Why social media does/doesn’t matter and why you should/shouldn’t just shut up about it already

• Journalist Dave Obee uses author Dave Bidini as an example of why artists shouldn’t quit Facebook
• Author Maureen Johnson’s hilarious rant on the tedium of social media marketing: I Am Not A Brand
• A marketing specialist discovers that all the time you spend hawking your work via social media is not paying off in sales at all
• and because it is Friday … a little something special

UPDATED: David Davidar to leave Penguin

Penguin Canada president David Davidar – who took over the firm in fall 2003 and has been widely credited with returning it to good health – will soon be leaving the company and returning to India, his homeland.

[UPDATE] According to Penguin Canada director of marketing and publicity Yvonne Hunter, Davidar will not be continuing on with Penguin India, either. He is leaving the company altogether to pursue his writing career and other projects.

John Makinson, the U.K.-based chairman and CEO of Penguin Group, flew in to Toronto yesterday to join Davidar in conveying the news to staff and to explain how the company will be structured going forward.

Once Davidar leaves – which is likely to happen in July – staff will begin reporting to Penguin U.S. CEO David Shanks. According to Hunter, this is a permanent arrangement and Davidar will not be replaced. The most senior figure at Penguin Canada will now be publisher Nicole Winstanley, who is going on maternity leave in August. Ivan Held, publisher of Putnam U.S., will oversee the publishing program in Winstanley’s absence, and Nick Garrison, formerly of Doubleday Canada, will be handling the editing on several of her titles. Both Shank and Held will be flying to the Toronto offices next week to meet with staff and hammer out more of the arrangements.

When asked if the new reporting structure might mean changes to the Canadian publishing program, Hunter was emphatic: “Absolutely not. We have a really dynamic publishing program … that we absolutely intend to sustain.” Meanwhile, Winstanley stated in a press release that “the Canadian division will continue to publish robustly…. The new imprints that we have launched (Hamish Hamilton Canada in 2009 and Allen Lane Canada this year) reiterate our commitment to publish the best writers in Canada and abroad … and that is the direction we’ll continue in.”

Penguin Canada will continue to ship all lines from the Pearson Canada distribution centre in Newmarket, Ontario.

The changing face of DIY

In a recent column in The Globe and Mail, Russell Smith makes an excellent case for dismantling the stereotype of traditional publishers as obstinate elitists resistant to change:

Of course, everyone wants to get into selling e-books. No one is resisting this idea. The problem is that not everyone wants to buy them yet. Furthermore, no one has yet agreed on who will be in control of these sales, and in particular of how much each of these books is going to cost. Both the publishers and the booksellers want to set the prices, and the booksellers will want to set the prices much lower than the publishers will.

Smith goes on to discuss how e-books are helping change the face of self-publishing; he thinks that, in the age of PayPal, vanity presses may not be considered inferior to traditional publishing, despite continued lack of support from arts councils and awards juries:

Some of the most popular writers on the Internet are unpaid and unpublished in print. Furthermore, even successful published authors are beginning to experiment with putting their own works up for sale online. In this case, it’s not a lack of renown that causes authors to self-publish, but the opposite: If an author is a really big name, she knows she already has the following to generate sales without the help of a publisher’s marketing and sales departments.

The National Post examined the phenomenon of DIY publishing in a recent article:

It’s a curiosity of modern culture that an indie CD or film is cool, while a self-published book still carries a whiff of stigma. Don’t believe it? Just try to get your indie book reviewed in most publications that habitually fawn over indie music and film.

