The publishing industry is a strange business. For one thing, the product that a publisher sells isn’t necessarily guaranteed a profit. While this could be said of other products bought, sold or bartered for, there is a unique difference in the book world. You see, the profit margin is contingent not on the amount it takes to produce the labor, but on the difference between advance and royalties paid out to author (ideally as low as possible, which is interesting given that it is the author who creates, pitches and slaves over the work in the first place), the printing costs and amount shilled out to staff (also ideally as low as possible) and the net sales that come from a book’s sales through a distribution method that is equally batty (printing a book from a press, shipping all these copies out to warehouses, and then further shipping all of these to various booksellers) and time-consuming (the production process alone takes up to a year and a book might tank after three weeks).

It is strange in the sense that certain formats carry stigmas by buyers and sellers alike. If a book is self-published, it is genuinely considered crud (in most cases, with good reason). If a book bypasses the delectable hardcover stage and is issued anew in paperback, it is either genre or of questionable literary merit. (And often the two go hand in hand, no matter how seasoned the efforts.)

The publishing industry has responded to setbacks in sales by publishing even more books (150,000 last year), which is about as sensible as slaughtering five hogs to make three ham sandwiches. Further, even the sharpest minds in the industry (the publicists with the ideas, the editors who hone a book to fit a market, the MFAs shrewd enough to discern a dunce from a diamond) have no definitive idea about the “future of publishing,” a nebulous catch-all term that could mean everything and nothing. It is this “future of publishing” that catches voices in sussration, that has the eyes roll back into dollar signs shanghaied from a 1940s cartoon, that forms the basis of panels and deals.

Yet nobody can make a clear call.

The good news is that, like roulette, any number can win and any player on the table could make a killing. Never mind the odds or the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing or that the guiding brain behind these two hands (read: executive managers) is often slow to change, innovation, or experiments. Understandably so, because if it takes two years to clear things with the editors, the money men, and the people who distribute the books for purchase and consumption, then one must abide by a clear outline. Lack of planning is, after all, what made the initial attempt to build the Panama Canal such a disaster.

But the nice thing is that anything and everything can be published, provided it is profitable. Skirmishes and disagreements can be set aside because the one thing that everybody can agree upon is money. Dennis Loy Johnson told me that when he met with booksellers, they knew him as the Moby Lives rabble-rouser. But this didn’t prevent him from selling the goods or meeting chain resistance in the brick and mortar stores. And in the Generation Next panel I attended, one editor pointed out that self-publishing shouldn’t be necessarily dismissed, pointing out that a book in the streets managed to sell 200,000 coppies.

Because this is a business, it also means that the literary author who unexpectedly found success with a flagship title can be wooed by a bigger publisher hoping for the steady turnaround, leaving the small guy flinging whatever silent code of commitment into the dust. It also means that the reverse situation is true, where an author who doesn’t sell can also find himself standing in the dole line (not that he isn’t already).

The above is more or less what I’ve put together from the people I’ve talked to at BEA and my own perceptions (pre-show and post-show). A lot of this was discussed in the aforementioned Generation Next panel (which I plan to summarize in a future post). But I’ve come away with a greater appreciation for what publishers do and with the unique dilemma and strange system that they face.

* * *

I attended the Generation Text panel on Friday. The panel, a collection of “hybrid young editors,” included:

• Liz Nagle, Associate Editor, Little Brown & Co.
• Chris Jackson, Editor, Crown Publishers
• Lorin Stein, Editor, Farrar, Strauss & Groux
• Gillian Blake, Executive Editor, Bloomsbury
• Kate Travers, Editor, HarperCollins

The panel was moderated by Steve Zeitchik, News Editor of Publishers Weekly.

SUMMARY:

The room was again SRO. I strongarmed my way to the front to take notes in what little floor space remained at the front of the panel table.

Steve Zeitchik asked if publishing was heading towards a “winner take all approach” and a reading climate where everybody was reading the same book. He wondered if the editors had any specific strategies to promote reading or specific titles.

Gillian Blake responded by saying that any campaign of this sort could start with TV, but expressed concerns that there wasn’t enough space in people’s consciousness for books.

Chris Jackson noted that grassroots politics were instrumental in marketing The Lies of George W. Bush. The book did well because of its ability to tap into Working Assets and similar conduits. He said he wasn’t completely pessimistic.

Lorin Stein, who struck me as a dour and humorless numbers man (which I suppose you have to be in this business, even if you are an editor), said that publishers needed to spend more time making phone calls and sending letters. He noted that publishers were resonsible for more books per editor.

Liz Nagle said that she had lots of success with Yiddish with Dick and Jane at Little Brown courtesy of Vidlit (which was discussed here yesterday). The Vidlit Flash shorts were emailed from person-to-person. But even this innnovative success is not what Little Brown is spending all of its days doing this.

