Open questions about the author-editor relationship

I read a New York Times article about a new collection of stories today, and one of the anecdotes somewhat alarmed me. Now the question is whether the anecdote is balanced and accurate. The author Wells Tower has just published a book. Here are the paragraphs in Eric Konigsberg's piece about it that gave me pause:

The book is a lot of things, in other words, but, given the subject matter of the stories, which range from marital infidelity to a boy’s mistreatment at the hands of his stepfather to the dismemberment of a moose to Viking mutilation, you would not expect anybody to call it cute. Yet when Mr. Tower submitted the finished manuscript to Courtney Hodell, his editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, the words “too adorable” were among those she wrote most frequently in the margins. And she didn’t mean it as a compliment.

“Initially, there was a lot more corn-pone-ing and self-consciously vernacular language, cute little moments,” Mr. Tower said in an interview the other day, adding that he reined all that in upon revision. “So I actually didn’t sit down to write a bleak collection. When I look back at the early stories, it seemed much more like a ‘Hee Haw’ episode.”

So now (again, if this story is accurate), because an editor apparently thought it best, an author's voice has been irrevocably changed? Is this an editor's job?

So often "self-consciously vernacular language" and those "too adorable" moments are the very aspects that make a collection worth reading. Is the bleak vision of an editor in New York appropriate to paint onto the more humorous one of an author from Chapel Hill, North Carolina?

I encourage responses on this, especially from the parties involved. What really happened? And how does the author feel about his art being changed in this way? How does the editor feel? Is this necessary? Is this right?

Brilliant series from Duke University Press!

This series is a genius idea, and I'll post all of the installments if the press makes more. This is Duke University Press's Editorial Director, Ken Wissoker, explaining how it works at Duke:

I love this book about academic writing

My "best book lately" award goes to the mercifully short and delightfully witty How to Write a Lot by Dr. Paul J. Silvia. This is not The Artist's Way. It is not therapy. It is not sensitive. It is a smart and usable guide for producing voluminous reams of scholarly writing without resorting to blather and jargon. Dr. Silvia has more sense than a dozen other would-be how-to-write authors, and he's funny, too. Here's a quote:

Always write during your scheduled time, but don't be dogmatic about writing only within this time. It's great if you keep writing after the period is over or if you do some writing on a nonwriting day -- I call this windfall writing. Once you harness the terrible power of habit, it'll be easier for you to sit down and write. Beware, however, of the temptation to usurp your writing schedule with windfall writing. It doesn't matter how much you wrote over spring break -- you committed to your scheduled time, and you're going to stick to it. If you find yourself saying absurdities like "I wrote a lot over the weekend, so I'll skip my scheduled period on Monday," this book can help: Close it, hold it between the thumb and index finger of your nondominant hand, and wave it menacingly in front of your face.

I'm laughing sooo hard at this, but perhaps to wring the true humor from this graf you have to be a veteran of a zillion how-to-write books that advise writing with the nondominant hand, writing with a blindfold, etc. Those things can help (I'm not a complete scoffer), but Dr. Silvia can help more.

NB: He writes for psychologists, with the attendant emphasis on journal publishing. This isn't so much about books, although he has smart things to say about them. You'll need to adapt his advice to suit your own situation unless you're in the sciences, but this is still an amazing book. Buy it, read it, tell your academic friends.

J. Peterman sells an important book, sorta

J. Peterman offers the Bound Book of the Internet.

I remember the good old days when the internet was slow. When it took hours to download a document and minutes to refresh a webpage. That was a tolerable rate of growth.

Maybe you're like me. Thirsty for knowledge but you drink a little slower to savor the flavor.

So like a clonk on the head, the Internet book was born.

Thanks to @NewDirections for tweeting this.

Marilynne Robinson and Paul Elie

This upcoming event for the Georgetown University literary community looks wonderful. Paul Elie is the author of one of my favorite books, ever, The Life You Save May Be Your Own. A friend bought it for me after I said that I had (briefly) met him. I loved his intertwined history of four major Catholic writers of the mid-20th century: Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy. He is also an editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, where I published two books. When we met at Georgetown, I was too shy to say much more than "Roger Straus met my poodle," which was true -- but it was also true that the FSG founder made a fuss over the dog as he did over many, yet he wouldn't have known me from Eve.

My relationship with Marilynne Robinson's art is more complicated. I've never met her, but one of my literary students who became a good friend gave me her 1981 novel Housekeeping two years ago, saying it was one of the best things he had ever read. I didn't read it right away because I was so busy, although he kept urging and asking if I'd gotten to it yet. Later that summer he perished as a passenger in a small plane accident -- he still lies buried within the fuselage under many feet of water, and the wreckage has not been found, although they know approximately where it is. In my sadness I picked up the novel to read it, and I was stunned when it opened with a similar accident, and continued that imagery throughout the novel: "The train, which was black and sleek and elegant, and was called the Fireball, had pulled more than halfway across the bridge when the engine nosed over toward the lake and then the rest of the train slid it into the water like a weasel sliding off a rock" (6). I never believed in premonitory visions -- even though I wrote a dissertation about dreams in 18th-century fiction -- until then. Now I don't know what to believe, but I do want to know more about the author.

Here's an excerpt from the Georgetown invitation:

The Resurrection of the Ordinary: A Conversation with

Marilynne Robinson
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author of "Gilead" and "Home"
&
Paul Elie
Author of "The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage"
Monday, April 6
2:00 p.m. - Riggs Library
(Reception immediately following)

Marilynne Robinson went to Brown University, graduating in 1966; she then enrolled in the graduate program in English at the University of Washington, where she started writing her first novel, Housekeeping (1981), which tells the story of two girls growing up in rural Idaho in the mid-1900s and is regarded by many as an American classic; it received the PEN/Hemingway award for best first novel and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. After the publication of Housekeeping, Robinson began writing essays and book reviews for Harper’s, Paris Review, and The New York Times Book Review. She also served as writer-in-residence and visiting professor at numerous colleges and universities, including the University of Kent in England, Amherst College, and the University of Massachusetts. Her second book, Mother Country: Britain, The Welfare State and Nuclear Pollution (1988), revealed the extensive environmental damage caused by the nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield, in the north of England; the book evolved from an essay that she wrote for Harper's Review and was a finalist for the National Book Award. A decade later, Robinson published a collection of essays entitled The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought. Gilead, her second novel, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in November 2004, is an intimate tale of fathers and sons and the spiritual battles they face. The work won universal acclaim from critics and the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Her most-recent book, Home, published in 2008 - a companion piece to Gilead - is an elegant variation on the parable of the prodigal son's return.

