Duke is doing a series of anthologies of Latin American countries and the latest release, scheduled for February 2009, is The Ecuador Reader: History, Culture Politics, edited by Carlos de la Torre and Steve Striffler. Duke does a whole series on Latin America, and Striffler was co-editor of their book Banana Wars: Power, Production and History in the Americas. The new book contains many Ecuadorian pieces translated into English for the first time. Of the previous books in the series, The Peru Reader has been reprinted in a second edition, and The Mexico Reader has sold the best. These are handy, well illustrated books that serve a real purpose. They are going to expand the series with some countries in Asia, like Indonesia, and also include readers on different Latin American cities.
Did anyone know that James Baldwin spent 10 years of his life, 1961 – 1971, living and hanging out in Turkey? James Baldwin’s Turkish Decade by Magdalena J. Zaborowska, a professor of American Culture at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, frames a literary biography of Baldwin, and re-introduces readers to an important part of Baldwin’s life. The book has 55 “stunning photographs,” to quote Harvard University’s Werner Sollors. “A small throwaway reference to Istanbul in Another Country now appears momentous.” Zaborowska interviewed many people who know Baldwin in Turkey, and she comes up with fresh material about artists and intellectuals who were in his inner circle. “Baldwin’s Turkish sojourns enabled him to re-imagine himself as a black queer writer and to revise his views of American identity …”
Anthropology is one of Duke’s strong areas of publishing, and a really interesting new book is High Stakes: Florida Seminole Gaming and Sovereignty, by Jessica R. Cattelino. It appears the Seminoles revolutionized the gaming industry when they opened their first casino in 1979. They made a lot of money and proceeded to take care of their own people with free health care and education, and to buy the Hard Rock Café franchise. This book is an accessible ethnography of the Seminole Tribe and their efforts at self-determination. It discusses the interplay between economics, political power and culture and how their renewed political self-governance and economic strength has reversed decades of U.S, settler control.
A book for all sports sections and the anthropology bookshelf would be The World of Lucha Libre: Secrets, Revelations, and the Mexican National Identity by Heather Levi. This is an insider’s view of professional wrestling in Mexico. There are some great stories here. Duke did a previous book on professional wrestling called Steel Chair to the Head. Levi traces the history of wrestling in Mexico, starting with a match in Eagle Pass, TX in 1933, and explains in fascinating detail how this sport became an iconic symbol of Mexican cultural authenticity.
A pretty off-the-wall book, but none the less fascinating, is The Assassination of Theo Van Gogh, by Roy Eyerman. Van Gogh was a controversial Dutch filmmaker who was killed in the streets of Amsterdam in November 2004. A twenty-six year old Moroccan-Dutchman shot Van Gogh and proceeded to mutilate his body. He then pinned five-page indictment of Western society to his body. The murder set off a wave of anti-Muslim violence in the city. Eyerman, a professor of sociology at Yale University, uses what he calls social drama and cultural trauma theory to evaluate the reactions to and effects of the murder. In a highly theoretical argument he takes a performance studies approach to the event, and goes on to discuss its effects on the wider culture of the Netherlands. He relates it to significant events in Dutch history, such as the country’s treatment of the Jews in during the German occupation, and the failure for Dutch troops to protect Muslims in Srebrenica, Bosnia in 1995. There was a big trade book that came out about this event called Murder in Amsterdam, by New York Review of Books columnist Ian Buruma. This book adds another element to the mix.
Duke does film and TV studies, and a book about a cool Japanese director will come out in August: -- The Cinema of Naruse Mikio, by Catherine Russell. Russell is a professor of Cinema at Concordia University in Montreal, and she brings well-deserved critical attention to Mikio, the director of 89 films in Japan between1930 – 1967. He was known as a director of “women’s films,” and four of his films are available on DVD now (Russell wrote the liner notes). One of the films is called When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Criterion Collection). This book also sheds important new light on the Japanese studio system of the time.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Fair Use on Trial
In our meeting today with the marketing and sales folks at Duke University Press one book in particular caught my interest. Bound by Law? Tales from the Public Domain is a comic book primer on fair use doctrine for documentary filmmakers. The authors include a cartoonist named Keith Aoki, who is also happens to be a professor of law at University of California at Davis. The other two authors, James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins, are law professors at Duke. Jenkins runs the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain. The reason this book caught my eye is because it’s a graphic comic book format, something that’s a departure for Duke. It has a feel like Tales from the Crypt, with the narrator/host resembling Justice William Rehnquist. The idea of the book is that there needs to be a balance between fair use and copyright, and the current rules are way out of whack. What Aoki and company are saying with this book is that we need a robust sense of fair use for our culture to survive: -- and Bound by Law “reaches beyond documentary film to provide a commentary on the most pressing issues facing law, art, property, and an increasingly digital world of remixed culture.”