If I had to peg the smartest and most open-minded person on the panel, I’d say that it was Kate Travers. Unlike the other panelists, Travers immediately cut to the chasm between the publishing community and the public community. She compared the hardcover with the oldest child (the glamour child), the forefront symbol of literature and the paperback as the cute little child. The original trade paperback, meaning books that are published directly to trade paperback without benefit of a hardcover release (books along the lines of The Interpeter of Maladies and Bright Lights, Big City), was something of an awkward middle child, but she adamantly supported it, pointing out that it had not received enough recognition as a viable format.

Travers bemoaned the fact that publishers don’t want to gamble on new authors. Her mission as an editor is to fulfill the life of a book and destroy the perception that an original TPB is “not good enough for hardcover.” But she said this situation is changing.

Blake weighed in with the hard economics. If a publisher commits to an original TPB, then they need to be confident that it will be $60,000. Because you’re only talking about $1 per book. An original TPB needs to hit the bestseller list to make its money back.

Sam Lipsyte’s Home Land was brought up. When asked about how much Lipsyte was paid for the book, Stein responded, “It was criminal how low we paid out.”

Zeitchik, perhaps making up for the previous day’s inadequate discussion on the subject, brought up the 18-34 question and what responsibilities editors had to this crowd.

Travers, again demonstrating some pragmatism on this subject, pointed out that literature was in a serious crisis vis-a-vis younger readers. She pointed out that people in their late twenties still reach for a video game and, as Gillian Blake also pointed out, don’t necessarily spend their Sunday afternoons reading a book for a few hours. If they do buy a book, they’d rather wait the extra year for the trade paperback than shell out the twenty-five bucks. She hoped that there could be an alliance built to back up editors and pointed out the authors being stolen away from the small presses.

Jackson remarked that the pie has to get bigger, so that books will draw young adults. One of his titles, Angry Black White Boy, was a success because of its marketing. Crown had distributed stickers, mix CDs and even put up a graffiti wall. These were concrete efforts to pitch to young audiences in what he called an “authentic” way . He also noted that because of Def Poetry Jam, young teenagers stood around the block to get into a poetry reading. He insisted that “the audience is there.”

Zeitchik brought up the previous day’s resistance on the 18-34 panel, noting that many people in the audience expressed resistance that this audience was not thinking commercially (or even practically) about this pivotal audience.

Travers pined for a more collective atmosphere and hoped that open forums such as book fairs (one of which she was organizing in Brooklyn) could get people talking about literature again.

Stein had the novel idea of reintroducing corporate mandates for literary publishing, pointing out that this used to be a practice among the big houses.

Blake confessed that today’s books might very well be a matter of publishing work that these editors are proud of when they’re old and tired. Literary publishing is equally unforgiving with young and hip editors.

Jackson said that today’s publishers and editors needed to be more connected with the bookstore atmosphere. He said he had learned a lot because his wife had opened up a bookstore and that this had transformed his understanding. At Random House, staffers went to various Wal-Marts to observe how people bought books and how they selected them, gauging their excitement and lack of excitement w/r/t their choices.

Nagle was willing to go further by having Little Brown employees work in a bookstore for a week.

Blake suggested that publishers were “punished for their success.” The problem with finding the next Kite Runner is that the shareholders will demand more money the following year and that they would then be paying outrageous sums to the same author for a repeat success. She insisted that, in most cases, the first book would sell the most, implying very strongly that this author payouts were a signinficant problem.

Stein’s hard statement: “Give me a book that sells 300,000 copies. I don’t care how crummy it is, I’ll publish it.”

Jackson said that the problem isn’t so much demand, but the bidding wars that come with a hot title.

Blake singled out another problem: retail returns. If a book is likely to be marked down, where’s the incentive to order extra copies if the customer or the retailer knows that they’re going ot pay less later.

Small presses do play into the consciousness. Stein remarked that since it is easier to publish a book these days with advancing technologies, a small publisher is almost on the same footing as one of the big boys. There has been diversity despite the growing conglomeration.

Traver suggested that self-publishing shouldn’t be ignored. She singled out The Rules of the Game, a book that she had seen people reading on the subways. She was unable to find the book, but learned that people had bought this on the street. After Bookscanning the title, she learned that it had sold 200,000 copies.

CONCLUSIONS:

Zeitchik was a very good moderator, constantly keeping the conversation flowing with seminal questions. But the panel, which hoped to tackle many important questions, only created more.

