The President and His Daughters Enjoy Buying Books

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Just like last year around this time, President Obama and his daughters went shopping at a local bookstore today, on what is known as #SmallBizSat. They shopped at One More Page Books in Arlington, VA. No word yet from the White House, who tweeted out this picture, about which bookstore they were at (in Arlington, VA), nor what books the bookselling staff are wrapping up here. It sure is great to see the First Family buying books like this, a shot of high-profile bookbuying the book industry can really use.

Here are more photos from the Obamas’ visit to the bookstore. Photo credit for all these photos is “AP PHOTO/J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE”

 

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The National Book Awards–Debating How to Move Forward

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Here’s an excellent literary commentary from Publishers Weekly, by indie book publishers Chris Fischbach and Fiona McCrae, on how the National Book Awards could be reformed–and equally important, the direction they believe the reforms should not take. The 2012 Awards were given last week, so this is very timely, with Fischbach and McCrae noting a recent NY Times article which reported that “the National Book Foundation is reviewing changes to its procedures in order to ‘create more splash’ and in particular to address criticisms that ‘in recent years judges had preferred little-known authors, which diminished the award’s stature.’”

They urge the Foundation not to make the annual awards into a contest that merely rewards “big books’ by “big authors” from “big publishers,” which most of the year “get the lion’s share of attention.” By contrast, they say, “the annual national awards provide an opportunity to audit the year’s books and to come up with lists that either echo the year’s noise and/or illuminate books that for whatever reason have remained under the mainstream radar. The element of surprise and discovery, we would argue, is absolutely part of the value of these awards.” I also found that the Times article mentioned some good ideas that are being contemplated, such as involving younger book industry people at award-related events during NBA week. For my part, I think the Foundation should continue doing more to reach out beyond the book industry to involve avid readers.

I recommend you read the excellent column by Fischbach and McCrae which affirms the vibrancy of the independent publishing spirit.
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Nov. 28 Graywolf Press Update: Speaking of Graywolf, PW‘s Claire Kirch has also published this profile of them, Graywolf Press in a New Era. Last, I made one of Graywolf’s current titles, Mary Jo Bang’s new translation of Dante’s Inferno, my #FridayReads last April 27.  

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Publishers Weekly on Political Books, w/My Take on the National Climate

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A couple days after President Obama’s re-election last week, I was invited by Rachel Deahl of Publishers Weekly to comment on the current and future climate for political books.  She asked “what narratives seem to be emerging, or what narrative(s) you might be looking for.”  I heard from a friend today that this week’s print issue of the magazine has Rachel’s story, and though I haven’t seen that version yet, she just sent me a link to the story on line. It’s posted at the PW site, under the headline:  “Let’s Get Political”. I invite you to read the published story–there are seven publishing people quoted in it. Due to space I’m sure, the email comment I’d submitted was abridged, so I’m glad I can post my full remarks below, edited lightly for this space. Rachel also asked for a head shot, and since I’m not sure if the magazine used it, I’ll pasted in here at the bottom of the post.
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Hi Rachel,

I’ve been through many presidential book cycles, and it is true that books published for the benefit of the out-party (anti-Bush books from 2000-08; anti-Obama books 2009-2012) tend to flourish in these times.

However, what I’d like to be seeing now as an author’s representative, a political blogger, an editor, and a reader is a break from the more vituperative titles. I think even rabid partisans are tiring of these titles and are beginning to show less suport for them than in the past. I think what we need, and what the politically engaged reading public craves, are vigorously reported books in which the author, while not reining in his opining or editorial comment, nonetheless allows a pointed narrative to emerge from the facts of their story. An example from years past of what I’m looking for now is typified by Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickled & Dimed.

For the many authors, and publishers, who’ve featured criticism of Pres. Obama in their books, I think they need to look in the mirror and offer work that is as much self-critical as it is bashing of the president. I suggest this not as a partisan from the other side, but as a way for them to establish and enhance their own credibility with a more diverse readership. After all, there must be some critical self-assessment in the wake of an election that did not go the way of their advocacy, lest they lose all credibility with a more general readership, and remain in the bubble that bred their lack of prescience.

For authors on the left or from the more traditional center, I look at Michael Grunwald’s The New New Deal (S&S, August 2012, my Oct. 12 #FridayReads blog entry), as an example of the kind of book I’d be looking for. Extensive reporting of facts (about the 2009 Federal stimulus) that build a case for his thesis that the Recovery Act was the most consequential legislation since the New Deal. The point of view in Grunwald’s book emerges from the reporting, not the other way around.

