What I Learned On The Other Side

You could call them secret shoppers. Like the plainclothes informants who check out department stores for a lapse in customer service, publishers who slip on authors’ shoes return from their writing experience armed with anecdotes and tips that market research can’t devine. What many intelligencers see shocks them. Even thirty-year publishing veterans see their industry in a new light after sitting on the other side of the desk. Adrian Zackheim, Publisher of Portfolio and Sentinel, said, “I was used to looking down the other end of the telescope, and writing [Getting Your Book Published for Dummies] made me understand why authors ‘don’t get it.’” And Bill Rosen, one time Executive Editor of Free Press and author of the forthcoming Justinian’s Flea (Viking), said “I learned how painful the process can be when you’re not part of it. It’s frustrating to think you know what’s going on and then wonder how they got from there to here.”

Though people in every department guide the author through the publishing process (and some, such as Penguin, even provide a nuts-and-bolts pre-pub booklet), many publisher-authors are still surprised at how unnerving it can be. “[The process gave me] a deeper empathy when working with authors on our list. I could much better understand their anxieties, especially when being reviewed,” said Jacqueline Deval, EVP and Publisher at Hearst as well as author of Publicize Your Book (Perigee) and the novel Reckless Appetites (Ecco). “Until it is your own work on the line, it is hard to appreciate what a blood sport publishing is,” confirmed Star Lawrence, Editor-in-Chief of Norton and author of The Lightning Keeper (HarperCollins). “I might once have made the analogy between a devastating review and losing at paint-ball: it’s messy, it stings, but tomorrow is another day. I wouldn’t be so quick to say that now, either to myself or to an author.”

For John Glusman, VP and Executive Editor of Harmony, however, his turn as an author taught him that the job can, and should, be done on time. “It has made me more sympathetic, but also more demanding as an editor,” he said. With three growing children and taking no more than vacation time off from his demanding editorial position, Glusman carved time to write whenever he could “on weekends, in elevators, waiting in line at the grocery store” to deliver Conduct Under Fire (Viking) just two months past deadline.

On the other hand, no amount of self-discipline or dedication could help Amanda Vaill, former Executive Editor at Viking, when writing both her books Everybody Was So Young (Houghton Mifflin) and Somewhere (Broadway). During her editorial tenure, backloading payment to incentivize manuscript delivery from authors was standard, but, as an author, it backfired and she found herself having to take time out from writing her books to write magazine articles just to pay the bills. And she commented, “the cost of money is not huge and there are production savings that never get passed on to the author,” she said. Publishers, en garde!

Despite the pitfalls and pains of the writer’s life, for those accustomed to working behind the scenes in one of the most complicated and arguably thankless industries, suddenly being center stage has got to feel pretty good. When Diane Gedymin, publishing veteran now at iUniverse, saw her first book Get Published! (iUniverse) displayed at Barnes & Noble, the primeval rush of ownership compelled her to pick it up, just to hold it. After a fellow browser struck up a conversation, Gedymin found herself humbly signing her first autograph.

Herewith an articulated primer for you and your authors of ten things you think they know but probably don’t (and that you should remind them, ahem, along with yourself):

1) Get to know the business. Zackheim put it this way: you wouldn’t go to London without booking a flight or a hotel or reading a guidebook, so you can’t expect to enter the world of publishing without preparation. Deval concurred, “authors have to understand the business they’re in–the business of publishing. They can’t wait for the publisher to tell them how to get involved. They need to be proactive early on. I knew that before becoming an author, but becoming one absolutely reinforced that knowledge.” Help your authors help themselves. For a general guide of what to expect and where to begin asking questions, have your authors consult our annotated list of resources on the PT website.

2) Master your own domain. John Glusman’s “newly minted author ego was damaged” when Viking declined to share the cost of a website. But after seeing how conductunderfire.com extends the reach of his book and facilitates feedback from readers, he knows the initial outlay of the author is rewarded later on. “A website is absolutely essential to certain books and the author must be involved in keeping the site up-to-date,” he said. When Glusman was about to go on the air for a radio interview, the interviewer confessed the book hadn’t arrived in time for him to read. After a quick look at excerpts and reviews on the website, the interviewer got a good feel for what the book was about and they had one of his best interviews to date. (Policies differ: Doubleday built and subsidized Jane Isay’s site–see below.)

3) The power of the podcast. Literary agent and former HarperCollins editor Craig Nelson was skeptical about podcasting, but at Viking’s urging, he participated in one when his biography, Thomas Paine, came out last year. “As it turns out,” said Nelson, “they were right and I was wrong, since Thomas Paine in fact triggered a lot of blogger attention, going on for months and months after pub, to the point where I had to set up Google Alerts to keep track of them all.”

4)“Ride the Big River.” Amazon is not just a force to be reckoned with, but one to be harnessed, and authors can explore and exploit it with little to no help from publishers. Steve Weber, online bookseller and author of Plug Your Book (forthcoming from his eponymous press), confirms that “the balance of power is shifting to book readers, and away from gatekeepers like professional critics. Online book reviews by ‘amateurs’ are crucial now, especially for new authors.” In his book, Weber lauds the new Amazon ad network Clickriver which is geared exclusively toward Amazon shoppers. Weber said, “The keyword suggestion tool is its strongest feature. For example, if you were compiling keywords to advertise a book about ‘bread baking,’ Clickriver would suggest author names, title phrases, and other words and phrases that customers have used to search for books about bread. You can be fairly sure that the objective of the search was to find a book, very possibly with the intention of making a purchase.” Just as the recent Wall Street Journal article cautioned, Weber warned against the Amazon Bestseller Campaign. The outlay is big and the benefits mostly minimal.

5) Blog til you can blog no more. Blogging isn’t the time-intensive, all-consuming activity many publishers fear it is. Gedymin pointed out that it’s in fact one of the most flexible marketing tools out there for authors. Updateable at all hours of the day and night, blogging keeps your name, your book, and your expertise in search engines. Weber gives tips to aspiring author-bloggers in his book, one of them being to set up a Google Alert to deliver topical news on your book’s subject, giving you fodder for blogging.