The book industry: this week in quotes

“We’ve had the ‘woe is me, alas’ memoir, the ‘feeling orgasmic over the touch of linen on my toes alone in bed in Italy on Tuesday’ memoir, the ‘Thank Christ she wasn’t my mother’ memoir, the ‘I got rid of my husband and everything makes sense’ memoir, and now, in the case of Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story, we arrive at the “nothing in particular, on me holidays with me mum, we might be having a crisis but you’ll need a magnifying glass to find it” memoir. Publishers trot this tripe out because of the chance it might be lifted by the winds of marketing and carried to every middle-class dinner table.” – Anakana Schofield, from The Globe and Mail‘s Daily Review for Jan. 12

“A new independent study, conducted by the online monitoring and enforcement service Attributor, found that ‘nine million illegal downloads of copyright-protected books were documented during the closing months of 2009,’ according to the [Association of American Publisher's] release….Indeed, those are staggering numbers – and something that must be contended with. And yet they’re kind of perversely encouraging in a way: That many people want to read that many books, and are willing to steal to do so…. At least that goes against the ‘nobody reads anymore’ and ‘it’s the death of publishing’ story we’ve been hearing so much of. And that glass of rare Chateau Lafite 1787 is half full.“  - Mobylives

“How surreally wonderful to discover that an entire exhibition devoted to the ‘works’ of David Foster Wallace’s fictional creation James Incandenza is set to open later this month. A cult filmmaker, Incandenza is the star of Wallace’s seminal novel Infinite Jest… As was his wont, Wallace included a footnote in the novel about the filmography of Incandenza, and now using the author’s ‘detailed list of over 70 industrial, documentary, conceptual, advertorial, technical, parodic, dramatic non-commercial, and non-dramatic commercial works’, Columbia University’s Neiman Centre has commissioned artists and filmmakers to make the movies.”- The Guardian

“Three weeks after Highsmith’s arrival, a new resident appeared at Yaddo: Flannery O’Connor. Does your imagination not crackle at the idea of Highsmith and O’Connor living under the same set of roofs? As Highsmith drafted Strangers on a Train, O’Connor worked on Wise Blood…. Highsmith did not think much of O’Connor, who was disinclined to join the other colonists on their treks to the taverns of Saratoga Springs” – The New Yorker

January is SUAWOYN month … according to Colson Whitehead.

“Canada’s literary scene does not financially support more than a handful of authors, so don’t limit your work to Canada if your goal is to make a living as a novelist. You will either starve or die of frustration. It’s hard enough trying to make it as a writer without adding obstacles in your path.” – author Jeffrey Round on Open Book Toronto

Vancouver librarians told to cover up non-Olympic logos

According to CTV, librarians in Vancouver have been warned by city officials to use only approved Olympic sponsors in any Games-themed events they host next month, and to conceal the logos of any non-Olympic companies that may pass in front of patrons’ eyeballs.

The memo, written by marketing and communications manager Jean Kavanagh, tells staff to avoid such companies as Pepsi or Dairy Queen – neither of which is an official sponsor, unlike, say Coca-Cola or McDonald’s. And she suggests taking unusual steps to avoid displaying the logos of non-sponsors, writing: “If you have a speaker/guest who happens to work for Telus, ensure he/she is not wearing their Telus jacket, as Bell is the official sponsor.”

She also writes that any rented sound equipment have its brand name covered by cloth or tape – if it’s not a machine from sponsor Panasonic.

Though Kavanagh goes on to say that her list of Olympic dos and don’ts doesn’t constitute censorship, Alex Youngberg, president of the local library union, disagrees:

“There’s something in my library to offend everybody,” [Youngberg] said. “And that’s our job. Our job as library staff is to not ever censor any information.”

Bookmarks: The Advent Book Blog helps you shop, The National Post picks a shadow Canada Reads list, and more

• Richard Lea at the Guardian blog: If you can’t get Roth, Palin, or Rowling on the Kindle, what can you get?
• David Suzuki’s garbage gets combed through for incriminating Kraft Dinner boxes, and now archeologists are looking at what the Bard may have tossed away
• The L.A. Times picks their 25 favourite books of the year and actually selects some – gasp – poetry! That provoked a hearty booyah from this cubicle
• Web 2.0 marketing guru and Bookmadam Julie Wilson has teamed up with Books on the Radio‘s Sean Cranbury to offer the Advent Book Blog: Great Books Recommended by Great People
• Those funny book blog dudes at the National Post noted this year’s Canada Reads pics and wondered, what should Canada also read? Get your answers in by 5:00 p.m. this afternoon and maybe you’ll be able to participate in the alterna-reads version of the popular CBC book debate show

Should literary agents be afraid of Amazon?

