My Letter to the Dept. of Justice in the Agency Model Ebook Case

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With Monday June 25 as the last day for public comment in the Agency Model and ebook pricing case now before the DOJ I submitted a comment today. This is what I sent in an email to John Read at the Dept. of Justice:

June 23, 2012

Mr. John Read
United States Department of Justice
Washington, D.C.

Dear John Read,

I believe a competitive book market for authors, publishers, and readers is essential to the cultural and commercial well-being of our country. Because of the public good that a competitive marketplace conveys, I urge you to turn away from any course of action in this matter that would have the perverse effect of boosting Amazon.com and permitting them to continue predatory conduct that they have shown a predilection to practice.

While I know that the government’s investigation has been about allegedly improper conduct on the part of some publishers, I hope you can find a remedy here that does not deliver a new competitive advantage for Amazon.com, one that, given current trends, could surely lead to a less healthy, less competitive book and publishing marketplace, one that would over time lead to fewer titles coming from publishers; less income for creators; and less choice for consumers.

I write with respect for the difficulties you and your office must face in dealing with this matter. But as a longtime retail bookseller, editor and publisher, I know that our industry is balanced on a perilous edge where your decision could lead to a more competitive and fairer book marketplace, or when where a very few players dominate the commercial and cultural space. I hope you will not let that occur.

Sincerely, Philip Turner
Philip Turner Book Productions
New York, NY
www.philipsturner.com

Click through to see screenshot of my email to the DOJ

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#FridayReads, June 22–Finished “Canada” by Richard Ford

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I really saved and savored Richard Ford’s current novel, Canada, and finally finished it while in the air flying home from Toronto earlier this week. Immediately after completing it I began re-reading Chapter One, where 15-year old Dell Parsons opens the book by telling readers that

“First, I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later. The robbery is the more important part, since it served to set my and my sister’s lives on the courses they eventually followed. Nothing would make complete sense without that being told first.”

I had written about the book at earlier stages in my reading, and now I can say with sure conviction that it is a great novel. The measured pace of it; the mounting force of Dell Parsons’ adolescent  voice; the shocking violence that suddenly invades the seemingly placid narration; the amoral nature of many of the adults in the tale; the way Ford evokes character and place in Montana and the Canadian prairies, in short, sharp strokes that left me wanting to re-read his chiseled sentences–all these things combined to leave an indelible mark on my consciousness while reading it, and once I’d finished it, impelled me to want to start it all over again, eager to riddle out the narrative from the start. It’s one of those novels that teaches you to how read it, while you’re reading it.

I am aware that Canada has had mixed reviews–for instance, the reviewer in Publishers Weekly didn’t care for it, asserting that the first two parts of the book, set in Montana, then Saskatchewan, made little sense together–but I don’t agree. It all worked for me, and brilliantly. Now I want to go back and read more of Ford’s earlier work, and re-read the ones I read years ago.

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The Surprising Legacy of Lu Burke, Longtime New Yorker Copyeditor

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My friend Alan Bisbort, whose book “When You Read This, They Will Have Killed Me:” The Life and Redemption of Caryl Chessman, Whose Execution Shook America, I edited and published with him in 2006, is a fine writer with whom I share many personal interests. We’ve both worked in bookstores, we both ponder the iniquities of the criminal ‘justice’ system, and we both enjoy reading about and observing idiosyncratic and eccentric personalities.

In Connecticut Magazine, Alan recently published a fascinating piece of literary journalism, on Lu Burke, a longtime copyeditor at the New Yorker, who upon her recent death bequeathed all her accumulated fortune to the Southbury (CT) Public Library, more than a million dollars. Alan’s piece is called The Million Dollar Enigma, and it was published in the magazine’s May issue. I found today that Mary Norris of the New Yorker, who knew and worked with Lu Burke, has contributed a recollection of Burke and done some more reporting on her bequest. It appears on the New Yorker‘s book blog, Page Turner, and also references Alan’s article. The photo accompanying Ms. Norris’s blog essay, and Alan’s article, as well as this blog post was taken at the Friendly’s restaurant in Southbury where she enjoyed going to lunch with a visitor, such as Norris, who took the photo.

