The Literary Life

From the staff of BookSwim.com

150 Novels Later, Readers Make Debbie Macomber’s Heart Sing with a BookSwim Springboard Author Award

October 1, 2010— “People often ask me what I like best about being a writer,” author Debbie Macomber writes in her online blog. Surely, the winner of the Romantic Times Magazine Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award, Romance Writers of America RITA Award, and the B. Dalton Award (three times) has many reasons to choose from. But, Macomber writes, “I don’t need to think twice before I reply: meeting my readers.” Macomber’s enthusiastic sharing with her readers through her recipes, knitting projects, and 130,000-strong mailing list has earned her the prestigious BookSwim Springboard Author Award.

“We were impressed by the level of engagement and intimacy Debbie Macomber shares with her fans,” said Chip O’Brien, Director of Member Services at BookSwim.com. “Not only does she share her knitting projects, favorite recipes, and incidents from her daily life through her blog, but she also spotlights submissions from her readers, creating this very real sense of exchange and reciprocity. It’s rare to see an author show the same passion for her readers that they show for her work.”

The communal exchange continues beyond the online world: Macomber mails monthly packets to her mailing list as an expression of her appreciation. The packet includes extras such as book coupons to a full-color newsletter detailing Macomber’s latest adventures and new favorite recipes. Despite receiving roughly three thousand fan letters a month, Macomber’s Harlequin profile claims she responds personally to each one.

The Springboard Author Award, formerly the Booksie Award, was created to recognize and honor author innovation and engagement. Previous winners include Suzanne Collins and Andrea Cremer. BookSwim will announce a new award winner each week during Author Appreciation Month.

Author Debbie Macomber overcame dyslexia and five years of rejection slips from publishers before successfully selling her first book, Heartsong, which became the first category romance reviewed by Publishers Weekly. Over sixty million copies of her books are in print. In 2007, her novel 74 Seaside Avenue was listed as the #1 paperback on the Publishers Weekly, USA Today, and New York Times bestsellers lists simultaneously.

About BookSwim.com

Launched in May 2007, BookSwim is America’s only online book rental club offering paperbacks and hardcovers allowing subscribers to rent books “Netflix®-style” with free return shipping and no due dates or late fees. BookSwim offers nationwide home delivery of hardcover new releases, paperback classics and everything in between. Subscription plans start at $9.95 per month, with an option for members to keep the books they love.

No Comments by Chip on October 7, 2010
filed in Company Blog

‘Nightshade’ Steps off the Bookshelf, Into the Blogosphere

SEPTEMBER 21, 2010 – Being a fictional character hasn’t stopped Shay Doran from creating a series of increasingly spooky Youtube webcasts, a detailed blog, and a regularly updated Facebook page with over 700 friends and growing. He stars in the upcoming novel Nightshade, arriving at bookstores on October 19th. Debut author Andrea Cremer has brought her fictional universe to life with an invitation to readers: help Shay solve the mysteries of the centuries-old Rowan estate, and you could be written into the official Nightshade prequel. Her clever melding of the fictional universe with this one has garnered her the prestigious Booksie Award from BookSwim, America’s favorite online book rental club.

Nightshade, a story about a young female werewolf falling in love with a human boy against the wishes of her pack, has already earned praises from the likes of New York Times bestselling author Cynthia Leitich Smith, who called it “a finely-wrought compelling tale of romance and treachery.” The welcome intrusion of the fictional world doesn’t limit itself to the internet: not only does the Nightshade website promise that you can even “text [Shay] straight to his phone,” but readers can send an email to nightshade@campfirenyc.com to enter the running to receive a calla lily mailed to their address—a special package from, as one blogger put it, “a cute fictional boy.”

In fact, as some book bloggers have already seen, ‘Shay’ has even gone so far as to send personalized invitations to take part in his world. The BookSwim office was bubbling with excitement when our own present arrived: an elegant gift box containing a silk calla lily, a cream-colored card with a ribbon and the words ‘An Invitation’ inscribed in script, and a golden USB key holding a personal message from Ms. Cremer along with the first episode of Shay’s video blog.
“Many readers dream of meeting their favorite character in the flesh,” said Jeevan Padiyar, BookSwim’s CEO. “By crafting such an interactive experience with the character through the social media sites we use everyday to talk to our real-life friends, Cremer has given us the next best thing!”

Cremer, an Associate Professor of History at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, began writing Nightshade after breaking her foot and being consigned to crutches for twelve weeks. She plans to follow Nightshade with two subsequent volumes, Wolfsbane and Bloodrose, as well as an official prequel and companion novel. Her other writing projects include The Inventor’s Secret, a YA steampunk novel set in an alternate nineteenth century in which the American Revolution never occurred and the British empire’s power reigns unchecked.

The Booksie Award was created to honor all types of innovation and invention in the publishing industry, in anything from printing techniques to character development. BookSwim.com will announce a new Booksie Award each week during Author Appreciation Month. Honorees, like Cremer, are selected by a panel of publishing professionals and receive recognition on the BookSwim site and through BookSwim’s content partners.

About BookSwim.com

Launched in May 2007, BookSwim is America’s only online book rental club offering paperbacks and hardcovers allowing subscribers to rent books “Netflix®-style” with free return shipping and no due dates or late fees. BookSwim offers nationwide home delivery of hardcover new releases, paperback classics and everything in between. Subscription plans start at $9.95 per month, with an option for members to keep the books they love.