Paul Elie, Senior Editor with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC, New York, is the author of The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage (2003), a group portrait of Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, Thomas Merton, and Dorothy Day. The Life You Save May Be Your Own received the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction, a Christopher Award, the Beliefnet Book of the Year award, and the annual awards in Christianity and Literature and in the Literature of the South given by the Modern Language Association; the book was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in biography. Mr. Elie’s article “The Year of Two Popes,” about the death of John Paul II and the election of Benedict XVI, appeared in February 2006 in The Atlantic, which published an earlier article of his, “In Search of a Pope,” about the run-up to the conclave. The magazine published his article about the contested legacy of Reinhold Niebuhr in its 150th anniversary issue last November. His writing has also appeared in Commonweal, The New Republic, and The New York Times, among other periodicals, and in several essay collections.

Here's the smoking press release

Thanks to Newspaper Tree of El Paso for posting the press release in full. It was written by angry staff members who pushed back on layoffs at the University of New Mexico Press (see my previous post for the Chronicle of Higher Education article). Caution, hot content!

Employees at the University of New Mexico Press push back

Wow. Jennifer Howard has an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about pushback from staff at the University of New Mexico Press over layoffs. Scalebacks have happened at a number of university presses in recent days, but this is the first time I've heard of the staff resisting, and pointing back at management. Watch this space for details if they come to light.


Coyote fight image from taxidermybymarkditzel.com.

A chapter isn't actually real

I had an interesting discussion with an author this week who wanted to know if she should change her sections -- with headings -- into chapters. Her book is presently divided into five chapters representing five decades, with sections within each chapter clearly delineating the action. It works.

When she asked if sections should be changed into chapters, I had to think a bit before saying that it really didn't matter. Call a division what you will -- a section or a chapter -- and it's the same thing. A chapter isn't a real unit. It's just an agreed-upon segment, something to help the reader make sense of a very long work of prose, and it doesn't actually have to exist. The only reason it does exist is because people seem to want it.

I looked up "Chapter" in the OED, and was charmed to find this:

A later syncopated form of CHAPITER, a. OF. chapitre, earlier chapitle: L. capitulum. dim. of caput head, used, in ancient Latin, in the senses ‘little head, head of a plant, capital of a column’, and later, those of ‘head-dress of women, chapter of a book, section of a law’. The form chapter appears in Sc. in 14th c., but in Eng. is rare before the 16th; chapiter survived beside it till the middle of the 17th, and is still occasional in the sense ‘capital of a column’. Cf. also CAPITULUM, CAPITLE, CHAPITLE, CHAPITER, all orig. the same word. 1. a. A main division or section of a book (whether the latter is an entire literary work, or one of the divisions or parts of a large work). Esp. used of the main divisions of the books of the Bible. Cf. BOOK n. 8.

I'm not surprised that it was first used in reference to the Bible, since for a long time that was probably the longest book of which anyone knew, and the one that most easily lent itself to chapters. But within those chapters were something else entirely -- verses! And we rarely see a book today divided into chapters and verses, do we?

Perhaps we should.

By the way, did you know "chapter" can also be a verb? "I chaptered my book." It hasn't been much in use since the 1800s, but I rather think it's due for a comeback.

Why is poetry reading down?

Just as I started having epiphanies about literary journals, and just as I started blogging that for the first time in my adult life I was even reading new poetry on purpose (in contrast to it being assigned in a class), the NEA releases a new report saying poetry readership is at a 16-year low.

In a way this isn't surprising. Two of the key aspects that have tended historically to keep me away from contemporary poetry are those that also probably make me a cavewoman on the subject: (1) it doesn't usually rhyme and most of it is in free or blank verse (I love rhyme, meter and rules); and (2) it's often written as a word puzzle where the author knows the meaning, and the reader/listener is supposed to figure it out. That's rewarding for many, but I get tired at the end of a long work day, and so prefer things I can understand. Enter fiction, exit poetry.

However, to give poetry a better shake, I have been regally impressed with the work I've been reading in Ploughshares, The New England Review, The Georgia Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, etc. New and different journals came in today's mail, so I'll post soon about them as well. In other words, I may not be much of a poetry reader overall, but I've been gratified with the job the journal editors have done of finding words that are worth the work.

My latest theory has been that the literary journals will protect and even save fiction. To that I would now also add that they may end up being the salvation of poetry as well. All hail journals. If you haven't done so this week, subscribe to one! ;-)


(Image above from TattoosOne)

"Shock waves?" No, I wouldn't exactly say that. . .

An item in today's Publisher's Weekly claims that the University of Michigan Press's recent decision to switch to a digital format for scholarly monographs has "sent shock waves through the academic publishing field." Um, I would add "or not."

Who would be shocked by this? Anyone paying attention to discussions of scholarly publishing over the past few years would know that the monograph is a serious point of contention because by definition it has a limited audience. At the same time, almost anyone who does academic research would argue that the monograph needs to exist. It needs care, protection, support.

The University of Michigan has always been a bit digitally precocious, for good or ill, and it likes to involve itself in electronic solutions early. Some fret that tenure committees won't accept books that exist primarily in digital form, and I can't speak for tenure committees to answer that question. But this has been a long time coming in some form or another, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out in tenure bids, and also in scholars' future decisions to publish with Michigan or not. Here's the original piece:

University of Michigan Switching to Digital Format for Scholarly Monographs
-- Publishers Weekly, 3/24/2009 7:17:00 AM

The University of Michigan Press sent shock waves through the academic publishing field Monday when it announced it is switching to a primarily digital format to publish scholarly monographs. The press expects that within two years, most of the 60 monographs it publishes each year out of a total 140 new releases will be published only in digital editions. A POD option, however, will be made available for all digital books, said University of Michigan Press director Phil Pochoda. He said the press’s regional titles and its ESL list will continue to be released primarily in print editions, though select frontlist, as well as backlist, will be made available in digital formats as well as print. Print runs consequently will be more conservative, to cut down on returns. “We’re going to try to keep [initial] print runs close to orders,” Pochoda said, with more of a reliance on offset printing for smaller print runs.

