L.A. Times really excited about novel concepts of book serialization, packaging

Yesterday on Twitter I mocked the hype about a new novel by Mark Z. Danielewski, a novel which will be -- shocking new idea!! -- serialized in 27 "volumes." Today there's more information about it in this L.A. Times column.

From this article I want to draw a single quote, emphasis mine:

It's possible that [our publishing] schedule could be accelerated. We're constantly open to new ideas -- where will we be in 2014? Maybe digital releases every week, every few months a trade paperback or hardcover. The novel is designed to accommodate, anticipate various platforms.

I take it that he means this particular novel has been designed to "accommodate" (not to mention "anticipate" -- wow!) "various platforms" -- not that The Novel generically is. Although that's an interesting idea to investigate, maybe a good topic for a master's thesis -- that the novel is, by its nature, flexible enough to accommodate changing media.

But what struck me was this. This is not just a long book that the publisher decided, hey, let's go back to that whole serialization thing that worked so well in the 19th century. After all, it's working for the Paris Review to serialize Roberto Bolaño's "The Third Reich" into four parts -- that's garnered lots of attention (and did, in fact, motivate me to subscribe to the Paris review for the first time ever) -- not to mention the multi-book franchises of Harry Potter and other fantasy creations.

No, according to the author, he designed the books to a) be super-ass long, and b) "accommodate various platforms," like so:

Danielewski was paid a reported $1 million for the first 10 volumes; he's thinking of them as two 5-volume seasons, like a television series.

Uh huh. Now I know why it's the L.A. Times that is the one getting excited about it. Seriously, is this really anything that the awful teen-novel book-packaging industry (cf. "Sweet Valley High," etc. etc.) hasn't already pioneered?

Limo driver and performance artist 'found her voice' on 'This American Life'

This story about a memoirist seems to me representative of several odd strains in our culture.

Writer-performance artist Jeanne Darst wrote lots of stories about her dysfunctional family, which she "performed in one-woman shows she performed in her living room to help pay the rent," according to the story. Reading this, I thought, Oh right. This is the same world Miranda July lives in. You make yourself into a twee storyteller in the David Sedaris mode, and sure enough: "This American Life" is "where Darst began to find her voice as a memoirist." This led directly to a book contract.

Well, that's nice! You get to find your voice on the premiere radio show for memoir, really? Take a giant step, eh?

Just sour grapes on my part. I think it was that bit, which the journalist wrote, not something that came from her, suggesting "This American Life" is like a stepping stone rather than being what it is right now, which is a pinnacle. She's just someone doing exactly what 10,000 other writers are doing, only doing it better, and oh by the way, being an attractive slender woman who lives in L.A. You go!

Whining for dollars

When I wrote up a little piece on whining writers for The Rumpus, there was one article I couldn't find that I wanted to link to. In today's listing of deals on Publisher's Marketplace, I got reminded:

Professor X's IN THE BASEMENT OF THE IVORY TOWER, about the vagaries of teaching English 101 and 102 at a college of last resort -- based on a popular Atlantic Monthly piece chosen by David Brooks for a Stanley Award, to Joy de Menil at Viking Penguin, for publication in March 2011...

Yeah... that was in The Atlantic last year. Pretty much a gloss on Lynn Fried's infamous 2005 piece in Harpers, Doing Time: My Years in the Creative Writing Gulag, only about teaching freshman English instead of creative writing, the Atlantic piece was another in the parade of whining by people who consider themselves above their jobs and the students (or readers) who are their audience.

I wonder why they are taking two full years to bring out the book, though.

technorati: teaching, complaining, whining

'Lost' Kerouac novel to be published

Publishers Marketplace reports that Harpers has agreed to publish "The Sea is My Brother," a "lost" novel by Jack Kerouac, written in 1942 and based on his experiences in the Merchant Marine. According to the book "Desolate Angel" by Dennis McNally, Kerouac wrote the work while on the Dorchester, where he served in the galley.

A review in Jack Magazine of "Atop an Underwood," the 1999 compendium of Kerouac's early and unpublished writings says that "Underwood" contains "a substantial chunk of the third version of 'The Sea is My Brother'." The biography "Jack Kerouac" by Michael Dittman quotes Kerouac as describing "The Sea is My Brother" as being about "man's simple revolt from society as it is, with the inequalities, frustration, and self-inflicted agonies. Weley Martin loved the sea with a strange, lonely love; the sea is his brother and sentences. He goes down. The story also of another man, in contrast, who escapes society for the sea, but finds the sea a place of terrible loneliness."

Sounds like Kerouac was pretty horny and miserable aboard the Dorchester.

technorati: Jack Kerouac, publishing, book deals

Eight years' work on her book paid off

On the SF Metroblog, I just posted an interview with novelist Nami Mun, whose work I was alerted to through the blog of another Korean-American writer, Alex Chee.

I hadn't heard of Mun, but she is a Pushcart Prize winner. According to the book deals log on Publishers Marketplace, Mun's book sold in a "significant" deal, which is between $250K and $500K, but she did work on it for eight years. Say she got $250K for the book, that's about $30,000 a year.

