cacophony for a moment. Alliances and treaties can be and have been established:

Amanda Hocking signed a two-million-dollar, four-book contract with St. Martin’s Press in March 2011 for a series tentatively called Watersong. Her previously self-published Trylle Trilogy has also been sold to St. Martin’s Press for a 2012 expanded release [NYTimes].

John Locke (still the author) signed a sales and distribution agreement with Simon & Schuster in August 2011. This unique arrangement allows Locke to continue self-publishing under John Locke Books, but his printed books will be available at brick-and-mortar bookstores via Simon & Schuster. (Is he single-handedly creating his own imprint?)

Brenda Novak, best-selling author of In Close, will be self-publishing her latest historical novel The Bastard. Novak chose the self-publishing route for this particular novel because it allowed for more flexibility: “I knew if I tried to sell this book to one of the major publishers, they would want a follow-up within six months. Publishers are looking to build careers, not publish one book. This way, if Bastard does well, I can get another [book] out on my own schedule” [USA Today].

Scene IV. Embarking into the great horizon with confidence

Seth Godin is going cold turkey: The influencial entrepreneur, author, and public speaker recently announced that Linchpin will be the last book he’ll publishing “in a traditional way.” Godin plans to release all future titles himself as e-books, POD, apps, and digital files.

AJ Davidson, author of bestselling novel Kidnapped, has also made the switch to independent self-publishing, citing “how traditional publishers seem to be narrowing the range of their lists with each passing year” as the deciding factor [Huffington Post].

It's a brave new self-publishing world out there! How will it all unfold?

Tune in next Wednesday for Act II. The advantages of self-publishing

[booklrblog]

Booklr's Essential Resources for Writers

The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition: The Manual is considered the de facto guide for American English style, grammar, and punctuation. Even if you're a rouge punctuator (or a neologist), you should know the rules, and then break them.

Urban Dictionary: Slip some spicy slang into your writing, and keep it hip and loose. For a daily dose of street lingo, download Slango Lite, Urban Dictionary’s free app.

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King: Part instruction manual, part engaging memoir, King offers insight that is down-to-earth, witty, and sympathetic. This will be one of the most enjoyable and constructive writing guides you'll ever read, we promise.

The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile by Noah Lukeman: Sound advice from an experienced literary agent who founded his own agency and whose clients include Pulitzer Prize winners, bestselling authors, and prominent academics. Lukeman’s experienced words of wisdom will help you navigate the world of publishing.

Every book you might ever encounter: William Faulkner astutely advised, “Read, read, read. Read everything–trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write.” You probably should heed his advice.

What resources do you love? Tweet us @booklr or email [email protected].

Love,

[booklrblog]

Get Google to recommend your webpage: Easy steps to Search Engine Optimization

What is SEO? SEO is a technique that search engines use to find and rank your site against the millions of other sites in response to a search query. Whenever you look up something on the Internet, most likely you're entering a query using a search engine (Google or otherwise), and after you hit 'enter', you get a list of results that correspond to your query. The websites at the top of this returned list are recognized by the search engine as the most relevant and best matched to the query, and therefore, generally receive the most visitors. The logic mechanism that ranks websites higher or lower in relevance is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Understanding a few simple things about SEO can be a powerful tool for you to help optimize your web visibility and get more traffic from search engines.

Search engines are text-driven, so a few simple URL and page title alterations could push your webpage up in the ranks:

  Use the correct URL format: Use dashes to separate words in your URLs. Don't use underscores, which can cause search engines to see the words in the underscore string as one word, thus hampering the ability for your URL to be returned as a relevant result of a query. *** Ex: http://blog.booklr.com/post/12800747145/super-sexy-true-romance-facts *** NOT: http:// . . . super_sexy_true_romance_facts

Remove "stop words" from your URL: The content of your URL is also important. "Stop words" are words that are likely to be ignored by most search engines and may interfere with the efficiency of the query return. Omit words such as I, the, it, and a. See a more complete list.

Don't generalize page titles: Page titles that ask questions, offer solutions, evoke emotion, and generally specify their content are more likely to be returned for a query. Keywords and titles that are too general can often, conversely, register low and get lost in the search engine "slush pile." 

Optimize your page titles: Position important keywords within the first 60 characters of your page title. Unless your brand is well-know, position the title of the specific page first, then the name of your site/brand.