While Amazon is keeping quiet about the meetings it held last week with top U.S. agents, several commentators have begun to speculate about their significance. Crain’s reports that the talks were “freewheeling, frank, and contentious,” with e-books and aggressive discounting being the main topics under discussion. Meanwhile, MobyLives comments that the meetings are “one of the first signs that major agents are worried about the survival of the current system of author advances and royalties.”

Taking the argument one step further, GalleyCat asks the provocative question, “Literary agents … Who needs them?”

One published author who asks to be unnamed disagrees [that agents still serve a useful purpose], “What do you need an agent for anymore, really? Why? To negotiate a meager advance? You can’t get them on the phone anyway. You’re stuck promoting the book yourself because publishers don’t put any marketing dollars into your book unless you’re John Grisham. I don’t see the whole point when I can hire an attorney to negotiate my publishing contract for a flat fee or just upload the book to Kindle myself.”

Bookmarks: a small town book tour, inappropriate books for kids, and Walt Whitman selling jeans

Bookish links from across the Web:

• Test your celebrity poet knowledge over at Details and guess which verses have been written by Michael Jackson, Mr. Spock, Jewel, or William Butler Yeats
• Battle of the sexes, poetry edition: Do women write “female” poetry? 
• Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue tour skips San Francisco and Los Angeles and makes stops in Noblesville, Indiana, and Rochester, New York 
• Don’t tell Scholastic: a new blog dedicated to inappropriate books for kids
• Recordings of Walt Whitman reading “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” and “America” are being used in Levi’s Jeans new ad campaign. Controversial use of a dead poet’s work or clever marketing strategy? Slate Magazine discusses
• Kazuo Ishiguro “auditions” characters to narrate his novels. Colum McCann will print out chapters of his incomplete book, staple them together, and take them to Central Park, pretending to be reading someone else’s work. The Wall Street Journal interviews 11 top authors about their writing habits

Free books, free readings on the streets of Toronto

The International Festival of Authors took to the streets this morning in downtown Toronto to drum up public interest in the fest, which gets underway at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre on Oct. 21. Festival organizers hired a rag-tag band of actors to give impromptu readings from a number of books featured in the fest – including Ian Weir’s Daniel O’Thunder (Douglas & McIntyre), Lauren Kirshner’s Where We Have to Go (McClelland & Stewart), Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist, and Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger – and to give away hundreds of free books. [UPDATE: Organizers are handing out backlist titles by some of the authors featured at the fest, so don't expect to get a free copy of The Anthologist.]

Organizers will repeat the stunt at Nathan Phillips Square from noon to 1 p.m. See below for photos from this morning’s happening.

Book marketing on a budget

In the latest issue of The New Yorker, Ellis Weiner takes a satirical look at how U.S. publishing houses are coping in a down market. In this Shouts & Murmurs piece, an intern “brought on … to replace the promotion department” at the fledgling (fictional) Propensity Books outlines the company’s marketing plans for an author’s book:

To start: Do you blog? If not, get in touch with Kris and Christopher from our online department, although at this point I think only Christopher is left. I’ll be out of the office from tomorrow until Monday, but when I get back I’ll ask him if he spoke to you. We use CopyBuoy via Hoster Broaster, because it streams really easily into a Plaxo/LinkedIn yak-fest meld. When you register, click “Endless,” and under “Contacts” just list everyone you’ve ever met. It would be great if you could post at least six hundred words every day until further notice.

The company has its eyes set on traditional media “gets” as well:

Once we get back from Frankfurt, we’d like to see you on morning talk shows like the Today show and The View, so please get yourself booked on them and keep us “in the loop.” If I’m not here – which I won’t be, since after the book fair I go on vacation for two weeks – just tell Jenni, my assistant, when she gets back from jury duty.