The gist I seemed to get here is that today’s publishers, even the more literary-minded ones, are almost completely out of step with today’s audiences. Random House’s trip to Wal-Mart is a start, but I’m mystified why they didn’t go to a bookstore — seeing as how most people of a book-minded persuasion are going to go to a place that specializes in books. Call me practical, but this might be the behavior that is worth observing.

Further, since there are few guarantees that a publisher might be profitable, Stein’s hard idea about literary mandates is a good one. As much as these editors bemoaned the “everyone is reading the same book” school of thought, their companies are dictated by finding the next Dan Brown . And it was interesting to see their editorial attitudes reflecting this.

The other lingering question: are publishers responsible to some degree for the dropoff in reading with the 18-34 crowd? If they are not fully accessing them, then should they be allocating more resources to this? Or is this too much of a long-term financial thing even for Random House?

Television and community awareness seems to have played a seminal part in promoting reading. But so has the Internet with the Vidlit idea. If the publishing industry moves at the rate of a dinosaur and the act of consuming media only accelerates, is it little wonder then why readership has dropped?

* * *

I still have a remarkable amount of data here to process, but I’m running late on little sleep and much coffee and I again have too many things that I’m doing today. Factor in the ridiculous amount of books I have to ship back to San Francisco and you see my dilemma. I hope to get more pictures up today and brief reportage and another massive post up tomorrow. I’m sitting on two minidiscs of interviews, which includes the publisher of the 2005 Man Booker International winner. More to come.

I will say that I agree with Mark. I’ve had enough of these panels. They are essentially repetitions on the same two themes: the “future of publishing” and whatever misunderstood technology happens to be percolating at the moment. I’m also inclined to observe that this industry seems to be a matter of endlesly putting things into action and I suppose has enough returns to keep it self-supporting. But while this has allowed it to preservere through the 20th century, the 21st century, with its Amazons and its Oprahs, includes far more variables for a venture than meets the eye. This may in fact be good for the small publisher who is attuned to the book-buying public and might explain why niche publishers are doing so well.

But for the big boys, and even the mid-sized folks, the answer to me seems startlingly clear: become aware of the shifting paradigms (which, yes, includes book blogs) and dare to put your money where your mouth is. Or to put it succinctly:

Adapt or perish.

Additional coverage of BEA can be found at Chekhov’s Mistress, Beatrice, and of course, the Elegant Variation. We just caught sight of a guy who is either Stephen Elliott or who looks like Stephen Elliott. There are bagpipes playing downstairs — presumably because lots of Scottish folks read books or Irvine Welsh is primed to make a surprise appearance.

I’ll report more later in the afternoon. If you need to get in touch with us by email, we’re having server problems. Try arizona_jim@yahoo.com.

Signing off. There’s boatloads of people here.

It’s a veritable boon for Pauline Kael and James Thurber completists. For one Ben Franklin, eighty years of The New Yorker will be available in DVD format. This is probably the best idea since Broderbund issued all of the issues of MAD Magazine on CD-ROM.

I’m howling with laughter over how the City and the 49ers will handle this, particularly since the stunning video embarassment is readily available online. Offensive stereotypes, girl-on-girl action, homophobia, racism, and the 49ers — much of it shot in Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office.

Political corruption hasn’t been this fun to watch this since Marion Barry’s cocaine video.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: While we’re on the move, Lauren Baratz-Logsted was kind enough to offer us an essay about her experiences with reading reactions.]

I didn’t set out to write books that would piss people off.

Of course, when it happens, I don’t mind it so much – at least, I’ve come not to mind it so much. When I sit down to write, since I primarily write books of a comic or satirical nature, my intention is to create something that will make people laugh and, between the laughs, think.

As far as intentions go, when I originally left my day job as an independent bookseller back in 1994, I didn’t plan on writing comedy or satire. I thought, like many a bright-eyed writer jumping into the fray, that I was going to write the Great American Novel. But I don’t think any writer can control her natural voice any more than she can control her tendency to check her Amazon numbers on an hourly basis. But the big surprise was that, when I sat down to write, the voice that came out was a decidedly comic one.

My first novel, The Thin Pink Line, was published in 2003. On the surface, the book is about a self-obsessed Londoner who fakes an entire pregnancy. But if you scratch the surface, you’ll also find a scathing indictment of the notion that, all too often in life, people make life-altering choices (marriage, children, et al.) – all because “everyone else is doing it.” Sometimes, they avoid serious thought about what the decision actually means.

When my book hit the stacks, things began well enough. All the pre-pub reviews were positive: Kirkus gave it a starred review with PW calling it “hilarious and original,” blah blah blah. What writer wouldn’t want to hear that? Particularly the “blah blah blah” part. But then the Amazon reviews started popping up and I realized I’d done something unexpected: I’d written a book that polarized audiences. If you look at my page there, you’ll see that out of my 100 reviews, half are for five stars, while the other half are one-stars. Not that reviews have any affect on my writing. And that’s not to say I don’t care at all about what people think. But if at the end of the day I’m proud of something I’ve created, then that has to be enough. I always like to say that I’ve been compared, variously, to Swift and shit.