When a publisher acquires a book, everyone isn't always on board

Publishing houses don't always agree on books, and that may include your book. Yes, your editor wanted it. That's usually a given unless your editor left and someone else took it over. But sometimes that editor prevailed over the skepticism of other editors, or of the marketing team, or even of the editor-in-chief. Sometimes editors get shot down in contentious acquisitions meetings, but other times they prevail. That still doesn't mean that everyone loves your book, and it could account for some of the ambivalence you feel from the publishing side.

Is this bad? I personally think it is neutral, and just part of the real world versus the imaginary one. It's like being hired at a company and fantasizing that everybody voted for you. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn't, and sometimes you have to deal with the guy down the hall who applied for your job and didn't get it.

If you know going in that publicity is difficult, that publicists have a whole catalogue of books to love and care about, and that yours is certainly important, but not the only consideration in their day, then you can start to think constructively about how to work with your publicist. One editor in a recent edition of Poets & Writers suggested flowers. My personal style would lean more toward a terrific sandwich platter sent to the whole publicity team with a thank-you card. Either would be a great start. Along with this outreach, consider making a personal, 40-minute visit if you live close enough, or at least plan a phone conference with your publicist about six months before pubdate, armed with the attitude that you want to learn how to be the best author ever when it comes to teaming with your publisher to sell your book.

Gifts, thanks, and a terrific attitude? These will go a long way toward engaging publicists in your cause beyond routine efforts, and they can also overcome any in-house ambivalence that may have lingered around your (or any) book's initial acquisition.

Perusing "The New England Review"

The journal experiment has been such a glorious thing, with unexpected surprises. This office's first copy of The New England Review arrived, and again, it is different from any other journal out there. The more I practice this fascinating exercise of studying literary journals, the more convinced I become that the time-honored practice of writing a poem or a short story in private and then sending it various places to see where it sticks is less my style -- I prefer the notion of understanding a journal as an entity and writing just for it.

(Flannery O'Connor might argue with me. She had her own way, and in the late 1940s she resisted so strongly her first editor's pleas for conformity that they ended up not working together, with each party declaring the other intractable. Maybe she was right. But this is for now my opinion.)

My first impression of The New England Review is that its size and the unfussy quality of the paper combine to give it the feel of a workbook. Unlike The Georgia Review that is rich with illustrations, or The Virginia Quarterly Review that features photography leaning toward a global, human rights focus, this copy of NER has no images except black-and-white ones in the ads, and the simple cover is a closeup of an abstract painting. No fuss, no drumrolls, just the work, laid out page by austere page. There is a certain cleanness to that, a lack of sentimentality. Also, NER has less of the perceived pretension that kept me away from the literary journals for such an unfortunately long time. Dare I say, it seems approachable. (But then, so does Ploughshares in a different way).

Of the 27 contributors to this 30th-anniversary edition, nine are faculty members, and that's good news both for those employed within and without the academy. For academics, it is comforting to know that a full third of the contributions come from us. For non-academics, it is good to know that two-thirds work elsewhere and publish very well. The notion that there would be a robust representation of academics but not an overwhelming majority interests me. I don't know what it means, but it seems balanced.

The oddest thing about all of this is that I have begun to read more poetry. It has long been my greatest challenge, as I have consistently preferred prose forms. But the poetry showcased in these journals has tended toward the extraordinary, and I begin each day with anticipation of it.

To a reader who might ask if I read these journals in one sitting, the answer is absolutely not. I try to make one copy last about two months, with readings from it every day or two. Sometimes I'll go a few days and not read, and then other times I might read for an hour, but I do dip in and out. One goal of the journal experiments -- besides learning the nature of many journals by reading them as a regular subscriber, and besides heightening awareness of their richness for those aspiring authors who may benefit richly from discovering that world -- is to make shorter work such as short fiction and poetry part of the fabric of everyday life. I eat, I wash, I walk the dogs, I read poems, I garden, I visit friends, I read short fiction, I dance, I sing, I pray, I study, I read novels, I rise, I sleep, I worship, I read nonfiction. Amen.

Publishing cliché series -- is it true that "Editors don't edit anymore"?

I've decided to start a little series dedicated to the shopworn publishing clichés I hear in this goofy, amazing profession. The first is something I hear from unpublished authors mostly, that "Editors don't edit anymore." Then Ecco editor Lee Boudreaux brought it up again as a sore point in the March/April Poets & Writers. Boudreaux points out "Having worked at two different houses, I literally do not know who they're talking about. Who just acquires and doesn't edit? I feel like everybody I've ever worked with sweats blood over manuscripts. And you reap the rewards of doing that."

Agreed. My editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Elisabeth Kallick Dyssegaard, worked so hard. I was amazed at the dedication, the time invested in back-and-forth work over drafts, and the general sense of care and craft that went into Elisabeth's work.

When some people hoist this particular canard (and yes, I know that I'm combining clichés here), they also like to cite Maxwell Perkins -- the longsuffering editor of Thomas Wolfe's Southern Gothic doorstop Look Homeward, Angel -- as a real editor. Oh please. Even Wolfe finally decided that the interdependence had to end, and he left Perkins's publishing house, Scribners, to sign with Knopf. If you're going to cite Perkins as a real editor and the rest as pikers, then I'll consign you to a corner of literary hell where all you can read for eternity is The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises over and over and over and over again.

Corny song for a Friday

@Booklounge, the digital team of Random House of Canada, tweeted this goofiness for a Friday and the First Day of Spring. It's by '90s Canadian band Moxy Früvous.

Hmmm, I may enter this contest

This gem comes from indiebound.org, a web resource to help you locate and shop at your local independent bookseller. It's sad that you'd need a website to find an independent bookstore any longer, but so many of them have closed that this really makes sense.

Announcing the IndieBound Voices of Indie Consumers Contest!

It's really easy: make a video, no more than 3 minutes long, about why you shop at indie retailers, what resonates for you about the Shop Local movement, why you feel passionately about your community, and maybe even mention a local store or two . . .

Post it to YouTube or Vimeo or any video-sharing site, and send us an email when it's there. One videographer will be chosen to win a bunch of IndieBound swag!

Details are available at the website.

To understand a university press, know its catalogues

University press catalogues are indispensable to learning a press's tastes and culture. Yet I'm amazed when faculty members come to me with an interest in a certain press, but no particular drive to read its catalogues. One woman even gently asked, "Isn't that your job?"

