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.

A blog about readings

For those of you who are becoming understandably concerned about the fate of literary readings in the DC area in the wake of closings such as Chapters and Olsson's, and the folding of "Book World" in The Washington Post, a local author and blogger named Mark Athitakis offers one answer: Mark Athitakis’ American Fiction Notes It's a one-stop shop of readings in the region, and to my eye both complete and easy to use. Thank you to Dr. Maurice Jackson for pointing this one out.

NB: He spells the possessive Athitakis', and I spell it Athitakis's. I think I'm one of the last editors who still prefers the full possessive. About 70% of my faculty authors agree with him, not me. The NYTimes agrees with him, too. All I have in my corner is fusty old Strunk & White, and I'm not even a major fan of that volume. ;-)

When you think you had it first

Publisher's Weekly recently launched a column about food and cooking titles called "Cooking The Books." That's such a great title, I wish I'd thought of it! Wait... I did. A few years ago. I wrote two columns with that title on cookbook publishing for Foodservice Monthly, a terrific mid-Atlantic publication edited by a dedicated Washington foodie, photographer and editor Michael Birchenall.

So did PW steal my title? It's tempting to think so, but probably not. In reality, people often think up the same titles, and even the same concepts; it happens all the time. It's part of the principle behind zeitgeist. Most of us consume a surprisingly similar porridge of popular culture, both low and high, in varying amounts, and because of this disparate people are bound to make the same mental connections simultaneously. That's part of why so many Hollywood "he stole my screenplay" legal fights aren't always open and shut. Many people may have a similar idea for -- say -- a romantic comedy, simply because we've all ingested the same formulas for so long. Think back to the Restoration stage, and how similar many of the comedies can seem.

But I still admit it grates (joke!) a little.

Origin of the Spouses

It's finally February, and I love Valentine's Day. In honor of it, I offer this quote from Charles Darwin when he courted his wife Emma. I first read of it in Christopher Benfey's New York Times Book Review article on Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin’s Views on Human Evolution by Adrian Desmond and James Moore.

Then I found the Darwin Correspondence Project online, and looked it up.

Charles Darwin wrote to an old school friend on May 8, 1838: "As for a wife, that most interesting specimen in the whole series of vertebrate animals, Providence only knows whether I shall ever capture one or be able to feed her if caught."

Who says science types aren't romantic?


The title of this blog post and the photo above are from London's Daily Mail.

What to give your publisher on the questionnaire

When you publish a book, you'll get a questionnaire asking you many questions about your book, and asking you to write thoughtfully about it. Many authors like to postpone this, handle it quickly, or put it off altogether until the editor all but demands it.

Here's a hot tip: spend a lot of time on this important document, fill it out carefully, and turn it in early. Why? Because the book marketing team may use much of it to create important aspects of your book, including your media kit and even the copy that will go on your book cover.

Words you write on that page could actually end up on your cover if you do a really good job. They can work as flap copy, as the book's description -- if you have talent for this sort of thing, your own words can even make it into the book's advertising.

"But isn't that my publisher's job?" some authors ask. Hmmm. Let's see. They have how many books on their list each season? And besides, who better than you to perfectly describe your own work? I'm not saying that publishing professionals don't or won't write this stuff, because they do and they will, but I urge authors who are of a mind to do so to try their hand at the art form of the questionnaire.

But when they say 150 words, they mean it!

Do you listen to music while you write?

Some writers love music, and use it as a muse. Others cherish silence. I'm usually of the silence school of writing, but lately some music has worked for me... either early baroque, very old jazz, or oh-so-occasionally some new stuff like the bird and the bee (although I wish there were versions that had vocal noises but not actual words, since actual words can confuse me while I write...).

I do think people can change in their preferences over time, and even then change back again; I do imagine going back to silence more than falling further into music.

Any thoughts?

The Suspicious Cheese Lord

This is a great quote from director Darren Aronofsky about the ending of "The Wrestler" that easily applies to books as well: "I just have too many cheese alarms. If something's cheesy I just run. I just can't do it. I'd make a lot more money if I had a little more cheese in my arsenal."