While I respect the right of readers to hold the latter view, I hope no one will hold it against me if I prefer the former. As for the one-stars, they mostly seem upset about a single thing: they hate what my character does! Now, we don’t even need to get into the issue of people picking up a book that’s cover actually says the character fakes an entire pregnancy and then getting upset when she does, in fact, fake an entire pregnancy. The point is that I’d struck a nerve with people, many of them fundamentalist in temperament, who misconstrued things a bit, obviously believing that I (as the author) was endorsing Jane Taylor’s behavior.

I’ve come to realize that if readers don’t get that a book is satire from the get-go – satire being defined in my Webster’s Tenth as “a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule and scorn; trenchant wit, irony or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly” – they miss the point of the exercise entirely, preventing themselves from enjoying the book. If I had to pick just one area of writing that is most likely to be misunderstood by an American audience, it would have to be satire. Before Helen Fielding and Nick Hornby opened American editors’ eyes to a new way of seeing, I regularly received rejections from publishers saying that while they thought the material was hysterical, they didn’t believe Americans liked comic novels or satire. And now that a lot of comedy and satire is published here, there is still a problem in that publishers are so bent on presenting heroines as being likable, as being “the girl next door,” that readers are understandably confused when they find those heroines doing over-the-top things like, say, faking an entire pregnancy. My characters are almost never girls next door. In fact, you probably wouldn’t want to live next door to my characters! But, hopefully, if you read the books, you’ll laugh a few times at the things they get themselves up to. And maybe you’ll find yourself thinking in the process.

And now I’ve written a third book, A Little Change of Face. And again, some readers have completely missed the point of the exercise.

A Little Change of Face is about Scarlett Jane Stein, a very attractive, 39-year-old, unmarried, Jewish librarian from Danbury who, for one reason and another, decides to sabotage her own looks in order to find out how the world will treat her once she’s no longer a swan.

So far, so good. No one had any trouble with that part.

However, they did have a problem with one of the supporting characters, T.B. (standing for Token Black).

Romance Reader at Heart, a website devoted to romance novels, wrote, “As if that name is not ridiculous enough, Scarlett and her friends talk in Ebonics while in TB’s company (TB is a lawyer and obviously uses Standard English). I am not even black and I found this offensive.” And the ubiquitous Harriet Klausner, who described my clearly British protagonist Jane Taylor as “Turkish” in a review of my previous book, The Thin Pink Line, weighed in with the following, “…and Scarlett speaking hip hop with a black attorney pal seem inane for educated people and clearly in poor taste. Simply Scarlett needs to dump her best pal and treat TB (don’t ask) with respect maybe the love of her life will do likewise.” Ah, well, grammar notwithstanding, at least Harriet gave me five stars anyway.

Sometimes, when in doubt, I’ve learned to let crazy Jane Taylor do my talking for me. Here’s Jane, talking about her problems getting the wording regarding race right in my second novel, Crossing the Line:

I hadn’t known many black people in my life, but what few I’d known, I’d liked. Oh, I do know that sounds like one of those backhanded compliments, like when someone says, “Some of my best friends are Jewish” – which really is true in my case, but only in the singular, since my best friend, no ‘s’, is David and he is Jewish. (At least, I’m pretty sure he is; he never really talks about it.) And, anyway, what would be better, to say that some of my enemies are Jewish or that the few black people I’d known I’d hated? Neither of which would be true, of course. As a white Christian, my random sampling of other races and religions was just too limited to make any kind of meaningful sweeping generalizations. All of this said, if anyone else ever comes up with a way to say, “I’m not a racist” without people automatically knee-jerking to “Ah, she’s a racist” or “I’ve liked what few black people I’ve known” without sounding like some kind of insufferable prig, please drop me a line.

Oh, and here’s one last interesting part on that subject: I can say “I hadn’t known many black people in my life, but what few I’d known, I’d liked” and fully realize that there will be some who will find the remark offensive. And yet, any remark I make about the white people I’ve known would have to be more offensive, the truth being that having known a ton of white people in my life, there had been precious few I’d genuinely liked. So there.

Jane, as most readers agree, is often nuts on most subjects, but here she’s saying something that makes sense to me and it relates directly to A Little Change of Face and the problematic – for some readers – character of T.B.