Two other bookpeople I know are mentioned in Alan’s article–Peter Canby, who’s worked at the New Yorker for many years (and whose book The Heart of the Sky I published in paperback in 1994) and Daniel Menaker, who was an editorial executive at Random House when I worked at the company in 1997-2000. Peter and Daniel also both knew Burke. (One necessary correction to Alan’s article: Menaker is no longer working at Random House.)

Alan and Norris both wonder why Burke–who it is now known never even had a library card from the Southbury Public Library–willed her life savings to the institution. Though she had no children , she did have a niece. Lu was known for a vinegary personality–Norris reports on “A story that made the rounds after her death” . . . once, while waiting for the elevator, she beckoned to a fellow-resident and asked, “Would you do me a favor?” And when the woman said yes, Lu told her, “Drop dead.” She was not known for a generous nature to her co-workers.

Norris also reports that now the library and the town are in a dispute over how the money should be spent and allocated, an unfortunate pass for such surprising generosity.

 

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Neil Young to Patti Smith: Don’t Chase the Rabbit

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June 12 Update: Happy to have had this post linked to by music writer Chad Childers, with the websites of radio stations like Kool 100 FM in Abilene, TX, and 98.3 FM in Twin Falls, ID, picking up his piece. It looks as if Childers’ piece is being syndicated on the Web. Childers reports on the conversation between Patti and Neil, quoting from my post below, and properly attributing it to this site. Childers also recently reported on a great performance by the Canadian band City and Colour, led by Dallas Green, who at this year’s Bonnaroo festival ended their performance with a scintillating performance of Neil’s, “Like a Hurricane,” which you can listen to via this link.
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The BEA conversation between Patti Smith and Neil Young was one of the most anticipated events of this year’s convention, and I had previewed it with this blog post a few weeks ago, with a recollection of hearing Neil live when I was only fourteen years old. It turned out that last Wednesday’s program was not only a highlight of the convention, but a life highlight. The two artists shared a comfortable rapport and their dialogue reached a serious level about how songs are written, art is created, and artists and audiences connect in a reciprocal space where creative work flows.

Patti’s first remark, at seeing dozens of photographers below the stage snapping pictures of them was lighthearted: “I feel like Sophia Loren at the Milan airport.” Referring to Neil’s new album “Americana” and his forthcoming book–and her new album “Banga,” which David Shanks of Putnam, Neil’s publisher, had cited in his introduction–Patti said “all the things that one creates comes from the same soul, the same heart, the same hopes.” She asked Neil about a song he’d retitled for the new album, a cover of “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain,” which he’s retitled “Jesus’ Chariot.” He chuckled and attributed this to “the folk process” and new understanding of the song he gained through working with it, in which he now sees an unknown composer’s long-submerged intimations of “the Second Coming and the end of time.” Patti marveled at how a song we’ve sung “since we were little kids by rote, with no emotion” is totally reimagined by Neil and Crazy Horse.

After about fifteen minutes, the event organizers finally remedied a low-volume mic that Neil had been equipped with, or that his serape was perhaps masking, which until then had left the more than one thousand bookpeople in attendance uneasy and dissatisfied, leading one person to call out “May we have more volume on Neil’s mic.”

Much of the rest of the talk has already been reported well and comprehensively, by John Mutter in Shelf Awareness, Claire Kirch in Publishers Weekly, and Bob Minzesheimer in USA TODAY, and yet even with bad audio at the outset these two consummate and uncompromising artists engaged in such a full and wide-ranging converation that there are a few aspects of it I want to emphasize in this space.

