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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Author Gilbert King, a Deserving Pulitzer Prize Winner, Takes it All in Stride

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Devil in the GroveGilbert King, whom I happen to know as a publishing acquaintance, got some welcome and unexpected news last week. His book, Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys and the Dawn of a New America, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in the general nonfiction category. King didn’t know that his publisher HarperCollins had submitted his book for consideration of the prize. A NY Times story published tonight profiles the unpretentious King, who was on a golf course in Florida when he got the news from a friend’s text: “Dude. Pulitzer.”

With refreshing modesty, King, whose book was published in March 2012, told the Times reporter William Grimes, “‘I’m sure people who write the big, critically acclaimed books know if they’re in the running. . . . But I’d just gotten a notice from my publisher that the book had been remaindered.’” The book tells a story of a too-little known incident of racial injustice, when in 1949 four black men were falsely accused of raping a white woman. The villain of the tale is the local sheriff in Groveland, Florida, Willis McCall, who King told Grimes compares unfavorably even with another notorious lawman: “’He made Bull Connor look like Barney Fife,’ the author said, “referring to the notorious commissioner of public safety in Birmingham, Ala., during the civil rights era. ‘Connor used dogs and fire hoses. McCall actually killed people,’” including one of the accused in this case.

King faced a daunting research challenge. While he did have the FBI case files to draw on, he also really needed to see records of the case housed at the NAACP, as Thurgood Marshall, then with the civil rights organization, had defended the accused. Though the organization had never shared such case files, even with eminent academics–because of attorney-client privilege–King persuaded them in this instance by insisting he was only interested in this one case, and none of their other historic cases. It sounds like a remarkable book, one with a terrible miscarriage of justice at the heart of the story that it seeks to redress, just the sort of book I have always enjoyed acquiring and championing as an editor for publishing houses.

I couldn’t be happier for Gilbert King, whose two books have “enjoyed only modest sales.” Grimes writes that King “is undecided what the next project might be. When the Pulitzer news came, ‘I was sort of lying low.’” I hope his next book, whatever he writes about, and whenever he publishes it, will gain recognition from the start. With the Pulitzer in his back pocket, it’s a good bet it will.

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#FridayReads, April 12–“The Barber’s Conundrum,” Essays by John Hartnett + Richard Nash, On the Business of Literature

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bc-goodreads-cover1#FridayReads, April 12–The Barber’s Conundrum–And Other Stories: Observations from Life in the Cheap Seats by John Hartnett. A while back, the author, whom I know a bit as a publishing industry contact, asked if I’d like to see a copy of his book of humorous essays, which he’d recently published himself. I like the genre of the humor essay, going back to E.B. White, Stephen Leacock, and in our era with writers like Roy Blount, Jr., and Nora Ephron, and so asked him to send me a copy. I had dipped in to the book a bit before this week, but only in the past few days have I made a point of making sure to read all 35 + pieces in the collection, and gain a sense of the whole. Now I realize how much I really like this charming book. The title piece, on the futility of trying to get a decent haircut, is full of wry observations and delicate exaggeration:

“I’m a barber’s worst nightmare because I’m not a crew cut guy. They enjoy giving crew cuts because all they need is a pair of clippers and a little conversation. There’s no finesse in crew cuts, no risks. Whenever I sink into the chair, they automatically reach for the clippers and when I tell them I just want a trim, they start looking at my head like it’ the Manhattan Project. It’s not uncommon to have three barbers looking at my head at the same time, like baseball managers standing around the pitcher’s mound deciding whether to try a little pep talk or send for the reliever. I’ve had barbers spontaneously retire while I sat in their chairs. One even tried to convince me that I’d be better off cutting it myself.”

Equally amusing are such pieces as “The Catalog: A Modern Fairy Tale,” about the insidious temptations of mail order shopping, and “Surviving Your First Trade Show,” on the rituals of being an exhibitor at a convention.

Hartnett’s been a gag writer, so he’s got the knack for inducing a chuckle, and nowadays also writes a humor blog, The Monkey Bellhop. I’ve found this an ideal book for the subway, where I can actually start a piece boarding a train, and finish it before reaching my destination. I recommend it if you’re looking for some painless laughs, something to lighten whatever load of worry might be a part of your day. While self-published, it’s nonetheless attracted 55 customer reviews on Amazon. I know of many commercially published books that don’t manage even half as many comments.