For intelligent readers who read the book closely, I don’t think they’ll have a problem seeing what I’ve done here. I’ve created a character who is an indictment of the fact that, however far we may think we have come since the Civil Rights Movement, all too often, in books and on TV and in film, African-Americans are still relegated to supporting roles in our society. As T.B. says to Scarlett when they first meet, referring to her own nickname, “I am the movies, and TV too…I’s the judge and the pediatrician and the prosecutor…I’s the local color, I’s the next-door neighbor, I’s the best friend who gets killed so the star can get angry…I’s expendable.”

And anyone who is willing to take a hard look at the entertainment industry would have to honestly agree, she’s right. Friends, one of the most successful sitcoms in history, and even set in New York City – New York City! – is about as white a show as there ever was. And just look at the three people who die in the beginning of Jurassic Park: the fat guy, the smoker and the black man – this is Hollywood’s definition of who’s expendable.

But Scarlett doesn’t see T.B. as expendable and says as much. Indeed, she refers to TB as “the glue” and anyone reading closely should see that as well. T.B. is the female character that Scarlett is most consistently honest with as T.B. is with her. T.B. is the female character who most consistently provides Scarlett with unconditional love and support and, again, it goes both ways. As for what is inaccurately characterized as Ebonics in the book, I’d have to wonder if someone who could see such a shadow where none exists might not be carrying around their own collection of racial guilt or if they’ve ever even had any close friends of another race at all.

Here’s some of my own personal history and you can take it for what it’s worth:

When I was twelve years old, both my best friend and my boyfriend were black, and while the latter is mostly forgotten, the former still blazes clear in my mind 30 years later and will for as long as I have memory. Stephen King, another writer who’s been maligned for other issues than I have, does occasionally get things right . In his novella Stand By Me, he passes a remark that has stuck with me in essence all these years: the best friends you will ever have are the ones you have when you are 12 years old.

As far as I am concerned, the character of T.B. is as much a tribute to that friendship as it is anything else. It is a tribute to two young girls, both very short, who played basketball together and talked slang together. Despite both of the girls being highly educated, they often lapsed into the vernacular that T.B. and Scarlett used. They laughed and loved and argued so much sometimes it made the fans in the stands uncomfortable.

I know in my heart that even if the entire rest of the world reaches misimpressions about the character of T.B., that young girl that I loved so much, Donna, would totally understand.

I do realize that, as writers, we do not get the luxury of sitting on every readers’ shoulder – I’m picturing a very mini-me here, perched on your shoulder, a glass of Shiraz in my hand – directing the reader’s attention to what’s important in the work, explaining jokes that don’t go over at all, or correcting misimpressions. But one still does hope for intelligent readers, readers who can be depended upon not to mistake an uber-British Londoner for a Turkish woman. And, maybe just occasionally, readers who are intelligent enough to see that what others might perceive as racism is in fact anything but.

---

Lauren Baratz-Logsted is the author of The Thin Pink Line and Crossing the Line. Her third novel, A Little Change of Face, will be published in July 2005. Her essay, “If Jane Austen Were Writing Today,” is collected in Flirting with Pride and Prejudice: Fresh Perspectives on the Original Chick-Lit Masterpiece, edited by Jennifer Crusie and due out from Benbella Books on September 1.

The latest Doonesbury pretty much sums up my disillusionment with Memorial Day.

King Fahd is dead. This guy’s next in line. Crown Prince Abdullah is mostly friendly, but unlike Fahd, Abdullah didn’t like American involvement in the initial Gulf War and tried to broker a peace deal with Israel. Expect oil prices to climb and international relations to get rather interesting.

Several new Vollmann posts are up. The main page has been updated.

Scott points to this disturbing article. The California State Assembly has decided to ban school districts from purchasing textbooks longer than 200 pages. The bill itself can be found here. As phrased, the bill could actually go beyond mere textbooks and be destructive to books in general. AB 756 states, “This bill would prohibit the State Board of Education and school district from adopting instruction materials that exceed 200 pages in length.” So what are instructional materials?

According to California Education Code Section 60010(h), “instructional materials” are defined as “all materials that are designed for use by pupils and their teachers as a learning resource and help pupils to acquire facts, skills, or opinions or to develop cognitive processes. Instructional materials may be printed or nonprinted, and may include textbooks, technology-based materials, other educational materials, and tests.”

In other words, what we have here is a definition so broad that a “material” that might be used in a Grades 1-8 classroom such as a book that exceeds 200 pages will be tossed in the dustheap. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? Sorry, 360 pages. Too long. Silas Marner? Maybe, but be sure to order the edition minus the introduction and the related resources page. Because Eliot’s just on the brink of 200 pages.