I will add that one genre I’ve not tired of is the traditional, Theodore White-style “Making of the President” narrative. My longtime author David Pietrusza has done books like this for such years as 1920, 1948, and 1960. I think it’s too late now for me to work on one of those about 2012, but I’d sure like to read one. That is, not a magazine piece, but a deeply reported and full textured portrait of the campaign.

Thanks for asking for my input, Philip

The Great Gray Bridge
Philip Turner Book Productions
Speakerfile profile page

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A Farewell to Wendy Weil, Book Agent & Friend to Many

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On Thursday afternoon I attended a lovely memorial, sweet and sad, for a longtime book biz friend, literary agent Wendy Weil. I’d learned of her passing on September 29 when, scanning the Saturday NY Times, my gaze had landed on her picture in a death notice. Struck with a sudden heart attack, she’d died one week earlier, on September 22, which happened to have been my birthday. I’d have been shocked and saddened regardless, but knowing she’d died on a day I was celebrating hit me especially. I was reminded me of the psalm-like phrase, “In the midst of life we are in death,” from The Book of Common Prayer. That day I blogged about Wendy at this post, “Wendy Weill, Book Agent Extraordiniare, RIP“, and made sure I cleared time to attend her memorial.

Attesting to personal qualities that engendered much affection and loyalty, and her sound professional judgment, nine author clients of Wendy’s eulogized her, and many more of her writers were in attendance. Authors speaking were Jim Magnuson; Beth Gutcheon; Phillip Lopate; Andrea Barrett; Nancy Salz; Alice Walker (by video); Anthony Doerr; and Karen Joy Fowler. Her playmate from toddlerhood, fellow book agent Lois Wallace, also spoke from her perspective of more than sixty years of shared friendship. A good short film was shown, made by Jessica Wallace, with Wendy speaking about women who keep, or don’t, their own family name upon marrying. Representing Wendy’s immediate family was her stepson, JT Ross, who allowed as he had probably been closer to Wendy than his own mother. At the very end, New Yorker editor Fran Kiernan read a eulogy from novelist Mark Helprin, who’d planned to be there but was prevented from getting to NYC by travel problems.

It was a personal disappointment to me that Helprin wasn’t there, as I had hoped to say hello to him and share memories of Wendy. In the early 1980s, my whole family and our Cleveland bookstore Undercover Books hosted Mark for very successful signings of two of his early books–A Dove of the East and Winter’s Tale. The second of those two events came in 1983, and was a proper launch party, with local book press and probably 150-200 customers. Critic Benjamin DeMott had only a few days earlier praised the novel expansively on the cover or the NY Times Book Review, and people came in droves. We kept pushing the book for weeks, and all Mark’s titles, especially Refiner’s Fire. Wendy heard of our store, and got a hold of me and asked to meet at an ABA, our annual book convention. I was delighted then when I met such a winsome, ebullient emissary from the New York publishing scene. When I left the bookstore in 1985 and moved to NYC to work in publishing, Wendy was excited for me. She was unfailingly helpful and full of encouragement and suggestions as I sought and then landed my first editorial jobs. Later, I always relished receiving submissions from her office–especially after she established her eponymous agency, in ’86–as I knew how carefully she chose her clients and the books they would embark upon writing.

The last time I saw Wendy she began our conversation by recalling our shared connection with Helprin. She excitedly told me she’d recently licensed a new novel of his, to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. After I learned of Wendy’s passing, I realized that that novel, In Sunlight and In Shadow, was on the verge of officially being published, but she wouldn’t be around for the happy milestone.

Inside the printed memorial program, the front of which is pictured at the top of this post, people who’d like to make contributions in Wendy’s memory were asked to donate to the Women’s Media Group Scholarship Fund and/or the Teachers and Writers Collaborative, a worthy group that Phillip Lopate spoke of in his eulogy. I also found a flyer in the church vestibule promoting an effort to name a memorial bench in Riverside Park in Wendy’s honor, where she was fond of walking her cairn terrier, Bridie (shown on the program cover in Wendy’s arms).

