Piggybacking on Michael’s last post–a topic I was about to write about along with this till I realized he’d beat me to it–apparently Faber in the UK is also trying an interesting e-method to jumpstart book sales. Following in the footsteps of Radiohead’s experiment with their last album, Faber is making Ben Wilson’s What Price Liberty? available electronically six weeks before the hardcover is released with readers picking their own price. It’s an interesting strategy–and you’ve got to love the punny-ness of an experiment like this for a book with that title!–so I’ll be looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

If I love a book, I want it on my shelf. Even though I have a Sony Reader, I don’t buy books I expect to love electronically, but I might do it for a small amount of money as a preview. If I loved it, I’d buy the book itself. If I only found it mildly interesting (or not at all), I wouldn’t buy a hard copy for more money, though I suppose the publisher would at least have some money from me–and possibly more than if I’d gone into the store and read a few pages to see if I wanted it or never actually got around to going in to pick it up.

The key, then, would be to make sure books are utterly compelling and amazing, so people will get around to buying them and want to display them in hard copy. That’s something I can certainly get behind!

What do you think? If this became more common, would it encourage you to buy more? How much would you pay?

(For the record, I bought In Rainbows for about $5 thinking I’d go back and re-buy it for more money if I liked it, but then I didn’t. $5 seemed a reasonable amount for a band I adore that hasn’t put out an album I liked in over a decade. If they hadn’t done that, I’d probably never have spent a penny on it. So I guess the strategy works on me to some degree!)

-Lauren

I’ve been saying for some time now that publishers should be giving away free copies of ebooks along with hardcovers, and it seems like someone was listening — and then took things the extra step! NelsonFree is a new program from Thomas Nelson in which one purchase nabs you a hardcover, a free ebook download and a free audio download. It’s a great deal, and I think these kinds of arrangements make great sense in certain situations. I hope other publishers will consider similar arrangements.
-Michael

Let’s say you flip open the latest catalog from Random House or Simon & Schuster and staring back at you is a novel that you rejected. Maybe about five years ago in a moment of complete stupidity you thought, “Is there really an audience for werewolf books?” and passed on Carrie Vaughn’s fabulous KITTY AND THE MIDNIGHT HOUR. If you had, you’ve probably spent much time since then feeling sharp pangs of regret every time Vaughn published the next book in that great series.

I mean…hypothetically.

So doubts starts to creep in, and you think awful, traumatic thoughts like, “Please tell me I never rejected TWILIGHT. Pleeeeeeease…”

But it doesn’t make sense to spend too much time looking back at what might have been when instead you can focus on what is and what has been. I’m thrilled with the stable of fabulous authors I’ve had the chance to work with. Which doesn’t completely quash the occasional panic that I might have just turned down something unbelievable (sorry, Ms. Vaughn) but is immensely reassuring.

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about what we pass on, what we sign up, and how those choices are made because of a mind-blowing novel I read over the weekend.

Michael Muhammad Knight’s THE TAQWACORES is, according to its back cover copy, “a manifesto for Muslim punk rockers and a ‘Catcher in the Rye for young Muslims.’” It is a brilliant coming-of-age story about a college kid who bears witness to the wild scene around him in a Muslim punk house in Buffalo–I couldn’t wrap my head around it until I read the book either.

A challenging read for someone with embarrassingly little understanding of Islam or Arabic, it was still the sort of fiction that grabbed me from the start and didn’t let go. It informed my knowledge of Islam, shook my comprehension of faith, and vibrated with the power of fiction that (even if imperfect) is raw, real, and truthful. The characters were revelations, and the climactic scene at a punk concert was one of the most exciting things I’ve read recently.

So if it came across my desk, would I have signed on THE TAQWACORES? Probably not. It’s tough to admit, but it’s true. “Is there really an audience for Muslim punk rock novels?” I would have thought. And then…maybe…I would have passed.

In response to a rejection letter I recently sent that cited some market concerns, someone e-mailed me recently asking, “Don’t you ever sign up something just because you love it?” Of course, in that case, the logic didn’t bear out because I totally didn’t love that novel. I wrote back, truthfully, that I do. There have been times in the past when I signed up projects and told the author, “Look, it’s a long shot. I have no idea if I can sell this. But I’ll give it a shot.” One, in particular, that was one of the very first things I worked on as an agent, still sticks with me to this day, and I have a hard copy of the manuscript at home, even though I didn’t manage to sell it. Other of those situations have worked out more happily.

It’s a large investment, though, in terms of time, energy, and emotion to take on a project that you suspect is an intensely difficult sell. THE TAQWACORES would have been that. Indeed, it only recently was published by Soft Skull, a small independent publisher in Brooklyn, four years after its author began photocopying it and distributing it on his own. Even having gained a large audience and much notoriety (and having been the subject of a great NY Times article), the book has apparently sold just about 1,000 copies since it came out.

Sometimes we bear with things because we can’t imagine giving them up. And sometimes we look at a tough marketplace and accept that we need to sign up just those things that we love AND we think we can sell. It’s a tricky thing. No one’s perfect at it. But we all try to be.

Now excuse me while I go pick up Carrie Vaughn’s sixth Kitty Norville novel.

Over the past several years many in the publishing industry have complained that the reason sales are down is that people are no longer reading. They are watching tv or on the internet or playing video games – everything but picking up a good book.

Now, though, it seems that even my publishing colleagues aren’t reading either.