I like that line about remixed culture. This comic book about fair use and filmmaking has far reaching consequences in many different fields of creative expression. My friend and colleague Roger Rapoport of RDR Books in Muskegon, MI is being sued by JK Rowling and Warner Brothers over a book he announced to publish called The Harry Potter Lexicon. Roger has gone to federal court in New York to defend himself against a suit that claims copyright infringement. The author/complier of the book, Stephen Van der Ark, runs a web site which is a resource of information about all things Harry and his magical world - http://www.hp-lexicon.org/index-2.html
JK Rowling herself admitted to using Van der Ark’s site regularly while writing her books, and her publishers at Scholastic wrote a glowing letter to Van der Ark saying how indispensable his work was to them when they were editing Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Rowling seems to have a personal obsession with this lawsuit, and claims to want to do her own encyclopedia in a few years. RDR Books enlisted the lawyers at Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project to testify in their favor.
See this link from the Times of London -- http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article3746609.ece
The lawsuit is ridiculous and the book is simply a guide to navigating the seven books in the Harry Potter series, which seem to get longer and longer with each passing book. Rowling has no case, and she doesn’t seem to realize that the Lexicon actually embellishes and compliments her work. It’s clear that Van der Ark is an avid fan of Rowling’s work. One of the things that Rowling was complaining about in her testimony was that Van der Ark got some of his sources wrong – for instance, a certain spell cast by one of the witch characters in the book was said to derive from the Hawaiian language, and Rowling claimed it was an African dialect. The fact that the Lexicon might be mediocre, or that it gets a few obscure points wrong does not make it a violator of copyrights! Fair use rights need to be protected in this country, and as with the poor documentary filmmaker character in the Aoki comic book coming out in September from Duke, people need to fight to protect themselves from overwrought and greedy copyright holders.
I like that line about remixed culture. This comic book about fair use and filmmaking has far reaching consequences in many different fields of creative expression. My friend and colleague Roger Rapoport of RDR Books in Muskegon, MI is being sued by JK Rowling and Warner Brothers over a book he announced to publish called The Harry Potter Lexicon. Roger has gone to federal court in New York to defend himself against a suit that claims copyright infringement. The author/complier of the book, Stephen Van der Ark, runs a web site which is a resource of information about all things Harry and his magical world - http://www.hp-lexicon.org/index-2.html
JK Rowling herself admitted to using Van der Ark’s site regularly while writing her books, and her publishers at Scholastic wrote a glowing letter to Van der Ark saying how indispensable his work was to them when they were editing Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Rowling seems to have a personal obsession with this lawsuit, and claims to want to do her own encyclopedia in a few years. RDR Books enlisted the lawyers at Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project to testify in their favor.
See this link from the Times of London -- http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article3746609.ece
The lawsuit is ridiculous and the book is simply a guide to navigating the seven books in the Harry Potter series, which seem to get longer and longer with each passing book. Rowling has no case, and she doesn’t seem to realize that the Lexicon actually embellishes and compliments her work. It’s clear that Van der Ark is an avid fan of Rowling’s work. One of the things that Rowling was complaining about in her testimony was that Van der Ark got some of his sources wrong – for instance, a certain spell cast by one of the witch characters in the book was said to derive from the Hawaiian language, and Rowling claimed it was an African dialect. The fact that the Lexicon might be mediocre, or that it gets a few obscure points wrong does not make it a violator of copyrights! Fair use rights need to be protected in this country, and as with the poor documentary filmmaker character in the Aoki comic book coming out in September from Duke, people need to fight to protect themselves from overwrought and greedy copyright holders.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Ambit Energy Strikes in New York and Texas
http://mars.joinambit.com/index.asp
The great American poet Walt Whitman states in Leaves of Grass, “… every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” Energy deregulation in the 21st century is good for me and you. Selling electrons and thermal units seems to be the perfect sideline, in an old-fashioned publishing sense. It provides light and warmth for reading, the power to produce books, even e-books, and like books that can be opened again and again, electricity and natural gas keep on flowing: -- everybody on the grid uses it all the time. Ambit Energy customers have the chance to save money on their bills; Ambit Energy sellers have the chance to earn money as re-sellers, and everybody wins!
With a small piece of the electricity marketplace in selected areas of Texas, Ambit Energy was able to grow into a major corporation. See the Texas state-sponsored web site on Electric Choice -- http://www.powertochoose.org/ -- it’s essentially empowerment for the customer! And with their expansion into the five boroughs of New York City, and suburban Westchester County, NY, Ambit Energy has tapped into a major marketplace for both electricity and natural gas. Illinois is pending with natural gas, and with this development the floodgates will open. A total of eighteen states are in some stage of deregulating their utilities: -- and Ambit Energy is said to have its sites set on areas in Ohio and Pennsylvania next. In Illinois, which is in a pre-launch stage right now, they are going into the Nicor Gas territory. Nicor Gas serves a wide swath of Northern Illinois, http://www.myutilitychoice.com/custom/index.cfm?id=152645&winpop=1 – They have something like 2.4 million customers. Many of these folks have not yet switched their accounts, so it’s another huge market for Ambit Energy.