I’ll close with a mention of Andrea Barrett’s moving eulogy. Andrea, who often incorporates elements of natural history into her work, had brought with her a book that Wendy once bought her as a gift, a sort of field guide to mosses. Andrea held it aloft from her place at the lectern, extracting from it  samples of old mosses in tiny envelopes that previous owners of the book had pressed between its pages. Andrea read the tiny pencil-written notations that indicated where the specimens had been found and picked, and when. These were all from the 1930s, and lent a simple kind of homely poetry to the memorial. This example of Wendy’s thoughtfulness showed how much she cherished living things, from the plant or animal worlds, and from the realm of letters and the imagination. She was a dear friend, and will be missed so very much by so very many.

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A Memoirist Can Go Home Again, and Not Get Shot

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A good article in the Saturday NY Times zeroes in on memoirist Domingo Martinez whose book The Boy Kings of Texas is one of five nonfiction finalists for the National Book Award, which will be handed out this Wednesday in a black tie ceremony here in New York City. Laura Tillman reports that Martinez’s book is a frank and raw portrait of his troubled young life and violent upbringing in Brownsville, TX. The dateline on the article is Brownsville, which is key, because Tillman had the opportunity be with Martinez on a recent trip he made to his hometown. Tillman writes,

“It was the first time Domingo Martinez had returned here in nearly 10 years, and it seemed as if nothing and everything had changed. His street, once rutted caliche, was now potholed pavement. Favorite stores had shuttered, but new mom-and-pops still sold tamales and tacos, and the 18-foot border fence between the United States and Mexico slashed rust brown through farmland panoramas.

Mostly, Mr. Martinez marveled at how the decade had worn on his grandmother Virginia Campos Rubio, softening that gun-slinging lioness into a slow-moving 85-year-old with a gentle smile. Ms. Rubio is one of the central characters in Mr. Martinez’s book. . . . In the book Mr. Martinez describes how an abusive, starvation-plagued childhood filled Ms. Rubio with rage, making her both loved and feared in the barrio where he grew up. She still keeps a pistol on her bed, alongside a copy of the Bible, a doll and a bag of cheese puffs.”

Martinez approached the visit with some trepidation, actually fearing possible reprisals from people he’s written about.

“’I was terrified about coming back to Texas,” Mr. Martinez said. “I was afraid that I was going to have a violent confrontation—that I’d get shot.’”

In short, not everyone is happy with the portrait he’s painted. Lecherous neighbors and abusive relatives populate the memoir’s pages. Mr. Martinez said the accounts themselves hadn’t been disputed, but that didn’t make the public airing of dirty laundry easier to bear. . . . No brawls took place on the trip. Instead Mr. Martinez was fed caldo de res, a beef-and-vegetable soup (prepared by his father) and mole with chicken and rice (prepared by his grandmother). He was applauded by more than a thousand students, visited by old teachers and given many congratulations. His immediate family supports the book, though he said it had been too painful for his parents to read. His grandmother doesn’t speak English, and Mr. Martinez said he hoped she wouldn’t be exposed to the book’s contents.”

I’m eager to read such an honest memoir, and more than happy for the author and the people involved in its publication. His literary agent is Alice Fried Martell, whom I mentioned on this blog when we both attended the Publishing People for Obama fundraiser last June. As an in-house acquiring editor I always enjoyed reading submissions from her clients. I learned from Keith Wallman, a longtime editorial colleague when we were both with Carroll & Graf, now at Lyons Press, that Alice sold the book to another editor there, Lara Asher. Lyons Press is a Connecticut house that has never before had a National Book Award nominee. There I’m friendly with publisher Janet Goldklang, who last year brought out James Kunen’s superb Diary of a Company Man: Losing a Job, Finding a Life.

The Boy Kings of Texas is nominated alongside books by fellow finalists Robert Caro, Anne Applebaum, Katherine Boo, and the late Anthony Shadid. I congratulate Mr. Martinez for the acclaim he’s receiving, and for his candor in exploring this personal terrain so movingly. I’m also happy for my publishing friends involved with such an exceptional book

 

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Hurricane Sandy’s Near-Wipeout of NY Publishers

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Earlier today Publishers Weekly asked 10 publishing and bookselling companies if their offices were open–it was a total wipeout, not one managed to open this day after the big storm. While none of these establishments opened, I want to add for the record, that Philip Turner Book Productions LLC is answering its phone and has someone available for editorial and bookselling consultation. That would be me.