PS: Wrestling seems to be my theme this academic year. See my previous post about working with Bret "The Hitman" Hart at the National Press Club Book Fair.

My favorite piece about John Updike

John Irving offers a charming and offbeat story about getting John Updike's fan mail for years, and vice versa. It is the best thing I've read about Updike; the piece makes him seem engaging, human and less like the stuffed literary lion that places like the New York Times Book Review would make him out to be.

Come to think of it, the mainstream literary establishment often does this to writers. It can shape them into creepy icons. The worst was when Barnes & Noble used to have those green shopping bags with authors' heads on them... the Anne Tyler was the most sacrilegious (although the Mark Twain was pretty gross, and Emily Dickinson was just unspeakable), and I remember wondering why on earth someone as quiet and sensible as Anne Tyler would have agreed to such a thing. It's not that the art was technically poor -- in fact it was quite good -- but that if being an author meant finally getting one's oversized head caricatured on a book bag, then make me a bricklayer, please.

I'm sure there was an Updike head at some point (can anyone find an image?). So thank you, John Irving, for writing something memorable about the man.

An article in the Chronicle about university presses

Jennifer Howard published a must-read article in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education about what various university presses are doing in this icky book-buying market. Sales are down as much as 13% at some shops, although others are doing better, largely because of individual successes in various books, or a core strength in an area such as economics that is more popular because of the downturn.

Losing Sara Nelson

It's funny how someone just doing their job can become a quasi-celebrity sometimes, but that's how I felt about Publisher's Weekly editor-in-chief Sara Nelson, who was surprisingly laid off this week. I've met plenty o' famous writers and never been tongue-tied, but when I saw Nelson at a party in New York, I got flummoxed and didn't approach her or say anything. It was her. (Silly, I should have piped up, but I had an easier time talking to Erica Jong... life isn't logical.)

She wrote a column for every issue of Publisher's Weekly, and while it was mostly a re-cap rather than news, I found it warm and engaging, and I read it every week. She often posed in that familiar wrap dress with the autumn leaves on it (see photo), and her expression was one of serenity and concern. Sara Nelson reminded me of the Washington Post's inimitable Marguerite Kelly, whom we fans probably read less for exactly what she says, than the unique and engaging way she says it.

Given Nelson's considerable experience in the publishing industry, I hope she writes a book about the bloodbath from her perspective without the muzzle of being a spokesperson for an industry journal.

And boo to the short-sighted pooh-bahs who laid her off. Way to demoralize an industry, folks.

Publishers in the news

The Washington Post has run an article about one of my professors from undergraduate school, and his elegant independent press. I didn't know that he occasionally typed on manual typewriters. My personal quirk is sometimes using an old IBM correcting Selectric II from the late 1970s, but an actual manual typewriter is even more startling.

In these days of print-on-demand publishing that creates good-looking books in small batches, running your own press doesn't seem like such a big deal, but he was doing this decades ago when a publisher still needed some sort of financial backing, or at least a significant trust fund (the latter being the genesis of many New York houses); it was and remains quite an accomplishment. You can visit the press here.

Maurice Jackson at the Library of Congress, February 26

Dr. Maurice Jackson will discuss his new book, Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism, at the Library of Congress from 4-5 on February 26. Here's information adapted from the invitation:

Anthony Benezet is recognized as the founder of the antislavery movement in America in the mid-1700s. Benezet believed the British ban on slavery should have been extended to the colonies, and worked to convince his Quaker brethren that slave-owning was not consistent with Christian doctrine.... A book sale and signing will follow the lecture, which is sponsored by the Library’s John W. Kluge Center.