6) Mark your calendar. After several years of receiving calls from radio stations around the country in the weeks leading up to Mother’s Day, editorial consultant and writer Michele Slung and author of Momilies: As My Mother Used to Say (Ballantine) hired her own PR agency to book phoners to promote her book, which was a mass market (and now a trade) paperback. Twenty years and more than a million copies later, Momilies is still in print. “Books are like boats on a calm sea” said Slung, “they can get launched with a puff of wind, but they need a steady breeze to keep going.” This fall, Slung will help re-promote her latest book, A Treasury of Old-Fashioned Christmas Stories (Carroll & Graf), which was published last year.

7) Target the right audience. Tom Woll thought his book, Publishing for Profit (Chicago Review Press, revised ed. 2006) had a clearly defined target audience: small to mid-size publishers, presumably American. But Woll was surprised by the wide reach of the title. Aspiring publishers from all over the world got in touch with him and he parlayed the enthusiasm into seven foreign language editions.

8) Give publishers a run for their money. Ostensibly, the writer’s job is to write and the publisher’s job is to publish, but in reality, for a title to do well these days, all sides have to do substantially more than what’s expected. Years of dealing with the “my publisher should have done this for me” attitude from authors didn’t make Glusman immune to the sentiment himself. Most publishers-cum-authors admitted the amount of time and effort that goes into publishing a single book shocked them and the effort required of the author even more. “Authors who adopt the view that publishers are going to publish their book without a great deal of care and supervision [from the author] are gravely mistaken,” said Zackheim.

9) It’s not who you know, it’s who you know who knows your book. If the successful salesperson’s mantra is “always be closing,” the author’s can be “always be talking about your book.” When Roxanne Coady, founder of R. J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, CT, mentioned her book The Book that Changed My Life (Gotham) to bookselling compatriots at Powell’s, they invited her to be a guest blogger at their website. The cyber exposure led to more stints at other bookstore blogs. Likewise, Diane Gedymin uses every chance she gets to tell willing listeners about Get Published! and even hands out free copies at speaking engagements. And if the thought of real life networking sends your reclusive authors running back to the safety of their garrets, they can now do it virtually on (all together now!) MySpace. It’s working for Josh Kilmer-Purcell and The Memoirists Collective who have carefully and successfully cultivated a group of engaged friends. On March 20, Barry Eisler, as a guest editor on Buzz, Balls, and Hype (see Ink Slingers chart), wrote a particularly insightful thread about MySpace as a business tool.

10) Be relentless, but not obnoxious. “It’s important to be aggressive, but respectful of people’s time.You’re not alone as an author,” said Gedymin. As our publisher-authors discovered, even the most seasoned vet has to ask a few questions when put in the bewildering position of the author. Jane Isay, former Editor-in-Chief at Harcourt, said that before writing Walking on Eggshells, she “didn’t realize how narcissistic and weird and needy you become. The whole world revolves around your book.” If she’d learned this earlier in her career, she would have spoken to her authors differently, she said. “Maybe I would have told them to take up tai chi or some other meditative practice.”

International Bestsellers: The Addams Family Meets Sister Act

As a member of the first internet-savvy generation, the Brazilian Daniel Galera (who was born 1979) naturally looked to the web when he first started writing stories ten years ago. He wrote for and edited literary websites before switching to paper and co-founding Livros do Mal (Evil Books), a publishing project responsible for bringing some of the biggest names to the fore in the new surge of young Brazilian writers. With his latest novel, Horse Hands (Companhia das Letras), Galera tried something new: a conventional publisher. Critically acclaimed when it came out last year, Horse Hands juxtaposes the defining, crucial moments of several people’s lives, showing how even a single second during childhood can change the course of someone’s destiny. Until now, the solitary and half-hearted protagonist, Hermano, has lived an unexamined life. Seemingly out of the blue, he finds himself on the brink of adulthood and heading into a lifeless marriage. Dormant memories surface and Hermano must deal with a past of turbulent emotions, complicated sexual experiences, and death. Fragmented insights from the stoic Hermano are interspersed throughout the narrative. “[Galera’s narration] reminds of the scientific detailing of Ian McEwan in Saturday,” a critic says of Horse Hands. A film adaptation of a previous novel is on its way later in 2007 directed by the renowned Brazilian director Beto Brant. Rights have been licensed in Italy (Mondadori) and France (Gallimard). For more information, contact Piergiorgio Nicolazzini (piergiorgio.nicolazzini@pnla.it).

Slipping just below the top ten in France this month is The Suicide Shop (Julliard), a black comedy and first novel by Jean Teulé. No stranger to bestsellers, Teulé has previously published popular biographies of Villon, Rimbaud, and Verlaine. It was during research for the latter that he found a turn-of-the-century literary review called The Suicide Shop. When Teulé began to imagine what a store for suicides would look like, his novel was born. Stocked with nooses, poisoned apples, swords, and revolvers, the shop has been in the Tuvache family for ten generations. With the motto “Dead or your money back!” proprietors Mishima and Lucrèce are blessed with equally morbid children who eventually will take over the family business as long as they can resist the allure of its products. Life couldn’t get any better, or worse depending on your point of view, for the family until Alan, the product of a broken condom, is born. To the horror of his parents, Alan develops the one flaw that could prove fatal for the shop: optimism. His sense of humor and cheery voice push customers out the door and away from the cash register. When Mishima notices how little Alan’s love of life infects everyone around him, even his own wife and children, the paterfamilias starts to panic. In vain he reprimands Alan for sending customers off with “see you later” instead of “goodbye,” but his hands are tied and ten generations of suicidal success end with one little boy. Rights have been licensed in Israel (Pandora Box) and South Korea (Yolimwon). For more information, contact Greg Messina (gmessina@robert-laffont.fr).

The French must be feeling macabre lately as another dark novel, this one with more blood and less comedy, rounds out the top twenty. Goncourt-winning novelist Jacques Chessex based The Vampire of Ropraz (Grasset) on real events that took place over a hundred years ago just past his garden gate in rural Switzerland. Within months of each other, the graves of three young women are unearthed with the bodies mutilated. The mark of the vampire is everywhere. The body of innocent Rosa, dead at twenty from meningitis, shows tooth marks on the inner thighs and a gaping hole where the heart once was. Children find the scalped head of Nadine near another newly opened grave. Terror spreads from village to village fueling longstanding prejudices and igniting new ones. Everyone wants to trap the vampiric villain, but with no leads for a real suspect, a scapegoat is found in a mentally disabled farmhand named Favez who has a history of abusing horses in the stable. Tried, convicted, and imprisoned, Favez is subjected to psychiatric experiments until all trace of him disappears for good in 1915. A critic says of The Vampire of Ropraz that “the author has created a short, angular book with the pure, whetted edge of a horse-butcher’s knife or a mirror-cutter’s diamond.” German (Hanser/Nagel & Kimche) and Dutch (Voltaire) rights have been licensed. For more information, contact Heidi Warneke (hwarneke@grasset.fr).