Ambit Energy focuses on servicing its current customers well. It has taken time to build the infrastructure of Ambit Energy, and to get approval from the Better Business Bureau. BBB is like the Good Housekeeping seal of approval: -- who wouldn’t want to save money, anyway? For the two months since I signed up as a beginning marketing consultant with Ambit Energy – see the site http://mars.energy526.com/ - I’ve found it hard to attract re-sellers to join my fledging organization. It’s a ground floor opportunity, I tell people, but it’s something big coming in the future, and it’s hard to for them to imagine. But think about it, I’m smack-dab in the middle of Nicor Gas country – I live in River Forest, IL – and for a mere $399 one-time fee, and $24.95 a month for seven different web sites, and a back office frontloaded with selling and marketing tools, Ambit Energy re-sellers have a real chance to grow their Ambit business into residual powerhouses! As Old-Blue-Eyes Frank Sinatra once sang, “Come fly with me, come fly, let’s fly away!”
I’m heading to New York City – Ambit Energy land for electricity and natural gas for heating – and I’m setup to start signing up customers. It’s a real benefit for them! I’m there for some 10 days at publisher sales meetings, and I used to live there. My brother Mark Crispin Miller lives there, my nephews and extended family are there, so I’m going to switch gears and focus on selling this great Ambit Energy service in an around New York City. Sign up and get free airline miles. Continue to use the service and get a free cruise on the South Seas. Get five other people to be customers and Ambit will reward that enterprising customer with 25,000 free airline miles. It’s a bit of a no-brainer. You can go to this site - http://mars.thinkambit.com/index.asp - click on the customer enrollment link, type in your zip code, and see if you’re in the Ambit territory. It’s easy as pie. Customers are going to like it. It’s an incredibly good deal for them – a veritable free lunch – and they will come to understand that Ambit Energy is for real and definitely the wave of the financial future for them.
The great American poet Walt Whitman states in Leaves of Grass, “… every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” Energy deregulation in the 21st century is good for me and you. Selling electrons and thermal units seems to be the perfect sideline, in an old-fashioned publishing sense. It provides light and warmth for reading, the power to produce books, even e-books, and like books that can be opened again and again, electricity and natural gas keep on flowing: -- everybody on the grid uses it all the time. Ambit Energy customers have the chance to save money on their bills; Ambit Energy sellers have the chance to earn money as re-sellers, and everybody wins!
With a small piece of the electricity marketplace in selected areas of Texas, Ambit Energy was able to grow into a major corporation. See the Texas state-sponsored web site on Electric Choice -- http://www.powertochoose.org/ -- it’s essentially empowerment for the customer! And with their expansion into the five boroughs of New York City, and suburban Westchester County, NY, Ambit Energy has tapped into a major marketplace for both electricity and natural gas. Illinois is pending with natural gas, and with this development the floodgates will open. A total of eighteen states are in some stage of deregulating their utilities: -- and Ambit Energy is said to have its sites set on areas in Ohio and Pennsylvania next. In Illinois, which is in a pre-launch stage right now, they are going into the Nicor Gas territory. Nicor Gas serves a wide swath of Northern Illinois, http://www.myutilitychoice.com/custom/index.cfm?id=152645&winpop=1 – They have something like 2.4 million customers. Many of these folks have not yet switched their accounts, so it’s another huge market for Ambit Energy.
Ambit Energy focuses on servicing its current customers well. It has taken time to build the infrastructure of Ambit Energy, and to get approval from the Better Business Bureau. BBB is like the Good Housekeeping seal of approval: -- who wouldn’t want to save money, anyway? For the two months since I signed up as a beginning marketing consultant with Ambit Energy – see the site http://mars.energy526.com/ - I’ve found it hard to attract re-sellers to join my fledging organization. It’s a ground floor opportunity, I tell people, but it’s something big coming in the future, and it’s hard to for them to imagine. But think about it, I’m smack-dab in the middle of Nicor Gas country – I live in River Forest, IL – and for a mere $399 one-time fee, and $24.95 a month for seven different web sites, and a back office frontloaded with selling and marketing tools, Ambit Energy re-sellers have a real chance to grow their Ambit business into residual powerhouses! As Old-Blue-Eyes Frank Sinatra once sang, “Come fly with me, come fly, let’s fly away!”