Benezet transformed Quaker anti-slavery sentiment into a broad-based transatlantic movement. According to Jackson, Benezet translated ideas from diverse sources – Enlightenment philosophy, African travel narratives, Quakerism, practical life and the Bible – into concrete action. He founded the African Free School in Philadelphia, where future abolitionist leaders Absalom Jones and James Forten studied. Jackson, a former Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress, teaches Atlantic and African-American history at Georgetown. He currently is at work on a social, political and cultural history of African Americans in Washington D.C. (1790 to the present). He is co-editor, with Jackie Bacon, of "African-Americans and the Haitian Revolution: Selected Essays and Historical Documents," to be published in 2010. Jackson will be inducted into the Washington, D.C., Hall of Fame in April for his years of service to the people in the nation’s capital.

The lecture is free and open to the public; tickets and reservations are not required.

A ringside seat to history

UPDATE January 21. Now I know why it was so easy to get in from the Georgetown side. Crowds were held back at various checkpoints elsewhere, and were unable to use their valid tickets to see the inauguration. That's sad, and I wish that my good fortune hadn't occurred while someone else in the city didn't get to be there. I didn't actually take a seat from anyone (it was almost deserted on the side I walked through), but I now know that many Blue ticket holders were disappointed.

Here is the original post from yesterday:

This has nothing to do with books, but it is so remarkable I had to post it. Today at 11:30 a.m. I was able to walk from my Georgetown home to the Watergate, grab a taxi (because it was so cold, and cabs were plentiful), and make it within two blocks of the Lincoln Memorial. No crowds! I walked right up to the very steps of the Lincoln Memorial and listened to the new President's inaugural speech from that amazing vantage point. I had a perfect view of the Reflecting Pool, the Washington Monument, and behind it, the Capitol. I call it the "Forrest Gump" angle (this photo is from the movie and shows almost exactly where I stood).

No one ever once asked me for a ticket (even though I was in a Blue ticket area), and I was not questioned by any police or guards. Going back to Georgetown was also a breeze. I walked to George Washington University and hailed a taxi at the traffic circle.

What may have happened was that the people who came at three or four in the morning got frozen out and left, and others may not have been able to get into the city at all because of congestion in the subways.

All I know is that I had a beautiful trip on a sunny, 35-degree day, I stood in an historic place as people around me wept, clapped and prayed, and I was able to return home in an orderly manner. The insane Washington of the newspapers and the blogs wasn't in evidence. It was lovely.

External validation on a complex subject

Dr. Charles King's book The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus (Oxford 2008) has been named the 2008 "Book of the Year" by The Moscow Times. More information about him and his other books is available here.

Yes, I actually play Bookworm

This is so clichéd, but I do play Bookworm online. Wouldn't you think a book person could find something else to play, like a war game or something? Or maybe find a newer product? But I love it.

It doesn't have an end, however, so I put one in of my own. I try to get to 20,000 points within 20 moves. That's harder than it sounds.

Oh, and I play online rather than downloading it, even though doing that would enable the version that lets you make 9-letter words. Who needs 'em?

More about whether "your field" is your field

Several people wrote to me privately about the last post. Apparently there is a good bit of personal anxiety out there among many academic professionals about whether or not they're in the right field. I wish some of them had posted their thoughts in the comments, but in these days of Eternal Internet Footprints, many are shy about doing that, and I certainly understand. Still, my e-mail was lively.

Beyond the case of the assistant professor with the mashup disguised as a specialty, there are those who enjoy what they do, but don't quite know how they got there. They feel as though their careers are some sort of cosmic accident -- that they are experts in one thing when it could just as easily have been something else.

And then as if the universe were in some sort of secret accord, this quote came from Steven Pinker in today's New York Times Magazine: During my first book tour 15 years ago, an interviewer noted that the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould had dedicated his first book to his father, who took him to see the dinosaurs when he was 5. What was the event that made me become a cognitive psychologist who studies language? I was dumbstruck. The only thing that came to mind was that the human mind is uniquely interesting and that as soon as I learned you could study it for a living, I knew that that was what I wanted to do. But that response would not just have been charmless; it would also have failed to answer the question. Millions of people are exposed to cognitive psychology in college but have no interest in making a career of it. What made it so attractive to me?