No Comments by Chip on September 20, 2010
filed in Booksie Awards, Company Blog, Press Releases

Forbes.com: “DRM: Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be” by Chip O’Brien

Read the article by BookSwim’s Director of Member Service CHIP O’BRIEN

While working at BookSwim, we have listened to quite a few debates about digital rights management (a.k.a. DRM, which is the term for access-control systems used by hardware manufacturers, publishers and copyright holders) and its role in piracy. In an effort to shed some light on the land of piracy, we visited a popular torrent site and grabbed some statistics on its most downloaded torrents in the books category, as well as the release date of the physical book, list price, Kindle price and Amazon price.

Here’s what we found:

Rating Number of Downloads Title Release Date List Price Kindle Price Amazon Price
1 156,106 The Beatles Complete Songbook (Guitar Tablature/chords) 2000 $24.99 $14.84 $16.49
2 104,034 180+ For Dummies eBooks (all types) n/a n/a n/a n/a
3 98,576 All 6 Harry Potter eBooks n/a n/a Not Available n/a
4 97,006 All Physics Books Categorized (71 textbooks) n/a n/a n/a n/a
5 92,576 Kama Sutra eBooks (10 in total) n/a n/a n/a n/a
6 83,787 Building Flash Web Sites for Dummies 2006 $24.99 Not Available $22.49
7 83,591 Web Design for Dummies 2nd Edition 2006 $24.99 Not Available $16.49
8 78,325 AutoCAD for Dummies 2008 $24.99 Not Available $16.49
9 69,573 Men’s Health – Total Body Workout 2001 n/a n/a n/a
10 66,523 Visual Basic 2005 eBooks n/a n/a n/a n/a

Here’s what we learned:

1. DRM does not stop e-book piracy: 40% of torrents (files shared) contain books not available in e-book format in their current edition. This means that someone bought a physical copy, cut the spine, scanned the pages and used optical character recognition (OCR) to get a first draft. They then crowd-sourced the Internet to help read through the OCR, correct the files and set up linking. In fact, the process was extremely similar to the professional conversions that publishers are doing today. This is particularly true for J.K. Rowling’s books, which were only recently digitized.

2. E-book piracy may be overstated: 50% of the most illegally downloaded files are collections of books, most of which are irrelevant to the pirate downloading them and therefore do not represent lost sales.

This is a strong statement–let us explain: Typically, an individual seeking a particular “For Dummies” book downloads the entire collection, weeds through the titles and opens only the handful of files that are relevant. The remaining titles never get read. However, from a reporting standpoint, one download of the No. 2 torrent “180+ For Dummies eBooks” represents 180 counts of e-book piracy, not the handful actually consumed. In this case, piracy counts are grossly overstated. Even if 50% of the “For Dummies” collection was opened and read, this would still overstate piracy counts by 100%. In order to estimate an accurate count of losses from piracy, look at the consumption rates of pirated titles, not the sheer numbers of books downloaded.

Piracy is real, but perhaps we should rethink the magnitude of e-book piracy and how effective DRM is as a solution.

Read the article by BookSwim’s Director of Member Service CHIP O’BRIEN

No Comments by Chip on August 27, 2010
filed in Blog, Company Blog, Magazine (Online), Press & Media Clippings, Website

Forbes.com: “Book Publishers Can Learn from Film and Music” by Chip O’Brien

Read BookSwim’s Director of Member Service CHIP O’BRIEN at Forbes.com

What is happening to the future of books? Consider this: Amazon sold more Kindle books than paper books on Christmas Day in 2009, despite decisions by publishers like Harper Collins (Palin’s Going Rogue) and Simon & Schuster (King’s Under the Dome) to delay the release of eBooks long past the release of their hardcover counterparts. It seems the popularity of eBooks is growing much faster than publishers’ willingness to embrace them.

But e-publishing doesn’t have to bring an end to traditional paper books, or spin its wheels trying to translate the paper book model into a far different space. Instead of trying to understand eBooks within the space of the old paper-and-binding universe, we should examine the media that survived the first wave of the distribution revolution: movies and music.

Taking cues from the music and film industries, here are five things book publishers should offer:

Combo Deals: Bundle purchases of paper books and eBooks. According to science fiction novelist Eric Flint, releasing a free online copy of his novel Mother of Demons raised the book’s sell-through rate by 11%. While it can’t be shown that his subsequent novel, 1632, definitively benefited from being available for free as an eBook from its publishing date onward, its own 88% sell-through rate doesn’t seem to have been harmed. Many print novels, especially series volumes, currently include a “sneak peek” chapter of a forthcoming book at the end. Instead, why not offer a free download code for a large online excerpt of another title, or even a complimentary eBook in its entirety? It would be an easy way to add value to a paper book purchase, and a great way to promote other titles.

More Flexibility: With the rising popularity of book-swapping sites like Book Mooch and of online book-rental clubs like BookSwim, readers are finding flexible ways to get and keep (or return, as it were) books. Meanwhile, eBook file formats seem almost deliberately restrictive: Nook books can be read only on Nooks and PCs, Kindle books only on Kindles. The music industry long ago gave up on DRM. Offering eBook files that can display on all eReader devices would be a friendlier option for the consumer, allowing the same book to be read on a Nook, a Sony eReader, or any PDF-reading program on a computer.