I’m heading to New York City – Ambit Energy land for electricity and natural gas for heating – and I’m setup to start signing up customers. It’s a real benefit for them! I’m there for some 10 days at publisher sales meetings, and I used to live there. My brother Mark Crispin Miller lives there, my nephews and extended family are there, so I’m going to switch gears and focus on selling this great Ambit Energy service in an around New York City. Sign up and get free airline miles. Continue to use the service and get a free cruise on the South Seas. Get five other people to be customers and Ambit will reward that enterprising customer with 25,000 free airline miles. It’s a bit of a no-brainer. You can go to this site - http://mars.thinkambit.com/index.asp - click on the customer enrollment link, type in your zip code, and see if you’re in the Ambit territory. It’s easy as pie. Customers are going to like it. It’s an incredibly good deal for them – a veritable free lunch – and they will come to understand that Ambit Energy is for real and definitely the wave of the financial future for them.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Pick of the Lists for Spring Books, 2008
Spring 2008 – Miller Trade Book Marketing
Contact: Eric Miller 363 W Erie St. Ste. 7E Chicago, IL 60610 orders@millertrade.com
Toll Free Phone 1-866-829-0824 - Fax 1-312-276-8109 http://www.millertrade.blogspot.com/
Charter Members: National Association Independent Publisher’s Representatives – http://www.naipr.org/
Sunday Afternoon on the Porch: Reflections of Small Town Iowa
Photographs by Everett W. Kuntz – Text by Jim Heyen
ISBN 978-1-58729-653-6 Cloth $29.95 June 2008 Photography Univ. of Iowa Press
“These pictures, resting like treasures from 1939 until now are delights … The photographs are garnished by Jim Heyen’s witty affectionate commentary … If 2007 looks insane to you, pursue for a while this lovely, charming book …” – Bill Holm
9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press
David Ray Griffin
ISBN 978-1-56656-716-9 Paperback $20.00 May 2008 Current Affairs Interlink Publishing
“David Ray Griffin has established himself – alongside Seymour Hersh – as America’s number one bearer of unpleasant, yet necessary, public truths.” – Richard Falk, Princeton University
The Color of Loss: An Intimate Portrait of New Orleans After Katrina
Photographs and Introduction by Dan Burkholder – Foreword Andrei Cordescu
ISBN 978-0-292-71713-8 Cloth $50.00 March 2008 Photographs Univ. of Texas Press
Using an innovative digital technology that creates photographs that look like paintings, Dan Burkholder offers a powerful new way of seeing New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
A Natural Sense of Wonder: Connecting Kids with Nature through the Seasons
Rick Van Noy
ISBN 978-0-8203-3103-4 Paperback $16.95 June 2008 Nature Univ. of Georgia Press
This book answers the call to action raised by The Last Child in the Woods.
What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction
Toni Morrison
ISBN 978-1-60473-017-3 Cloth $30.00 April 2008 American Literature/African American Studies Univ. Press of Mississippi
Thirty years of the Nobel Laureate’s reflections on life, writing, and other writers. This edition includes her Nobel Prize speech in 1993.
Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers
Edited by Kathryn Kyser
ISBN 978-0-87351-614-3 Cloth $24.95 April 2008 Literature/Anthology MN Hist. Soc. Press
With honesty and extraordinary self-knowledge twenty-one accomplished authors illuminate the mother-daughter relationship – intimate, complicated, loving, flawed – with humor and clarity.
Positively Main Street: Bob Dylan’s Minnesota
Toby Thompson
ISBN 978-0-8166-5445-1 Paperback $15.95 May 2008 Music/Regional Univ. of Minnesota Press
A young writer uncovers Bob Dylan’s past, back when music mattered. “Dylan fans will not
want to miss this book.” – Sioux City Journal
Hitler’s Priest: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism
Kevin F. Spicer ISBN 978-0-87580-384-5 Cloth $34.95 April 2008 World History/Religion N. Illinois Univ. Press
Notre Dame professor Spicer use of archival materials is almost superhuman and he has done a true detective’s job in tracking down priests the Catholic Church leadership would rather be stricken from the historical recor
Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac, Updated Edition
David Amram
ISBN 978-1-59451-544-6 Paperback $19.95 March 2008 Music/Literature Paradigm Publishers
David Amram’s musical career has spanned 50 years, and he participated with the first jazz-poetry reading in 1957 with Jack Kerouac in Greenwich Village. Now updated, this is the rollicking story of this legendary musician and his adventures with his close friend Jack Kerouac.
Jackie Ormes: The First African-American Cartoonist
Nancy Goldstein
ISBN 978-0-472-11624-9 Cloth $30.00 February 2008 Art/Comics Univ. of Michigan Press
A richly illustrated biography of a pioneering woman artist and the characters she created.
A Time to Dance
Heinz Poll
ISBN 978-1-931968-52-2 Paperback $22.95 Dance/Regional Univ. of Akron Press
Heniz Poll was an internationally known choreographer who founded the Ohio Ballet. Through all unexpected twists and turns of his adventurous life he displayed a total dedication to the art of dance.
A Cook’s Journey: Slow Food in the Heartland
Kurt Michael Friese
ISBN 978-1-8881603-6-9 Paperback $26.95 Cooking/Regional Ice Cube Press
Iowa City Chef Friese explores the Slow Food Movement in the 13 state Midwest region. We learn about the remarkable diversity of foods throughout the region. This book will be a stunner.
