by Chasya

You all know I get more than squirmish when I hear the word censorship, so when I came across news in the Telegraph that Apple was removing erotic books (bestsellers, no less) from their store, I winced. The company’s chaste stance has created a flurry of backlash among bloggers, and I think with good reason.

Though I’m not a fan of that category myself, it seems simply strange and outmoded that the company would elect to ban these titles. There is quite a lot happening now on the digital publishing front, much of it evidenced by the most recent controversy over the formation of literary agent Andrew Wylie’s new e-book company Odyssey Editions. There are new skirmishes every day in what is mostly unchartered territory, but I hope that this is not a trend that lasts. What about you? Any dissenters amongst us?

It’s impossible to go anywhere these days without seeing a book in Stieg Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy series. It seems like everyone (on the subway, in the park, at my place) has got their hands on one or the other of these books. Impossible to ignore because of their bright and superbly and originally designed covers, I find myself catching a glimpse of them even when I’ve got my eyes shut blissfully on my commute into Manhattan. So when I saw this article in the Wall Street Journal and the various mock-up covers that Knopf’s senior designer Peter Mendelsund went through to get to the finished product, I was thoroughly intrigued. The covers varied from snowy and stark white to electrified font against an equally electric background. All were scrapped in favor of the now ubiquitous design that anyone who reads (and many who don’t) would recognize.

We often discuss covers on the blog, and it’s fascinating to get an inside look into what works and why. The range of reasons go from the cover being too literary to “just giving everyone a headache.”

What do you all think about the covers presented here? Would you have bought the book if it was packaged in any of the other options?

by Jessica

Earlier this week the NYT ran a piece about a family of four who created a book review blog. Seemed like a swell idea, so in that spirit, here is my family book blog, as recorded by me.

My husband is a publishing apostate turned academic, so he generally has his nose buried in an Arabic or Farsi text, which means I have more or less no idea what he’s reading: esoteric treatises by medieval Sufi mystics? Recipes for chicken fesenjoon? Post-modern literary criticism (in its own way as impenetrable as Farsi)? As far as fiction is concerned, he just finished Amos Oz’s The Hill of Evil Counsel, three linked novellas by the eminent Israeli novelist who was Ladbrokes heavily favored pick for last year’s Nobel. He didn’t win, but according to my husband, he should. Oz is a singularly humane writer, one who captures the relationship between fathers and children with particular sensitivity.
My son, who is just turning four, is on a fairy tale jag—and we just returned from the library with an armload of gorgeously illustrated pictures books. My love for libraries is a capacious enough to fill several dozen blog entries (so much available, all for free!) but that they stand between me and another reading of Green Eggs and Ham is enough to earn my gratitude. I love Sam-I-am as much as the next person, but man does not live by green eggs alone. So we’ve just read Jan Brett’s exquisite Goldilocks and the Three Bears, a retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk by John Cech and Robert Mackenzie in which the otherwise terrifying giant is too afraid of heights to pursue Jack back down the beanstalk. The clever Jack escapes not only with the goose that laid the golden egg and the enchanted harp, but the giant’s beleaguered wife. Apparently, the giant’s bossiness, boorishness, and predilection for dining on dinner guests proves too much for the weary woman, and she leaves him to become a great friend to Jack’s mother. Peter Pan (this version adapted by Michael Johnstone and illustrated by Chris Mallone) however, is my son’s current hands-down favorite. I realize that children are, according to experts, supposed to be able to handle the scary bits of fairy tales, but my son descends, at least on his mother’s side, from a long line of lily livered scaredy cats, so any version in which people/animals are not hacked to bits, cooked in a pot, burnt in an oven, or otherwise imaginatively offed is fine by me. My son often speculates that Hook and Peter Pan go on to become great friends. As you might imagine, in my reading, Hook escapes the jaws of the ticking crocodile.

As for me, I am perforce also reading fairy tales, which, wimpiness notwithstanding, I also loved as a child. I was, however, older than four when I read the Andrew Lang’s Red, Green, Brown, etc. Fairy Books. I also read (to myself) a galley for One Day by David Nicholls, a UK import that Vintage will publish in June. The obvious comparison is Nick Hornby, whose enthusiastic blurb is prominently featured on the cover. It is a bittersweet, sprawling and beautifully drawn portrait of a friendship. That this friendship is between erstwhile lovers (on the night before graduating from university, the two main characters have a farewell fling) will likely invite parallels with When Harry Met Sally, but the novel is smarter and more subtle and blessedly free of Meg Ryan. I’m also reading Life is More Beautiful Than Paradise by Khaled al Berry, a candid, wry look at the path that a young Egyptian man from a moderate family took toward radical Islam. His gradual involvement in an extremist organization is eye-opening and oddly familiar. Yesterday I happened to catch an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air with a “Recovering Skin Head” and the parallels between two young, wayward teens are interesting.
Here’s a great interview with al Berry on the BBC.

