An Exciting Rebranding for One of My Favorite Clients

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As readers of this blog may have noticed, for more than a year I have run a paid promotion at the upper right corner of this website for Speakerfile, a tech company based in Toronto. They operate a web platform with smart software that connects conference organizers and meeting planners to authors and experts who speak in public. The ingenious software ensures powerful search capabilities, so speakers and experts are found readily by people eager to discover them. I think they run a great service, and so have really been proud to feature them prominently on my website, while also representing them to the book industry–publishers, authors, publicists, and literary agents. Having long described themselves as an expert visibility platform, it is therefore a natural evolution that has now led the company to officially rename themselves as Expertfile. In an announcement on their website company CEO Peter Evans says,

Switching our brand to ExpertFile underscores how we are aligning with a larger shift in the market. In working with organizations such as Cleveland Clinic, ADP, Constant Contact, [and] the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) . . . we've seen first-hand how content marketing and thought leadership has become a major priority. While speaking at industry conferences is important to thought leadership programs, it is only one dimension of how organizations build visibility and authority. Driving online engagement with their experts is proving to be essential to thought leadership. But most marketing departments lack the tools to unify and publish a yard sale of expert content—assets that remain fragmented across a variety of social and rich-media channels.

In a company press release Evans added, In working with thousands of experts and Fortune 500 organizations, we are discovering a major unmet need among even the largest of enterprise customers. Our move to ExpertFile is a natural evolution to a full enterprise platform that helps organizations promote and manage their expert content—to build visibility and authority in their industries without the complexity and drama of building custom applications.

In keeping with the change, their Twitter handle has changed to @ExpertFile, and they have a new ExpertFile Facebook page, which I invite you to 'like.' If you're interested in learning more about how the company operates and how they work with individuals and organizations, you can sign up for free online demos via this link. Their new logo is now in the promo on this site, and clicking on it will lead you directly to the Expertfile website. I'm really excited to see this dynamic client of mine evolving in exciting new directions, and I look forward to continuing to introduce to my book business contacts, old and new. If you'd like to know more about Expertfile, please let me know.

 

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Serendipity During Book Expo America

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One of the things I love about BEA is the prospect of serendipitous meetings. One spontaneous encounter I had during the convention at the beginning of June was when I bumped in to a friend, the literary agent Laura Nolan, who was on the floor at the Javits Center with her author client Dagmara Dominczyk, whose first novel, The Lullaby of Polish Girls, is out from Speigel & Grau this month. We got to talking, and soon Dagmara’s publicist from Random House took this picture of the three of us with my digital camera. Here Dagmara is in the center, between me and Laura.

Her novel has drawn lavish praise from fellow writers and Dominczyk was the subject of a NY Times Style section profile last Sunday, centered on her recent reading at WORD bookstore in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood, an historically Polish enclave, an event that became a homecoming for the novelist.

When I read the Times story about the reading at WORD I was relieved to find one of the least snarky pieces I’ve read in the Style section. I find that part of the paper has a pronounced predilection for snark and sarcasm, and I often avoid it entirely.  (See the recent story on tech change agent Rachel Sklar, which framed her new entreprise that seeks to “change the ratio” of women in tech, as her “trying” to become an entrepreneur). Even while the article on Dagmara likened the attractive author and her sisters to the Gabor sisters of the 1960s, and highlighted her marriage to actor Patrick Wilson, it didn’t stint on informing readers that Dagmara, 36, had attended LaGuardia HS, the Manhattan high school of the performing arts, and moved to Greenpoint with her sister where she wrote her novel, after she got her first really good movie role.

LaGuardia happens to be where my teenage son Ewan will be a senior in the fall, also in the drama department, but that’s not the only coincidence I found in the story: Dagmara’s big break came when she got a lead role in the 2002 version of “The Count of Monte Cristo”  This is a genre–the swashbuckler–that I love.  Additionally, I  am about to begin offering to publishers a terrific proposal for a new anthology of swashbuckling fiction.  It will naturally include selections from Alexandre Dumas, whose own father is the subject of Tom Reiss’s 2012 Pulitzer-winning biography, Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal and the Real Count of Monte Cristo. It is kind of an eternally sturdy genre.  Cultural consumers always seem ready to take in and enjoy a new swashbuckling book or film.  In the proposed anthology, editor Lawrence Ellsworth will include a new Dumas translation of his own, along with pieces by Rafael Sabatini (author of Captain Blood and Scaramouche); Johnston McCulley (creator of Zorro), Anthony Hope (Prisoner of Zenda); Baroness Orczy (The Scarlet Pimpernel); Arthur Conan Doyle, and about 15 great and ripe-to-be remembered writers.