The Long Journey Home: A Novel
Laurel Means
ISBN 978-0-89733-569-0 Paperback $ 16.95 Historical Fiction Academy Chicago Publishers
A fascinating saga set on the Minnesota prairie of the 1860s. Filed with shifting shapes and graphic action, this book is set in the aftermath of the Civil war and tells a compelling story of 19th Western America.
Gallery Ghost: Find the Ghost Who Paints the Most
Anna Nilsen
ISBN 978-1-59960-036-9 Cloth $18.00 Children’s Birdcage Press
Bestselling children’s author Nilsen (Art Fraud Detective) joins up with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and features 24 of their masterpieces where a spooky time is has by all.
The Informed Gardner
Linda Chalker-Scott
ISBN 978-0-295-98790-3 Paperback $18.95 Gardening Univ. of Washington Press
This is a solid introduction to sustainable landscape practices that is of interest to a wide variety of designers, architects, arborists, foresters, and the home gardener.
Contemporary Iraqi Fiction: An Anthology
Edited and Translated from Arabic by Shakir Mustafa
ISBN 978-0-8156-0902-5 Cloth $22.95 World Literature Syracuse Univ. Press
The first anthology of its kind in the West: -- here is the work of sixteen Iraqi writers that sheds important new light on the rich diversity of the Iraqi experience. Themes range from childhood and family to war, political oppression and interfaith relationships.
Bang: The Complete History of the Universe
Brian May, Patrick Moore, and Chris Lintott
ISBN 978-0-8018-8985-1 Cloth $29.95 Science/Astronomy Johns Hopkins Univ. Press
This all-color book was a bestseller in the U.K. This fascinating book includes photographs, short biographies of key figure, glossary of terms, and suggested resources for further exporation. Brian May, recently awarded a PHD in Astrophysics, was the founding guitarist of the rock band Queen. Pick up a copy of Bang - it will rock you!
At Maxwell Street: Chicago’s Historic Marketplace Recalled in Words and Photographs
Compiled by Tom Palazzolo
ISBN 978-0-9786976-1-1 Cloth with DVD $40.00 Photography/Film/Chicago Wicker Park Press
Legendary Chicago filmmaker and artist Tom Palazzolo has assembled photographers, musicians, journalists, writers, and everyday people to bring the classic marketplace of Chicago back to life in a vibrant multimedia book. Maxwell Street started in the first years of the Twentieth Century before being razed by City officials and the University of Illinois at Chicago. A DVD of the 1983 film produced by Tom Palazzolo, along with a slide show of color images, accompanies this book.
Contact: Eric Miller 363 W Erie St. Ste. 7E Chicago, IL 60610 orders@millertrade.com
Toll Free Phone 1-866-829-0824 - Fax 1-312-276-8109 http://www.millertrade.blogspot.com/
Charter Members: National Association Independent Publisher’s Representatives – http://www.naipr.org/
Sunday Afternoon on the Porch: Reflections of Small Town Iowa
Photographs by Everett W. Kuntz – Text by Jim Heyen
ISBN 978-1-58729-653-6 Cloth $29.95 June 2008 Photography Univ. of Iowa Press
“These pictures, resting like treasures from 1939 until now are delights … The photographs are garnished by Jim Heyen’s witty affectionate commentary … If 2007 looks insane to you, pursue for a while this lovely, charming book …” – Bill Holm
9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press
David Ray Griffin
ISBN 978-1-56656-716-9 Paperback $20.00 May 2008 Current Affairs Interlink Publishing
“David Ray Griffin has established himself – alongside Seymour Hersh – as America’s number one bearer of unpleasant, yet necessary, public truths.” – Richard Falk, Princeton University
The Color of Loss: An Intimate Portrait of New Orleans After Katrina
Photographs and Introduction by Dan Burkholder – Foreword Andrei Cordescu
ISBN 978-0-292-71713-8 Cloth $50.00 March 2008 Photographs Univ. of Texas Press
Using an innovative digital technology that creates photographs that look like paintings, Dan Burkholder offers a powerful new way of seeing New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
A Natural Sense of Wonder: Connecting Kids with Nature through the Seasons
Rick Van Noy
ISBN 978-0-8203-3103-4 Paperback $16.95 June 2008 Nature Univ. of Georgia Press
This book answers the call to action raised by The Last Child in the Woods.
What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction
Toni Morrison
ISBN 978-1-60473-017-3 Cloth $30.00 April 2008 American Literature/African American Studies Univ. Press of Mississippi
Thirty years of the Nobel Laureate’s reflections on life, writing, and other writers. This edition includes her Nobel Prize speech in 1993.
Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers
Edited by Kathryn Kyser
ISBN 978-0-87351-614-3 Cloth $24.95 April 2008 Literature/Anthology MN Hist. Soc. Press
With honesty and extraordinary self-knowledge twenty-one accomplished authors illuminate the mother-daughter relationship – intimate, complicated, loving, flawed – with humor and clarity.