While the French are filling up on grisly details, Germans are more curious about the holy, propelling What Fits in Two Suitcases: Years in the Convent (Goldmann) up to the third spot on the German non-fiction list. When she turned 21, author Veronika Peters decided to reject her spot in the upwardly mobile middle class to search for life’s deeper meaning. In a conversational yet refined voice, Peters begins her narrative as she arrives at the convent where she will go through the five-and-a-half-year process of becoming a nun. Struggling to resist the urge to smoke just one last cigarette before opening the door, Peters meets Sister Placida who informs her that from that point on, she will be addressed using the formal pronouns in German. Then Sister Hildegard takes her to the austere “cell” where she will sleep and pray. As she adjusts to the new vocabulary and physical discomforts of the cloistered lifestyle, Peters struggles to obey all the convent’s rules, spoken and unspoken. After six months as a postulant, she earns the right to wear the white veil of the novice. After two more years, she takes the preliminary vows that will bind her to the community for three years: stability, conversion to a cloistered life, and obedience to the standards that govern the convent. Twelve years after her last cigarette, Peters emerges from the convent to begin an entirely new life as a photographer and writer in Berlin. The title is currently on auction in Italy. Contact Gesche Wendebourg (Gesche.Wendebourg@Randomhouse.de).

Industry Ink Slingers

When we checked in with publishing “ink slingers” just over two years ago, Sara Nelson’s move to Publishers Weekly was imminent, and Jerome Kramer was in mid-launch of VNU’s The Bookstandard. Today, most of the industry stalwarts are still chugging along (including yours truly), many with expanded offerings. We’ve extended our profiles to include blogs (like MediaBistro’s Galley Cat) that have gained traction, as well as the online editions, and other platforms that once print-only publications are now exploring (like PW Daily, and the launch of their new website). For circulation numbers we turned to both recent ABC audits and Bacon’s, and for uniques we asked individual site owners for their best metrics. An important note: Web metrics are difficult – “Uniques” are individual visitors to a site over the course of a month–which excludes instances where one person visits a site 100 times, but also possibly excludes instances where 100 different people visit a site from one single location (e.g. Random House). When we couldn’t get in touch, the starred uniques are estimates by Compete.com, an online analytics site that bases rankings on users of their toolbar (making the stats notoriously low). Feel free to add, contest, and browse the list below…

Publishers Weekly

Price: $ 299.99/yr, $4.80/issue
Format/Freqency: Weekly (print), Daily (blogs, newsletters)
Circ. /Uniques: 23,000 (print circ. ABC) 200,000 (uniques)
Audience/Focus/Tone: Mixes pub. news segments with reviews. Largest segment is librarians (26%) followed by publishers (24%). Now offers discounts to booksellers (13%).
Ad Space/Cost: A on of options – 1x full-page print around $6500
Notes: New website with great design and added features – bugs need to be fixed – numerous image errors and lost links.

PW Daily

Price: Free online & with print subscription.
Format/Frequency: Daily Newsletter
Circ. /Uniques: 20,000 (circ)
Audience/Focus/Tone: The largest of PW’s daily e-news (religion, comics, children’s)
Ad Space/Cost: Ad space ranges from $441-$1118
Notes: . Circ. now rivals PW print subscribers.

Publisher’s Marketplace

Price: $20/mo.
Format/Frequency: Online content, database, blogs, etc.
Circ. /Uniques:  80,000+ (uniques) 90,000 page views.
Audience/Focus/Tone: The new industry standard. The source for deals, looking to expand into international. Comprehensive database; numerous blogs.
Ad Space/Cost: Featured Promotions.
Notes: The Cadar kingdom has effectively quelched the competition since it began five years ago. Expect more TK.

Publisher’s Lunch

Price: Free
Format/Frequency: Daily e-newsletter
Circ. /Uniques: 35,000 (circ.)
Audience/Focus/Tone: Links to daily industry news, events, wildly popular job board.
Ad Space/Cost: Recently added banner ads.
Notes: .Lunch Deluxe packs even more info – free with PM subscription.

Kirkus Reviews (VNU)

Price: Print/Online ($450 for 24 issues; $18.75/issue)
Format/Frequency: Bi-Monthly print, online & e-newsletter
Circ. /Uniques: 5,000 (circ. Bacon’s) 7,500 (uniques)
Audience/Focus/Tone: Reviews of approx. 200 titles/issue; for librarians, newspaper editors, agents, film producers & booksellers.
Ad Space/Cost: Banner ads, Google ads, Limited ad space in print.
Notes: Kirkus Reviews online database contains 275,000+ reviews dating back to 1933.

The Bookstandard (VNU)

Price: $9.95/mo.
Format/Frequency: Monthly e-newsletter.
Circ. /Uniques:  21,275 (uniques)
Audience/Focus/Tone: Nielsen Bookscan charts, contact databases, News, Reviews, & a retail analysis for booksellers.
Ad Space/Cost: Ad opportunities online, in the e-news & in special reports.
Notes: Rumors of shuttering the online magazine have been rampant this year.

Book Publishing Report (Simba)

Price: $695/yr; $57.90/issue.
Format/Frequency: Monthly e-newsletter, print, no free online content.
Circ. /Uniques: 15,000 (circ. Bacon’s) 400 (uniques for all of Simbanet)
Audience/Focus/Tone: Uses Simbanet data and recycled press releases – published by Bowker. The data is interesting, but not placed in any context.
Ad Space/Cost:  No Ads.
Notes: .By far the most expensive of the bunch. Subscribers can send emails to suggest categories for future coverage.

Galley Cat (On Media Bistro.)

Price: Free (subs to MB start at $49/yr.)
Format/Frequency: Daily Blog
Circ. /Uniques: 50,000 (uniques)
Audience/Focus/Tone: After PW and PL, an industry staple that continues to gain. For editors, writers, publicists, marketing professionals. Casual, snarky.
Ad Space/Cost: 1x – $400. 3x-$1200. 6x-$2160. 12x-&3888.
Notes: . Written by Sarah Weinman and Rob Hogan. (Weinman also writes Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, a blog about crime fiction.)

