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The Boston Globe published a piece today that questions that validity of the non-fiction book Bringing Down the House, which inspired the recent hit film 21, starring Kevin Spacey. (I actually just read the book this weekend, and saw the film the weekend before that, but that proves no point other than I have no real social life.)

Both the author, Ben Mezrich, and his editor stand behind his book. However, as with A Million Little Pieces and Love and Consequences before, such a claim has spurred controversy and many readers are feeling betrayed.

While Sebastian Junger claims doing so is “lying,” on Papercuts. His argument is that “nonfiction is reporting the world as it is, and when you combine characters and change chronology, that’s not the world as it is; that’s something else.”

Mezrich ever intended for his book to be educational or representational of “the world as it is.” He tells the Globe that he “took literary license to make it readable.”

The Globe writes that such non-fiction trends are

Much like reality television shows, the shift is fed by the sense that what audiences want is reality, but packaged with an excitement and drama that the original facts lack.

And does anyone get truly angry that The Amazing Race, Survivor and the thousands of other shows like them, play with the idea of “reality”? I know it happens, but never with the vigor as it does in the literary world.

Non-fiction books, like reality television, has a spectrum. Television viewers don’t put the Discovery Channel documentaries and MTV reality shows in the same box. Why are non-fiction books treated differently? What literary high ground exists so that movies and television can take extreme creative liberties with “reality” with relatively little controversy and books cannot?

While publishers and authors should never misrepresent their books (and this is totally the case in some books!), readers need to take greater responsibility in recognizing and understanding why they are reading that particular book. Are you reading it to learn something? Or are you reading it for entertainment value?

Such critical thinking could even inspire greater debate around literature, the media and more.

Image by Falcifer. Licensed via Creative Commons.

The other day, HarperCollins US announced a radical shift in their publishing policies when they launch a new imprint soon. The entire Wall Street Journal article is here, if you’d like to read it, but here’s the short version:

• Authors will no longer receive large advances
• Book sellers will no longer be able to return books
• They will no longer engage in co-op programs at book stores

I think, given the radically shifting book market, these are fantastic moves to be making. While they might initially lose authors with this model, it reverses the ridiculous “wait and see” approach of publishing– that is, throwing a bunch of money at a book and wait and see if it does well. It’s a much more efficient business model.

The Wall Street Journal argues that the largest impact on the publishing industry will be the non-returnable aspect of this new approach. I can’t help but wonder what this will do for the creative element of the industry.

According to WSJ, executive Robert S. Miller “thinks he will attract major authors who have a book in the desk drawer that doesn’t fit their image, as well as up-and-coming writers.”

Without books costing publishers so much money up front with expensive advances, they will be able to publish more books. And when you publish more books, the avenue opens for more authors and more voices to enter the publishing industry, and gives consumers more content to choose from.

According to HarperCollins executive Jane Friedman, who spoke to the New York Times,

At this moment of real volatility in the book business, when we are all recognizing things that are difficult to contend with, like growing advances and returns and that people are reading more online, we want to give them information in any format that they want (my emphasis).

I wonder how such a model would work for the Canadian publishing industry. Yes, the Canadian publishing industry isn’t nearly as competitive as the American one, but I believe such an approach would further solidify the mandate of furthering Canadian cultural production as well as streamlining the business side of publishing, as well as empowering book stores and consumers to select titles that are right for them.

Thanks to Joe Wikert, I came across Podiobooks, a website that offers serialized audiobooks for free.

Users can subscribe to a book or books and download the chapters to listen to as they are released. They let you get your books through iTunes, Juice and Transitor. They currently have over 190 titles and 42,000 users. Pretty crazy stuff.

Joe makes the great suggestion of Podiobooks joining forces with the other publishing platforms. Joe’s a smart guy, you should read his blog.

Check out Podiobooks and let me know what you think!

While I fall somewhere in the middle of the “print is dead” and “print will never die” schools of thought, there is one book medium which completely confuses me and always will–the hardcover book.

Not necessarily the hardcover per se, but the hardcover with dust jackets. They are bulky, difficult to transport, difficult to store, and make for difficult upkeep. I successfully rip all my dust covers within minutes of purchase, then store them somewhere for “safekeeping” while I read the book, only to find it three months later, half-chewed by our resident mouse under the couch.

In today’s mobile, fast-paced, disposable, multi-tasking world, where do hardcovers fit? Reading is happening on subways, on airplanes, in small snippets while doing other things. Gen Y is the generation of multi-tasking and reading is no exception. This is not a bad thing, but books need to evolve with how people are reading them–digital or not.

Hardcovers are bulky and just annoying. I know not every publisher and every book follows the hardcover-paperback-mass market lifeline, but I think it’s a cycle worth reconsidering. How are you going to attract new readers and younger readers, readers who grew up in a culture of disposability, instant gratification and choice when the current buzzed about book is a $40.00 hardcover and they’ll need to wait six to eight months for the paperback version?

Hardcovers. I hate them. Except for a few niches–textbooks, large-print editions, some cook books and some children’s books–I don’t see their point.

I’m sure there a valuable reasons to print in hardcover. The current ones I get at school–”tradition” and “the media”–are whack. Why do publishers let media outlets dictate how and when they’ll publish books? With the rise of new media, media is bigger and more diverse than ever before. You just need some resilience and some creativity.

As for tradition, I’m not saying kill the hardcover completely. I’m just saying that readers deserve choice. Choice in where they read, what they read, how they read, and the format they read it in. Book publishers shouldn’t punish readers for wanting choice.

And I cant think of a single reason we should ever use dust jackets. Ever.

Image by betizuka. Licensed through Creative Commons.

Publisher and blogger Ted Savas recently wrote about the keys to building book success. His advice is so simple and true–and it works.

Savas writes:

The fundamentals for selling any book are essentially the same. Here is the secret: talk about your book as often as you can, with as many people as you can, for as long as you can, wherever you can, even if you don’t sell a single copy when you do. Oh, and there is a follow up: REPEAT–REPEAT–REPEAT.

Nothing about mediums, about budgets, about having a well-known author or a movie deal. Nothing about “doing what you know” or “doing what works” or “reinventing the wheel.”

It’s promising advice for the future of books. The more places you talk about it, the more places people will come across it.

It’s that simple.

PS. Ted Savas’s blog is absolutely great. I’m only sad I didn’t find it earlier!

Image by awrose. Licensed via Creative Commons.

I was excited and proud when I read this article in the Toronto Star that said that Canada is leading the book industry in terms of eco-friendliness.

Vit Wagner writes:

115 Canadian publishers, accounting for between 60 and 75 per cent of the market here, have implemented ecologically improved paper-purchasing policies, according to a 2008 report by Markets Initiative, a Canadian environmental non-governmental organization that lobbies the publishing and printing sectors to increase their use of recycled paper stock.

While this is excellent news, we still have a ways to go. I’m constantly hearing in school that recycled paper isn’t high quality enough and lots of things currently being published aren’t recyclable.

But it’s a start! Yay Canada! Read the full article here.

The following is an interesting interview with the editor-in-chief of Wired, Chris Anderson. In it he talks about the print/web dynamic and the role of choices for readers of magazines. It’s about twenty-two minutes long, but it’s worth it!

He does an excellent job differentiating between the two mediums and highlighting the value of print magazines (and books!). I can’t help but to agree with nearly everything he says.

I found this comment about book publishing particularly interesting:

“A book is a superior product to reading the same material as text on a screen…I think a book has a place in the 21st century…”

Even the biggest tech-heads see value in the traditional book. The book is here to stay. However, the book industry need to become less scared of new technologies and embrace them.

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.