Positively Main Street: Bob Dylan’s Minnesota
Toby Thompson
ISBN 978-0-8166-5445-1 Paperback $15.95 May 2008 Music/Regional Univ. of Minnesota Press
A young writer uncovers Bob Dylan’s past, back when music mattered. “Dylan fans will not
want to miss this book.” – Sioux City Journal
Hitler’s Priest: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism
Kevin F. Spicer ISBN 978-0-87580-384-5 Cloth $34.95 April 2008 World History/Religion N. Illinois Univ. Press
Notre Dame professor Spicer use of archival materials is almost superhuman and he has done a true detective’s job in tracking down priests the Catholic Church leadership would rather be stricken from the historical recor
Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac, Updated Edition
David Amram
ISBN 978-1-59451-544-6 Paperback $19.95 March 2008 Music/Literature Paradigm Publishers
David Amram’s musical career has spanned 50 years, and he participated with the first jazz-poetry reading in 1957 with Jack Kerouac in Greenwich Village. Now updated, this is the rollicking story of this legendary musician and his adventures with his close friend Jack Kerouac.
Jackie Ormes: The First African-American Cartoonist
Nancy Goldstein
ISBN 978-0-472-11624-9 Cloth $30.00 February 2008 Art/Comics Univ. of Michigan Press
A richly illustrated biography of a pioneering woman artist and the characters she created.
A Time to Dance
Heinz Poll
ISBN 978-1-931968-52-2 Paperback $22.95 Dance/Regional Univ. of Akron Press
Heniz Poll was an internationally known choreographer who founded the Ohio Ballet. Through all unexpected twists and turns of his adventurous life he displayed a total dedication to the art of dance.
A Cook’s Journey: Slow Food in the Heartland
Kurt Michael Friese
ISBN 978-1-8881603-6-9 Paperback $26.95 Cooking/Regional Ice Cube Press
Iowa City Chef Friese explores the Slow Food Movement in the 13 state Midwest region. We learn about the remarkable diversity of foods throughout the region. This book will be a stunner.
The Long Journey Home: A Novel
Laurel Means
ISBN 978-0-89733-569-0 Paperback $ 16.95 Historical Fiction Academy Chicago Publishers
A fascinating saga set on the Minnesota prairie of the 1860s. Filed with shifting shapes and graphic action, this book is set in the aftermath of the Civil war and tells a compelling story of 19th Western America.
Gallery Ghost: Find the Ghost Who Paints the Most
Anna Nilsen
ISBN 978-1-59960-036-9 Cloth $18.00 Children’s Birdcage Press
Bestselling children’s author Nilsen (Art Fraud Detective) joins up with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and features 24 of their masterpieces where a spooky time is has by all.
The Informed Gardner
Linda Chalker-Scott
ISBN 978-0-295-98790-3 Paperback $18.95 Gardening Univ. of Washington Press
This is a solid introduction to sustainable landscape practices that is of interest to a wide variety of designers, architects, arborists, foresters, and the home gardener.
Contemporary Iraqi Fiction: An Anthology
Edited and Translated from Arabic by Shakir Mustafa
ISBN 978-0-8156-0902-5 Cloth $22.95 World Literature Syracuse Univ. Press
The first anthology of its kind in the West: -- here is the work of sixteen Iraqi writers that sheds important new light on the rich diversity of the Iraqi experience. Themes range from childhood and family to war, political oppression and interfaith relationships.
Bang: The Complete History of the Universe
Brian May, Patrick Moore, and Chris Lintott
ISBN 978-0-8018-8985-1 Cloth $29.95 Science/Astronomy Johns Hopkins Univ. Press
This all-color book was a bestseller in the U.K. This fascinating book includes photographs, short biographies of key figure, glossary of terms, and suggested resources for further exporation. Brian May, recently awarded a PHD in Astrophysics, was the founding guitarist of the rock band Queen. Pick up a copy of Bang - it will rock you!
At Maxwell Street: Chicago’s Historic Marketplace Recalled in Words and Photographs
Compiled by Tom Palazzolo
ISBN 978-0-9786976-1-1 Cloth with DVD $40.00 Photography/Film/Chicago Wicker Park Press
Legendary Chicago filmmaker and artist Tom Palazzolo has assembled photographers, musicians, journalists, writers, and everyday people to bring the classic marketplace of Chicago back to life in a vibrant multimedia book. Maxwell Street started in the first years of the Twentieth Century before being razed by City officials and the University of Illinois at Chicago. A DVD of the 1983 film produced by Tom Palazzolo, along with a slide show of color images, accompanies this book.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
An Offbeat Column from a Publishing Insider
Written for KC Generations, Kansas City, Missouri
“The whole culture grapples with who is in charge and what can be known, who must be listened to and what must be remembered. As authors, authors sense acutely the complicated relationship they have with authority. ‘Author’ and ‘authority’ – it goes beyond the mere suffix following the word. In the classroom or out of it, what one speaks, what one writes is always seeking a purchase, looking for traction, hoping this word will take.”