Of course it is, but it is also the job of each author who approaches a press with a prospectus and a dream. The common-but-naive notion that the manuscript is what it is, and therefore should be shopped to 20 or 30 presses until one of them "gets" it, represents one of the most interesting bits of human psychology that I've encountered in this wonderful profession. It's not the author or the manuscript who should adapt, this thinking goes, but the press. If only the press would see things differently, squint a little and appreciate, read more deeply, then it (depersonalized, not an editor but an edifice) will at last understand.

In reality, publishing decisions are made by teams of actual people, and they are usually made at meetings, not in imagined solitude. One of the first things a group of editors considers when examining new prospectuses is the rest of its list. What else does the press publish and why? Where will this proposed book fit in? How will this author's reputation enhance the house? What about the press's other authors who publish similar work? The more an author understands those same questions via the study of catalogues, the better the chances that the prospectus will address these important considerations.

A case in point is this month's catalogue from the University of Minnesota Press. It arrived last week, and today I spent a joyful hour reading it. Not skimming it, not riffling through, but reading. I read book descriptions, I looked at cover art, I considered not only who was writing, but where they were placed in the catalogue, and I pondered the press in terms of its extremes (Native American studies at one end, the visual image at another, narrowly focused monographs at a third point of departure). The press publishes everything from potential bestsellers such as Paul Chaat Smith's Everything You Know About Indians Is Wrong, a book that I can imagine selling both in the Museum of the American Indian, where he is associate curator, and in Barnes & Noble, where it might logically appear alongside work by Sherman Alexie. On the other end of the spectrum is Reticulations: Jean-Luc Nancy and the Networks of the Political, representing the scholarly monograph that many of us yearn to keep alive in university press publishing, and would hate to see pass away in favor of the potential bestseller.

A salt with a deadly weapon

Whenever I meet wonderful new people, I try to get a group together of ones who seem as though they might enjoy one another's company. By last autumn I had met several these fascinating folks, all of whom are writers (a playwright, a journalist-playwright, and a poet), and that always calls for a dinner party. Little did I know that something as innocent as mango chutney on pork could have sent one guest to the emergency room. It didn't (thankfully), and she was so cool about it that I never knew there was a problem. Later, however, I learned that she had made art out of her suffering by selling a book on the subject. Sandra Beasley's book Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales From an Allergic Life will be published next year by Crown. Besides writing about such serious stuff (albeit I'm certain with her characteristic flair), Sandra is an editor at The American Scholar, an award-winning, much-published poet, and the Literary Chair of the Arts Club of Washington. Her website is www.sandrabeasley.com.

Meanwhile, here's what she had to say in The Washington Post about my not-so-innocent dinner party, and the near-mayhem caused by those malicious mangoes.

I heart literary journals

It should by now be obvious to all seven readers of this blog that I am insanely, over-the-moon in love with literary journals. It's a new love. For some reason I was previously put off by some of the tweedy names, earnest covers, and a faint but unmistakable whiff of pretension. Plus I didn't much care for the handful of people I knew who submitted (an arty girl in my high school who played guitar in minor chords only; a guy in grad school who had a habit of slyly and poetically insulting his friends; any number of twits who name-dropped all the poets they met for five minutes at public readings), and I mistakenly thought that meant the journals themselves were amateur-ville.

I was completely wrong. Now that I have subscribed to several and actually read each one, issue after issue, I'm deeply impressed with the quality of the writing, the astonishingly good taste of many of the editors, and the consistent caliber of already-successful authors who don't need to publish there but who choose to because of the readership and the credibility. Receiving these journals is like receiving a valentine from the literary world each time they appear. Thank you, editors and staffs, for creating these gems. I believe journals will be the keepers of literary fiction and poetry during tough economic times for books, and that the good ones will survive.

Here is a partial list of those to which I have subscribed. There will be more in the future: Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, Indiana Review, New England Review, Missouri Review, Threepenny Review. Any suggestions for others?

PS: If you love fiction and/or poetry, please show it by subscribing to literary journals. Yes, you can read them at the library, especially if you work at a university, but do consider going that extra step and buying actual and ongoing subscriptions.

Great quote, but is it Vonnegut?

So much has been falsely attributed to Kurt Vonnegut that I hesitate to quote this, but it's apt. I first saw it in Poets & Writers on an ad for Butler University's MFA program, but a quick internet search suggests it has been a darling of book bloggers for quite a while.

"When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth."

I love the word "ineffable," because it sums it up: it means "Incapable of being expressed in words."

Sara Nelson in The Daily Beast

Kudos to The Daily Beast for running work by laid-off Publisher's Weekly editor-in-chief Sara Nelson. The blog item below came from her work.

How to get your fiction or even poetry published

Hudson River hero Chesley Sullenberger has demonstrated once and for a key publishing principle I've emphasized for years. He just got a $3 million book deal for a quickie about his splash landing on New York's iconic river, and his agent scored a tagalong coup. The publisher will also issue a volume of his inspirational poems. This is a variation on what I've said to authors since at least 1997: if you want agents and publishers to care about your fiction or your poetry, make some money for them first on a commercial nonfiction project. Many publishers will please a moneymaking author by agreeing to publish fiction, even if it doesn't "earn out," as long as the author's nonfiction is a steady plus for the team. Poems are a longer shot, but if your nonfiction earns enough (and Sullenberger's probably will), it's possible.

Personally, I'm no more likely to read Sullenberger's poems than I was to ponder the musings of that sweet but ubiquitous kid, Mattie Stepanek, and his Heartsongs series. But he'll surely find an audience -- perhaps enough that the poetry will do well. And who knows? Sullenberger might surprise me and become a meaningful addition to my poetry reading life (I'm still campily fond of Rod McKuen, and I'll defend him to the death, me hearties), but whether he does or doesn't, he got what he wanted from a publisher by bringing home some bacon for them first.


The above image of Rod McKuen is from Life magazine.

Maurice Jackson at the Library Company

Dr. Maurice Jackson's new book, Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism, is taking off like a rocket. Here's a great photo of him at the Library Company of Philadelphia this week. This office hosted him on campus last week, and his talk was electrifying. As soon as photos are available (the bookseller from our campus bookstore took some great shots), I'll post them here as well.