All that from a meeting on the convention floor! It’s things like this that keep the book business fun.

Here are the great advance comments that Dagmara’s book has received, from Emma Straub and Adriana Trigiani, who introduced Dagmara at WORD.

“The Lullaby of Polish Girls is a striking and vivid debut novel, absolutely buzzing with energy. Dagmara Dominczyk’s freshly observed story about the intertwined lives of three friends is both sexy and sensitive, with a raw, openhearted center. Dominczyk’s love for her complicated characters is apparent from the first page to the last, and by the novel’s end the reader cares for them just as deeply.”—Emma Straub, author of Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures

“The Lullaby of Polish Girls will make you swoon. Dagmara Dominczyk has written a glorious debut novel inspired by her own emigration from Poland to Brooklyn with depth, intensity, humor, and grace. Dagmara is a natural-born storyteller. I’m crazy about this book, and I know you will be too.”—Adriana Trigiani, author of The Shoemaker’s Wife

I wish Laura and Dagmara much success with the book. imgres

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Remembering Maurice Sendak on his 85th Birthday

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The animated doodle on Google’s main search page today is really inspired. If you haven’t already seen this tribute to Maurice Sendak, there’s a screen shot below. You can view it via this link, and make sure you click on the arrow to start the animation.
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Last May, soon after Sendak’s passing, I published a recollection on this blog called, Warding Off a Zealous Censor of Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen. Via this link, I invite you to read about this episode from my bookselling days, when a prudish religious conservative woman demanded we stop selling Sendak’s work.

Update: I also just found this animated video on the Daily Beast narrated by Sendak himself.

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#FridayReads, June 7–Eric Lundgren’s “The Facades” & Suzanne Corkin’s “Permanent Present Tense”

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#FridayReads, June 7–The Facades by Eric Lundgren–a witty and heart-filled novel about a man in a post-apocalyptic world who’s searching for his family. I’m also reading Permanent Present Tense: The Unforgettable Life of the Amnesic Patient, H.M. by Suzanne Corkin–a scientific biography of a historic medical subject, a man who after undergoing brain surgery suffered a permanent loss of his capacity to make and retain long-term memory. In 2008, when I was Editorial Director of Union Square Press, I heard an NPR segment about Prof. Corkin’s work with H.M. and contacted her to ask if she was writing a book. Indeed, she said she was working on a manuscript, though she added it was a long way from completion and she suggested I should stay in touch with her agent. When I left the job in 2009, I wondered what would become of the project. At BEA last week I was pleased to see it had ended up on the list of Basic Books. Please click through to see full post and all pictures

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One More BEA In the Books

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It was not the most energetic Book Expo America (BEA) I’ve ever attended, but it was still a good show for me. Wednesday–when the Buzz panel was held, before the Exhibit Hall officially opened–was a good day. And then the next 3 days (Thursday-Saturday) were a roller coaster with busy, agitated activity to slow times when one could imagine the proverbial bowling balls rolling down the carpeted aisles. On Friday afternoon, there were so many publishing executives off the main part of the floor–I surmised many of them were in meetings, closeted behind the black curtains I saw that shrouded makeshift conference rooms at a distance from the publishers’ stands–that there was a palpable deflation of activity out on the floor. And yet, over all, I picked up many galleys and download cards of important forthcoming books. It took three jumbo zippered red totes that I’d kept picking up at the McGraw-Hill stand to drag it all home, which I did by myself. 

On Saturday, BEA for the first time ever opened itself to members of the reading public, not just book industry professionals. I saw many well-organized groups of fans and other readers powering around the floor, often under the concierge-like care of publicists who brought them en masse to signings with authors like Sylvia Day (at Harlequin), and Jami Attenberg and Jeffrey Deaver (at Hachette). There must have been at least 20 lines I saw like that today. I also saw smaller groups of two or three Power Readers, as the BEA dubbed them, eagerly snapping up galleys and stuff. I know there were some book industry people who, when the announcement of this innovation was made, were skeptical it would be a good thing, but I’d say that this not so daring–and to me, welcome–experiment went very well, indeed.

I took a pic of the jacket of David Folkenflik’s forthcoming Murdoch’s World: The Last of Old Media Empires, a book I’m very eager to read, having in 2008 edited and published a book on Roger Ailes, Dark Genius: The Influential Career of Legendary Political Operative and Fox News Founder Roger Ailes by Kerwin Swint.Murdoch book

I’ll have more to write and share about the book convention over the next few days and weeks, with photos and reporting. Meantime, glad to get a post up today, even though I’m exhausted from the four days of the show.