He goes on to try and analyze it, and you can read his thoughts at the link above, but I consider his question more interesting than the answer. What, indeed, made any of us turn right instead of left, or this way instead of that way? I remember the moment I decided to study the 18th century. About eight of us were in a scholarly editing class at the University of Virginia with David Vander Meulen, and we sat around a table in the rare books room at Alderman Library. He showed us the University's copy of the Declaration of Independence. Sitting there, seeing that hand-printed document, and realizing that the 18th century was one of the fields my particular graduate program was best known for, made it fall into place like a puzzle piece clicking. Perhaps I should have known what field I wanted before entering grad school (many people do), but I was fortunate that one of UVA's best offerings happened to be a perfect fit. I wouldn't change it if I had it to do over again; rather, I would have begun earlier and studied even more deeply.

But if that day hadn't happened (and if I hadn't grown up near Alexandria, Virginia, an 18th-century port city), would I have been happy doing something else? Of course, or at least I think so. Would you?

Above image from an optical illusions website.

Are you sure "your field" is really your field?

This interesting conversation happened with a pre-tenure faculty member who was having trouble placing her manuscript. "There's just so little understanding," she said, "of what it is that I do." She kept referring to "my field," but when I asked how she defined that field, she launched into a complicated explanation of a how it was a cross between two distinct areas of historical research, with a third cultural component thrown in. The mix made not-so-much sense to me because both of the historical aspects were from the Dutch late-1600s, and her literary/cultural monkey wrench was from France in the 1920s. Both were fascinating eras, but also much-studied yet oddly tacked onto one another in a "see if you can follow my logic here" way that felt both obscure and culturally disjointed. I soon found myself mentally humming "One of these things is not like the others..."

Call me old-fashioned, but I think if you're going to refer to an area of research as a field, it should probably have more than just you in it. Otherwise you risk being just another lonely laborer out standing in his field. Sure, you can define a field, and that's bold and important work, but it's also usually best done post-tenure. In fact, her field wasn't really so much an area of research as the resulting mashup combining what she had studied in graduate school with what she liked to do now.

I asked her whether she had considered writing about something a bit more accessible. Something -- perhaps -- that a university press might actually be able to list in its catalogue and sell. She sighed. "But this is what I'm trained in. It's my expertise." She held on to her topic, and who knows? Maybe she will find a home for it, though I don't see how. But what I do question big-picture is how hard it would be to take some post-doctoral courses at (for example) Johns Hopkins that is just an hour away, and branch into a second area of expertise that more clearly connects her to a recognized field. I'm not saying she needs to give up what she loves, but rather it seems she is defining "her field" so narrowly that she can't quite imagine doing anything else. And is she really an expert? Her qualifications at present are quite slim -- just a few graduate courses, and a dissertation. Why can't this change, expand, grow?

Many scholars choose a number of areas in which to educate themselves as experts. A doctorate is hardly a badge of perfection in any field. As some of my advisors liked to say, it's just a union card.

Photo above of a woman out standing in her field taken from Somebody's blog.

Since when are an author's lies the editor's fault?

I grow weary of armchair critics who blame editors and fact-checkers for bold, audacious falsehoods by authors. "What happened to editing?" these critics cry. "Where are the fact-checkers?"

They're right where they've always been, stupendously overworked and underpaid. Do these critics seriously believe that a busy editor with 50 nonfiction books on her list is also personally responsible for making sure that every one of them is absolutely true? Or that an underpaid fact-checker who works for an entire publishing house, not just one editor, can possibly think of and then catch everything in every manuscript?

I'm not talking about having a basic fact-checking procedure. Some of that is routine, and if my own experience at FSG is any indication, it does happen. Not only did I have to provide evidence of certain facts to the publisher, but I also had to spend a couple of hours on the phone with a lawyer going over the potentially actionable parts. All fine, all good, but (I would add), all my responsibility as an author. The fact-checkers and lawyers were there to advise and instruct, not to police. Even if they were there to be the truth cops, if an author has the deep-seated, pathological ability to fabricate things that happened years ago in a place that no longer exists, how would an editor or fact-checker ever know?