“Not surprisingly, Hurricane Sandy left most people in the New York City publishing world at home on Tuesday. Here is a list of different houses’ status. We will try to update this throughout the day, as more information surfaces. Please contact us with updates on Twitter @PublishersWkly. (Publishers Weekly’s email is currently down, and our Manhattan office is closed, but staffers with power will be monitoring Twitter and other social media.)

Macmillan is without power and email is down, due to outages in the Flatiron Building, where it is housed. (The publisher’s warehouse, however, remains open and operational.)

Random House email is working, but access to the office is limited due to the collapsed crane in midtown.

Penguin is currently closed and a decision has not yet been made about whether the office will open on Wednesday.

Hachette’s office is closed, but company email is working.

Bloomsbury’s office is closed, but company email is working.

Abrams is currently closed and company email is down.

Kensington’s office is closed, but an employee reports that the building has power. A decision has not yet been made about whether the office will be open on Wednesday.

Barnes & Noble’s New York City office is closed, and a decision has not yet been made on whether the office will be open on Wednesday.

McGraw-Hill closed its office in New York City, as well as in other cities, including Washington, DC.

Scholastic’s SoHo New York office was without power through Tuesday and the company is not sure when its headquarters will reopen.

Norton’s New York City office is closed, but the company’s warehouse in Scranton remains open.”
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Distressing News From One of My Favorite Canadian Publishers

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Douglas & McIntyre, one of the most highly regarded independent publishers in Canada, has filed an announcement that throws the company’s future into question. Here’s the entire report from Quill & Quire, the journal of the Canadian publishing industry, on the publisher seeking protection from creditors, entering into a Canadian-style bankruptcy.  I know and am friendly with many people who work at Douglas & McIntyre and its associated companies, beginning with co-founder Scott McIntyre. I also know some of its authors. My thoughts are with all of them. I’m hoping for the best and that they manage to come out of the process whole and intact.

D&M Publishers files for creditor protection

D&M Publishers, home to the Douglas & McIntyre and Greystone Books imprints, has filed for creditor protection and intends to restructure.

The Vancouver-based firm announced late Monday that it has filed a notice of intention under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. According to a statement, the company intends “to carry on its operations during this restructuring process” and has enlisted Bowra Group “to locate an investor or purchaser for its assets.” New Society Publishers, a subsidiary of D&M Publishers with offices on B.C.’s Gabriola Island, is not affected, and its “business activities will continue as usual,” according to the statement.

Co-founded by Scott McIntyre, D&M Publishers, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2012, is one of the largest remaining Canadian-owned publishing houses. In July, McIntyre stepped down as CEO and the company appointed a new publisher.

D&M Publishers is known for high-quality non-fiction and art books, as well as titles with a regional focus. The company had recently bolstered its fiction program under the Douglas & McIntyre imprint, publishing Daniel Poliquin’s 2007 Scotiabank Giller Prize nominee A Secret Between Us and the science-fiction anthology Darwin’s Bastards, edited by Zsuzsi Gartner.

In 2010, Douglas & McIntyre won reprint rights to Johanna Skibsrud’s Giller-winning novel The Sentimentalists, originally published by Gaspereau Press. Earlier this year, Carmen Aguirre’s memoir Something Fierce, which appeared on the Greystone list, won CBC’s Canada Reads competition.
D&M is distributed in Canada by HarperCollins Canada. It has a long-standing agency agreement in place with Farrar, Strauss and Giroux that is set to expire at the end of the year.

In 2007, a majority share in Douglas & McIntyre was sold to a trio of investors led by Mark Scott, who went on to develop the digital publishing platform known as Bookriff. Q&Q will continue to report on the story as more details become available.

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Book Court of Brooklyn Gets Some NYC Love

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There are many NYC bookstores where I enjoy browsing and shopping, such as Three Lives in the West Village, Book Culture in the Columbia neighborhood, and Westsider Books & Records, but I was really glad to see in Shelf Awareness this morning that the Village Voice has named Brooklyn’s Book Court New York’s Best Bookstore. I don’t live in Brooklyn, so I don’t visit the store–run by a family, Henry Zook and his son Zack, all that often–but I agree it’s a terrific bookstore, with strong sections in many subject areas, and a packed events calendar. Having run a bookstore from 1978-85 with my siblings and our parents, Undercover Books in Cleveland, Ohio, I know how challenging it is to run a family business, any business, and particularly a bookstore.

Congratulations to the Zooks, and everyone who works and shops at Book Court!

 

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