  • The first concerns Neil’s father, Scott Young. Judging by Patti’s first question on Waging Heavy Peace–about how his dad happened to call young Neil by the nickname “Windy”–Scott is an important figure in the book, and well he should be. It is too little known in this country that long before Neil became a musician and creative force, Scott was a prominent sportswriter and author in Canada, publishing bestselling books of fiction, nonfiction, and YA titles, and a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame (tantamount to a baseball writer in the States being inducted into Cooperstown). The book of his that I’ve read and treasure the most is Neil and Me, a heartfelt, double portrait that offers a mea culpa for the divorce and family break-up his constant travel as a working journalist caused, at least in part. Listening to Neil’s “Helpless” I hear echoes of that family pain. It’s a beautifully written book, as revealing as anything written about Neil, with the exception of Jimmy McDonough’s comprehensive Shakey. I recommend it highly.
  • The next was the discussion between Patti and Neil over the writing of “Ohio,” and how the song came forth from Neil unbidden as a spontaneous response to the cataclysmic events at Kent State. He explained how CSN&Y got into the studio within days to record it, and how they rushed acetate copies of it out to radio statios so disk jockeys could respond to the shock and outrage provoked among their listeners by the campus killings. Neil described this as “the social networking of the time” and added “you could only get seven or eight plays off” the acetates, which degraded quickly. The ephemeral quality of the recording materials prompted an unlikely association in my mind, but an apt one, I think.

I was reminded me of the samizdat editions that writers in the Soviet bloc produced of their work during the Cold War. Without access to printing presses, they would roll multiple sheets of carbon paper into their typewriters, and with each key struck they hammered another ringing blow for creative expression. The medium had limitations, however. A Czech writer and publisher I met in Prague in 1991–post-Cold War–Vladmir Pistorius of Mlada Fronta Publishers, showed me his samizdat editions and explained that a rebel author could only put about five sheets of carbon paper in their typewriter, inter-leaved with as many sheets of typing paper, because each succeeding copy became more faint and less readable. It was humbling then to see what writers had done to create and share their work.

The writing, production, and perforce distribution of “Ohio” also reminded me of the genre of the “instant paperback,” like the Watergate Hearings books published by mass-market publishers back in the day, Norton’s edition of the 9/11 Commission in more recent years, or The United States v. I. Lewis Libby, which I pulled together with reporter Murray Waas at Union Square Press in 2007, after Scooter Libby’s trial in the leaking of Valerie Plame’s CIA identity. Neil and his bandmates were responding authentically and spontaneously to events around them, and meeting their audience in the public square, much as publishers have long tried to do for their readers.

  • The last point is Neil’s discussion of how he never forces the writing of a song. Patti observed that Neil’s songs, “even ones produced from pain . . . seem so effortless, like they just came out of the wind, maybe that’s why your dad called you ‘Windy.'”

Neil answered, “Well, they do come that way. I don’t try to think of them. I wait till they come. A metaphor may be that if you’re trying to catch a rabbit, you don’t wait right by the hole. . . And then the rabbit comes out of the hole, he looks around. You start talking to the rabbit, but you’re not looking at it. Ultimately, the rabbit is friendly and the song is born. The idea is, he’s free to come, free to go. Who would want to intimidate or disrespect the source of the rabbit? And in that way if the song happens, it happens. If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. It doesn’t matter. That’s why I’ll write a lot of material and why I’ll suddenly not write any material. There’s no reason to write, it has to come to me, if it doesn’t come to me, I don’t want to have anything to do with it, I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to look for it. I really hate things that people work on. There’s nothing about music that should be working on it. There’s no reason to be something you’re not. Or trying to be somebody that you think is good.”

I am more eager than ever to read Neil’s book when Blue Rider Press publishes it in October. Patti and Neil seemed like old friends, to each other, and to us in the audience. It was a treat to hear them in conversation, a BEA moment I’ll treasure forever.  If you couldn’t be there I hope this report and the photos will make it come alive for you, and if you were in the hall, I hope I’ve lent some useful perspective on such a special occasion. / / More . . . please click through to see all photos.

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Dumpstaphunk & Chaka Khan in a Funky Groove at PGW’s BEA Party

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Each year during BEA book distributor Publishers Group West (PGW), and a number of their client publishers,* throw one of the book convention’s best parties, with a tradition of live music over the years (John Wesley Harding for one) and good venues (Chicago’s Green Dolphin, for instance). Last year they booked the superb soul singer Lee Fields, and this year longtime PGWers Elise Cannon–and I learned during this year’s party, Sean Shoemaker–really outdid themselves. The party was at the Highline Ballroom, a new state-of-the-art club with great sound and a terrific lighting system in Chelsea on 16th Street near Tenth Avenue. The acts they booked this time occupied a solid groove in funk and R&B, just right for a dance-ready crowd that’d been working the Javits convention floor for two days and craving some serious fun.