It is true our business is going through a very challenging period. It is, however, still a business of ideas and words and in order to adequately judge whether those ideas, proposals and manuscripts that we agents submit will work, publishers and editors have to actually read them.

This last week a senior editor at a major publishing house received a proposal from us and rather than read it at all, she simply looked up other books in the category and decided that since they hadn’t sold, it wasn’t even worth reading one word of this author’s work. In another, rather shocking instance, a publisher of a very good house turned down material I had submitted saying that the fiction market was extremely difficult these days. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read the note – the material I had submitted clearly stated that it was a memoir.

If we in the industry don’t read, then I fear our days are numbered. I say, let’s pay more attention to what we are doing and less to the businesses that are taking our customers away.

-Jane

While they continue to claim that they aren’t stepping on anyone’s rights, Amazon has agreed to let authors and publishers decided whether or not the text-to-speech function should be enabled for their Kindle books. Seems like a victory for the Authors Guild!

-Michael

For those who don’t know, the Kindle 2 offers a text-to-speech component that essentially “reads” text aloud in a robotic voice. Does that infringe upon audio book rights? That, it seems, is quite the divisive issue—including within our office.

It seems that both sides not only think they’re right but think the other folks are totally missing the point. Rather than watch us fight it out between ourselves, here are two takes, one from Neil Gaiman and a response from Jason Pinter.

Neil’s take.

Jason’s response.

What do you think?

Our own THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH bears this out. We still love us some vampires, though.

— Miriam

Check out this new deal listing on Publisher’s Marketplace:

February 24, 2009

Non-fiction: Memoir

Jerry Orbach (Law and Order, Dirty Dancing) and wife Elaine Orbach’s REMEMBER HOW I LOVE YOU, the story of their enduring love and a peek inside the life and heart of a beloved actor New Yorker through his words, notes, poems and reminisces to his friends and loved ones, to Michelle Howry at Touchstone Fireside, at auction, for publication in Fall 2009, by Alison Fargis at Stonesong Press (world).

As a member of a family that lovingly refers to the late actor as “the Orbach” when discussing important matters such as putting babies in corners, I’ll be excited to see how it turns out!

-Lauren

Apparently Stephen King isn’t the only one who finds Stephanie Meyer’s writing to be amateurish.

As most people are no doubt aware, Slumdog Millionaire, based on Vikas Swarup’s debut Q&A, won Best Picture at the Oscars, against nominees The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (based on the Fitzgerald short story) and The Reader (originally by Bernhard Schlink). And the adaptation of Richard Yates’s much beloved Revolutionary Road got a few nominations as well.

But many, including the New Yorker’s Willing Davidson recently in Slate, would argue that book-to-film adaptation is often a total disaster. Davidson points to Benjamin Button, The Reader, and Revolutionary Road as crap. Having not actually seen any of those, nor Slumdog, nor in fact any movies nominated for more than a single Oscar this year, I can’t really say that I agree or disagree on those specifically, but it did make me consider how I feel about film adaptation.

I’d say that, like many people, I’ve been more disappointed than pleasantly surprised or even satisfied by adaptations of books I’ve read. That said, one of my favorite movies actually is an adaptation of one of my favorite books. Admittedly, both are, I would argue, underappreciated—-Waking the Dead by Scott Smith (which Library Journal called “about as profound as a made-for-TV movie, and of similar literary merit”—-ouch!), adapted by director Keith Gordon into a film starring Billy Crudup and Jennifer Connelly (which the New York Times called “painfully earnest”). But forget the critics, because I love both of them, passionately. Every once in a while I break out my DVD and force it upon unsuspecting friends, who may be lying to me when they say they enjoyed it because they know I care too much. I’ve not been willing to force the book on anyone, because that would break my heart. Both the book and the movie make me feel a certain way–as a cynical aspiring idealist, I identify with the story’s themes and characters–and both leave me teary eyed. Alone though I may be in that sentiment, I still vote for that as a fine adaptation, because I find them both captivating and moving. (Honorable mention to the significantly better reviewed Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson and the film also starring Billy Crudup. Perhaps I just have a thing for Mr. Crudup?)

In case I disprove my point that it’s possible to do it right with my unpopular choice, I thought I’d poll some of the folks here to see if they could come up with some personal favorites that might be more universally beloved:

The Silence of the Lambs is a brilliant adaptation that not only captured the spirit of the book but elevated it. Little Children is an amazing movie based on a book I felt like I should have liked but didn’t. And Adaptation is a brilliant exercise in adaptation as non-adaptation as adaptation as mind-blower.

-Jim

I loved the film adaptation of The Princess Bride. Granted, the screenplay was written by William Goldman, the same person who wrote the book, which is probably why it kept its unique tone and charm.

-Chasya

So my nominee is To Kill a Mockingbird. Although my love for the book (which I read repeatedly when I was a kid) far outweighs my fondness for the movie (which I’ve seen only once), Gregory Peck’s portrayal of Atticus Finch was remarkable; he inhabited and amplified that character, one who remains one of my all-time fictional heroes.

-Jessica

Best movie made from a crappy book: The Bridges of Madison County. I loved Accidental Tourist-—lovely understated acting. Mystic River–great film, great book.

-Miriam

I think Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a perfect example. The book and the movie are so different – yet classically fabulous.

-Intern Bridget

The film version of A Scanner Darkly perfectly visualizes the paranoia and uncertainty of the plot of the novel by superimposing shifting animation over the actors. It’s a creative interpretation of the novel as well as excellent eye candy.

-Intern Helen