Product Expansion: The eBook format can break down the traditional linearity of a book; why not use that to the book’s advantage? Like a VHS tape, paper books give access only to the finished product in a single linear sequence. As with DVDs, versatile ebook technology would allow content-producers to “layer” content that would be impossible to include in a paper book, from author commentaries with a display/hide option to extras like deleted chapters or characters that didn’t make the final revision. Links to blurbs of background information could be embedded in the text, so the interested reader perusing The Da Vinci Code could click a link to see a picture of the Louvre museum or a snapshot of “The Last Supper.” Publishers might even consider including free user-submitted content like fan commentary and analysis—material with little-to-no cost that still enriches the basic text.

Some may object to the idea of book “extras” in the same way Spielberg refuses to record audio commentaries for his films: because it might distract attention from the work itself. Would these changes take away from the mystical self-completeness of a book? Perhaps, but it may be time for the book to lose its one-way conversational flow. When you increase the interactivity of a book, you increase its ability to engage an Internet-age audience.

Friendlier Reading For Short Attention Spans: When a would-be reader complains that he or she doesn’t have time to read, it’s more likely that they’re simply missing a continuous block of free time to plow through several chapters at once. It may be worthwhile for publishers to take inspiration from such sites as DailyLit, which breaks novels into 1,000-word chunks and emails those excerpts on a customizable schedule. We may not have time to read 500 pages today, but we could certainly read two pages a day for a few weeks. Many of today’s classic novels, from A Farewell to Arms to Great Expectations, were originally published in serial form—what if, like a band releasing several EPs instead of a single long album, publishers released books in segments?

Social Experience: Reading has traditionally been a solitary activity, which may explain the growing appeal of blog-reporting over traditional newspapers: through comments and follow-up posts, the text talks back. But armed with wireless connections, eReaders can finally create a seamless social reading experience. They might include the option to connect with other readers currently working through the same section of the book, allowing for a kind of impromptu disposable book club. Another possibility is to “Wiki-fy” every text: Allow readers to add comments throughout the book, while others vote on the relevance and helpfulness of those comments.

Finally, a note on what not to do. Netflix recently reached an agreement with Warner Bros. to delay rentals of the studio’s movies until four weeks after their retail release. This bears an uncanny parallel to publishers’ delay of eBooks to preserve hardcover retail sales. In both industries, though, scrabbling frantically for retail sales will fail when the consumers know they can rent (or, dare I say, pirate) the product elsewhere—and the appearance of bullying consumers into buying at hardcover prices is highly unlikely to give readers a sense of compassion for beleaguered publishers.

This is the exact wrong time in history to fret about the imminent death of reading—eReaders have the power to transform books into far richer, far more interactive experiences than ever before. Instead of deriding the eBook as a profit-killer, why not unite our old ideas of reading alone in quiet rooms with the vast potential created by new technology? Let’s re-imagine what books can become.

Read BookSwim’s Director of Member Service CHIP O’BRIEN at Forbes.com

No Comments by Chip on June 9, 2010
filed in Blog, Company Blog, Magazine (Online), Press & Media Clippings, Website

Got questions for Debbie Macomber, James Patterson, or Rick Riordan?

After reading a great book, have you ever felt that burning desire to meet the author for lunch and ask what the HECK your favorite character was thinking in the twenty-second chapter?

In two weeks, we’re tromping off to Book Expo America where I plan to interview several authors and bask in their brilliance. The problem is that I’m a little behind on my reading and I’m not sure what to ask about books that I haven’t read. Then I realized: who better to ask than our readers?

So: tell me the questions you have for the authors below, and time permitting, I’ll get your answer for you from the author him/herself! Comment below or shoot me an email at cobrien@bookswim.com.

And what the heck, an added bonus: if you send me a question by comment or email, you’ll get a chance to win an autographed copy of the author’s newest book!

Robyn Carr (Grace Valley, Virgin River)
Lee Child (Bad Luck and Trouble)
Tim Gunn (Tim Gunn: A Guide to Quality, Taste and Style)
Debbie Macomber (Back on Blossom Street, Hannah’s List)
Carla Neggers (Cut And Run)
Joyce Carol Oates (My Sister, My Love, Blonde)
James Patterson (The 9th Judgment, Witch & Wizard)
Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson & The Olympians, Kane Chronicles)
Karin Slaughter (Fractured)
Adriana Trigiani (Brava, Valentine)

Thanks for helping me out with the interview questions, lovely Swimmers!

–Chip

No Comments by Chip on May 12, 2010
filed in Company Blog

Are writers vampires? The trouble with memoir

There’s always a trouble reading memoirs: writers have a habit (and arguably, an obligation– otherwise, why bother paying attention?) of describing things as more meaningful, more beautiful, than most of us would perceive them. Sometimes, this insistence on plot, metaphor, and ultimate significance doesn’t translate from novels, their natural habitat, to real life, where the details are messier, the characters less consistent, and guns we saw in the first act rarely make it to the third act, much less go off. I once read of a regular blogger whose significant other broke up with her over her writing, saying he felt as if the only reason she was in the relationship was so that she would have something to write about. It’s a risky approach, treating real life like a work of art.