If you think you're so smart and no one would ever pull one over on you, take down any major nonfiction bestseller from your shelf and ask yourself how you would start proving that the important, big-picture aspects of the book are true. Where do you begin? Someone says, for example, that they should have checked to see if James Frey ever went to prison. Really? Okay, but if you don't know that's the suspect fact, where does it fall in a list of maybe 2,000 other facts that need to be checked? Now multiply the book in your hand by dozens of books, piled up all around you. They all need fact-checking. Where do you start? How long will it take? Whom do you hire, and what happens when most of the facts do check out? At what point do you stop and conclude the book is true?

Sure, it would have been nice if somebody knew that a young woman in starving Eastern Europe in wartime couldn't hide a stash of apples to toss over a fence to a boy in a concentration camp, and that her beau couldn't have made it to the fence in the first place. But that fact amid all the other checkable facts becomes a needle in an amazingly complex haystack. In retrospect we know a lot of things that are not at all evident in the moment.

I believe the critics should give editors and fact-checkers a break. The responsibility for telling the truth rests with authors.

Vanity, thy name is option clause

The author was ecstatic. Not only had she been offered a publishing contract, but they wanted her next two books as well! Oh glory! Whoo-hoo!

Slow down.

I made her a cup of my amazing fresh-brewed coffee with lemon zest, and I convinced her to sit by the fire at Booklab a minute and take a breath. Yes, it sounds flattering when a publisher includes mention of your future works in a book contract. But dear author, this is what is known as the dreaded Option Clause, and it always benefits the publisher, not you.

The clauses are generally written in tricky ways. You usually have to show your publisher your next work of the same genre (for example, your next work of nonfiction), and give them right-of-first-refusal. Doesn't that sound innocent and also flattering? It does, but it isn't. First of all, it gives them a chance to bid on the book with no competition, so they can "buy" you on the same terms as your first book, even though presumably you're worth more on book two if you are angling your career the right way. Second, it prevents you from shopping book two around when it is in the earlier stage of proposal and sample chapter, a stage at which many publishers may want to give you a deal. This option clause won't be satisfied if you show your current publisher that same amount of work -- you still owe them a look and a bid on the whole manuscript. The overall effect is one of squelching healthy competition.

There is an old gentleman's agreement in New York publishing (although it is rapidly falling by the wayside along with such niceties as job security) that says if authors are bound by option clauses to publishers even in a manner that they can technically wriggle out of, other publishers won't bid. The general thought was -- and sometimes still is -- that you should satisfy your obligation to the publisher by producing the books that the option clause stipulates before you are free to go elsewhere, and other publishers would expect the same, so they back off. Would this hold up in a court of law? Of course not, but publishers know that turnip-poor authors aren't usually going to go crying to the judge over such matters. They can't afford to.

There are two ways to handle an option clause if you don't have an agent. The best way is to get the publisher to strike it out altogether, and if you do, that's a complete victory. Then the publisher can bid just like anyone else for your next book. But most publishers won't do this, and unless you are valuable and they're nervous about losing you, I don't blame them... why would they? What you usually can get, however, is a time limit. I prefer sixty days, but you can negotiate and perhaps settle at ninety. Once you close the loop by giving the option clause an expiration date, you at least render it into a gentler thing, if not completely harmless.


The book image above comes from the University of Nebraska Press.

Was your editor really angry in that e-mail?

Or were you being just a wee bit sensitive? I ask, because authors forward me correspondence from editors quite often, asking me to read between the lines and tell me what s/he was thinking at the moment they hit "send."

Almost always the e-mail is much tamer when I read it than it was in the mind of the nervous-nellie author who sent it to me. Sometimes the note is neutral, completely harmless. Other times it has a little bit of what I call "New York cheddar" to it, but nothing to worry about (New Yorkers can snap at each other when they're happy, let alone when they're not... it is getting better, but unnecessary snippiness is still their collective worst habit). Some of my authors have over-interpreted a simple "No," or "I don't think so," as "Go away and never come back, I'm canceling your contract you worthless excuse for an academic professional."