What’s your family reading?

Before working in publishing, I thought an author’s life consisted of sleeping in late, wearing a dressing gown all day, writing chapter after chapter of the next big novel, and attending glamorous book tour events. I pictured authors being shuffled from bookstore to bookstore for signings and readings and warm cozy nights tucked away in five-star luxury. Well, those thoughts were soon laid to rest upon entering the business.

The LA Times published an interesting article over the weekend which describes the kind of book tour that is most common these days – the drive-yourself, couch-surfing, expenses-out-of-your-own-pocket kind of book tour. It’s nothing like what some of us dreamed up for our favorite writers. Now, more and more writers are promoting their books the DIY way because as the publishing business changes, so do the money risks of sending authors on book tours.

Not only do you have to be an incredible writer to gain a fan base these days; you have to be an incredible marketer. It takes a fair amount of effort to promote a book and reach out to new readers, and seeing the amount of work some authors put in when publishers cannot, is something that I greatly admire in authors. It’s all about dedication to the craft, and from reading that article, there certainly remains a lot of dedication in the world of writing.

-Rachel

The Guardian book blog has an interesting post about the newly fractured reading experience. With books now outnumbering games in iPhone app downloads and the release of the iPad getting closer, it’s no wonder blogger Molly Flat is feeling a big frazzled by the numerous options she has in reading platforms. I can relate as an owner of a Kindle, subscriber to numerous magazines, frequenter of blogs and someone who has spent the past two weekends at Ikea buying new bookshelves for a personal home library. I suspect Molly and I are in good company, too.

How about it readers? Anyone else feeling overwhelmed by the many choices in reading platforms lately?

–Chasya

Since it’s way too close to the holidays to talk about anything that resembles serious, and you technically have a few more shopping hours, here are some links to holiday gift book ideas. Books are always a great gift, and a good way to support the publishing industry. There is definitely something here for everyone on your list–moms, dads, kids, sports fans, animal lovers, book haters (just kidding), and even those who seem impossible to shop for. Enjoy, happy holidays, and a very happy, healthy New Year to all!

Jeff Rivera of Galleycat, who wrote the post that Miriam linked to yesterday and a response to Miriam’s response, asked us to post the following open letter. Since our commentary on his post spurred so much interest here, we’re happy to oblige:

Dear DGLM Community:

I enjoyed reading your blog posting on November 10, 2009, responding to my post on GalleyCat entitled, Literary Agents, bah! Who Needs Them? I thought your response was valid, respectful and you made excellent points in it. I read your blog fairly regularly and enjoy your other posts as well.

I also read through every one of your readers’ comments, including those who referred to me or my post as “stupid”, “idiot” or “horrifying”.

I was rather taken aback by the stir my post caused on the internet on both sides of the fence as well as its follow-up piece yesterday entitled, Literary Agents React!. I received an equal amount of support letters as well as letters of debate.

I invite those critical of my post to re-read it and they may notice that not once in the post did I ever state my personal opinion was that literary agents were not needed. Rather, I only posed a question that I believe we ought to ask, a question many of my friends, both authors and literary agents have asked. I then asked for an open discussion which I believe is healthy for our community of writers, literary agents and other book publishing professionals to have.

The post provided two professionals who were pro and two professionals that were con. If I wanted to state my personal opinion, the post would have been entitled an op-ed piece.

My personal opinion, for the record, is that of course there will always be a need for literary agents. We need someone with a good eye for what is good and enjoyable literature, and who has keen sense of what readers really want to read.

However, I am open hearing from those who believe the opposite, that there will not be a need for literary agents. And, I would never refer to those who differ from my personal opinion as “stupid” or “idiot.”

The title of the blog along with the illustration of Scrooge, and his coin term “bah, humbug”, I hoped would clue readers in that the title was done tongue-in-cheek and not to be taken seriously.

My job as a correspondent at GalleyCat is only to provide an open forum to question the way we have done business for over a hundred years and to ask the questions many of our readers have asked themselves but did not have an opportunity to ask in a public way.

I do apologize if some readers found the post offensive but once again, I invite them to re-read it with an open mind. I look forward to hearing all opinions and I thank you for this opportunity to respond to the DGLM readers, of which I am one.

Sincerely,

Jeff Rivera

Correspondent at GalleyCat
(This note is a personal open letter, not representative in any way as the official word of Mediabistro or GalleyCat)