The Revenge of Bonnie Morris

I get a major kick out of Georgetown Women's Studies lecturer Bonnie Morris, who appeared like a comet in my office when Booklab was just getting rolling. I went to see her amazing one-woman show "The Revenge of the Women's Studies Professor" when she performed in DC a couple of years back, and now I'm happy to note that it's a new (last month!) book from Indiana University Press. "Dr. Bon" is an oldskool feminist with two books that were finalists for the Lambda literary award, and a seat on the board of Mothertongue, a DC-based spoken-word theatre space for women. She has more energy than a sugar-fed fifth-grader, and if you thought sexism was a thing of the past, her books will get you thinking twice.

It be National Grammar Day

To celebrate March 4, the official National Grammar Day, I'm gonna confess something. I was never hot stuff at grammar. Ever. I was always one of the best writers in class, and one of the most mediocre grammarians. Apparently I have an ear for the vernacular, and I even do okay with formalish text, but when it comes to not splitting one's infinitives, um, I do. Sometimes.

Even so, they have a fun way to celebrate that I might just participate in anyway... if you find an example of bad grammar on the web, take a screenshot of it (hit "print" and then paste into an e-mail) and send it to info@spogg.org (SPOGG is the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar -- a club that would never have me as a member).

Here's a link to the Official National Grammar Day website. Those of you who have better grammar than me can freely correct whatever nudge-wink blips you find in this post.

In love with the "Most Coveted Covers"

If you want to fall happily into a blog and not come back, visit Readerville Journal and check out the Most Coveted Covers. The founder and editor, Karen Templer, is a former art director at Salon.com who now works as a writer. I was immediately taken with the artful way she describes the covers she loves and craves. Most artists I know are less adept at saying why they love something, and helping the not-so-artful understand not just that it works, but some of the reasons why.

Kudos to the Authors Guild

Amazon backed down remarkably easily on the text-to-speech question, and it now leaves the decision to individual copyright holders whether or not to include their books in Kindle2's new text-to-speech feature. Amen, amen. I haven't read the Guild's press release on this yet (maybe they're snowed in), but it seems like a victory.

Journal Experiments -- Back to Basics

Last year I started The Journal Experiments, but then life and work got in the way and I drifted. Now I'm back to them again, and interested in hearing your thoughts about supporting journals. The Experiments consist of subscribing to, reading, and getting to know journals as unique entities -- little artistic corporate cultures, if you will -- and then submitting to them based on that understanding. This is the opposite of the usual author or poet strategy of writing something and then sending it out scattershot to see where it lands. The latter is part of I Am Writer, World Bend To Me... whereas the Journal Experiments are about the writer serving the medium (think about 17th-century bards writing for the stage, that sort of thing). One is author-focused, the other -- my preferred -- is audience-focused. Neither is correct in contrast to the other's incorrectness, they're simply different.

On that note, the Winter 2008 Georgia Review that I'm just now getting around to contains a fun Call For Submissions. The journal plans a special feature, "A Devil's Dictionary for the Twenty-First Century," "an update of sorts of Ambrose Bierce's brilliant satirical work... published just about one hundred years ago." Interested in submitting? Here be the link.

Reading to earn freedom

Did you see this piece by Leah Price in The New York Times about prisoners who can join a book club to earn time out of jail? English professor Robert Waxler at UMass-Dartmouth started it, working with a judge and a probation officer. Here's how Price describes a class: The eight others are convicted criminals who have been granted probation in exchange for attending, and doing the homework for, six twice-monthly seminars on literature. The class is taught through Changing Lives Through Literature, an alternative sentencing program that allows felons and other offenders to choose between going to jail or joining a book club.

What an unusual and smart idea. The biggest hurdle I can see is fundamental literacy. I have taught in jail before, and some felons have such challenges with simple reading and writing that they will need to do a lot of work before a book by John Steinbeck or Toni Morrison makes sense to them. For those who read well, though (and I encountered some highly literate people in jail, too), this is a creative and constructive idea.

There are also two fair arguments that (a) it's not right for prisoners to get personal tutoring from college professors and access to their otherwise expensive classes when many of their victims cannot afford such luxuries; and (b) books shouldn't be transformed into punishment. I'll grant both arguments have merit. But I still like to see people thinking laterally about alternatives to incarceration, especially for nonviolent offenders.

Why I agree with the Author's Guild lawsuit

The new Author's Guild lawsuit regarding Amazon Kindle's text-to-speech feature is quite controversial. Many who supported the Guild when it sued Google over digitization of books under copyright and won are now not supporting it on this fight. His eminence (at least to me) Neil Gaiman has weighed in, saying that he doesn't understand why the Guild opposes free text-to-speech, since it's the equivalent of having the right to read it aloud himself. Gaiman's agent argues the opposite, that Amazon is infringing on quite valuable audiobook rights. That's the Guild's position as well.

Why do I support the Guild? Simple. I don't think we're talking about the technology as it exists today. Text-to-speech at the moment is still robotic and largely uninteresting -- it would never compete against your favorite readers of audiobooks. But what happens when it gets better? What happens when you can even tweak it to sound like your preferred gender, age, and region of the country? What happens when it's so good you think you're hearing a live person read?

What happens is that the book's author, who under today's rules would have earned a nice profit from that audio version of the book, won't get anything. I think authors make precious little enough as it is. And though I enjoy my Kindle, I think Amazon is dead wrong on this one. Unpopular position? Yes, I know. But that's where I am.

Pogue said it

If you like new tech toys, how you feel about David Pogue probably says a world of other things about you, such as your clothing choices (Brooks Brothers or quirky designer?), your food preferences (three squares a day with meat, or vegan grazing?), and your voting habits (red or, um, you get the picture). The only problem is, I'm not sure whether liking or loathing Pogue makes you one way or the other. It just says something.

I like Pogue most of the time, and if he should fail to please me then I just don't keep reading him. But mostly he makes me smile, and today he did with his review of Amazon's new Kindle. I've had Amazon's old Kindle for about a year and a half now, and I love it. My only gripes are small -- I keep forgetting to bring it with me, and when I do remember it, such as on vacation, I keep forgetting to bring the charger. But the Kindle is convenient, easy to read, and (best blessing of all) you can download a book while stuck on a city bus without having to pay for a monthly account.

Nothing in Pogue's review made me want to buy the new Kindle. I'm fine with the one I have. But here's the nut graf (for me) when he discusses those who claim one type of e-reader will win out over all others, who will of necessity fade away: The point everyone is missing is that in Technoland, nothing ever replaces anything. E-book readers won’t replace books. The iPhone won’t replace e-book readers. Everything just splinters. They will all thrive, serving their respective audiences.