I’ve also read and will be mulling for days, Richard Nash’s deepthink essay on the future and purpose of publishing, “What is the Business of Literature? published in the Virginia Quarterly Review. Nash is with Small Demons, an innovator in mapping and indexing content from books in creative ways. I also recommend this essay highly, which carries the reading line, “As technology disrupts the business model of traditional publishers, the industry must imagine new ways of capturing the value of a book.” I was happy to be reminded of Nash’s piece–which first landed with a flurry a few weeks ago–by publishing thinker Brian O’Leary of Magellan Media, who wrote about it on his blog earlier this week. H/t Brian. Nash VQR

I didn’t plan ahead on sharing this medley of readings–but sort of like cooking a meal with an unlikely set of ingredients and discovering how well they work together–now that I’ve done so I’m intrigued to see there’s a kind of congruity about them. From a self-published book of essays that’s making its way in the emerging publishing ecosphere to an essay considering that ecosphere and even what makes a book, I think the combination suggests something more than just my reading taste. Not sure I can say yet that is, but it’s what I’ll be mulling this weekend.

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Authors are Collateral Damage in Dispute Between B&N and S&S

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I want to inform readers of this blog about an ongoing situation that has authors ensnared in the middle of an unfortunate standoff between Barnes & Noble and Simon & Schuster. As reported in a number of news outlets, including in this Wall St. Journal story, the bookselling chain and the publisher are in a dispute over charges that B&N wants to assign to their stocking and promotion of S&S titles. While the dispute is ongoing, B&N “has sharply reduced the number of Simon & Schuster titles it carries in its stores as well as the promotion it gives those books.”

As explained in a blog post by novelist M.J. Rose, and in her comments below the post, while B&N is minimally representing most S&S titles, they have cut orders of those books by as much as 90%. Rose happens to be an S&S author herself, and a very skilled book promoter. These authors are collateral damage in a conflict that’s leaving their books under-represented in the country’s largest retail book chain. Rose’s post collects many of the books currently being published by S&S that are being disadvantaged by this unresolved situation. She suggests that if these are books you want to buy and read you can find them for sale via other retailers, whether online or at brick & mortar bookstores. Rose’s own current books are The Book of Lost Fragrances and Seduction. I hope you will support her and these authors. In this screenshot of her blog post, you’ll see she’s used the idea of a missing person on a milk carton to explain the impact of this situation on authors. To read her whole post and see all of the books she’s assembled, please click on this link.MJ Rose blog

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Remembering the Pitch That Killed a Major League Ballplayer

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Sowell front coverSowell back coverThe Pitch That Killed: The Story of Carl Mays, Ray Chapman, and the Pennant Race of 1920 is one of the best baseball books I’ve ever read, or been involved with publishing. It chronicles the only fatality ever caused by injury during a baseball game. Ray Chapman was a great Cleveland Indians shortstop who died after struck in the head by a pitch thrown by NY Yankee Carl Mays. The tragedy occurred in the same season that the Tribe won their first World Series, somehow overcoming the loss of one of their best players. I’m glad that Cleveland Plain Dealer sports writer Bill Livingston, @LivyPD, chose to write about it today, the Sunday before Opening Day. Livingston reports that a film based on the book, “Deadball,” may be in the works.The Pitch That Killed is still in print today, in an edition from Ivan R. Dee, independent publisher in Chicago.

Macmillan, where I worked in the late 1980s, was a hotbed of excellent baseball publishing, anchored by The Baseball Encyclopedia. Titles I was responsible for included Two Spectacular Seasons: 1930–The Year the Hitters Ran Wil and 1968: The Year the Pitchers Took Revenge by William B. Mead and the Twentieth Anniversary edition of Jim Bouton’s classic Ball Four, an edition that’s still widely available today, including from Powell’s Books, the affiliate bookseller for this site. Colleague and friend Rick Wolff, who edited The Pitch That Killed and The Baseball Encyclopedia also worked on You Gotta Have Wa: When Two Cultures Collide on the Baseball Diamond, Robert Whiting’s enlightening examination of baseball in Japan. As baseball season begins, it’s fun to celebrate some great baseball books.

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Announcing a Great Gray Bridge Bookselling Partnership With Powell’s Books of Portland, Oregon

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Some readers of The Great Gray Bridge will recall that I ran a bookstore for many years, Undercover Books of Cleveland, Ohio, which I operated with my two siblings and our parents. I worked in the store from 1978-85, before moving to New York City and beginning to work as an editor and publisher. It was a great way to begin a career in the book business, instilling in me the passion to share my favorite books and authors with other readers. I worked as an in-house editor and publisher until 2009, when I began working as an independent provider of editorial and publishing services, which has now grown to the point where I offer quite a broad menu of services. The new role was immediately fulfilling, though I soon realized that there was something I missed about editing and publishing a full list of 20-25 books each year–that was the act and process of curation, in which I chose and sifted and assembled a coherent list.