Mark Doty begins his heartbreaking memoir Dog Years by explaining his need to apologize for writing, of all things, about his dearly departed dogs. This is the man who wrote another memoir that so clearly evokes the feelings of grief that I could barely read a chapter on the subway without needing to pull up my hood and pretend I had allergies: Heaven’s Coast. That earlier memoir chronicled the last days of his partner Wally, who died of AIDS after they had been together for twelve years. In Dog Years, Doty mentions some of the negative reviews he had received for that earlier work– notably, one British reviewer who accused Doty of being a psychic vampire, living off the corpse of his deceased lover.

Ouch. Most of the reviews of Heaven’s Coast are overwhelmingly positive, but it’s possible to find other readers who agree with the vampire-accuser. “This book,” one anonymous online reviewer writes, “despite the horrors it sometimes documents, ends up reading like one long, shrill assertion of its own marvellous[sic] sensitivity, inviting the reader to congratulate themselves on their special ability to share in it. Sometimes bad writing is also morally questionable, and this is one of those times.”

The detractors seem to agree on a common viewpoint: that it is inappropriate for Doty to write about his loss, at least in the manner that he does; that his writing reflects to them an indulgence, even macabre delight, in airing emotions that should remain private. There’s a revulsion in their negative reviews and the hideousness of their metaphors, aside from their insensitivity– a kind of disgust that we usually reserve for obscene things.

So we come to the problem of memoir: writing about real life to make it interesting (which usually means tragic, challenging, and very occasionally hilarious) without triggering the voyeuristic feeling that we’re reading someone’s diary. I’ve come across this kneejerk revulsion to difficult memoirs, for books from The Glass Castle to Angela’s Ashes. A reader invariably accuses the author of being self-pitying, hyperbolic, whiny, even a liar.

Admittedly, in this case, Doty comes from a background in poetry. This means that when he writes about an emotion, he not only describes it, he lingers, examining the feeling in every setting, from every point of view. So accusing him of melodrama, perhaps, or self-importance, comes easily.

But what do we want when we read memoirs, if not this close examination of feelings we may or may not share but want to see someone else surviving? A man loses his partner of twelve years, a girl born to Mormons escapes after years of physical and sexual abuse, and they write their stories. Do we demand that these writers present brave faces throughout their stories, as if they had always had the strength they do now? Reading these memoirs can be so harrowing, so effective, that getting through the book makes us feel as if we’re undergoing the same difficult circumstances, inviting them onto ourselves whenever we open the pages. Most of us will find the redemption of such difficult reads in the strength and hindsight the protagonists gain after their hard-won triumphs, so our main interest lies in the ‘after’ rather than the ‘before.’ Or are these reactions instead demonstrating a belief that emotions like grief and rage should be kept private, as if they are never warranted in adults, as if we should be ashamed of them?

I wonder sometimes if we’re surrounded by too many media sources, too many stories, so we feel ashamed that our own lives aren’t bigger. Doty lost his partner, and this hurt; he also lost his dogs, and that hurt too, if not as much or in the same way. We look to writers to tell us about our own lives, help us make sense of this pour of babbling experience that never bothers to explain itself to us. Is it wrong to treat the death of a dog as something worth talking about? What makes one life experience worth noticing, the other a kind of private thought reserved for self-reflection?

I say: if a man experiences the worst loss he will endure in his life, and he needs to write about it to put his mind back together… let him linger. Let him stare as long as he needs into the place where we hide our powerful emotions, afraid that if we let them loose, we will never have the strength to navigate our lives again. And if someone else accuses him of making too much prettiness out of private grief?… well, some people drink themselves to oblivion to forget how hard life is. Some people need to tell stories of their own lives so the world will still feel beautiful, still worth inhabiting, despite the pain. What else are writers for?

-Chip

No Comments by Chip on March 17, 2010
filed in "Sound & Fury" by Chip, Company Blog, The Literary Life

Silly Survey: Classic Literature vs. Video Game Marketers

We’re taking a break from the Books Bulletin this week to examine something that’s responsible for widespread wails of despair here in the office: the bizarre book covers that publishing companies roll out for classic books, hoping to attract a new young audience.

Case 1 is the recently released book cover of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, now published by Del Rey using the same cover as the soon-to-be-released video game by Electronic Arts:

Imagine bringing this to your freshman English class.

Case 2 is what happens when Jane Austen meets Stephenie Meyer.

See how the button exclaiming this is ‘Edward & Bella’s Favorite Book!’ is bigger than Charlotte Bronte’s name? I’m surprised Harper Collins’ building hasn’t been picketed by angry literature professors.

Then again, are these covers any worse than the usual movie tie-ins? Do we really need to see airbrushed Hollywood teens on the cover of a novel, where we never see them?

Time for a scientific study. Which cover makes that little part of you die inside? Or, is there another that’s far worse?

Let us know!

No Comments by Chip on January 15, 2010
filed in Company Blog

Monday Mayhem: An Ode to Author Advances

To most of us, the business of publishing is an intriguing mystery. Do famous authors just walk into a publisher’s office, plunk down the bare outline of their latest masterwork, and smile indolently as the fawning publisher passes them a check for millions?