Book Page/Buzz Girl (ProMotion Inc.)

Price: Many options, cheapest $18/mo. (50 copies.)
Format/Frequency: Monthly print
Circ. /Uniques: 2,000+ (print circ.)
Audience/Focus/Tone: Book reviews of up to 100 books each month; designed to be distributed by booksellers and librarians to consumers.
Ad Space/Cost:  Google ads (BP), No ads (BG)
Notes: . All Book Page content is free except for the current issue. Buzz Girl is a separate blog written by a BP editor.

Book Business (Target Marketing Group)

Price: Free
Format/Frequency: Monthly print magazine, various enewsletters.
Circ. /Uniques: 12,100 (circ); 29,405 (‘reach’); 10,000 (uniques); 7000 (circ. enews)
Audience/Focus/Tone: 44% business management; 33% production, manufacturing; 23% other management (fulfillment, distribution, marketing/sales)
Ad Space/Cost:  Online, enews and “added value” opportunities.
Notes: Focus on: manufacturing, printing, sales, digital, online sales& marketing, ecommerce, shipping, fulfillment.

Shelf Awareness

Price: Free
Format/Frequency: daily enewsletter.
Circ. /Uniques: 10,000 (circ.) 1,800 uniques.
Audience/Focus/Tone: “Daily enlightenment for the book trade.” Launched in June 2005.
Ad Space/Cost: Top banner: $750; Skyscraper $500; Insertion  $300.
Notes: Edited and written by John Mutter and Jenn Risko.

Bookslut

Price: Free
Format/Frequency: Monthly e-issues, daily-ish blogging.
Circ. /Uniques: 220,000 (uniques) 3,000 (enews)
Audience/Focus/Tone: Literary minded reviews and author interviews. Fresh tone.
Ad Space/Cost:   Banner ad – $175/mo. Enews text ad – $35/mo.
Notes: Edited by Jessica Crispin, who also blogs for other sites including the Bookstandard, and the NBCC blog.

Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 Blog

Price: Free
Format/Frequency: daily-ish blog.
Circ. /Uniques: 7000-8000 (pageviews) 1000 (rss circ.)
Audience/Focus/Tone: Recent posts include: Monetizing video search, Branding, Borders financial results, Changing revenue models. Business casual.
Ad Space/Cost: Google Ads
Notes: Tag Line: “a book publisher’s future visions of print, online, video and all media formats not yet invented”

Big Bad Book Blog (Greenleaf Book Group)

Price: Free
Format/Frequency: Daily-ish blog
Circ. /Uniques: 840 (uniques)
Audience/Focus/Tone: Recent posts include: color& meaning; The Agenting Process explained; Holy Ship! That’s expensive shipping!
Ad Space/Cost: None (except links back to Greenleaf.)
Notes: Run by Texas-based Greenleaf Book Group (See PT 09/06). Great, in-depth entries on all aspects of the book biz.

Booksquare

Price: Free
Format/Frequency: Daily-ish blog
Circ. /Uniques: 8,500 (uniques); 275 (enews circ.)
Audience/Focus/Tone: Commentary on all aspects of the book biz. One recent ‘Open letter to the Book Publishing Industry” began “Darlings, Where are you?”
Ad Space/Cost: Brainaids – online ad network repping the arts community online.
Notes: Another Texan, the blog is mainly written by Kassia Krozser.

Buzz, Balls & Hype

Price: Free
Format/Frequency: Daily Blog – 2 versions at Typepad and PubLunch.
Circ. /Uniques: 25,000 (uniques)
Audience/Focus/Tone: Recent posts include: Titles – Automatic & Acquired Resonance; Myspace as a Business Tool.
Ad Space/Cost:  No ads – widget for Publishers Lunch board.
Notes: The author of the blog, M.J. Rose also runs AuthorBuzz – a marketing service for authors.

Edu Update: CAMEX & The Education Industry Investment Forum 2007

At the 9th Annual Education Industry Investment Forum (March 26-28), more than a hundred investors and entrepreneurs gathered to learn more about the current state of the $300B education market. As always, technology was the glue that binds.
SparknotesDan Weiss joined HM’s Craig Bauer and Beth Aguiar, VP of Apollo’s University of Phoenix, to talk about “The Publishers’ Perspective: Identify Challenges in Publishing and their Impact on Schools to Protect your Investments.”

Aguiar, who runs Phoenix’s publishing “rEsource” program, said that she was “eating her words” on ebooks. They have arrived, she announced, by which she meant that they are now interactive, multimedia-rich, and pedagogically effective. She cited specific examples of publishers that have begun to integrate educational ebooks with other material (online tutorials, online assessments etc.) so that they can work together seamlessly. Wiley, for instance, has a series with National Geographic, Visualizing Human Biology, that allows readers to see different aspects of the human body as they read about it–with automatic assessment and feedback.

Weiss agreed that with government dollars shifting to the district level, publishers are forced to build custom solutions more locally and thus expensively–making digital and ebooks an essential component for textbook publishers. Weiss also talked about how the tweaking of Sparks’ search engine optimization has resulted in high rankings for some of its titles. For instance, key in “Hamlet” on Google and the first entry will be the Sparknotes version. Noting too that publsihers are not likely to pass along any savings on educational titles to consumers, he discussed the advent of advertiser-supported books and book sites.

CAMEX – The Campus Market Expo – sponsored by NACS, is notable for two things: the lack of book exhibitors (publisher’s row has now shrunk to around ten or so die-hards, many with microscopic booths), and the lack of attendees in general. The ratio of vendors to bookstore badges has grown diproportionate, but unlike BEA there’s no one else there. So despite a rumored record attendance (what the CAMEX website refers to as a “Tropical Success”) in Orlando this year, the aisles seemed thinly populated–though all agreed that it was up from last year’s lackluster Houston event.

But eyebrows were raised at a publisher’s roundup meeting when NACS supplied an attorney to keep the discussion within the bounds of antitrust laws. The main subject was Thomson’s internet site ichapters.com, where students can buy chapters and textbooks directly from the publisher and where applicable a percentage flows to the referring college e-bookstore.

Absent that, the merchandise “spirit” wear and spirit gear ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime, with everything from Pets First–a small booth that featured all sorts of doggie spirit wear: sweaters, neckerchiefs, bowls, etc., to a faux tiffany-glass fire screen complete with a customizable school’s crest on it.