Use social media and build link-based relationships: Building a network of quality sites that link back to your website may take some time and effort, but it is probably the most important step in significantly increasing your page rank with search engines and driving traffic to your site. *** Share your best blog posts on Twitter or Facebook to get them retweeted and reposted. *** Exchange links with other sites, and post comments that add to the conversation that will inspire other readers to follow you. *** Write awesome content that people can't help but link to.

Want more detailed tips to SEO? Tell us, and we can write a follow-up for the technically daring.

Love,

[booklrblog]

Super Sexy True Romance Facts

FACT: Romance novels are THE SINGLE MOST POPULAR form of fiction in North America with

$1.36 billion in sales in 2010 [Romance Writer’s of America (RWA)]

Largest share of the overall 2010 trade-book market at 13.4% [Business of Consumer Book Publishing 2011]

Fastest-growing segment of the e-reading market, ahead of of general fiction, and mystery and science fiction [Bowker].

74.8 million people reading at least one romance novel a year [RWA reader survey].

FACT: Romance readers have led the way into the digital reading age.

Romance readers were among the first to migrate to e-book.

8,240 new romance titles were released in 2010.

Romance readers buy, on average, 3 e-books per month [NYTimes].

Publishing houses are jumping on the romance imprint bandwagon with wild abandon:

Random House released the digital romance series “Rouge Romance”

Carina Press, launched in June 2010, is pioneering a digital-first novel imprint at Harlequin (godmother of romance publishing)

HarperCollins followed suite with its digital-first imprint Avon Impulse

Amazon followed two months later with Montlake Romance

Ellora’s Cave, a publisher specializing in erotica, has come out with their own proprietary “eCave Reader”

AllRomance.com, the biggest dedicated romance e-tailer, saw 215% growth in sales in 2010, and the number of its listed publishers swell to 4,700.

Dorchester Publishing Inc., one of the country’s oldest mass paperback publishers with the majority of its titles in the Romance genre, has switched to publishing titles only as e-books and in print-on-demand [Wall Street Journal].

(FUN) FACTs: Romance readers are...

Among the most loyal of fans, often buying the entire backlist of novels by a single author, according to Allison Kelley, executive director of RWA. And with some astonishingly prolific authors--Nora Roberts, 209 novels; Debbie Macomber, 150 novels; Danielle Steel, 92 novels--that's a hefty library to amass.

Sassy and smart: SmartBitchesTrashyBooks.com is one of the most popular and heavily trafficked book blogs, ranked #2 overall, beating out London Review of Books and The Penguin Blog [BlogRank].

NOT sad spinsters with cats. According to Publishing Perspectives, “The heart of the U.S. romance novel readership is women aged 31-49 who are currently in a romantic relationship." (Ok, maybe they have one or two cats.)

Are reported to make love 74% more often with their partners than women who do not.

Titillated by Romance? Tell us your favorite author or novel. Email [email protected]

Love,

[booklrblog]

This Week's Readings

Check out these cool events. Have an event you want us to share? Tweet us @booklr or email [email protected]

Jeffrey Eugenides and Jennifer Egan @ 92Y Tickets to this Pulitzer Prize-studded evening are sold out, but the 92Y has added a FREE LIVE WEBCAST so you don't have to miss out. Date: Monday, November 14, 8pm LIVE Webcast @ http://www.92y.org/tickets/production.aspx?pid=75906 Selected Shorts: Miranda July The writer, filmaker, and artist hosts a multimedia performance inspired by her book It Chooses You, about people she met through PennySaver classified ads. July is joined by actors Olga Merediz, Adrian Martinez, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Tom Bloom, and Mia Dillon to perform selections from the book. Date: Wednesday, November 16, 7pm Location: Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway (@95th Street), NY Admission: $27; Member $23; 30 & Under $15: Buy tickets @ https://tickets.symphonyspace.org/public/hall.asp In the Flesh Reading Series Hosted and curated by writer/editor Rachel Kramer Bussel, In the Flesh will get you hot and bothered, laughing hysterically, and lusting for more every 3rd Thursday of the month. Catch Daniel Maurer, NY Mag's Grub Street editor and author of Brocabulary: the New Man-i-festo of Dude Talk, at this month's reading. Date: Thursday, November 17, 8pm Location: Happy Ending Lounge, 302 Broome Street, NY Flannery O'Connor Short Story Award Winner @ KGB Bar Join Amina Lolita Gautier, who won for her short story collection At-Risk, and Hugh Sheehy, 2011 winner for his collection The Invisibles, for an evening showcasing the finest in contemporary fiction from new and emerging writers. Date: Sunday, November 20, 7 pm Location: KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, NY Have a great literary week! Love, 

[booklrblog]

Fantasy (Fiction) Forward. A truly worthy genre.