To find out, I’ve investigated author advances for some well-known titles. Here’s the advance that each title earned for its author:

£5: Paradise Lost (John Milton)
£1500: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (J. K. Rowling)
$2,500: Carrie (Stephen King)
$3,939: The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
$10,000: Day of the Jackal (Frederick Forsyth)
$100,000: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Dave Eggers)
$100,000: The Time Traveler’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
$750,000: Twilight (Stephenie Meyers)
$1.5 million: Bright Shiny Morning (James Frey)
$2 million: Official Book Club Selection (Kathy Griffin)
$3 million: as yet untitled (from NY Times: “the new book is an allegory — this time about the Holocaust — involving animals.”) (Yann Martel)
$5 million: Her Fearful Symmetry (Audrey Niffenegger)
$8 million: Thirteen Moons (Charles Frazier)
$15 million: My Life (Bill Clinton)

Do these numbers surprise you? Know of any other amazing/ horrifying author advance statistics? Comment below!

–Chip

No Comments by Chip on December 28, 2009
filed in Company Blog

Author goes ballistic over Amazon.com review– and other book news

Welcome to Books Bulletin, our mostly-regular collection of wacky, weird and/or wonderful news from the book and publishing world.

Did you save your Lewis Carroll when you were a kid? You may have earned yourself a year at Harvard: this first edition Alice in Wonderland sold for $40k. A copy that had been given to the little girl that inspired Carroll to write the story was going to sell for $140,000 but never made it to auction.

Authors everywhere breathe a sigh of relief: Kirkus Reviews has joined the growing list of defunct publications. “There are no plans to run online Kirkus reviews or a strategy to try to keep the Kirkus brand alive. It is also uncertain what Nielsen will do with the Kirkus review archive. A total of 18 people worked at Kirkus and E&P.”

When I read this article, the ad immediately below it was for a book called But Who Will Bell the Cats?– which proudly proclaimed “Young readers will pore over this one again and again. –Kirkus Reviews.”

Publishers Weekly apologizes for racist “Afro Picks!” cover. If you missed this controversy, read up and prepare to have your trust in America’s progressiveness subdued.

Aspiring writers take note: try not to entertain belligerent delusions or notify the FBI over negative Amazon reviews. Candace Sams goes ballistic while in the guise of Amazon poster Niteflyr One. Gems include:

“”Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.”

“Why not go after ST. Nick since you’re all in such a festive mood.”

“I leave it to you – dear readers – to decide whether authors should be allowed to try and make a living…or if reviewers such as Taylor should be allowed to run amok across Amazon deciding who might or might not get another contract for new work.”

Neil Gaiman takes note of the nonsense and shakes his Wise Writerly Guru head.

Has the Catholic Church blocked potential sequels to The Golden Compass? Star Sam Eilliot certainly thinks so.

And here’s to innovation: one journalist’s favorite newly-coined words of the decade.

Enjoy the weekend!

No Comments by Chip on December 17, 2009
filed in Company Blog

The best use for four-letter words

The illustrious Nick here at BookSwim has released the current bane of my existence. It’s a spelling game called Well Versed– and just as when I play Scrabble, I keep resorting to endless series of four-letter words. Can’t help it– ‘help’, ’soon’ and ‘hear’ are just so easy to identify in the scrambled word pool and give a pleasant little bump in my self-esteem every time.

Play Well Versed

Also, I have to ask: who is the illustrious RobinSki, our current all-time winner?

Try the game out and see how you fare! Hopefully, you’ll wrack up more 5+-letter words than I have.

–Chip

No Comments by Chip on December 10, 2009
filed in Company Blog

Anything but Eurocentric: an ode to independent bookstores

I fell in love with independent bookstores one rainy September night in the Lower East Side of New York City, back in the Halcyon days of my ill-spent youth. We(others shall remain nameless)’d finally but cheerfully been chased out of a bar two hours after last call, when all the trains back to New Jersey had stopped for the night. A man we’d just met in the bar asked if we wanted to stop by his store for awhile, and with nowhere else to go, my friend (looking greener every minute) and I took him up on the invitation.

Once we pulled the gate up and ducked inside, my friend scuttled into the bathroom and the man proceeded to tell me about the darkened room while making cups of fair trade coffee. “A lot of love went into this room,” he said, eyes clearly shining with pride and a touch of weariness, while I surveyed an area slightly larger than my kitchen with dim shelves and books with unfamiliar names. He talked about how being forty and barely affording his New York apartment became worthwhile because it meant making this place possible.

It was only weeks after my (arguably conscious) friend and I stumbled out to the subway that we realized where we had been. Turns out my friend had retreated into the bathroom of one of the last independent radical bookstores in New York City, the kind of place where you go to meet reincarnated Beat novelists, Palestinian slam poets, radical queer activists, dumpster-diving freegans with dredlocks who survive on $10 a week, genderqueer feminists and modern-day Pagans. Y’know– the kinds of people we go to cities to gawk and laugh and wonder at (and sometimes wind up becoming).

As one reviewer remarks on yelp.com: “If there’s a better selection of books and tools in New York to help you challenge the Eurocentric, masculinist knowledge validation process and oppose all of the false assumptions undergirding the hegemonic paradigm, I’m not aware of it.” And there’s the glory and downfall of independent bookstores in a long-winded erudite nutshell.

When we write down our To Read lists, what kinds of books do we establish as worthwhile? What do we wind up reading, if anything? If a long day of work leaves our minds reeling and craving nothing but a light Janet Evanovich, when do we create spaces in our lives for Beauvoir, Burroughs, even Homer– the heavy stuff of intellectual transformation? I’m saying this as a former English major down to maybe five completed books a year.