Beyond the baffling anti-intellectual nature of this bill (which was introduced by Democrats), there’s the troubling financial impact it will have upon school districts. Instead of ordering that big 500-page compilation for a classroom, I forsee an age where school districts will have to order three 200-page books to cover the same material. And with school districts already pinching their pennies, it’s doubtful whether they’ll pony up the dough.

Fortunately, Governor Schwarzenegger (how I do hate typing those two words together) has not yet taken a position on the bill (which needs to be signed into law to be effected). Since he has previously gone on record with absurd approaches to fiscal spending, perhaps the fiscal approach might be the way to get through to him.

Michiko: “It’s a book as hip and intermittently tender as Dave Eggers’s ‘Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,’ as gripping and overstuffed as David Foster Wallace’s ‘Infinite Jest.'”

L.A. Times: “The main problem is that Wilsey hews too closely to the McSweeney literary model: typographical tricks, hyper-fluency in pop culture and exuberantly high-pitched prose. All conspire against the emotional registers he so wants to express.”

Francine Prose: “To write about the sufferings of the well-to-do imposes a certain set of demands on a writer, and Wilsey rises to the challenge with agility and grace. His narrative voice reflects a vivid mix of brio, self-awareness and sophistication, and he is able to meld the point of view of the troubled boy he once was with that of the stable and sensible adult that he has, admirably and against all odds, become.”

Village Voice: “…if the book slips at all, it’s in Wilsey’s willingness to cast her in the one-dimensional role of wicked stepmother.”

Frankly, I’m a bit tired of all the Sean Wilsey coverage. Another book-length journey down McSwee’s Way might permanently damage my cerebral cortex. But the reviews seem to be hailing the memoir, Oh the Glory of It All, as the cat’s pajamas. So I can’t help but remain curious about this memoir, particularly since David Foster Wallace’s name has been invoked. I really don’t feel the urge to run out and get this book, but if an enterprising publicist were to send a copy to me, I’d certainly give it an honest assessment. And if it were indeed the bomb (exploding in whatever timbre), then you’d certainly hear from me.

Cronenberg’s new film, A History of Violence, looks like a ballbuster.

While I believe it’s still possible to do some of these things, I still wish to respond to Mr. Teachout’s recent item. Here are ten things I feel a sizable regret not doing (or at least putting off):

1. Learning to play the piano.
2. Learning French.
3. Visiting Rome and looking for what remains of the road markers.
4. Personally cooking the food for and preparing a fantastic dinner involving at least 50 guests.
5. Having a one-on-one three hour conversation with the President about the issues of our time and seeing what he has to say.
6. Getting a proposition on the local ballot, seeing it pass, and watching it help other people without being squashed by the cold realities of bureaucracy.
7. Performing a live one-hour set of my own personally composed songs in front of an audience and making them happy.
8. Reviving the reputation of ten great and forgotten writers.
9. Making a sizable dent to end poverty and to promote world peace.
10. Getting carte blanche to write and direct a modestly budgeted feature film that devastates and gets a decent release.

There are more, but then revealing these would cut even closer to the personal. And I have no desire to unleash this upon you folks.

Even so, I’m curious. What ten things do you want to do? Pass the meme around.

Jimmy Beck has the scoop on Charles Baxter. He writes:

When asked what he was working on, he said he spent two years on a novel about bombs but gave up on it. Perhaps because it was too disturbing? I don’t remember exactly. “I couldn’t do it,” he said. “I’ve gone back to short stories.”

METHODOLOGY: On May 26, 2005, during lunch hour, surveyor Edward Champion asked various people in the Embarcadero Center (a multi-block shopping center in San Francisco’s Financial District), if they had heard of eleven authors. The surveyor tried not to discriminate by age, gender, race, or class. Among the participants were a smug investment banker who claimed to be “a literary type” (and who was only able to identify two authors) and a down-to-earth cable car operator catching a smoke between runs.

Ten women and nine men were asked in person by the surveyor to offer a “yes” or “no” answer if they recognized the name of the author. (The gender makeup was tracked separately from the data, so as not to corrupt it. I should again point out that this was an informal study that tried to extend across demographics without preference to makeup.) If they knew of the author’s name, they were then asked to name a book that the author had written.

The surveyor remained impartial, so as not to intimidate the participants, only stepping in at times to urge the participants, “Don’t beat yourself up,” pointing out that there were no right or wrong answers and that this was just an informal survey.

RESULTS:

Six authors recognized (1)

• One could not name a single book by the authors recognized.

Four authors recognized (2)

• One could name a book correctly by one of the authors recognized.
• One could not name a single book by the authors recognized.

Three authors recognized (6)

• Two could not name a single book by the authors recognized.
• One could name a book correctly by two of the authors recognized.
• Three could name a book correctly by one of the authors recognized.

Two authors recognized (3)

• Three could name books correctly by two of the authors recognized.