The other day, I nonchalantly asked a friend what he was reading (as I often do). He grinned sheepishly and replied, "I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but I'm reading [A] Game of Thrones." I was a little sad that he felt the need to respond with a cautionary caveat.

It seems that the genre of Fantasy has always struggled to defend itself as worthy of serious literary consideration, and therefore, Fantasy readers and writers often feel a need to distance themselves from the "genre that will not be named." The Mad Magpie had a recent, poignant post about her coming-out-of-the-closet as a Fantasy writer. "My name is Emily and I'm a fantasy writer...You never know who will support it enthusiastically, and who will just smile politely and then privately judge you." The world is full of stereotypes, but it sure seems like Fantasy fans get an exceptionally rough deal, branded as anti-social Dungeons and Dragons-gaming, Klingon-speaking, never-been-kissed computer geeks. 

But for all its hush-hush, dirty-little-secret existence, Fantasy, as a genre, is a proverbial industry GIANT. TheBookSeller.com asserts that mainstream publishers can no longer afford to ignore sci-fi/fantasy projects. Authors are seeing six-figure book deals and selling 30,000 copies in one week. The sales figures are staggering: Twilight series, 116; Chronicles of Narnia, 120 million; Star Wars 160 million; Lord of the Rings (including The Hobbit), 250 million; and, of course, the Harry Potter series tops all the charts with approximately 450 million and growing. Remember The Game of Thrones? A Dance with Dragons--the fifth installment in George R. R. Martin's series A Song of Ice and Fire, of which GoT is the first--sold 298,000 copies (110,000 of which were e-books) in the first few days it was released, making it the fastest selling work of fiction in 2011, and Martin the 10th person to sell 1 million Kindle books. Nothing embarrassing about that.

And it's not just the astronomical demand for Fantasy fiction that's so admirable: Fantasy readers and writers continually blaze the trail and lead the way in publishing trends. They were among the earliest adapters to e-books and predominantly consume literature through e-readers. The 2010 sales for Sci-fi/Fantasy e-books more than tripled those of print. And the genre is the most popular with e-reader users, second only to Crime and Thriller [TheBookSeller.com] George R. R. Martin isn't the only Fantasy author to hit 1 million Kindle books sold: Charlaine Harris, whose series was the basis for "True Blood" also claims that distinction. As the publishing industry races to supply the ever-increasing e-book demand, Fantasy remains at the forefront of that demand: Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series was one of the most requested series for e-book format, until its e-conversion in late 2009.

So now that the rest of the literary pack is catching onto e-books, what's next on Fantasy's horizon? How about interactive e-books? Carl Frederick, theoretical physicist and award-winning writer, has been writing work that can only be appreciated on an e-reader, where readers can click to read the story from either perspective of the main characters. It reminds me of a digital version of the Choose Your Own Adventure series, which grossed 250 million, btw. 

"My hope is that one day it will all just be a question of good strong writing, and not a question of...genre," said The Mad Magpie, looking toward her Fantasy future. I say, given the facts, it's Fantasy fiction forward, baby.

[firstbook]

Our Friends at First Book are doing something wonderful. Just a click helps them donate a book!

[booklrblog]

Help First Book donate a book to a child who needs it! It's FREE, and all you need to do is click. Do you remember how wonderful books were growing up? How powerful an impact they had on you? Kids from low-income families typically have no books of their own, and few books in their classrooms. Today, and through the weekend, you can do something about it. It's simple:

  Like First Book on Facebook   Follow First Book on Twitter   Follow First Book on Tumblr For each new follower, one brand-new book will be donated and distributed to a school or program serving kids from low-income families. Make a difference and start your weekend off doing something wonderful! Love, Booklr supports First Book with every new member.