Bookview

PEOPLE

March brought some big announcements from industry veterans:
Teri Kelly, President of the trade and reference division at Houghton Mifflin has announced that she will leave the company where she has worked for twenty five years, once a replacement is found. And after seventeen years with the Walker Group (most recently as COO of Candlewick) Mike McGrath, is leaving to join Quercus Publishing in London, founded two years ago by Anthony Cheetham and Mark Smith. He will again be COO. Meanwhile, David Ford and Brett Brubaker, having returned to London, have launched Brubaker & Ford Ltd. (www.brubakerford.com), a book packaging and publishing consulting agency. There will be a New York office as well.

Chronicle Books has hired Bill Boedeker as Children’s Publishing Director, a new position which follows Victoria Rock’s move to the role of Editor-at-Large and Founding Publisher. Boedeker was most recently VP of Marketing and Associate Publisher for Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

Alice van Straalen has left Vintage Books, where she was an editor, for the non-profit world. She may be reached at avanst@yahoo.com.

At Reader’s Digest, Stacey Ashton has been hired as VP, Director of Sales and Marketing, charged with growing the retail and specialty markets. She was VP, Sales and Marketing at MQ Publications.

Marion Maneker, VP Publisher of Collins Business has left HC and may be reached at maneker@optonline.net. Meanwhile, Lisa Sharkey has taken the newly created position of SVP/Director of Creative Development, HarperCollins. Sharkey will be responsible for acquiring “current event and personality driven books” for the General Books Group and “will work with all publishers to position authors for maximum television exposure.” Most recently, she was President of Al Roker Entertainment. Earlier HC hired Margot Schupf as Group SVP and Associate Publisher for Collins reporting to Joe Tessitore, Schupf most recently was Editorial Director of lifestyle books and media at Rodale.

John Tintera has also left Rodale where he was Director of Sales, for Osprey where he holds the same title. Earlier this month Zachary Schisgal, formerly Executive Editor at Rodale, moved to Touchstone Fireside as Senior Editor. Michelle Howry has also joined Touchstone Fireside as a Senior Editor. She had been at Little, Brown/ Springboard. . . .Jessica Napp has left Touchstone for Rizzoli New York as Publicity Manager.

At NBN, Linda Sinisi has joined the company as Special Sales Manager. Most recently she was Director of Special Markets at Abrams, after working on Book Sense at the ABA.

David Schanke formerly Market Segment VP General Publishing at Banta has left the company in the wake of its acquisition by RR Donnelley. He may be reached at d.schanke@yahoo.com.

St. Martin’s has hired a new Editor, Jason Pinter, from Crown. And Courtney Snyder has joined the Crown Sub Rights Department as Senior Manager, Domestic Rights, reporting to Linda Kaplan. She had been at Scholastic where she was Manager of cross-channel sales and subsidiary rights.

David George has joined Bloomberg Press as Managing Editor and Art Director, reporting to Editorial Director Jared Kieling. He was formerly a Senior
Managing Editor at Prentice Hall, Pearson Education.

Jake Elwell has joined Harold Ober as an agent. Elwell acquired Wieser & Wieser three years ago and operated it as Wieser & Elwell. Yvette Romero is now Public Relations Director at Kaplan Publishing. Most recently she had been at Monteiro & Company.

Shanta Small has gone to Tarcher/ Penguin as Associate Publicity Director and Marketing Manager.. Small was at Random House Children’s.

Susan Bradanini Betz has been hired by the Chicago Review Press as Senior Editor for Lawrence Hill Books. Cynthia Sherry was promoted to Publisher of CRP.

PROMOTIONS

Erstwhile of Regan Books, Cal Morgan has moved to the Harper imprint as VP/Executive Editor, reporting to Jonathan Burnham. In a separate announcement, Morgan’s wife Cassie Jones has joined the William Morrow imprint as Executive Editor, reporting to Lisa Gallagher. Anne Marie Spagnuolo has been promoted to Group Executive Managing Editor, Avon Books.

Steve Weitzen has been named SVP of Business Development for S&S Children’s. Assuming his former spot as head of the Simon Scribbles imprint is Valerie Garfield who is now VP, Associate Publisher.

Julia Reidhead, a longtime editor at W. W. Norton & Company and a member of the board of directors, has been named to a newly created position of Editorial Director of the College Dept. Most recently she had held the title of Director of Editing, Design, and Production.

APRIL EVENTS

PEN American Center has announced the theme “Home and Away” program for its third annual PEN World Voices: The New York Festival of International Literature, which boasts 162 writers and cultural critics from 45 countries panels, lectures, tributes, readings, one-on-one conversations, and musical performances, April 24-29. Participants include Don DeLillo, Vikram Chandra, Kiran Desai, Neil Gaiman, Nadine Gordimer, Steve Martin, and Salman Rushdie in various locations around New York For information go to www.pen.org.
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The 3rd Annual New York Round Table Writers’ Conference takes place April 13-14 at The Small Press Center. Speakers include Inkwell’s Kim Witherspoon, ICM’s Lisa Bankoff, St. Martin’s Dori Weintraub, and keynotes Colin Whitehead and Richard Ford. For more detailed information go to www.writersconferencenyc.org.
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From March 31 – April 30 Poets House celebrates its 15th Annual Showcase at its Spring Street location, with its largest display to date: 2,000 titles on view including volumes by individual authors, anthologies, biographies, critical studies, CDs and DVDs. Executive Director Lee Briccetti claims it is the “golden age of poetry production.” In 2008, Poets House will relocate to new space in a new building in Battery Park City, with “free rent guaranteed through 2069” Go to poetshouse.org for more information.

DULY NOTED

DM News reports that Amazon’s Sam Wheeler was a keynote speaker at the Direct Marketing Association’s Insert Media Day (which, alas, conflicted with the other conferences that PT did attend). He said that Amazon offers an astounding 80 million package insert opportunities annually, as well as on-box ad space and, of course, online display ads. Wheeler and other speakers argued that inserts provide income to the host, as well as sales and branding opportunities to the marketer. However, too much focus on branding can deflect the focus away from sales. “We are in the response business and we have been invaded by the brand,” one vet warned. Amazon’s program started in 2003 (see PT November, 2003).

