All stories by James Grainger
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Grande promo
The Starbucks coffee chain has announced plans to expand its in-store marketing program to include movies and books. The company has had tremendous success promoting and selling a limited line of CDs in their stores and recently put their marketing muscle behind the film Akeelah and the Bee. According to an article on the International Herald Tribune site, Starbucks “has signed an agreement with the William Morris Agency to find more movie and book projects to market. The aim is to have one book in Starbucks stores this year and at least two or three movies to promote and sell on DVD next year, with more projects in years to come.” There is no word yet on what that book title will be, but you can bet there are thousands of crossed fingers out there. (Thanks to Bookninja.com for the link.)
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Read the article on the International Herald Tribune site
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I want my baby back
The bid by HMV, owner of Waterstone’s, the largest retail bookseller in the U.K., to buy the Ottakar’s bookstore chain just took an unexpected turn. The Guardian is reporting that Tim Waterstone, who started the chain in 1982 before selling out to W.H. Smith in 1993, wants to buy his stores back from HMV, who bought the company from W.H. Smith in 1998. Waterstone is offering £280-million for his old chain, but only on the condition that HMV drop its bid to purchase Ottaker’s. No word yet from HMV on the offer, but the company’s stock price has risen 3% since Waterstone’s bid became public.
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Read the Guardian article
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Choose your battles
The SlushPile site has an editorial titled “Why People Hate Self-Published Authors.” The piece is not as caustic as it sounds, but is more of a warning to authors to understand the limitations (and potential upside) of self-publishing and to not fall into the trap of mistaking their books for those published by legitimate houses: “When you self-publish, or go with one of the more questionable print-on-demand services, you are essentially going around [the traditional publishing] system. You’re taking your ball, going home, and making up your own game in the backyard. Your game might be fun, it might be a valid exercise, it might be the perfect thing for your situation, but it’s not the same way all the other kids play. And to pretend otherwise is to invite scorn and derision.”
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Read the piece on SlushPile.net
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Everyone’s got one — a life story, that is
The Wall Street Journal site has an article on the increasing popularity of the memoir genre — this in spite of, or perhaps partially because of, the recent James Frey controversy. Staffer Robert J. Hughes looks at the variety of memoirs currently on the market, from celebrity tell-alls to political memoirs to in-depth treatments of life-changing events by the famous and the unknown. The article is also useful as a primer on the differences between autobiography and memoir. “Autobiographies typically cover a person’s entire life,” Hughes writes, “while memoirs usually are confined to a specific period or relationship in that person’s life.” This interpretive focus lends itself to a more stylized treatment of biographical material, though it is the very “literary” nature of the memoir that leaves it open to the kind of scam Frey pulled on his gullible readers. (Thanks to Bookninja.com for the post.)
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Read the Wall Street Journal article
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Why the young don’t read: part XXIV
The CBC site has a piece on this year’s Canada Reads shortlist, which the on-air panel will whittle down to a single title by the end of this week. In Other Media couldn’t help but notice that, except for Mordecai Richler’s Cocksure, which takes place in Swinging-Sixties London, the titles on the shortlist either take place in the distant past or focus on small-town and rural life. Apparently us Canadians are either hard at work fixing our snowmobiles or reflecting on distant World Wars. Noticeably absent from the list is the token French-Canadian novel in translation, an oversight that is no doubt being discussed at the highest levels of the mother corp.
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Read about Canada Reads on the CBC site
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A critic critiqued
Slate.com has an interesting evaluation of longtime New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani. What’s interesting about Ben Yagoda’s piece is that he avoids the vitriolic attacks levelled at Kakutani by such heavyweights as Susan Sontag and Normal Mailer — who referred to the Japanese-American critic as a “one-woman kamikaze” and a “token” minority hire — and focuses on what he sees as a rather plodding approach to her craft. “Kakutani doesn’t offer the stylistic flair, the wit, or the insight one gets from [Pauline] Kael and other first-rate critics,” Yagoda writes. “For her, the verdict is the only thing. One has the sense of her deciding roughly at Page 2 whether or not a book is worthy; reading the rest of it to gather evidence for her case; spending some quality time with the Thesaurus; and then taking a large blunt hammer and pounding the message home.”
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Read Ben Yagoda’s piece on Slate.com
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Life after Hogwarts
After another round of spectacular financial results, Bloomsbury, publisher of the Harry Potter series, continues to be Britain’s homegrown answer to the multinational giants that dominate the industry. But there is much speculation about how things will go for the independent publisher when the seventh and final Potter book hits the stores, which could be as early as next year. The Guardian‘s Matt Seaton reminds readers that Bloomsbury wasn’t exactly dead in the water before Potter — they are, after all, the U.K. publisher of such heavyweights as Margaret Atwood, Joanna Trollope, and John Irving — but shareholders have come to expect the kind of returns that only a mega-selling author like J.K. Rowling can bring. To keep up their profile, the company is using its excess cash to muscle in on the lucrative mass-market business, as well as backing up its literary list with new books by Richard Ford and Germaine Greer. And then there’s always Rowling’s post-Potter career.
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Read the Guardian article
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We should be so lucky
The Guardian website features a report on the outrage over the British Competition Commission’s tentative approval of a takeover bid of the Ottaker’s bookstore chain by HMV, who already own the upscale Waterstone’s chain. The merger will give HMV control of 24% of all book sales in the U.K. and an even higher percentage of sales of specialist categories, including literary fiction titles. This has understandably raised the ire of many British independent booksellers, publishers, and authors, including Philip Pullman, who says: “I have had great experiences with Ottakar’s and with Waterstone’s too. But I like the fact that there are two of them.” Many of the fears expressed by those interviewed for the article will be familiar to book consumers in Canada, where up to 70%, depending on who you talk to, of book sales are in the hands of one megachain.
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Read the article on the Guardian site
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They love her in Scotland
Margaret Atwood’s extensive list of awards, citations, and fellowships just got even longer with the announcement that she has been chosen as the the inaugural writer for the The Muriel Spark International Fellowship. The fellowship, named after one of Scotland’s most revered novelists, will see Atwood fly to Scotland in September, where she will “spend time concentrating on work while also taking part in a number of light public duties, including presenting masterclasses, readings and lectures.” Those duties include a stay at an artists’ residency centre in Argyll and Bute and a public reading in Edinburgh. (Thanks to Bookninja.com for the link.)
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Read about the inaugural Muriel Spark International Fellowship
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The jeremiad of John
The closing of the bricks-and-mortar location of Boston’s Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop (the store will continue to sell its wares online) after 30 years in business has inspired the owners to post “The Crepuscule,” John Usher’s wonderful screed on the 12 reasons for the demise of the independent bookstore. Even In Other Media can’t do justice to Mr. Usher’s pithy summation of everything that’s gone wrong in the book biz in the last two decades, but here’s one of his 12 points to whet our readers’ appetites: “Publishers, [for] marketing their product like so much soap or breakfast cereal, aiming at demographics instead of people, looking for the biggest immediate return instead of considering the future of their industry, ignoring the art of typography, the craft of binding, and needs of editing, all to make a cheapened product of glue and glitz — for being careless of a 500 year heritage with devastating result.” Ouch. (Thanks to bookninja.com for the link.)
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Read John Usher’s “The Crepuscule”
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