One author recognized (6)

• Four could not name a single book by the authors recognized.
• Two could name a book correctly by the one author recognized.

No authors recognized (1)

Authors Recognized by Name:

Margaret Atwood (12)

• The Handmaid’s Tale: 2
• Cat’s Eye: 1
• Wilderness Tips: 1
• “I heard her on NPR”: 1
• “Cheesy paperbacks”: 1
• No Book Title Offered: 6

David Gardner (8)

• “I heard him speak”: 1
• No Book Title Offered: 7

Philip Roth (7)

• “Confessions of a Communist”: 1
• “‘Red’ in one of the titles”: 1
• “American something”: 1
• No Book Title Offered: 4

James Robison (6)

• No Book Title Offered: 6

Michael Chabon (5)

• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay: 2
• “Comic book novel”: 1
• “Is he the guy who writes gay novels?”: 1
• No Book Title Offered: 1

Kate Atkinson (1)

• No Book Title Recognized: 1

Joanne Mitchell (1)

• No Book Title Offered: 1

Chris Clarke (1)

• No Book Title Offered: 1

Erik White (1)

• No Book Title Offered: 1

William T. Vollmann (0)

Sue Monk Kidd (0)

CONCLUSIONS:

The results here are quite interesting. I didn’t realize that Atwood would not only be so known, but that the participants would name books beyond The Handmaid’s Tale. Given his work with the Motley Fool, David Gardner’s recognition in the Financial District isn’t much of a surprise. His book titles, apparently, slip through the mind like a sieve. James Robison’s unfortunate success on the Trinity Broadcasting Network probably plays a hand in name recognition. Since Michael Chabon lives in Berkeley, I had thought he would do better. But participants were able to name a book by him better than the others. Philip Roth was quite the reverse. Participants knew his name, but really couldn’t remember a book title by him. Even more interesting, they came close to mentioning the novel, I Married a Communist, but weren’t quite able to do so. All this despite the alleged critical and popular success of The Plot Against America.

And, of course, I weep for Vollmann.

But does all this mean that a literary crisis is at hand? You make the call. Try this excercise in your neighborhood and see how the results stack up.

We’ve finally discovered that we can actually view the Internet on our cell phone and that it actually loads fairly fast (under the circumstances) and looks pretty darn spiffy. The problem, of course, is that this blog isn’t yet designed for those tiny display resolutions (or, rather, a specific URL for you mobile folks does not yet exist). Because of this, when we eventually do redesign this damn site, we’ll be considering those of you with mobile devices.

The other thing: some of you have written in expressing interest in our audio ramblings, whether they be further episodes of the Neurotic Chronicles or additional interviews through the Bat Segundo Show. Please know that we’ve been sitting on a few short author interviews that we’ve been hoping to string together for a solid hour-long future episode of Segundo. The problem is that our narrator, a seminal part of the show, is more reluctant than we are to introduce these things. As soon as we pry him away from the Tecate, we’ll get his lazy ass talking again.

We also plan to continue the Neurotic Chronicles. The next few episodes have been written and ambient sounds have been recorded. Just need to find some time to mix it.

But as to the emails, frankly, we’re shocked that our audio content is not only thoroughly appreciated, but even being dumped onto iPods for this thing called Podcasting. While our feelings about the iPod are on record for all to see, we’re not necessarily against those who use it. And if those motherfuckers at ABC are going to do this, then we figure we should too, if only to preserve the independent spirit. So we’ll be keeping you folks in mind during the next month.

Never let it be said that this place didn’t consider the gearheads.

And if you’re wondering about BookExpo America, for those of you who missed our previous announcement, yes, we plan to be there. Yes, we plan to cover the damn thing with gusto. Yes, we plan in-depth, no-bullshit coverage. And there may even be a surprise interview or two soon after our return to San Francisco. Keep watching the skies.

The website AAUGH has unearthed how Amazon adds those annoying image tags (“40% Off!”) to their cover images. It’s all in the tags. (via )MeFi)

In a heated post, Scott takes audiobooks to task, pointing out that the audio book experience ain’t tantamount to reading. “Listen Jim,” writes Scott, “and all other audiobookphiles out there: If I can barely wrap my little mind around Vollmann while I’m holding the book right before my face and re-reading each sentence 5 times each, how in the hell am I going to understand it if some nitwit is reading it to me while I’m brewing a cappuchino on my at-home Krups unit?”

While I would agree with Scott that there’s a fundamental difference between reading a book and listening to a book, I don’t necessarily believe that audio books should be completely discounted. Personally, I’ve found that reading a book aloud (or hearing another person read a book aloud) allows one to discover or familiarize herself with a book’s particular cant and rhythms. To some degree, it’s a bit comparable to only experiencing a play on the page. Sometimes, the intonations, the delivery and the visual nature of the staging leads the mind to frame the narrative in a new context and unearth a subtext that may not have been as readily apparent from a strict read.