There were times when the opening of a radical bookstore meant the defiant expression of an alternate culture, a subversive stream of thought carving its space into the ordinary world. It sometimes meant
telephone threats, bomb threats, windows broken, in the case of the store Lambda Rising (soon to close). And how radical the effects are when that tiny defiance gathers voices and grows! How vital our bookstores were when they were the only places in all the mute world where we could hear our own voices! When New Jersey is on the verge of becoming the sixth state to legalize same-sex marriage equality, it’s hard to imagine what life must have been like when that gay bookstore’s survival was in doubt.

The time for radical bookstores may be passing, or so that man said to me back on that September night, talking about the rent in Manhattan that had chased all the other radical bookstores from the area. And the internet has opened other kinds of avenues for culture to germinate and flourish.

For all the convenience of the online world, though– some nights, what I wouldn’t give to sip a cup of fair trade coffee between ill-lit, cramped shelves…

No Comments by Chip on December 8, 2009
filed in Company Blog

Get published! BookSwim’s 2009 NaNoWriMo Competition

Ah, December… when tens of thousands of new novelists, victorious conquerors of National Novel Writing Month, can finally close the laptop in triumph and catch some sleep.

Entry is officially open to BookSwim’s 2009 NaNoWriMo Competition. Winners will have their novels published and available for rental in BookSwim’s catalog!

Prizes
20 Semi-Finalists: 1 free month of BookSwim
5 Grand Prize Winners: Your book rented through BookSwim!

How to Enter

Start with a bang! Copy and paste the first 1,000 words of your novel into the body of your email program along with your name, brief (3 – 5 sentence) summary of your novel, and your preferred method of contact, then attach the first 10,000 words in an .rtf, .doc / .docx, or .pdf file. You need not stop mid-sentence to get exactly 10,000 words– just come to a logical stop as close as you can to that word limit. Make our judges want the rest of the story!

Email your submission to the ONE email address that best corresponds to the genre of your novel:

Speculative fiction (horror, fantasy, science fiction): nanospecfic@bookswim.com
Mystery / thriller: nanomystery@bookswim.com
Historical fiction: nanohistory@bookswim.com
Romance: nanoromance@bookswim.com
Contemporary / mainstream / literary: nanolit@bookswim.com

Submissions begin immediately and close December 31st.

Questions? Comment below or email cobrien@bookswim.com, or click this link for Official Rules and contest details.

Congrats to all the winners of NaNoWriMo. Now let’s get your novel out where the world can see it!

No Comments by Chip on December 3, 2009
filed in Company Blog

Books Bulletin: Write Horrible Sex Scenes, Become ‘Award’-Winning Author

It’s November and the weather has taken a turn for the dreary. In an effort to help everyone become a little more cheerful, here’s a light-hearted romp through this week’s literary news:

Museum ‘of story and storytelling’ planned for Oxford
An online dream touches down from the internet to reality– namely, into Rochester House in Oxford, mere blocks away from Christ Church College where many scenes from the recent Harry Potter movies were filmed. “There must be something in the waters of the Isis that gets into the system of Oxford residents, magically causing them to think of and bring to life unforgettable characters and plots,” said Oxfordshire-based children’s author Mary Hoffman.

–Literary Review’s 2009 Bad Sex in Fiction Prize Strikes Again. Prizes have not yet been chosen, but take a look at these excerpts (if you can stomach the prose!) and see which one gets your vote.

–Overdue library books return century and a half later, all fees paid. Speaking of due dates and late fees: imagine receiving a $1,000 bill from your library, fifty years later!

–“Tokyo Vice” Author Goes To Japan Seeking Enlightenment, Ends Up Writing About Organized Crime. Journalism teachers will tell you to follow the story wherever it leads. It led Jake Adelstein to be placed under police protection– but the story seems to be worth it.

–A dark and stormy night: and slightly better first sentences from new books. With a first sentence like “Of Filastro Agustín’s seven children, the only one he couldn’t bear to beat was his youngest son, Edmund,” how could it be bad?

–Neil Gaiman continues to wreck the grade curve for other fantasy writers. How do we love Gaiman’s new Graveyard Book? From the Newbery medal to the Locus young adult award and the Hugo best novel prize, to the longlisted for the Carnegie medal and shortlist for the World Fantasy award, in quite a number of ways. Gaiman says he was pleasantly surprised, though “the trouble with saying that is that you always sound vaguely insincere – people assume that with each award the book wins, saying you are surprised is less and less plausible.”

With so many awards under his belt, I wonder if Gaiman will wander off to sweep other genre’s prizes. Do you think he’s liable to branch out (and you thought your supremacy was safe, best-selling authors everywhere!)?

No Comments by Chip on November 20, 2009
filed in Company Blog

Books Bulletin: Glenn Beck or Oprah?

Welcome to another post of Books Bulletin, gathering odd, interesting, and wacky news from around the literary world.

Work on your vocabulary, Mr. Churchill

By now, students in the UK have accustomed themselves to writing essays that will be assessed and graded by a computer. But it seems the computer system toted by the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors (CIEA) gives low marks to Churchill’s writing (needs to use fewer metaphors) and Ernest Hemingway’s (needs to write with more care and detail).

The incredible bouncing pricetag of John Grisham

The cost of John Grisham’s Ford County, officially released Tuesday, moved up and down like stock market shares as rivals Amazon.com and Walmart.com extended, then rescinded, their high discounts for top-selling pre-orders.