One time HC Creative Director Joseph Montebello tells PT that he now hosts a radio show, “Between the Covers,” that airs every Tuesday on WAPJ 89.9FM and every Wednesday on WVOX 1460AM in New Rochelle. Stay tuned.

Lots of anniversaries this year: Wiley celebrates its 200th anniversary–in 1807 Charles Wiley, strayed from the family distillery business and opened a print shop in lower Manhattan. Library of America celebrates its 25th anniversary this May.

Grand Central Publishing, is the final choice for the old Warner Books…. announced Jamie Raab, SVP and Publisher. The name change comes a month before the publisher’s move to new headquarters at 237 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10017-0010.

Congrats to Jane Isay on the publication of Walking on Eggshells – and to Will Schwalbe and co-author David Shipley, on Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Home and Office. Finally, Doug Stumpf’s Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy is coming this July (from HarperCollins).

IN MEMORIAM

Axel Rosin, former president of the Book-of-the-Month Club (and son-in-law of its founder, Harry Scherman) and later the head of the Scherman Foundation, died March 27th at his home in Manhattan. He was 99. He was president of the Book-of-the-Month Club from 1960 to 1973, and chairman until his retirement in 1979.

Prestige Fatigue: Book Awards- Marginal? Must-Have? Discuss.

In a prestige driven industry like publishing, scooping up a book award is often considered critical to sales success. But just as the book market has become increasingly fragmented over the past ten years, so has the awards market. Competition not only among books, but among the prizes themselves, is heating up – for every Sobol that falls by the wayside, a small army of Quill, Thurber, and FT Awards are there to step into its place.

As awards proliferate, the latest are niche (outstanding work about the Revolutionary Era anyone?), although some still adhere to the more-is-more mantra (hey, the people like choice). Either way, the basic formula hasn’t changed much: Drum up interest and marketing opportunities by drawing out the selection process (longlist, wait a month, shortlist, wait a month), and then celebrate the winners in a lavish ceremony (Televised Black Tie! Fireworks over the Potomac!).

Although “The Big Ones” (as many refer to the Booker, National Book Award, Pulitzer, and NBCC) remain influential and coveted by authors and publishers alike, even the NBA is doing some serious soul searching lately, according to Executive Director Harold Augenbraum. And Man Booker Director Ion Trewin said that even though the Booker “the” a huge success, he’s aware it can’t “sit on its laurels” with other UK prizes such as the Orange quickly gaining an “enormous reputation.”

While every little bit of marketing and publicity hype helps, some publishers are at a breaking point. Carol Schneider, VP Executive Director of Publicity at Random House, said that as books and awards multiply, and consequently “so few awards offer a boost in sales,” it’s difficult to justify the often time consuming (and expensive) submissions process. Alternatively, Jeff Seroy, SVP Marketing & Publicity at FSG, said that, “Awards are extremely important to FSG, and Hill & Wang in particular.” In 2006 FSG submitted nominations for over 140 different prizes. Seroy added that different awards serve different purposes – some influence sales immediately, some in the long term, some are about prestige, some boost the author’s future work, some come with sizeable purses which allow writers to pursue their work more freely.
In order to cover all of their bases, most publishers err on the side of overzealous submissions, which can add up over the course of a year. To defray costs as innumerable new awards crop up (and demands on publishers’ support increase), some publishers hinted at the possibility of putting their authors in charge of the process in terms of both money and energy.

Few awards programs formally track their own success (though unofficially they follow the impact on sales, see chart), but most agree that, other than evergreens like the Caldecott/Newbery, awards in the UK and Canada are much more successful than their American counterparts in generating interest and palpable sales. While the Brits and colonies might skew more literary, it is more likely that shrewd marketing, corporate sponsorship, and a healthy dose of betting (Booker Bookies, Guess the Giller) play a part.

Unlike many American awards, the Giller Prize is sponsored by a major corporation (Scotia Bank), doesn’t charge submission fees or sell tickets to its gala event, and works in tandem with publishers to market books (pubs are required to front $1,500 to the marketing of shortlisted titles). Similarly, Trewin noted that publishers must commit £5,000 to market the Booker shortlist.

Generally awards marketing is non-existent, rooted in tombstone ads despite print’s dwindling audience. Although Augenbraum doesn’t think the NBA will ever contribute to publisher’s co-op, he could see the NBA devising a contest for best window display, for instance, offering prizes to booksellers of $2,500, $1,000, and $500. “If you have an endowed award (e.g. Bancroft, Pulitzer), it’s a very different outlook,” Augenbraum said. “They’re not beholden to sales – they can pick whatever they want. We’re trying to keep our place at the table because we don’t have the luxury of $10 million in the bank.” Which begs the question, can a large non-profit award continue to thrive without outside sponsors? The farthest the NBA has considered going is saying “The National Book Award, sponsored by,” but even that seems a fairly distant reality at this point. “There’s a certain Puritanism in the US that wouldn’t allow for that type of sponsorship,” Augenbraum said.

Still, the transition to corporate sponsorship has worked well for Costa Whitbread, Man Booker and Scotia Giller. Scott Manning, Founder of Books For A Better Life (an award for self-help books whose proceeds benefit Multiple Sclerosis) said he remains convinced that the awards could be supported outside of the publishing community, and that it would be beneficial for companies with an interest in the cause, like health or financial services, to be associated. Manning said that BBL has gone after a number of potential sponsors with limited success. “It would be a big step forward to have non-publishing corporate sponsorship.”

Corporate sponsor or not, “A large purse certainly doesn’t hurt,” Adam Goodheart Director of the Washington Book Prize (worth $50,000) said. “It’s helped us gain the degree of visibility we have.”

Then there are, of course, the mysterious Quills whose existence baffles most everyone (including, it seems, the people at Quills). “We don’t have access to sales increases,” spokesperson Abby Raphel said, “We can’t see a direct correlation yet.” This year, the Quills is undergoing a major restructuring, presumably because the efforts of the past two years have left something to be desired. Although they can’t release any details until late March, Raphael hinted at new voting options (à la American Idol texting) among others innovations.

As Giller’s Elana Rabinovich says, though, “The debate about literary prizes has definitely become a bit of a cottage industry. We always felt ‘the more, the merrier’ in terms of new prizes coming on-stream, but there is a palpable prize fatigue among the media.”