The problem then with audio books, aside from the fact that rewinding can’t beat the exactitude of rereading a specific passage on page, is not necessarily the content, but in the way that the work is often delivered by the author. Too many audio book producers make the mistake of enlisting the wrong voice to read the work. And let’s face it: some authors, even though their text scintillates, are pretty damn horrible readers. (Without naming names, I’ll just say that if you go to enough readings, you experience this unfortuante phenemonon repeatedly. I would even suggest that this is an obstacle that may prevent poetry from being completely accepted. For more on this subject, I refer you to Mark Twain’s famous essay, “How to Tell a Story.”)

Further, for many people (particularly Southern Californians), the audio book serves as a surrogate to listening to an obnoxious FM radio DJ blather on during rush hour. While I bemoan the idea that this may be a person’s sole exposure to a book (as Scott says, the text is the thing and I would add that, if you are a supremely active reader, nothing beats copying passages, looking up words and references, or taking notes to understand an author’s intent further).

The problem here is that the audio book experience isn’t the same as a reading experience. But this does not mean that listening to the text of the book while driving and then returning home to study it further is without value. Further, comfort reads and potboilers may, artistically speaking, offer nothing more in the way of entertaining fluff and, on the whole, may be better experienced in one listening. From this perspective then, the audio book serves as a better use of one’s time, even if the sanctity of reading may be compromised in the process.

At the LBC site, editor Reagan Arthur weighs in on Case Histories. Arthur confesses her partiality, but does remark that Case Histories is the first of Atkinson’s novels to go into six American hardcover printings. Atkinson also playfully points out that Case Histories‘ sales are “not so stratospherics” and that, thus far, it has not hit any bestsellers list.

Seconds after throwing the Birnbaum Signal into the sky, our literary superhero respodned by interviewing Courtney Angela Brkic and Kevin Guilfoile. Commissioner Gordon’s services are no longer required.

Today at The Elegant Variation, during the course of Kevin Smokler’s appearance via the Virtual Book Tour, there was a heated though civilized thread about whether the infamous Reading at Risk report issued by the BEA was useful or even genuinely reflective of diminishing literary awareness. Arguments concerning the methodology and the resultant media reaction (which Smokler contends is equivalent to hyperbole involving those darn kids who listen to rock and roll back in the day, a sentiment I certainly agree with) were unloaded. But the central question of whether or not the everyday world is aware of authors remains not only unanswered, but largely unexplored on an empirical basis.

In a unconnected post on the same topic, Sara at Storytelling has a very interesting idea in response to some of the raging debates that have been going on at the LBC. She has a list of ten authors: five of whom are recognizable, five of whom are not. She wants people to go outside with this list and see how many people can recognize the names. She’s enlisted her daughter to posit the list to fellow students in her high school.

I think this is an excellent idea. For many of the same points that Sara made, whether there exists a “crisis” or not (depending upon your definition of the term), it would be a fascinating (if unscientific) experiment.

The list of authors is:

1. Chris Clarke
2. James Robinson
3. Margaret Atwood
4. Erik White
5. Sue Kidd
6. Michael Chabon
7. David Gardener
8. Philip Roth
9. Kate Atkinson
10. Joanne Mitchell

Tomorrow, I plan to ask fifteen random strangers not only if they have heard of these authors, but whether they can name a book that was written by them. And just because I can (and because I’m knee deep in his books), I’m adding an eleventh name: William T. Vollman.

I will post the results here. But for those who are interested in getting results, I would highly urge you to do the same in your respective regional areas. (I’m based in San Francisco.)

My thinking is that the results may surprise us. But the proof resides in carrying out the experiment.

[UPDATE: Ron Hogan suggests that Bookmark Now fails to tie in the “Reading at Risk”/literary awareness alarmism into its scheme of essays.]

For those who can’t wait for the Pynchon Bookforum issue (which we are salivating for as readily as the Learned English Dog), as Maud points out, much of it is available online. There, you can find reminiscences from some top-notch writers (including Richard Powers, George Saunders, Lydia Davis, Don DeLilo and Jeffrey Eugenides).

American Rhetoric has listed the top 100 speeches of all time. The text is available for all speeches. But what’s particularly amazing is that audio exists for a substantial chunk of these. The obvious ones are here. But the site is a fantastic trip down memory lane. This speech takes me back to fifth grade sitting at a desk with other stunned kids watching the television, while this speech, which I was not alive to hear, continues to amuse me with its hypocrisies.