Early in the day, Amazon was selling Grisham’s book of short stories for $9, the same price it had offered for Ford County before publication and a sign that Amazon was ready to continue the cost competition beyond the release date. Walmart.com was selling “Ford County” for $12 early Tuesday, then cut the price to the pre-order discount of $8.98.

Rick Riordan remains a gods-fearing author

Rick Riordan, the author of the million-selling “Percy Jackson” series about the Greek gods in modern times, has started “The Kane Chronicles,” in which Egyptian gods similarly make mischief, war, love, and other shenanigans in the modern age.

The Disney Book Group announced that the first installment, The Kane Chronicles, Book One: The Red Pyramid, comes out in May.

For Thrillers, Glenn Beck Is Becoming New Oprah

On his radio show and cable television programs, first on CNN Headline News and now on the Fox News Channel, Mr. Beck has enthusiastically endorsed dozens of novelists, a majority of them writing in the thriller genre. Mr. Beck, who now attracts 9 million weekly listeners on radio and 2.7 million daily viewers on television, often selects authors whose plots or characters reflect political stances that mirror his own. But he also promotes the work of authors who may disagree with many of his views.

Who’s more likely to influence your opinion to buy a book: Glenn Beck or Oprah?

–Chip

No Comments by Chip on November 13, 2009
filed in Company Blog

Calling All Writers: BookSwim’s 2009 NaNoWriMo Competition

Brace yourselves, readers and writers worldwide! November is National Novel Writing Month, a huge international event in which over 130,000 would-be writers rush to finish an original 50,000-word novel between November 1st and November 30th. From high school students to professional authors, most of them unpublished, these writers spend one highly caffeinated month writing for the sheer enjoyment of finally finishing that novel.

BookSwim is giving all NaNoWriMo writers the chance to expose their work to thousands of active readers. Now announcing BookSwim’s 2009 NaNoWriMo Competition! All NaNoWriMo winners are welcome to submit excerpts of their work for a chance to have their novels published through print-on-demand technology and made available in BookSwim’s catalog!

Prizes
20 Semi-Finalists: 1 free month of BookSwim
5 Grand Prize Winners: Your book rented through BookSwim!

How to Enter

Start with a bang! Copy and paste the first 1,000 words of your novel into the body of your email program along with your name, brief (3 – 5 sentence) summary of your novel, and your preferred method of contact, then attach the first 10,000 words in an .rtf, .doc / .docx, or .pdf file. You need not stop mid-sentence to get exactly 10,000 words– just come to a logical stop as close as you can to that word limit. Email your submission to the ONE email address that best corresponds to the genre of your novel:

Speculative fiction (horror, fantasy, science fiction): nanospecfic@bookswim.com
Mystery / thriller: nanomystery@bookswim.com
Historical fiction: nanohistory@bookswim.com
Romance: nanoromance@bookswim.com
Contemporary / mainstream / literary: nanolit@bookswim.com

Submissions begin immediately and close December 31st. Make our judges want the rest of the story!

Round 2: The People’s Vote
From these submissions, our judges will select twenty semi-finalists. Their excerpts will be displayed on our site between January 15th and January 31st, and every visitor to our site will be able to nominate one novel from each genre. Make sure all of your friends vote for your submission!

On February 1st, we’ll count the votes for each entry and declare our official winners! If you win, we’ll work with you to print copies of your book, rent them, and pay you each time a BookSwimmer reads your novel.

Questions, comments, or suggestions? Email cobrien@bookswim.com

WANT TO BE A CONTEST JUDGE? Send an email to cobrien@bookswim.com with your name and preferred genres you’d like to review for a free month of unlimited book rental!

Official Contest Rules: Terms and Conditions

1. ELIGIBILITY AND PARTICIPATION.
a. This competition is sponsored by BookSwim Corporation.
b. This competition is open to all winners of National Novel Writing Month as defined on nanowrimo.org (someone who has completed an original work of fiction at least 50,000 words between November 1st and November 30th; see site for full details) currently residing in the United States and its territories, except employees of BookSwim Corporation, its competition sponsor, advertising and promotional agencies and their respective affiliates and associates and such employees’ family members.
c. Entrants are responsible for compliance with applicable laws in jurisdictions where they reside.
d. By entering this sweepstakes, entrants automatically agree to be bound by the terms of this sweepstakes as listed in this Competition Terms and Conditions.
e. Failure to adhere to the terms and conditions listed in this Competition Terms and Conditions will result in disqualification of any submitted entries, and the nullification of entrant privileges to further participate in the competitions.

2. SUBMISSIONS OF ENTRIES AND DEADLINES
a. The competition will be opened for entry of submissions as indicated by the first written and electronically distributed announcement, hereinafter referred to as ‘First Announcement,’ of any competition by its respective promoter and will continue until December 31st, 2009. All entries must be submitted no later than 11:59pm EST on December 31st, 2009. Late entries will be rejected. To be eligible to participate, entrants must submit their entry to one of the following email addresses: nanospecfic@bookswim.com; nanomystery@bookswim.com; nanohistory@bookswim.com; nanoromance@bookswim.com; nanolit@bookswim.com.
b. Entrants must provide their name, valid email address, and all other required information.
c. Incomplete entry forms will be deemed disqualified and rejected. BookSwim Corporation is not responsible for any lost, misdirected or delayed entries. Entries received by telephone, fax, courier, personal delivery or Customer Service Ticket or any other method other than the official Competition submission email addresses will not be accepted.
d. By submitting any entry, entrants agree to be bound by the terms and conditions set forth in this document without limitation. Entries must not include content that is unlawful, harmful, vulgar, offensive, obscene, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable, the determination of which is up to the sole discretion of BookSwim Corporation.