Amen, and I think that statement can be expanded to include the false dichotomy between paper books and e-books. I welcome e-books, but some who know my paper-loving, rare-books-buying ways are horrified. Am I nuts? A traitor? Nope, I simply agree with Pogue. Different products will serve different audiences in various specific applications.

Not scary at all.

How much do I love this?

At last, someone even odder than I when it comes to re-reading. I am a compulsive re- and re-re-reader of certain special books, even when stacks upon stacks of unread books beckon. It makes no sense (or maybe it makes all sense), but now The Rumpus has a story about a woman who has read Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native over and over again for twelve years.

That reminds of the summer a few years ago, when I still taught in Georgetown's English Department, that I decided to read three Thomas Hardy novels back-to-back: The Return of the Native was one, along with The Mayor of Casterbridge and Jude the Obscure. I had twice taught Tess of the d'Urbervilles as part of an 18th-19th Century Survey course ("snortin' the Norton" as students waggishly called it), but I hadn't read the rest, so this was a great treat. Between books I'd wander down the hall to John Pfordresher's office and ask him questions about them, which he'd patiently answer. I loved them all and became an enraptured Hardy admirer, though I can't quite imagine reading one over and over again for twelve years. But cheers to Julie Vanderburg, that noble reader, and to The Rumpus for writing about her.

Thanks to @MaryContrary08 on Twitter for tweeting the link...

E-textbooks? Really? NPR reports.

Are physical college textbooks due to to become relics? At Northwest Missouri State the change to digital is already happening. This NPR piece by Sylvia Maria Gross demonstrates through audio clips how this "new generation of textbooks" capitalizes on interactive technology.

For those of you who want to publish textbooks, is there a way to make this work in your favor? Are there ways you can think of to make your proposed textbook intelligently (rather than arbitrarily, I suppose) interactive? Think about it -- you can have more maps and images, alternate text, audio. This represents a serious change, but also (possibly) a serious opportunity.

NB: On this piece, the comments section has some interesting tidbits (see the bottom of the article accompanying the audio piece), and are worth reading.

Kudos to a writer

Laurence Hughes has a strong and resonant article in the last-page "Soapbox" section of Publisher's Weekly for February 23 about how it feels to be laid off in publishing right now. All I can say is that I hope he considers writing a book of his own if he hasn't already.

The piece is so well written, and while what's happening in publishing is heartrending (don't these companies imposing such brutal layoffs know the meaning of the words pull together?), I found myself cheering for him to find his true north as an author, and have the last laugh.

Throw Down in Poets & Writers!

You have to look for it, but the March/April edition of Poets & Writers contains a wee bit of controversy. First is the outraged, almost bitter letter, aghast at the notion that authors should be responsible for any aspect of book promotion: I would think agents would want their writers holed up in a shack in the boonies typing away at their next project, not wasting precious moments plying the very superficial talk show circuit. Book promotion belongs to the publisher, who seems to be tossing off many of its duties these days. I say let's let writers do what they do best and leave sales to the people in suits.

Then, on page 57 there's a terrific interview with four editors, and Richard Nash of Soft Skull Press articulates the opposite opinion: Get out into the world. And if you don't have the personality to get out into the world, then you have to ask yourself, "Why does everybody else have to have the personality to get out into the world, but I don't? What makes me so special that everybody else has to go out and bang the drum for me, but I don't?" I have a fairly limited tolerance for people who assume that it is everybody else's job to sell their books while they get to be pure and pristine.

It's probably obvious if you have ever read this blog that my heart is with Nash, but the opinion of the unhappy author (whom I won't name, but you can identify at the above link) is quite common. Authors imagine that their publishers don't care, that they haven't tried, and that somehow it's someone else's fault if the book fails to find its most perfect (usually identified in authors' minds as "largest") audience.

Most publishers play their hearts out, authors. And a tip of the champagne glass to those of you who understand that, and who do what you can to help your own books find their homes on shelves, and in hearts.

A quote that's either funny or depressing

From a Publisher's Weekly interview with Charlotte Roche, a German television presenter who has just published her first novel, Wetlands:

PW: Who are your [literary] influences?

HM: I don't read at all. Since my daughter was born six years ago, I've only read one book, and that was because my best friend pushed me to read her favorite book, "The Great Gatsby." But I think not being a big reader makes me freer in writing; I always hear that authors who read lots also get blockages -- they have these idols and they try to be like them. I don't have that problem at all.

The novel is reportedly an increasingly uncomfortable meditation on bodily functions. A bestseller in Germany, it will soon be printed in 27 countries!

What libraries' buying patterns mean for you

If you're an academic author, you're familiar with the same old problem: the university press prices your book at $90 or $100 and releases it in hardback only, to profit as much as possible from academic libraries. Many of you have shaken your fists in frustration while telling me that your publisher "won't listen" when you beg for a more affordable price. Elsewhere in this blog I've explored alternatives (negotiating a special, lower cover price only for your students at your academic bookstore, for example -- something some presses will do if they want you badly enough, as long as they are protected by the assurance that you won't open these sales to others), but the process of educating academic authors about university press financial realities is always with us.

Now along comes a report from the Association of Research Libraries about what may change in acquisitions during the economic downturn. Libraries are facing acquisitions budget cutbacks that may be permanent. You may not have known it, but some publishers have structured book prices differently depending on the size and budget of the library. From the report: Large libraries have also been subject to a novel form of inflation pressure as some publishers have implemented new pricing models, such as tiered pricing, that shift revenue generation to larger institutions that are required to absorb significant price increases to compensate for discounting to other customers. Publishers implementing changes in pricing models that provide discounts to small customers by balancing them with increases to larger customers will be especially likely to force large institutions into cancellation decisions.

Whoa, that's deep. The upshot is that the report calls for university presses to consider cutting prices. But don't pop the champagne just yet. After many university press visits, I've become convinced that the price structures have their place -- the margins are so thin at so many places that if they couldn't get this guaranteed money from research library acquisitions, some books couldn't be published at all.

Any trainwreck usually results in the little guy getting thrown into a cowfield somewhere, and guess who that is? Yep, the author. If the engine (research libraries) cut back, and the middle cars (university presses) lower prices, the caboose (those academic authors who have niche audiences) may just find themselves fishtailing wildly and hurled from the tracks.