The opener was a Brooklyn outfit called The Pimps of Joytime, a five-piece that featured three percussionists–a conga player, a drummer seated not behind his bandmates, but right amid them, and a woman who played wood blocks and all manner of solid sounding and scarped objects, and sang too–along with a bassist who doubled on keyboards and synths, and guitarist and lead vocalist/front-man Brian J. Though Brooklyn-based, they plowed a very New Orleans-Little Feat-Caribbean groove and were a terrific warm-up for the evening, really enjoyable enough to be a headliner on another bill, duties they were scheduled to handle Saturday night June 9 at NYC’s Bowery Ballroom.

After a brief intermission that saw the stage get made over for a different sort of ensemble, the headliners hit the boards. This was Dumpstaphunk, also a five-piece, one that includes two nephews of R&B royalty–Ivan Neville on organ and vocals, whose uncle is Aaron Neville, and Ian Neville on lead guitar, whose uncle is Art Neville. In addition, they uniquely feature a two-bass attack with Nick Daniels and Tony Hall. On drums is Nikkie Glaspie, a powerful young woman who also sang from behind her kit.

Their repertoire’s solidly rooted in the delta and New Orleans, spiced with an edgy social conscience and song titles like “Turn This Thing Around,” Everybody Wants Some,” and “Livin’ Ina World Gone Mad.” They exhibited great stage presence, with Tony Hall, who also played a Fender Stratocaster on some songs, regularly engaging the audience, while Ivan also introduced some songs from behind his wide keyboard. I was fascinated that the pairing of Hall and Daniels, already unique for comprising a two-bass section, featured five-string instruments, rather than the standard four-string basses. In this band, it’s clear that the bass is very much of a lead instrument.

A highlight arrived with word from the stage that a special guest was in the house, and I heard murmurs among fellow audience members as to who it might be. Soon we heard an invitation shouted out to “Miss Chaka Khan” to come take the stage. The audience response was a huge rush of enthusiasm for “the queen of funk.” She instantly showed herself to be an incredibly dynamic performer, as Dumpstaphunk, which had already been playing at a high level, raised their performance to a pinnacle for the rest of the night. The crowd on the dance floor, eager all night to work out, was going like blazes now. Chaka Khan played the most believable and scintillating air guitar I’ve ever seen, or “heard,” as I hope the photos with this post will attest.

After one song with Chaka Khan, Dumpstaphunk played a couple more numbers, and left the stage full of thanks and bows to the audience, while the crowd gave the love right back. In fact, this seemed to be one night when an encore was really not in the cards, as several minutes of hooting and foot-stomping had not produced a return of the band. Finally, they re-emerged from backstage, playing one more song to close out the evening, with Tony Hall gesturing to us and raising his hands high in calling forth participation from the exhausted and still dancing crowd. When I saw friends on the floor at Javits the next morning, we all agreed it had been one of the best PGW parties ever.   // more . . . Please click through to complete post see all photos.

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The Recorded Voice of Virginia Woolf, 1937

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This is an amazing audio recording of Virginia Woolf, as heard on the BBC in 1937, with her speaking about the properties and subtleties of the English language. Thanks are owed to whoever put the pictorial slides together. This was recorded two years after she and Ruth Gruber met in London; Ruth had earlier written her doctoral dissertation on Woolf, the first feminist interpretation of her work, with an essay called “Virginia Woolf: The Will to Create as a Woman.” I wrote about their relationship in April, with a blog essay called Virginia Woolf and Ruth Gruber, Driven to Create as Women. H/t to Suzanne Marie Queen-komerous for sharing the audio on Facebook.

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Greeting Japanese Visitors at BEA, June 7

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A few weeks ago, publishing friend, Kay Ohara–who like me, once worked for the Japanese publisher Kodansha–emailed me with this question: “I’m playing the role of tour guide for a group of Japanese booksellers/ publishers. Their main interest is e-books . . . I was hoping you can give us a chance to ask what you’ve seen happening in the US book industry? Any time you can spare on June 7 at Javits?”