Michael Martone, Unconventions: Attempting the Art of Craft and the Craft of Art, 2005
Literature and the world of ideas revolve around authors taking chances, and making efforts to put words together to form a meaningful message or a story that will inspire readers. The job of the author is not easy, and it takes a very special individual to make their living at writing anything. I knew a writing teacher once from Connecticut who always used to say, “cut and trim, cut and trim, write with vigor and with vim.” He was a pragmatic mentor to housewives and schoolteachers who longed to write books for children. He kept up correspondence with his students, and I remember he was sometimes merciless in his criticism. I remember his telling me about the never-ending quest for the right word would have his students chomping at the bit, struggling for just the right turn of phrase, and to do this you literally needed to get down on your hands and knees and “bite the rug.” From the perspective of a book salesman, I can tell you the market for children’s books is one of the most cutthroat of all. I would never dream of publishing a children’s book, no matter how polished or cute it was. Children’s booksellers, librarians and book reviewers view themselves as a kind of guardians-of-the-gate for children’s literature, and the smallest mistake or problem with the format or content will spell instant doom for a children’s project. And this not only counts for small publishers’ books. Big publishers can get caught in this bear trap as well.
The struggle that authors go through to create their books is legendary, but I have seen the process from the other side, from a couple of different sides in fact. As a book salesman, you have something like 15 to 30 seconds to present a book to a bookstore buyer. Booksellers need to make swift judgments in the interests of time and economy. The thing that makes my sales job interesting is that booksellers can be very engaging people, and the books always change with each selling season. You never have the time to read all the books you sell, so you become adapt at coming up with a sales handle, a pitch, if you like, to say about each title. Never mind that an author could have poured blood, sweat and tears into creating the book, which may or may not be a masterpiece, and a key way it’s going to get on the shelf at Borders or Rainy Day Books is if the stars are aligned right and the business gods smile down on the transaction.
And the process does not end there. If books do not sell, or if nobody checks it out at the local library, they can be returned to the publisher for credit against future purchases. That’s why a standard publishing agreement for authors states that royalties will be paid only on “books sold, paid-for and not returned.” The whole business of returns is sad and awkward for everybody in the book business. You can have a big bestseller that garners a goldmine of publicity and exposure, and the publisher will gleefully print and re-print copies of the book. At the end of line, though, they risk their book not becoming a perennial seller and they can become awash in a sea of returns. This peculiar predicament has affected publishers both large and small. The process starts with the author and their private writing space, and once it goes out into the marketplace it can be ignored, marginalized or scorned. If the book catches on, the publisher needs to play their cards right not to end up with too many books. There is an annual overstock and remainder book show in Chicago every year in the fall where publishers unload their wares. One wit called it “the show where turkeys fly!” The residual market for unsold books pours into the Internet as well where, if you are willing to pay shipping, you can sometimes buy some books for as little as a penny a piece.
It seems that in the 21st century the book itself is becoming supplanted by the computer screen. The e-book has been slow to catch on, but it has never really gone away, and now there are big flashy ads in glossy magazines and marquees for electronic readers from corporations like Microsoft and Sony. These newly updated devises can hold an entire library in its clutches, and readers can even manipulate the text and interact with it. This file-sharing phenomenon changed the face of the music business. I remember walking into a Starbucks where they were playing Theodius Monk and I had a conversation with the young clerk who expressed a passionate love for the music. I told him about pianist Wynton Kelly and bassist Paul Chambers, classic jazz, and he eagerly wrote it down and said he was going straight home to download it onto his computer. Technology changed the face of that transaction, no money changed hands, and it gives me pause to think about what could happen to the content of books in the future.
I hope I am not come across as pessimistic in this article. In fact I am a kind of cockeyed optimist when it comes to books and the state of literature today. As a book salesman I’ve made the jump to publishing my own books. My parents are 81 years old and they still come into the office everyday and run Academy Chicago Publishers, a small but fiercely independent house that has published books of general interest for the past 31 years. You could say that publishing books is hereditary, and that I got the idea to do my own books by observing the ups and downs of my parent’s company. In a way this is true, but I also saw selling and marketing books as a way to do my own thing. I came up with my ideas for books through my job as an independent book salesman for the past 25 years, and from helping Academy Chicago Publishers develop its own list of books. I started my publishing company, Wicker Park Press, in 2002, and while I made many mistakes as a rookie publisher, I have learned by example and through experience. I have seen the fortunes of many books play out in the marketplace from manuscript to finished product. I feel blessed that I can contribute to the greater culture by helping publishers distribute their books, and that I have the opportunity to participate in my own form of self-expression with Wicker Park Press. Writers have their inspiration and their muse that motivates them to sit down and write books, publishers have their own special brand of incentive that keeps them producing books, and the whole shebang can be a fascinating journey for those involved in the world of books.
“The whole culture grapples with who is in charge and what can be known, who must be listened to and what must be remembered. As authors, authors sense acutely the complicated relationship they have with authority. ‘Author’ and ‘authority’ – it goes beyond the mere suffix following the word. In the classroom or out of it, what one speaks, what one writes is always seeking a purchase, looking for traction, hoping this word will take.”