It was with curation in mind that I started this site–I envisioned it like a garden that I would tend, a venue where I could share with friends and readers my enthusiasms for books and authors (and musicians and music, and the endless variety of urban life). I hoped it would be a very personal sort of curation, and indeed, I’ve relished doing it every day since I began the site in October 2011.

However, as a former bookseller, I sometimes felt as if something were missing–that was the opportunity to actually sell the books I was writing about it here. It could have been  books I had once published, contemporary classics such as Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance; Edward Robb Ellis’s A Diary of the Century: Tales From America’s Great Diarist; and Peter Hopkirk’s The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia, or more recent titles, ones that I didn’t have a role in publishing, but which I’ve ardently recommended on this site, such as Richard Ford’s hypnotic novel Canada; James Kunen’s memoir of the recession Diary of a Company Man: Losing a Job, Finding a Life; or Dan Fesperman’s ingenious spy novel, The Double Game.

At last, I’m excited to announce that even that gap in curation will now be filled, as I have found a bookselling partner: Powell’s Books, the great independent bookstore of Portland, Oregon. As shown in Powell’s promo that I’ve placed near the upper right corner of this site, you can now click through to Powell’s website to purchase books I’ve written about that have intrigued you, or really any book at all. Please note that Powell’s stock is vast, and includes new books, as well as really hard-to-find used titles. In their partnership program, a portion of the money that Great Gray Bridge readers pay to Powell’s will then be remitted to me, which I will use to help maintain the site. It’s a win-win-win–Powell’s get a referral of new business; you get books you want to own and read; and I get to recommend books that I know you, my readers, will appreciate, while your purchases help me maintain and improve this website. As the message at the upper right corner of this site explains, you can use that little search window to look up a book, research that will take you directly to Powell’s website. In addition, from now on whenever I include book titles in a blog post, as I so often do, a click on any of those titles will reveal them to be live links that are going to take you to that book’s page on Powell’s site. See the above paragraph, as an example.

I will also be creating what Powell’s calls Partner Bookshelves, curated book lists of up to 100 titles, so please watch for those, too. In short, this is an ingenious program and I couldn’t be happier now that it’s installed and ready for use. Please note that I will be updating older posts where books are mentioned to make the titles into live links. However, this will take time, as my archive currently contains more than 540 posts published since the site began 16 months ago. So if you read an older post with a book you’re interested in and it hasn’t been updated yet, please just enter that title in the search window and a click will take you through to Powell’s website.

Thanks for trying out this new system with me. No doubt I will be tweaking it in the weeks ahead, so please let me know of any questions you may have, or suggestions, particularly if you encounter any glitches. It’s great to be back in the bookselling business!

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Jonah Lehrer’s Reputation Falls Another Rung, as Plagiarism is Seen Again

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As reported in the Daily Beast, Jonah Lehrer’s publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) is going to ask bookstores to take How We Decide off their shelves and return the book to their warehouse for credit. The title will no longer be available from them. Having earlier pulled Lehrer’s book ‘Imagine,’ they’re now doing the same with HWD after seeing evidence of Lehrer’s plagiarism in it provided by journalist Michael Moynihan, who earlier exposed egregious authorial misdeeds by Lehrer. HMH says they see no problem with Lehrer’s first book, Proust Was a Neuroscientist, and they will keep it in print.

HMH’s latest announcement comes only two weeks after Lehrer appeared at a public venue for the first time since his reputation crashed, when he gave a paid address at the invitation of the Knight Foundation. He apologized during that talk and in a tweet, but it only raised more criticism of him, since he was paid $20,000 for the occasion.

Knight, which beforehand evidently had no problem with rewarding a plagiarist with an ample payday, should have known better. After the news of the hefty honorarium was disclosed, they backtracked as rapidly as they could, though they’d damaged their own reputation, as well.

A round-up of Lehrer coverage can be found at the Poynter.org website, at this link.

It’s been a sad shameful chapter for Lehrer who’s also lost magazine posts at the New Yorker and Wired. I hope Lehrer, 31 years old, can someday rehabilitate himself as a writer and a trusted journalist. He’s dug himself a big hole.

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