My Friend Ruth Gruber, Pioneering Photojournalist

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Since 1997, when I began working with my remarkable author Ruth Gruber, I’ve had the privilege of bringing out six of her books in hardcover and trade paperback. Over the past year, it’s been really exciting to see four of those books–Ahead of Time: My Early as a Foreign Correspondent; Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1,000 WWII Refugees and How They Came to America; Inside of Time: My Journey from Alaska to Israel; Raquela: A Woman of Israel–be published as ebook editions by Open Road Integrated Media. Now, in honor of Women’s History Month Open Road is making it very easy for new readers to discover Ruth’s work by placing excerpts from each of those books on its blog.

In addition, to observe Ruth’s 100th birthday last October Open Road posted a brief video of her reflecting on her life and career. That video is pasted in above this blog post. I urge you to watch and listen to Ruth, read the free excerpts, and go on and buy her books. I’d suggest you begin with Ahead of Time, which is also the title of a fine documentary film about Ruth. In addition to the recognition that film has brought her, the International Center of Photography mounted an exhibit of Ruth’s photographs last summer, as the ICP gave her the Cornell Capa Lifetime Achievement Award for her contributions as a photojournalist.

I am really excited to spread the joy I’ve taken over the years in working with Ruth and share it with you.

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Ereading Devices in Independent Bookstores?

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Today my publishing friend David Wilk has posted Booksellers and Co-opetition, an intriguing commentary on his blog, suggesting that indie booksellers should consider selling ereading devices in their brick & mortar stores, even Kindles and Nooks, as a way to maintain their connections with customers who are migrating to digital reading, even as many of them continue to read print books too. I suggest you read David’s piece, and think about how independent bookstores might carve out a new place in the emerging ereading environment.

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Not Shutting Up

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Last month, on January 14, I published a blog essay Three Years Ago Today, on my layoff from a publishing house job in 2009. It elicited widespread reaction, measured in sheer numbers of responses on Facebook and Twitter; on this blog, altogether totaling more than 200; in the engaged remarks from many friends and colleagues; and in the new contacts and readers it’s attracted to this website. The essay’s also attracted interest from a website that my friend and author Michael Goldfarb, former NPR correspondent, had referred me to, Over and 50 and Out of Work: Stories of the Great Recession. This a remarkable site and I’m very proud they’ve now published it on their site, among the company of extraordinary people featured on their web pages. You may see it here, and while you’re there, view some of the videos they’ve posted, with personal testimony from individuals like myself. Additionally, a magazine called NY______, or NY Underscore, is running a condensed version of the essay in their upcoming ‘Jobs’ issue. Clearly, the piece has struck a chord with many readers, and at least two web and magazine editors.

I should add that the essay also elicited one remark that wasn’t so kind, which I learned about from a friend. A person I shall not name, though I will say it was someone with a fulltime job, said to this friend, “He should stop talking about getting fired.” This was evidently meant as free advice, as if I should refrain from damaging my chances of regaining employment by being too open about my experience. I felt like a person with a serious illness might feel, who’s told not to speak of their malady in public, to spare those not afflicted the discomfort of learning about it. At first, I was stung by this, as if I’d been told to “Shut up,” and then I realized this person’s reading was so reductionist and witless that they didn’t even register the difference between getting “fired” and being laid off–of being one employee in a group of dozens in a corporation who’re all relieved of their jobs on the same day. After a few days, I laughed about it, and am now just bemused. It reminded me of Mitt Romney’s plea, made on January 11, just a few days before I published the essay, that income inequality and unfair tax burdens on the middle class may be discussed, but only “in quiet rooms.” Clearly, I haven’t entered any quiet rooms, I’m not “shutting up,” and the essay is proving to have an emerging afterlife; that is very gratifying indeed.

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Book Camp–Fostering Innovation Since 2010

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Book Camp on Sunday, February 12 was a spirited ‘unconference,’ a confab of experimentally-inclined publishing people enjoyed enormously by the 150 + plus in attendance, including me.

If you’ve never taken part in an ‘unconference’–and I never had until the first NY Book Camp in 2010–these gatherings are deliberately unplanned and unprogrammed up to the moment they begin. Book Camp is very much opposite to the two big digital publishing conferences held each year, Digital Book World and Tools of Change. As scripted and prepped as speakers are at those events, the presentations at Book Camp are informal, casual, and exploratory. Here, people aren’t sure what they think about a publishing question until they’ve had a chance to say it aloud, or listened to a colleague talking about it. / / more. . .

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Putting Printed Books and Ebooks on Equal Footing

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With indie record labels now routinely making downloads of music available to buyers of vinyl LPs, I’m heartened to see a similar strategy taking hold among indie publishers too, with regard to ebooks and printed books. . . . With the print book and ebook initiative announced today, Coach House has demonstrated their continuing relevance, if it were needed–and that of publishers like them– in the burgeoning digital age that publishing has entered. I wonder how long it will be before big, commercial houses are also routinely making ebooks available, or some digital product, available with purchase of a new book. Meantime, congratulations to Coach House Books for leading the way. // more. . .

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Kodansha Returning to U.S. Publishing Scene

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Excited to see a brief item explaining that Kodansha, the Japanese publishing house I worked for from 1992-97, is planning their return to the U.S. scene. In 1996, as part of the Kodansha Globe series we published the first paperback edition of then-Illinois State Senator Barack Obama’s debut book, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.

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Three Years Ago Today

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On January 14, 2009, I was laid off as the editorial director of Sterling Publishing’s Union Square Press, an imprint of narrative nonfiction books I had been recruited to run two years earlier. I recall the anxiety I felt upon being summoned to the office of the HR director; the sick-making sensation that shot through my gut upon receiving the news; that my email was shut off by the time I returned to my office; and the way I was instructed to leave Sterling’s office for the final time, informed that whatever personal effects I couldn’t grab then would be shipped to my home. If you’ve never had this happen to you, I must say it is not something you can prepare yourself for. Even though I was not surprised to get laid off in the middle of the worst financial crisis in eighty years, it nonetheless registered as a deep shock. Later that dark week, I sent an email to all my contacts, headed “Moving on From Sterling,” for that’s what I had already begun to do. In the weeks that followed, I incorporated a business in the state of New York, Philip Turner Book Productions LLC, and began cultivating clients for what would be my new editorial services business. // more. . .

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400 Years Later, More Room for Books at Oxford University

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Memories came flooding back this morning when I found online an article originating in the Oxford Times, headlined “Bodleian Library Gets an Upgrade.” Andrew Ffrench reports,
“Just over a year ago, library staff began transporting books to the South Marston site from Oxford, from its store in Nuneham Courtenay, and from a Cheshire salt mine, which was also being used to store part of its vast collection. The book move, the biggest since the library opened in 1602, was completed on schedule. One milestone was December 23, when the seventh million volume was shelved. The library, one of the oldest in Europe, and known to scholars as the ‘Bodley’ or ‘the Bod’, has 11 million volumes and is only second in size to the British Library. It is one of a handful of legal deposit libraries, which are required to keep a copy of every new book published. The completion of the move is part of the Bodleian’s plan to free up space and make its treasures more accessible for the public by providing larger display areas. Earlier this year, a collection of Franz Kafka’s letters to his sister went on display. The Treasures of the Bodleian exhibition included part of Jane Austen’s first draft of her unpublished novel The Watsons, which went on show for the first time since it was bought at auction earlier this year. Marco Polo’s travel manuscript from the 14th century, the Codex Mendoza, and a handwritten draft of war poet Wilfred Owen’s ‘Anthem For Doomed Youth’ also went on display. ” // more . . .

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