Michael Martone, Unconventions: Attempting the Art of Craft and the Craft of Art, 2005
Literature and the world of ideas revolve around authors taking chances, and making efforts to put words together to form a meaningful message or a story that will inspire readers. The job of the author is not easy, and it takes a very special individual to make their living at writing anything. I knew a writing teacher once from Connecticut who always used to say, “cut and trim, cut and trim, write with vigor and with vim.” He was a pragmatic mentor to housewives and schoolteachers who longed to write books for children. He kept up correspondence with his students, and I remember he was sometimes merciless in his criticism. I remember his telling me about the never-ending quest for the right word would have his students chomping at the bit, struggling for just the right turn of phrase, and to do this you literally needed to get down on your hands and knees and “bite the rug.” From the perspective of a book salesman, I can tell you the market for children’s books is one of the most cutthroat of all. I would never dream of publishing a children’s book, no matter how polished or cute it was. Children’s booksellers, librarians and book reviewers view themselves as a kind of guardians-of-the-gate for children’s literature, and the smallest mistake or problem with the format or content will spell instant doom for a children’s project. And this not only counts for small publishers’ books. Big publishers can get caught in this bear trap as well.
The struggle that authors go through to create their books is legendary, but I have seen the process from the other side, from a couple of different sides in fact. As a book salesman, you have something like 15 to 30 seconds to present a book to a bookstore buyer. Booksellers need to make swift judgments in the interests of time and economy. The thing that makes my sales job interesting is that booksellers can be very engaging people, and the books always change with each selling season. You never have the time to read all the books you sell, so you become adapt at coming up with a sales handle, a pitch, if you like, to say about each title. Never mind that an author could have poured blood, sweat and tears into creating the book, which may or may not be a masterpiece, and a key way it’s going to get on the shelf at Borders or Rainy Day Books is if the stars are aligned right and the business gods smile down on the transaction.
And the process does not end there. If books do not sell, or if nobody checks it out at the local library, they can be returned to the publisher for credit against future purchases. That’s why a standard publishing agreement for authors states that royalties will be paid only on “books sold, paid-for and not returned.” The whole business of returns is sad and awkward for everybody in the book business. You can have a big bestseller that garners a goldmine of publicity and exposure, and the publisher will gleefully print and re-print copies of the book. At the end of line, though, they risk their book not becoming a perennial seller and they can become awash in a sea of returns. This peculiar predicament has affected publishers both large and small. The process starts with the author and their private writing space, and once it goes out into the marketplace it can be ignored, marginalized or scorned. If the book catches on, the publisher needs to play their cards right not to end up with too many books. There is an annual overstock and remainder book show in Chicago every year in the fall where publishers unload their wares. One wit called it “the show where turkeys fly!” The residual market for unsold books pours into the Internet as well where, if you are willing to pay shipping, you can sometimes buy some books for as little as a penny a piece.
It seems that in the 21st century the book itself is becoming supplanted by the computer screen. The e-book has been slow to catch on, but it has never really gone away, and now there are big flashy ads in glossy magazines and marquees for electronic readers from corporations like Microsoft and Sony. These newly updated devises can hold an entire library in its clutches, and readers can even manipulate the text and interact with it. This file-sharing phenomenon changed the face of the music business. I remember walking into a Starbucks where they were playing Theodius Monk and I had a conversation with the young clerk who expressed a passionate love for the music. I told him about pianist Wynton Kelly and bassist Paul Chambers, classic jazz, and he eagerly wrote it down and said he was going straight home to download it onto his computer. Technology changed the face of that transaction, no money changed hands, and it gives me pause to think about what could happen to the content of books in the future.
I hope I am not come across as pessimistic in this article. In fact I am a kind of cockeyed optimist when it comes to books and the state of literature today. As a book salesman I’ve made the jump to publishing my own books. My parents are 81 years old and they still come into the office everyday and run Academy Chicago Publishers, a small but fiercely independent house that has published books of general interest for the past 31 years. You could say that publishing books is hereditary, and that I got the idea to do my own books by observing the ups and downs of my parent’s company. In a way this is true, but I also saw selling and marketing books as a way to do my own thing. I came up with my ideas for books through my job as an independent book salesman for the past 25 years, and from helping Academy Chicago Publishers develop its own list of books. I started my publishing company, Wicker Park Press, in 2002, and while I made many mistakes as a rookie publisher, I have learned by example and through experience. I have seen the fortunes of many books play out in the marketplace from manuscript to finished product. I feel blessed that I can contribute to the greater culture by helping publishers distribute their books, and that I have the opportunity to participate in my own form of self-expression with Wicker Park Press. Writers have their inspiration and their muse that motivates them to sit down and write books, publishers have their own special brand of incentive that keeps them producing books, and the whole shebang can be a fascinating journey for those involved in the world of books.
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