I happily agreed, made a note in my calendar, and forgot about it until yesterday when I got a text from Kay. “Are you at Javits? The delegation is having lunch right now. I wanted to know if you can meet with us in an hour or so.” Delegation–hmm? I thought. Fortunately, I wasn’t booked and we agreed to meet near the Bowker booth, at an entrance to the convention floor. I figured from there we could go find a few chairs outside in the food court, and I would try to answer their questions.

When I arrived, I saw that the group was much larger than I’d imagined, almost twenty men and women. Where was I going to take them? How would they hear me? What would I say to them? Luckily, I remembered that Kay is an excellent interpreter, so at least I had that going for me. Also lucky was the fact that next to the Bowker booth is a wide, common area, sort of a pass-through between two parts of the convention floor, with a kind of garage door and iron pillars to one side. I sized up the setting and moving with my back to this barrier, encouraged them to gather round in a semi-circle in front of me. I nodded to Kay and told her I’d offer them a quick rundown of my bookselling and publishing career, so they would understand my perspective on the business, after which I’d take their questions. I gave them my background in brief two-minute bursts, with Kay translating each segment–from Undercover Books, through the eight publishers I’ve worked for as an editor, with a special emphasis on my five years from 1992-97 with Kodansha America–when with my colleague Minato Asakawa, we created the Kodansha Globe series, devoted to cross-cultural titles, and the many Japanese and American colleagues I had then, such as Asakawa-san, Chikako Noma, daughter of the company’s president, and the late and dearly missed Leslie Pockell–on up through to my present days as curator and writer of this blog, independent editor, author representative, and consultant to such publishing enterprises as Speakerfile.

As Kay–who nowadays works as a publishing reporter for Japanese publications–had mentioned, their questions were largely about ebooks and I explained how they’ve reshaped and are continuing to reshape the U.S. book market. They asked me about author advances, and how the emergence of ebooks have affected them (on average, lowered them, I said); how print runs have been affected (ditto); and whether the majority of four-color printing for U.S. publishers is still being done in China (not sure, was my candid reply). At one point during the discussion, while Kay was interpreting something I’d said, I noticed several in the group were taking pictures of me. I took out my digital camera and began taking pictures of them, in a quick, panoramic continuum. The gallery of photos below is the spontaneous result.

Before we were finished, I distributed a handful of the 4×6 black&white postcard that Kyle and I’d had printed as a handout for BEA, and a fistful of my business cards. Soon, they were giving me their cards too, and we enjoyed a few minutes of very mannerly bowing and high-spirited exchanges of reciprocal good wishes for one another, with Kay providing introductions. The half-hour I spent with these foreign guests was a happy and diverting interlude on the final afternoon of BEA, a cross-cultural exchange I’m very glad I had the chance to be a part of, thanks to Kay Ohara, and her delightful “delegation.”
[Click through to see all photos.]

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#FridayReads, June 8–A BEA Cornucopia

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#FridayReads Some of the books I brought home from Book Expo America (BEA) and have already been browsing through:

The Devil’s Causeway: The True Story of America’s First POWs in a Foreign Land, and the Heroic Expedition Sent to their Rescue, Matthew Westfall (Lyons Press); Crossing the Continent, Michel Tremblay (Talonbooks); Mind Wars: Brain Science and the Military in the 21st Century, Jonathan D. Moreno (Bellevue Literary Press); Leonardo and “The Last Supper”, Ross King (Walker & Company); Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Union, James Howard Kuntsler (Grove Atlantic); Poe’s Lighthouse, edited by Christopher Conlon (Wicker Park Press); For the Sender: Four Letters, Twelve Songs, One Story, Alex Woodward (Hay House); Turkana Boy, Jean-Francois Beauchemin, translated from French by Jessica Moore (Talonbooks); The Life Squad, Amir Yassai (self-published); Life Among Giants, Bill Roorbach (Algonquin Books); Wilderness, Lance Weller (Walker and Company).

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