ONIX, Ebooks & Butterflies

Like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, the passage to the digital realm can be a vulnerable and tremulous thing. Nowhere is this more evident than in the quantum mechanical realm of trade ebooks. The problem du jour: can ONIX, the electronic standard used for the last five years to send bibliographic data (title, author, price, etc.) to support the sale of physical books, also be used with the digital files known as ebooks?

ONIX (the acronym for Online Data Exchange), you will remember, was born in the late 1990s when online retailers were tearing out their hair as each publisher sent bibliographic data in different ways. After a short tiff with the AAP (who was seen as having rushed in and co-opted the standards development process in Europe), serenity was restored, and the international organization, EditEur, that originated and continues to manage ONIX, unveiled ONIX 1.0 in 2000.

Over the past five years, use of ONIX has noticeably reduced friction in the distribution, marketing, and online sale of physical books, so much so that even libraries are considering adopting it. It could do the same for ebooks, but like all things physical to digital, it’s not a slam dunk. Among the obstacles for the smooth transmigration of print to digital in trade books are: There is no stable business model for the commerce in ebooks: should they be treated as just another format, like hardcover and paperback, or as a separate product like an audiobook? There are incompatible digital file formats for ebooks: Adobe, Microsoft, Palm, Mobipocket (Amazon.com), that cannot be read across different devices, and, most of the people involved in the daily commerce of ebooks, whether publishers, distributors, or online booksellers, are far from the process of developing standards. The wrong or competing standards (vhs vs. betamax anyone?) can significantly depress market growth.

Any light at the end of the cocoon? This year the International Digital Publishing Forum took a giant step forward by creating an Open Packaging Format. Think of this as a common digital automobile in which Messrs. Adobe, Microsoft, Palm and Mobipocket can ride across the ‘Net and then each step out to be re-created as ebooks. One day there may even be a universally accepted file format that could be read on any device. This would take enormous friction out of the system. IDPF is working on this as well. And ONIX 3.0, more than able to accommodate myriad ebook metadata, will be unveiled shortly. But the trade book, in its passage from physical to digital, is still emerging from its chrysalis and it will be a little while until butterflies are truly free.

PT thanks Lightspeed’s Jim Lichtenberg for this piece.

Museum Copyright Seminar

The increasing complexity of copyright law and the tortured definition (and abuse) of “fair use” provoked the Metropolitan Museum of Art to host its second workshop on the subject at the College Art Association’s annual NY conference in February. Co-sponsored by the CAA, it was followed by a highly instructive (albeit complex) panel on fair use tied together by two eminent copyright scholars: the Honorable Pierre Leval – author of the fair use opinion which guides much of today’s readings of the law – and Bill Patry, Google’s Senior Copyright counsel and Consultant to the Library of Congress. Although the two politely disagreed with one another, both declined to pick a fight.

Presiding over the seminar was the CAA’s Director of Publications, Eve Sinaiko, aided and abetted by Susan Chun, GM for the Met’s Collections Information Planning and Cristina del Valle, the Met’s Intellectual Property counsel.

Re-use of property created by others, explained Sinaiko, “involves risk assessment, which is part of rights clearance” but “uncertainty goes with the territory.” Sinaiko claimed that the artistic community perceives as “downright theft” the appropriation of another’s creation for reuse in some fashion, even when parody or collage is the intent. Cited were legal cases involving such artists as Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince and Jeff Coons, the latter of whom had two different legal decisions handed down at different stages of copyright interpretation, demonstrating how slippery the slope is. For instance, where does copyright infringement leave off and plagiarism begin?

While focusing on illustrated material rather than text, the workshop nevertheless confirmed that many issues are shared. The so called “orphan works” ruling that may become law in the near future, was discussed, highlighting “due diligence” (“What is sufficient research” in tracking down a copyright holder?), the increased complexity and opportunity for infringement posed by the internet as well as “perpetual archival use” as offered by such groups as JSTOR.

And, in cases where the rights holders have been identified and rights are clear, there’s still the complexity of credit lines for photo and picture captions where ownership, copyright and subject matter all seek and demand equal time and space.
As the law does not distinguish between not-for-profit use and, say, licensed refrigerator magnets the CAA is prepared to offer a similar workshop tweaked to reflect commercial concerns.

Fellowship in Jerusalem

In November I found out I’d been chosen to be an Editorial Fellow at the Jerusalem International Book Fair. It would be a transformative experience, Flip Brophy, a former fellow herself, informed the group of U.S. Agent and Editorial Fellows at the orientation in January, but she could not say exactly how. Would it transform me spiritually, being in the cradle of three world religions? Would it re-inspire my love of publishing to spend time in the company of the other fellows? Or would it teach me something that I couldn’t predict because I did not yet know?

Let’s start with the thing I learned that I couldn’t predict. As a senior editor at an enormous company, I’ve never been required to attend an international fair and I didn’t really know what the fuss was about. In Jerusalem, I found out. Among the Fellows, I met like-minded editors from Spain, Italy, Israel, South Africa and the UK, a few so like-minded that we have authors in common. At my desk in New York, I can understand in theory that the agent has sold the Spanish rights to Christopher Caldwell’s book to Mondadori in Spain. It is something quite different to meet Miguel Aguilar, editorial director of Mondadori, over wine at the Museum on the Seam, and reassure him, yes, the book is exactly on schedule. Later I told an editor at Am Oved, about a book I had preempted a few weeks before that I knew would be just right for his list. Even as the web of international editors clicked into focus for me, I was also finding re-inspiration from an unexpected source. I came 5,000 miles for Martin Levin to charge me up with his presentation on My Eleven Greatest Mistakes. With wit and modesty, he reminded the Fellows that publishing is and always has been a game of risk, and that the rewards – in his case, publishing Erica Jong and Mario Puzo – can be breathtaking, even if the perils – turning down Ian Fleming and Martha Stewart – can be hard to live down. Larry Kirshbaum, in his keynote address to the Fellows, confided that, as CEO of Time Warner Publishing, he always looked to the editor’s passion for a book when making his decisions. Now, that should not be a shock, except that, as an editor, I too often feel like a humble supplicant to the sales department and the chain stores. Larry’s speech neatly reframed the scenario: the sales department, even at Barnes & Noble, are looking to me to ignite their passion.

The Fellowship program also provides an amazing opportunity to discover Jerusalem and its environs. I briefly considered converting to Judaism and insisting on my “right of return” but the impulse passed. So while I would not say I was truly spiritually transformed by my time as a Fellow, I did remember why I got into publishing in the first place (the people!) and am inspired to do my work with greater collaboration and unapologetic passion. That was a week well spent.