It's my job to look out for all of my academic authors, but especially the caboose. I'll make recommendations as I can (how about "Look out!"). But this key recommendation has always been true -- be bold, and write a book with a measurable audience. You don't have to turn yourself into a trade author and you shouldn't, but now more than ever it is important that academic authors ponder along with their future editors about who the book serves and why -- what makes it essential. And if you're getting feedback from editor after editor that your book looks fascinating but just doesn't have a demonstrable audience, listen to that and think about what you as an author can do to help. Then come talk to me, and we'll try to sort through this together.

James J. O'Donnell at the Smithsonian Associates

Provost Jim O'Donnell's evening with the Smithsonian Associates is just a month away, and it's selling briskly so reserve now if you want to attend. Wednesday, March 18, 6:45 p.m., at the S. Dillon Ripley Center on the National Mall, and he'll be speaking about his new book, The Ruin of the Roman Empire.

The Smithsonian Associates program is one of the most elegant ways to see authors in Washington. I'm a huge fan, and the range and depth of classes and presentations is amazing. While you're at the website, be sure to browse their other offerings. It is one of Washington's jewels, and one of the best benefits of living in this great city.

Questions from the most recent, um, webinar

It amuses me that after having once made a bit of a name for myself as an outspoken critic of distance learning, I've gotten roped into teaching something called a "webinar," but it was for the best of reasons -- alumni! -- and it actually turned out great. Yesterday I had the privilege of spending an hour with 40+ Georgetown alumni on the web, discussing nonfiction book publishing and how to get a literary agent. Next week we'll meet again for a one-hour session on publishing fiction.

The best part of leading one of these seminars is the Q&A afterward, because the questions always surprise me. One author with amazing media credentials wanted to know if a literary agent would help her place articles in national magazines as a prelude to creating a nonfiction book proposal. For most people the answer would be no, because there isn't any money to be made on a percentage of the fee for an article. However in this questioner's case the answer is "It depends." A literary agent who happens to have a background as a subsidiary rights director in a publishing house (and there are a few of those) might have strong contacts at national magazines, so it might be worth asking.

Author credentials are the key, and this potential author had extraordinary ones. If you have them, great, but if you happen to be a mere mortal (aren't most of us?) then you will still want to land those major magazine or journal pieces, but you probably won't be able to enlist a literary agent's help. I'm not 100% certain that Ms. Media who asked the question will, either, but in her case I do think it is worth an ask.

A Valentine For You

People have asked if I can name a great, romantic book for Valentine's Day. Not offhand, but I sure remember a great sex scene! It's from Ken Follett's 1981 Eye of the Needle, pages 247-247.

Happy Valentine's Day.

View the actual Emancipation Proclamation. For reals.

If you want something fascinating to do tonight and you're in the DC area, hop over to the opening of the Library of Congress's Abraham Lincoln bicentennial exhibition. You'll see the actual first drafts of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address, plus his first and second inaugural addresses. The exhibition runs through May 9, but tonight is the time for special evening hours.

Okay, yeah, this isn't exactly a book-packed event, but the Library of Congress is an amazing treasure, and I enjoy giving people excuses to go there whenever possible.

A C-Note Well Spent

I'm a contrarian, so in these tough economic times I'm going to suggest that you spend money on something you can't even take home with you. The Folger Shakespeare Library is hosting Acquisitions Night on March 18, as a fundraiser. Why is it worth dropping a hundred dolla on them? Here's the squib:

Guests have the chance to personally examine books and ask questions as the curators and librarians reveal the newest additions to the world-renowned Folger collection in the Old Reading Room. The reading rooms are only open to the public once a year and are a stunning setting for this special night. A buffet dinner is served in the historic Great Hall, where guests can enjoy the spring exhibition, To Sleep, Perchance to Dream.

You will even have the opportunity to adopt a rare book, manuscript or work of art. If you have ever had the extraordinary pleasure of doing research using Very Old Books and coming across someone's bookplate from 300 years ago, you'll appreciate the shivery excitement of having your own name put on a literary treasure to delight and surprise someone 300 years hence.

The photo above, from the Folger web site, shows guests at Acquisitions Night 2008.

Don't mind me and this 100-pound anvil

Some authors have a funny way of defending their approaches to books. Something psychological can occur to cause the author of a magnum opus to feel extraordinarily attached to it, even if it has obvious flaws that cause near-universal concern. Take, for example, the scholar who knows that he has written about two ideas that don't really mesh together naturally, except in his own mind. He has now written a longish manuscript (450 pages) about both, dealing in the first half with the earlier phenomenon, and then through a linking chapter, turning to the second phenomenon. Several editors have suggested he turn it into two books. One would think, given the pressure to publish academically, that notion would appeal to him. Two for the work of one, what's not to love? But instead I often find him in my office, defending his doorstop and asking me to give him the magic words to help editors see that the book must be this way.

Another author has a book with a universally acknowledged boring first chapter, but (says he) it has to be there as an introduction to what comes next. Hmmmm. I suggest that if it remains there then it renders the rest of the book unnecessary, because no living begin will read that far.

But many authors defend their literary anvils, often furiously. Sometimes the authors become quite annoyed with me, before I've had a chance to say a word. I'll just sit there while the author explains the enormous, obvious problem of the book, and then proceeds to argue for it item by item, becoming increasingly annoyed with me for what s/he perceives must be my unspoken thoughts on the matter. (Either that or my eyes speak volumes, and I'm unaware of it.)

I'm not saying that authors should cut, rearrange, re-write or otherwise muck about with their books just to please colleagues, editors and agents. That kind of insecure pandering is dangerous, and it can lead to a bland, groupthink manuscript that speaks to no one. But I do believe that collective wisdom can occasionally be wise, especially when every reader has the same issue in the same place.

Chick lit as a career move

As the post-holiday bad film season settles around us, I notice a couple of big-budget films based on chick lit books: Confessions of a Shopaholic and He's Just Not That Into You. I'm blogging about this because one of the biggest surprises of this job was the interestingly high number of full-time academics who would like to write and publish chick lit. I see at least one every season or so in my office who imagines this would be a fun, quirky career move.

In an act of full disclosure, I confess that I develp a rash whenever near the chick lit genre in any of its forms, and even though I pride myself on trying to read a bit of everything in the name of research, I have not been able to force myself to dip into a single one of those pink-covered literary confections that celebrate shoes, shopping, and sex. But then, I haven't read a word of Harry Potter, either, and the globe still seems to spin. But perhaps my allergy to the genre means I'm not the best judge of any of this. In fact, I'm probably the worst.