3. WINNER SELECTION AND NOTIFICATION.
a. Semi-finalists of this Competition will be chosen by designated judges as deemed by BookSwim from among the participants who meet ALL of the criteria and guidelines specified by BookSwim Corporation. You understand that these criteria and guidelines are determined exclusively by BookSwim Corporation. The entries submitted by semi-finalists will be presented on the blog The Literary Life and Grand Prize Winners shall be selected by public popular vote via blog comments.
b. Nature of Prize. A maximum of twenty (20) semi-finalists will receive a $29.95 virtual Gift Code redeemable at BookSwim.com for a monthly rental membership. Gift Codes cannot be exchanged for cash and have no cash value. A maximum of five (5) Grand Prize Winners will gain the right to have copies of their novels printed through third-party print-on-demand services, which will then be made available in BookSwim’s catalog for rental by its monthly subscribers. BookSwim will cover the cost of printing for copies introduced into its inventory. Once winners are announced, BookSwim shall negotiate a separate revenue-share agreement with the winning authors. All copyright and ownership of the work of the Grand Prize Winners remains with the winners. Grand Prize Winners shall grant BookSwim the right to print copies of their work as catalog demand dictates and offer said copies for rental to BookSwim subscribers.
c. Notification of Winners. Semi-finalists shall be notified by email. Grand Prize Winners shall also be notified by email at the time the prize designation is made. Odds of winning a prize will vary depending upon quality of entry as determined by BookSwim’s judges and the number of actual Competition participants. In the event any entry is deemed ineligible or disqualified, BookSwim Corporation may award the prizes to alternate entries as it deems suitable. In the event that the prize cannot be awarded, BookSwim Corporation may withdraw the winner’s title and all unclaimed prize(s) will be forfeited. BookSwim Corporation may then select an alternate winner.
d. In accepting the prizes, the Competition winners acknowledge that BookSwim Corporation may not be held liable for any loss, damages or injury associated with accepting or using the prize(s).

6. GENERAL
a. Releases. All entrants, as a condition of entry into the Competition, agree to release BookSwim Corporation staff and its Competition sponsors from and against any and all liability, claims or actions of any kind whatsoever for injuries, damages, or losses to persons or property associated or sustained in connection with participation in any and all aspects of the Competition, including accessing the Competition, submitting an entry, and the receipt, ownership or use of any prize. Each prize winner bears all risk of loss or damage to his or her applicable prize after it has been delivered.
b. Prize Responsibility. All prize winners will be responsible for any and all federal, state and/or local taxes resulting from acceptance of any and all prizes associated with this Competition. No prize substitution or changes are allowed. All prizes are subject to availability. If any winner chooses not to redeem his/her prize, said prize may be withdrawn and awarded to an alternate entry.
c. Limitation of Liability. Neither BookSwim Corporation or its staff, nor its Competition sponsors, assume any responsibility or liability for (i) any incorrect or inaccurate entry form information, or for any faulty or failed electronic data transmissions; (ii) any authorized access to, or theft, destruction or alteration of entry forms or submissions at any point in the operation of this Competition; (iii) any technical malfunction, failure, error, omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay in operation or communications line failure, regardless of cause, with regard to any equipment, systems, networks, lines, satellites, email programs, servers, computers or providers utilized in any aspect of the submission of an entry or the operation of the Competition; (iv) inaccessibility or unavailability of the Internet; or (v) any injury or loss of participants which may be related to or resulting from any attempt to participate in the Competition or download any materials in the Competition.
d. Disputes. To the extent permitted by law, the rights to litigate, to seek injunctive relief, or to make any other recourse to judicial or any other procedure in case of disputes or claims resulting from or in connection with this Competition are hereby excluded, and any entrant expressly waives any and all such rights. You agree that you will submit any dispute you may have with regards to the conduct of the Competition, interpretation of the Rules, and/or awarding of prizes to BookSwim Corporation, whose decision regarding such dispute shall be binding and final. All disputes must be submitted in writing to BookSwim Corporation, 211 Warren Street, Suite 305, Newark, NJ 07103.
e. Winners. All decisions are final.
f. Winner Announcement. All prize winners will be contacted by BookSwim Corporation via email for the claiming of their prizes.
g. Privacy: Bookswim Corporation will not share any information provided by Competition entrants to third parties.
h. Age of Participation. Any participant under the age of 18 is required to notify BookSwim Corporation before entering any competition processes. Participants under the age of 18 may be required to provide proof of parental consent, either in writing by postal mail or facsimile transmittal, at any time during the competition process. If a winner of any award is under the age of 18, parental consent in writing by postal mail or facsimile transmittal will be required.
i. Terms. BookSwim Corporation reserves the right to abbreviate, modify, suspend, cancel, or terminate this Competition at any time without prior notice and without further obligation or liability to you. BookSwim Corporation also reserves the right to change these Terms and Conditions at any time without prior notice.

6 Comments by Chip on November 5, 2009
filed in Company Blog
« Older Posts