For the most part, everyone got up this morning thinking about themselves, not you or me. Most e-mails are just language, and the typical professional is careful not to put genuine anger in writing. Even if there was a major issue between you and your editor, you'd hear about it in a different way than casual e-mail.

Authors will continue to send me these e-mails, and I'm always happy to read them and try to help if I can. But your editor is probably not angry at you, and you won't lose your book deal just because you asked questions about it, even if you do get a sharp taste of New York cheddar in return.

Image swiped from Flickr.

As you resolve to write in 2009, does Dad's voice from 1967 still echo in your brain?

I want to have a word with dear old Dad. Not mine. Everyone else's. In 1967 He sat one of my authors down for a talk, when the then-adolescent was going through a particularly writerly phase that in those days involved wearing turtlenecks and playing guitar as well as scrawling his deepest feelings in notebooks. Dad said that writers starve, and He advised His college-bound son to major in something that would get him a job. Even though son eventually switched his major from Dad's choice, accounting, to his own preference, history, and even though he succeeded in graduate school, became an assistant professor, and eventually earned tenure, every fricking time he sits down to write he re-lives the scene from 1967, with my author's scruffy hair, the scent-memory of Dad's annoying aftershave and all.

Dads have "counseled" their offspring into fields for which they are poorly suited, while steering them away from that which could have made them famous, since forever. Songwriters, painters, dancers, actors all hear the same drivel from Dads coast to coast. Moms are guilty, too, but for that echoing voice that just won't go away when you're trying to go for it as a writer, there's nothing quite like the tuneless horn-honking of dear, old Dad to really lock things up.

In 1982, another Dad told one of my authors she should use her writing skills for something practical and go to law school. She did, and now she is a law professor (I'll bet if you scratch a thousand of those you'll find someone underneath who compromised between family expectations and inner pull a different way). Dads have told my authors that writers don't earn money, even though of the Forbes top 100 earning celebrities, 12 are writers.

Much of my job involves doing battle with a succession of Dad-voices from ages and places past. (Does that make me a kind of superhero?) I'm not saying that all fathers give bad advice. I'm just saying that many fathers push their kids away from the arts and toward business, and that is often not the right thing for the kid.

There are a number of quite successful strategies for making His voice go away, and they don't involve either electroshock therapy or drugs. My personal favorite is self hypnosis, but there are also good books you can read. Can you change your mind and your thought patterns? Absolutely! Here is my reading list of effective Dad silencers for 2009:

Loving What Is by Byron Katie. She is the queen of helping you shrug about what you can't change, and living fully in spite of it.

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. Kinda heavy on the righteous anger and the twelve steps, but she'll help you figure out who you really are. I love to work with her book in groups, and I have led five to date.

Hypnotherapy recordings by Lyndall Briggs and Glenn Harrold. You can find these at audible.com. In my heyday with the self-hypnosis I was listening to one or another of these every afternoon for over a year, and they did a remarkable job and changing the internal chatter from negative to positive. Both authors have fascinating accents. Briggs is a strong variant on Australian, and Harrold's possibly comes from within the sound of London's Bow Bells (I'm no Harold Higgins and can't quite tell). To me that's charming, but it can also be something to adjust to if you're used to listening to the BBC. I love both of them.



And yes, I realize that the man above speaking to Ben Braddock in "The Graduate" is Mr. McGuire, not Mr. Braddock, but it's just such a perfect image for this post.

More about not using your longsuffering partner as your unpaid editor

Georgetown University's Matt Maples, one of the seven readers of this blog, brought a recent New Yorker article to my attention. Actually I had already read it, and with great jealousy, because it expanded on a theme about late blooming that I mentioned in my book about adults returning to college some years ago and never had the focus/drive/whatever to shape it into an article or book of its own.