Still, the phenomenon is remarkable, whether you share my distaste for all things shopping, or whether you're a girlier type who enjoys that sort of book as an escape now and again. Why do so many academic authors also want to publish chick lit? What makes an otherwise intelligent and arguably over-educated faculty member think "Hey, in addition to my teaching, committee work and scholarly publishing, I think I'll type up a frothy little romance about an American doctoral student in London, no, make that Paris, who has an ooh-la-la affair with a sexy Middle Eastern scholar, only to return to the States and realize that he's the new head of her department. Along the way she goes shopping in the world's most famous venues (all on her teaching assistant's salary, but this is fiction), and she finds herself fending off advances from a surly, sexy biker who turns out to be an English movie star in deep disguise, and . . ."

My usual advice to someone contemplating this is to ask what will happen if you become famous for the book. What if it's a hit? The authors usually pooh-pooh this ("It's just for fun," "I'm doing this on the side," "I really want to be known for my research"), and I say that's great, but we can't control the world once we launch a book into it. We've conditioned ourselves for marginality and irrelevance, but what happens if you become a chick lit star? Do you want that reality for yourself? Is that your choice and goal?

If yes, then type away. I'm sure Sophie Kinsella or Greg Behrendt are easy enough to knock from their pedestals... and I will be happy for you if you succeed. I'll even bring pink champagne to your book party! But if your interest in writing the book is contingent on it remaining hidden from the world, then think twice. Go out there with something you will be proud of whether in its obscurity, or in the brilliant glare of its international fame.

Who is buried in Derrida's tomb?

Michael Bérubé has given me realistic flashbacks along with chills and attendant paranoia. How, you ask? By writing an excellent article for The Chronicle of Higher Education about re-taking the GRE in English Literature. We both went to graduate school at the University of Virginia (different years -- I didn't know him), and we both struggled through what I personally thought was a ridiculous exam. I never knew that others felt the same, except for one good hint... after I was in I met one of the committee members who had accepted my application. I asked her what she thought of the subject test (where I struggled), and she said "Oh, we've known for years that it's flawed... I personally didn't count it although I can't speak for my colleagues."

Here's the funniest quote, although it's rather insider-y unless you have taken this particular test: The three questions that asked you to identify which city was being described in which poem — those were bad questions too, suitable more for Jeopardy! than for an exam in English literature. Alas, I got many bad questions right, sometimes through sheer dumb luck. Among the ones I missed, I couldn't remember what the "euphuistic" style is, and I couldn't remember which war novelist — Stephen Crane, Faulkner, Joseph Heller, Ernest Hemingway, or Norman Mailer — had not seen combat.

It was precisely the latter sort of questions that infuriated me. They had nothing to do with the study of anything, and I'm thankful that the admissions committee at Virginia agreed. My criticism of standardized testing is well-documented -- I wrote about it in my second book -- so this piece was most welcome.

Scary, though.

How an academic author earns global publicity, click by click

Bob Thompson of The Washington Post has an interesting longer piece about American-gone-to-New Zealand academic author Denis Dutton, best known at least in this office for Arts and Letters Daily, a site I have enjoyed since its launch in 1998, moreso in its early years. Thompson explores why Dutton has been so successful flacking his new book The Art Instinct. My only surprise is that there is any surprise -- Dutton was early onto the internet with a useful site, providing content when there wasn't much, and he must have worked extraordinarily hard. Coming up with a great idea for a website is easy. Making it successful and keeping it that way year after year is extraordinarily difficult.

Author after author comes to me with the same pitiful lament about the publisher's publicist who won't do enough to push the book. (It's the most vintage whine in publishing.) Please, authors, know that there is only one person who woke up this morning passionately in love with your book, and that is you. You are the publicist. If the book is to succeed, it is your job. Yes, publishers try their best, but they have hundreds of books to sell. At any given time you usually have only one.

So does this mean you should run out and found a website like Arts and Letters Daily? Maybe, but I certainly couldn't pull that off. It could mean more simply that you might have wonderful fun being creative about what you do have to offer the world, and how through that gift the world might also learn about your splendid books.

**

If you visit ALDaily now and wonder what all the fuss was about, it used to be better. It's okay now, but lots of sites aggregate good content and it has competition. But back in the day it was fresh and different.

Words Without Borders

A friend of mine loves the work of novelist Junichiro Tanizaki. When I first met her years ago and asked "Who?", and she rightfully looked at me with shock. How could I not know? Well, now I do know, and I also understand better just how little of the world's literature is available in the United States in translation. Even when it is, it takes something like the Nobel Prize to give its sales an uptick. There are some exceptions, but few. Blame our literary isolation on the phenomenon of geography, xenophobia, or what you will, but as a nation we're just not as aware of world literature as we could be.

That's part of why I was so pleased to learn of the online magazine "Words Without Borders," a site that publishes its own original translations, plus book reviews and other information about international literature. In its publishing rationale, the journal notes: Few literatures have truly prospered in isolation from the world. English-speaking culture in general and American culture in particular has long benefited from cross-pollination with other worlds and languages. Thus it is an especially dangerous imbalance when, today, 50% of all the books in translation now published worldwide are translated from English, but less than 3% are translated into English. (Bold emphasis added)

My friend Katie King pointed the organization out to me two years ago, but it really caught my consciousness when I met its founder and president, editor Alane Salierno Mason, at W. W. Norton a few weeks ago.

I follow them, so they follow me

Okay, this is scary. About a year ago my digital strategist friend in London, Katie King, tried to get me onto Twitter. That's kind of like trying to get your 81-year-old granny to read Perezhilton.com, but I dutifully signed up for an account and then ignored it. This year, in a burst of confidence, I started Tweeting (it sounds like an adolescent rooster chick learning to crow). Soon, however, I rather liked it, and I found that many publishers are on Twitter, so I looked some up and started following them.

Now they're following me! Here's what the e-mail said:

Hi, Carole Sargent (Booklab).
Little, Brown and Co (littlebrown) is now following your updates on Twitter

Rut-roh! Isn't that a bit like reading The New York Times, and then realizing that the Times is reading you? Or as Byron Katie would put it, you're not just breathing, but you are being breathed?

I'll try to live up to my, um, following, by posting things worth knowing about. But it will be difficult. I am, after all, an 81-year-old granny trapped in the body of a much younger woman.

Dearie.