PT thanks Kris Puopolo, Senior Editor, Doubleday Broadway for sharing her experience as an Editorial Fellow.

International Bestsellers: Translating Math for the Masses

What Jostein Gaarder did for philosophy, Tefkros Michailidis seems to be doing for mathematics, bringing the history of math to the mainstream in novel form. A high school teacher by trade, a translator of math-inspired fiction and non-fiction by night, and now a debut novelist, Michailidis, with Pythagorean Crimes (POLIS), continues a trend in Greece and abroad in which math plays a prime role in plot development or as a protagonist itself. Paving the way for the Greek math trend were bestselling novels Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession (Bloomsbury USA, 2001) by Apostolos Doxiadis and Turing: A Novel about Computation (MIT Press, 2003) by Christos H. Papadimitriou.

Pythagorean Crimes, set in turn-of-the-century Paris, mid-twenties Athens, and ancient Greece, explains complex mathematical principles through parallel murder mysteries which have at their root scientific jealousy and the search for truth. Stefanos and Michael are lifelong friends who meet in Paris in 1900. At a mathematics conference, a leading scholar announces one of the challenges of the 20th century: finding a method to prove a mathematical theory completely consistent. After years of work (and parties with the likes of Picasso and other math-obsessed Parisian artists), Stefanos discovers the answer, but before he can announce it to the world, he is murdered. Interspersed throughout the more contemporary story are the travails of Hippasus, another thinker who rocked the mathematical boat a little too much in his day. After discovering irrational numbers, the Pythagoreans allegedly murdered him. As one Greek critic says, “the mixing of imaginary and historical heroes in Tefkro’s book is one of his most delightful games.” All foreign rights available. For more information, contact Despina Verykokkou at polis@ath.forthnet.gr.

Another Greek high school teacher and author of a dozen novels, Argyris Pavliotis, explores mathematics through mystery in The Equation (Patakis). When a brilliant math student, Lucas Athanassiou, vanishes from Aristotle University, a top investigator is called in to work on the case. He soon discovers that at the time of his disappearance, the student was working on the famously complicated Navier-Stokes equation whose solution carries a one million dollar reward. Pavliotis uses a cast of characters including terrorists, real estate tycoons, math professors, and criminologists not only to solve the crime, but to shed light on the mathematical enigma. All rights available. Contact George Pantsios (foreignrights@patakis.gr).

Ancient mathematical intrigue surfaces in Spain as well in a novel to be published this month that’s already generating advance buzz among European publishers. Written by astrophysicist Enrique Joven, Castle of the Stars (Roca) has at its center the mysterious Voynich Manuscript, an actual book written in an indecipherable language that could possibly hold the scientific and mathematical secrets of Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Copernicus, and Galileo. Héctor, a Spanish Jesuit high school science teacher and the novel’s narrator, belongs to an online group of Voynich enthusiasts who try to uncover the truth behind the document. Their investigation is impacted by the publication of a popular science book, Heavenly Intrigue (Doubleday, 2004) by Joshua and Anne-Lee Guilder, which suggests Kepler murdered Brahe to take credit for his master’s mathematical discoveries. Héctor then finds out that the solution to the Voynich Manuscript mystery may lie closer to home than he ever imagined. When his Jesuit superior tells him that a foreign real estate speculator has been scheming to close the prep school, Héctor learns the speculator is interested because the Voynich Manuscript may have been hidden in the catacombs beneath the church next door to the school. As the plot thickens, more and more Voynich enthusiasts come to light, many of whom have connections to religious, quasi-religious, and political organizations based around the world, including in the U.S. For more information, contact Bernat Fiol at Antonia Kerrigan Literary Agency (bernat@antoniakerrigan.com).

Though his latest novel veers toward the enigma of love rather than the mysteries of math, Aleksandr Ilichevsky, a young mathematician and physicist, came to the attention of Russian critics with the publication in 2005 of a short novel called Butylka-Bottle (Nauka) that follows a mathematician through Cyprus after the collapse of the USSR. The protagonist must abandon his profession to make ends meet in any way he can, but his integrity and conscientious nature get in the way at a time when corruption invades all industries. In his latest novel, Ai-Petri (published electronically and to be published shortly in book form by Vremya), Ilichevsky writes of another young Muscovite, lovelorn and depressed, who begins an aimless journey through the Crimea. As he sets off on his wanderings, he intends to commit suicide, but the beauty of the natural world lightens his spirits and causes him to ruminate on his past rather than his death. While he contemplates his life, the memory of when he witnessed his best friend’s killing by a white sheepdog surfaces again and again, triggered by unusual reminders in the world around him. He thinks he hears his dead friend’s voice somewhere near him, and soon notices a girl of unusual beauty accompanied by a white sheepdog. After the young man befriends the girl, the dog attacks him, but the girl saves his life in a strange reversal of what had happened to his friend years before. The novel ends as the young girl inexplicably throws herself from the cabin of a funicular and falls to her death in the Ai-Petri mountains. A critic says “Ai-Petri is seething with primary forces previously unknown in our literary works.” For information on either of Ilichevsky’s novels, contact Thomas Wiedling (wiedling@nibbe-wiedling.de).

And away from math, topping the Swedish list once again is The Pigsties, the debut novel of Finnish-born author Susanna Alakoski and winner of the 2006 August Prize for best novel of the year. Though set in Ystad, the town in southern Sweden where many of Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander detective stories take place, The Pigsties focuses on the town’s social issues rather than its criminal ones. The story is told from the perspective of a little girl named Leena whose Finnish parents have recently moved them into an apartment in a new housing project on the edge of town. To them, their new home with three rooms, a balcony, and parquet floors is a palace compared to the poverty to which they had become accustomed. But to the rest of the citizens, the projects are “the pigsties,” filthy dwellings filled with poor immigrants. In Leena’s voice, the author brings out the subtle contrasts between how a young girl sees the world and how the rest of the world sees her. When they awarded her the August Prize, the jury said Alakoski’s “modern depiction of class society is an infernal, yet humorous journey through an adult world, where drunkenness and a disadvantageous position rule everyday life.” Rights have been licensed in Danish (Gyldendal), Finnish (Schildts), & German (Suhrkamp). Contact Susanne Widén (susanne.widen@bonniergroupagency.se).