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Book Expo America–Off to a Quick Start on Day I

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Buzz panelAlthough the exhibit floor doesn’t open until tomorrow, there was lots of activity at the Javits Center today. My wife and I stopped in the hall just before 10:00 AM and got our badges as certified press, covering BEA for this blog. In the late afternoon, was the annual Editors’ Buzz panel, where a select panel of editors get to pitch their favorite titles of the coming fall season. By far the most exciting presentation was made by Liese Mayer [spelling corrected here from above tweet], of Overlook Press who touted the novel she acquired just after joining the company, The Facades, a first novel by Eric Lundgren. She said the novel combined elements of Kafka’s forbidding city and Batman’s modern Gotham. I grabbed one of the galleys and, after her compelling presentation, am eager to start reading the book. I also was interested in the presentation by  Picador editor Anna deVries of The Affairs of Others, a novel by Amy Grace Loyd and so took a galley of it. Now, running off to evening activities!

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The POT THIEF Mystery Series–Licensed to Open Road Integrated Media

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I’m happy to announce that as literary agent for author J. Michael Orenduff, in conjunction with the Silver Bitela Agency, my company Philip Turner Book Productions recently licensed the six-book POT THIEF mystery series to Open Road Integrated Media, a major player in digital publishing. The books, previously self-published by Mr. Orenduff, are The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras, The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy, The Pot Thief Who Studied Einstein, The Pot Thief Who Studied Escoffier, The Pot Thief Who Studied D. H. Lawrence, and The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid. They will all be published by Open Road in print and digital editions beginning in 2014.

As a devoted mystery reader myself, I adore the POT THIEF books and have earlier written about them here. They are set in and around Albuquerque, New Mexico, featuring dealer in Native America pottery Hubie Schutz and his sidekick in sleuthing, wise-cracking Susannah Inchaustigui, a descendant of one of the region’s old-line Basque ranching families. They meet most afternoons at Hermanas Tortilleria, to sip margaritas and discuss their latest puzzler. After years running Undercover Books, a bookstore where I sold lots of mysteries, and as an editor publishing mysteries, I know the mystery market well and am particularly excited that the many readers of Tony Hillerman’s Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn mysteries, also set in the American Southwest, will now also be able to discover the POT THIEF books. In their earlier editions, the POT THIEF books won numerous awards and raves from mystery readers, including this one from Anne Hillerman, the late mystery master’s daughter: “I inhaled this book. Witty, well-crafted and filled with unexpected plot turns, The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid will delight J. Michael Orenduff’s many fans—and win him new ones.”

If you haven’t yet heard of Open Road, I suggest you visit their website. They have more than 3000 active titles, including five books by my longtime author Ruth Gruber, as well as titles by dozens of important authors such as William Styron, Rachel Carson, Andre Dubus, and Mary Glickman, always in digital editions, and sometimes in print editions, too. They’ve been operating for three years, innovating and growing along with the emerging ebook market. The company was recently profiled in an excellent piece via this link at paidcontent.org. 

I’m delighted for my author J. Michael Orenduff and also very pleased to be working with Ed Silver and Babz Bitela of the Silver Bitela Agency, who are representing the POT THIEF brand for film and TV rights. In fact, they are already sharing with producers an excellent screenplay based on the series, written by previously credited screenwriter, Robert C. Powers.  Announcements of the deal I made with Open Road have appeared in Publishers Weekly and in PublishersMarketplace.com, both of which mention the Silver Bitela Agency (these may only be available by subscription so I’ve made screenshots of both to be sure they can be read by GGB readers). Happy I could share this great news the same week as Book Expo America (BEA), the book industry’s annual convention, taking place at NYC’s Javits Center May 30-June 1. Please click here to see deal coverage from the two book industry outlets.

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#FridayReads, May 3–James Lasdun’s “Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked”

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#FridayReads, May 3–Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked, novelist James Lasdun’s nightmarish memoir is a literary yet realistic account of how he came to be cyber-stalked by a former student. No matter what Lasdun has done over the past several years, from contacting police to ignoring the woman he calls Nasreen, she has continued to make him the target of her ceaseless anti-Jewish hatred and twisted paranoia, emailing venomous messages to him with numbing frequency, posting vicious rumors about him, impersonating him to his contacts and in online forums, implicating his literary agent and colleagues.  Despite these invasions of his personal space, Lasdun has prevailed, in his own way. The book is rich with allusions to such literary sources as Gawain and the Green Knight, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel,  The Penitent,  and Lasdun’s own novel, The Horned Man. A disturbing yet compelling chronicle. I want to read more of Lasdun’s work, because whatever one may say about this horrible experience with Nasreen, he’s also a terrific writer whose sentence-making is continually engrossing.James Lasdun

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