erin!balser

As you can probably tell already, I’m a big advocate for the digital world. I get all my news online, I can happily read a computer screen for eight hours and take my laptop to bed with me.

Other advocates use the “virtual is greener” argument when calling for a change from print to screen.

However, the true environmental impacts of a digital world are emerging. Wired editor Chris Anderson argued that “dead-tree magazines have a smaller net carbon footprint than web media.” Yet, Brendan Koernor of Slate argues that Anderson “underestimates the long-term consequences and carbon emissions of logging in old-growth forests, as well as the nasty pollution created by the wood pulping industry.”

Either way, it’s hard to assess the environmental impact of an industry that’s not only rapidly adopting green standards, it’s also facing a digital revolution.

As it is, environmental issues can be easily adapted for both the pro-print and pro-screen camps. This is without any real benefit to those who it matters most–the environment and the consumer.

In the end, it’s about adopting a medium between print and screen wherein the user is happy and where they can make informed environmental decisions.

Image by monettenriquez. Licensed via Creative Commons.

Matt and I were talking the other day about Generation Y (we do that a lot!) and literature. You see, Canadian literature has a distinctive identity on the international market: it’s very literary, it’s very multicultural and it’s very much tied into the Canadian landscape.

There hasn’t been a voice on the Canadian scene that represents me and my generation. Wait, let me rephrase that. There hasn’t been a voice on the Canadian scene people are paying attention to that represents me and my generation.

In the late nineties, something happened in American literature. Dave Eggers, Chuck Klosterman, and others–tech-savvy, slacker-types who remember Puck from MTV and when NKTOB were cool–started to get attention. Chick lit exploded and hip girls like Marisha Pessl and Lauren Weisenberger got six figure advances. Graphic novels are becoming mainstream. Youth, for once, was dictating the direction of publishing. These writers had impressive print-runs, vast fan-bases and a voice people listen(ed) to.

Canada doesn’t have that yet. The closest writer I can think of is Douglas Coupland, but he’s been around for over twenty years.

This is why it bothered me when I opened Quill & Quire’s latest issue–the one celebrating “the most influential, innovative and just plain powerful people in Canadian publishing”–and found that not only were there very few writers, the writers chosen were tried-and-true power players.

There were plenty of bright spots–Chris Olivero, Nicole Rycroft, and Brian Lam are just a few inspiring people–but the list felt overwhelming business-oriented and old.

Maybe the Canadian landscape isn’t encouraging and facilitating young, outspoken, original Canadian writers. While I seriously doubt this (Ellen Page, Sarah Polley and Jason Reitman are all examples of young innovation in Canadian creative industries), I cannot help but think that it’s not the lack of innovation Canadians, but the lack of innovation in an industry that celebrates the tried-and-true, the giants and the dinosaurs.

These people are important. They are shaping the industry. I respect them greatly. I’m not saying we shouldn’t celebrate the past. But in an industry struggling as much as publishing, we should be looking to the future with just as much enthusiasm.

I’m sure they are out there. Why aren’t they getting heard?

Image via Quill and Quire

For On the Danforth, the student magazine that we here at the Book and Magazine publishing program at Centennial College produce, Jen and I interviewed Michelle Lane, the founder of the Lane Montessori School for Autism. She was a fabulous and very impressive woman.

Michelle founded the Lane Montessori School for Autism in 2003. She wanted to create a unique program for children with autism and special needs that combined the traditional Applied Learning Behavior Methods with the Montessori teaching methods developed by Maria Montessori in the late 1800s.

LMSA combines traditional Montesori teaching practices with Applied Behavior Analysis practices. The classes are very small–only four students each–and the students receive a lot of one-on-one attention. Lane’s school integrates traditional autism approaches with the Montessori approaches. Lane believes that the blend of these two approaches is best for children with autism.

“Children with autism are largely visual learners,” Lane says. “They learn concrete concepts through hands-on learning, as opposed to abstract concepts. It’s about understanding the world around them.”

Read more »

Tonight, I will be pajama-clad early, snacks on hand, watching starlets sashaying up the red carpet, and wondering who will win the coveted Oscar statuette. It’s the most exciting night in the film industry and one of the most watched telecasts in the world.

I’ll be paying paticular attention to the select Canadians nominated: Jason Reitman for Best Director, Ellen Page for Best Actress and Sarah Polley for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Which brings me to the subject of note: film adaptations of books. As I was browsing the blogs of my friends, Patricia had this to say about the movie The Kite Runner:

In spite of all it’s good qualities, the book was still way better than the movie. I’m a print snob, shoot me.