Her multi-city book tour has just started, and I hope it goes better than that other guy's.

technorati: writers, book deals, Nami Mun

Nine-year-old gets a book deal

A nine-year-old boy who wrote a book titled "How to Talk to Girls" is the toast of the internet this week, and on top of it all, he now has a movie deal. 20th Century Fox will adapt the how-to advice into a charming comedic vehicle for its next doomed child star.

Perhaps the young man can follow up his success with "How to Talk to Publicists," "How to Survive the Onset of Puberty While in Rehab," and "How to Sue Your Parents For All That Money They Said You Were Getting."

technorati: books, publishing, book deals

Two new novels set in Las Vegas

Two new novels are set in, and largely about, Las Vegas: The Delivery Man by Joe McGinniss Jr., and Beautiful Children by Charles Bock. Both are first novels.

The story of how the first one was published has some interesting and -- for writers -- comic bits:

When McGinniss was looking for people to give his manuscript a read, among the first people he contacted was (Bret Easton) Ellis. "I groaned," says Ellis of receiving McGinniss' first e-mail asking for help. "Of course, you have to understand, I feel completely indebted to his father. There was no way I was going to say no to his request."

Ellis sent McGinniss back to the drawing board. "It needed to be tightened up," he says. "I felt there were a lot of missed opportunities... There was a lot of editorializing. He had the same setting [of the published novel], the same cast of characters, the same complicated relationships, but the story needed to be more precise."

"I was very naive," McGinniss says. "I'd just assumed you crank it out and if it reads well, it's a novel -- it's done, you're set. At the time I sent it to him, inside I thought, I think I'm pretty close." For the next two years he made multiple revisions and did some more Vegas research...

The confusing thing for novelists at the beginning of their careers is that you're aware some people do get manuscripts published without extensive, multiple revisions; while they may not "crank it out," they basically lay it down, do some polishing, and they really are done. T. Coraghessan Boyle is one of these; I heard him interviewed on a local radio station while I was writing my own first novel, Make Nice (which also happens to be set partly in Las Vegas). I phoned up the show and asked the author about his revision process. He said:

This is going to drive a lot of people crazy, but I don't do any subsequent drafts. I do substantial rewriting as I go along in the first draft, and when I get to the end of the book, it's essentially done. Of course there's editing and so on, but what's in my computer is basically it.

Many more writers do the multiple-revisions thing. My friend Katia went through seven or eight drafts of her first novel Crashing America and she's into the fourth or fifth draft of her next book. Soon I'll be commencing the fourth draft of Bangalored, my second book -- though like McGinniss Jr. when I sent it to my agent last year I thought, It's pretty close.

technorati: Las Vegas, books, novels

Something short of sock puppeting

Is it sock puppeting or sock puppeteering? Sock-puppet mastering?

Anyway. A writer who self-published the first in a series of fantasy books invented a publicist and sent out releases about himself. The ruse worked to attract the attention of a major publisher, which signed him to a six-figure contract.

There is an interesting distinction there between the practice of sock puppeting, or whatever you'd call it -- that is, writing glowing reviews about yourself on websites and writing comments to your own blog postings, using alter egos -- and pretending to be a publicist for yourself. A publicist is paid, while a sock puppet, or the persons purporting to write those glowing reviews and appreciative comments, are not. For some reason it is regarded as an embarrassing act of vanity to write a glowing review of your own book on Amazon, but not to act as your own publicist under a pseudonym.

The way around this problem, of course, is to make an arrangement with another writer to act as each other's publicist. Pay each other one dollar per year, and then flog the other person's book with such enthusiasm that he'd look like an asshole if he didn't pump yours with equal fervor.

Or you could, you know, just spend money and hire a publicist. I did this for my very first book with free money I'd gotten off stock options, thus keeping the strange little book from disappearing without a trace. The publicist's efforts even garnered a few reviews.

technorati: publishing, publicity, book publicity

Book deal of the day

Seen on the Publisher's Marketplace book deals list:

McSweeney's contributor G. Xavier Robillard's CAPTAIN FREEDOM: A Superhero's Quest for Truth, Justice, and The Celebrity He So Richly Deserves, to Carl Lennertz at Harper, for publication in Jan 2009.

Yet another in the series of superhero-themed literature that started a few years ago with "The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay."

Read my own contribution to the genre, a short story called Cleaning Up After the Champion (PDF file).

Lit liars in the news

Coincidentally, two of last year's most disgraced authors were in the news today. The filthy rich parents of Kaavya Viswanathan, whose name was attached to a largely plagiarized novel "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed" etc., bought a $3.2 million condo in Manhattan. And Galleycat reports that James Frey has recovered enough from his national humiliation on Oprah to pen a novel. Man, that's one book that's going to be combed for lice like a first grader's head.

technorati: James Frey, Kaavya, hoaxes, writers

Strange book deal of the week

From Publisher's Marketplace:

Jill Myles's SEX STARVED, the humorous adventures of a newly-fledged succubus as she copes with her new "life," the need for sex, and the dangerous vampire and sexy angel she's torn between; and SEX DRIVE, featuring a succubus road trip to New Orleans, [sold] to Pocket Books.

That's classified as "Women's Romance/Fiction." I guess succubi are the new vampires -- well, that's all that vampire thing was about in the first place, right?