"I was reading your booklab blog, and came across your post about advice columns, where you touch on the topic of spouses and authors. It reminded me of a recent New Yorker piece by Malcolm Gladwell about Ben Fountain and other late bloomers. I highly recommend it if you haven't read it already. It's a great story. And talk about your supportive spouses! Here's the link."

What he refers to is the story of Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award-winning author Fountain's wife, who was certainly not his unpaid editor. Instead of being forced to read and critique his manuscripts, she did what spouses can more appropriately do for one another -- she earned a living and supported him while he wrote (he had been a successful lawyer, but he quit to become a writer and it worked). Gladwell notes that she was far more than his tireless supporter, she was, to use an old-fashioned-but-accurate term, his patron. “Sharie never once brought up money, not once—never,” Fountain said. She was sitting next to him, and he looked at her in a way that made it plain that he understood how much of the credit for “Brief Encounters” belonged to his wife. His eyes welled up with tears. “I never felt any pressure from her,” he said. “Not even covert, not even implied.”

Romance author Debbie Macomber has a similar story. Her husband supported her while she wrote, long past the time when many spouses would have hung it up and said "Quit typing and get a real job." Now she (and he) are multimillionaires.

I'm not saying every partner has to spend years as the breadwinner while the other one gets to renovate the attic as an office and type away. In many ways that isn't fair or reasonable. But I am saying that partners should believe in one another. If you love somebody and they love to write, total honesty about your assessment of their talent (if it is low) is not the way to go. Love means support, usually more of the emotional and spiritual than the financial kind, but if the latter is possible, so be it.

One of my favorite books is self published

Occasionally I blog about self-published books, pointing out that they have a distinguished history, and that there is an enormous difference between publishing a book yourself and "vanity publishing." Self publishing can be practical for all sorts of reasons, especially if you have a built-in audience for your book.

That's the case with Kyra Alex, the owner of Lily's Café on Deer Isle in Maine. I have never met her, but one of my best friends in the world now lives in Maine, and he has vacationed there for about 15 years. He discovered her café, and in 2001 he brought me back Lily's Café Cookbook as a gift. It was a slim little thing, well-designed and full of happy photographs, yet still obviously self-published (no publisher colophon, just the mark of Thompson-Shore, a book manufacturer). I could see, however, why this kind of publishing made perfect sense for this author, as a way to share recipes and her outlook on food and life with her guests. Money from the book itself is probably secondary to the strong relationships it builds.

My habit with cookbooks is to write a little note next to each recipe with the date I first made it, my experience with the recipe, and a word about whether or not I would make it again since it is easy to forget five years later how each one worked. For some reason this book captivated me and I started writing notes all over it. For Barbara's Pumpkin Muffins: "Oct. 12, 2002. Amazingly good, and they freeze well. Made 1/2 recipe for six nice-sized muffins." For Banana Pecan Scones: "Nov. 21, 2003. Made for Artist's Way group, cut w/a heart-shaped cutter. Followed recipe exactly." For Lily's Café's Most Requested Chocolate Layer Cake: "Better than Martha Stewart's one-bowl chocolate cake, and easier!"

I ignored my other cookbooks by James Beard and Marcella Hazan in favor of this modest volume from a chef who to my knowledge has never been on TV, and who paid to publish her own book.

So what did I get for Christmas this year from the same friend up in Maine? Cooking in the Moment: Four Seasons of Cooking on an Island in Maine by none other than Kyra Alex. She signed it "For Carole, Here's to a decadent bite of chocolate cake and the wonderful moments it brings! Kyra Alex." I was as thrilled that she knew my name as if she had been M. F. K. Fisher or Julia Child herself (and yes, Kyra Alex has cooked for Julia Child... one year she made her official birthday cake!).

Imagine, all this excitement over self-published books from an author who doesn't even have a website, let alone a Food Network deal or her own line of kitchen knives. If you want to buy one of her books, I recommend the first one for now, until I see how the second one goes... but something tells me it will be just as wonderful.