Being from a pseudo-academic, pseudo-publishing background, I hear this all the time. It’s not always meant to be pretentious, but it always bothers me. A book is not a film and a film is not a book. A film is a single artist’s interpretation of a particular story through a different medium.

The screen is inherently different from the page. Literature is not bound by the visual elements of film beyond words on a page. Literature is not bound by a two-hour time frame. Literature allows you to move through the story at your own spatial and temporal pace, whereas films do not.

Yes, some films are better adapted at others. Some adaptations leave out crucial plot-points or misinterpret characters. But at the core, a film adaptation is not like a cover song. It’s a creative interpretation, the transition of a story from one medium to the other, which may or may not correspond to how you interpreted the book.

Image by melodrama.ca. Licensed through Creative Commons.

A few days ago Timothy Egan of the NY Times responded to Steve Jobs’ statement about Amazon’s Kindle:

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is,” Jobs told the Times. “the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.”

I’m one of the people who found this statement really disappointing. I believe Apple is a company that could make an e-book reader work, make it compatible with several other programs on the market and make it sexy. Hell, it could be as easy as giving the iPhone book-reading capabilities.

Anyways, back to Egan. In his refute of Jobs and his declaration of his love of books, he had the following to say:

The Mac, Pixar, the iPhone, the iPod, iTunes. This stuff is cool. Lighter than air. iGetit. But it’s just product, dude.

Just product? Maybe so. But these products revolutionized the way we consume things. Apple has changed how we interact with technology, with creative industries, and, to some extent, with each other. How can it be “just product” if it’s doing that?

Egan’s statement comes from a desire to demonstrate that reading is above being “just product.” “Reading is something else, an engagement of the imagination with life experience,” he writes. “It’s fad-resistant, precisely because human beings are hard-wired for story, and intrinsically curious. Reading is not about product.”

Egan is confusing “reading” with “books”. iTunes and iPods are products, listening is not. The Mac is a product, everything we use it for is not. iPhone is a product, interacting with friends and surfing the internet is not.

If we had a device that had inter-active cross-references and indices, that let us immediately hook up to others reading the same book, that gave us access to secondary and outside resources through the very book we were reading, that gave us the ability to instantly store and save passages we found moving or thought-provoking, wouldn’t that change how we read?

Yes, reading is more than product.

But, just as with those other products, the right e-reader will be more than “just product.”

We just need to get Steve Jobs on board.

Image by Dave & Bry. Licensed through Creative Commons.

Apartment Therapy shared yet another ingenious way to store books–this time in your staircase!

These stairs are obviously specially-made but I’m sure anyone building or renovating could easily incorporate this idea into their plans!

Chip Kidd, the renowned book designer, created the YouTube video below to promote his latest book, The Learners.

While the comments the video received so far are mixed, you have to give the guy credit for being truly unique when it comes to book marketing and promotion!

Do you think YouTube views will translate into book sales?

And does this video even appropriately reflect the book’s content? Guess I’ll have to read it to find out!

In my Book Sales and Marketing class recently we had to analyze a publishing houses website for its success in terms of marketing. What really struck me was how passive these sites were. Sure, they give the necessary information–upcoming titles and events and information about the author. There wasn’t any sense of community or any sense of identity with these sites.

What if publishing houses attempted to build an online brand around themselves and built a web community on this? What if the publishing houses interacted directly with readers? Supplied RSS feeds for news and events? Gave the editors behind titles a face with their own blogs? Allowed readers to interact with them through comments on books, on authors, on events, on anything? What if readers followed these houses on Twitter? What if the houses themselves supplied readers with materials and ideas of interest and not just rely on their authors to do this? What is publishing houses–even the big ones!–had personality?

I recently had a teacher tell me that if the old methods work, we don’t need to go outside the box when it comes to book marketing. This type of thinking is just plain wrong. In a world where publishing industry is changing–and changing dynamically–where fewer people are reading books than ever before, publishers need to get better at reaching their readers, and connecting with them in ways the reader wants. Why is everyone so afraid of failure?

I’m sure the average reader doesn’t know who publishes their favorite author–and doesn’t care. I bet we could change this. I’ve seen some change. Coach House has an RSS feed for their news and events and almost every Canadian publisher has a Facebook group. But publishers need to be better engaged and capitalize on these new opportunities being presented to them.

Sure, their website is a great place to buy a book. But it might be a great place to talk about it too.

Does anyone have any great examples of this? I’d love to see one.

Image by inju. Lisenced via Creative Commons.

Here’s the parody of the “Yes We Can” music video. It’s scary to think that those quotes were indeed pulled out of a speech John McCain made.

This video alone makes me wish I could vote for Obama!