Picador Launches a Twitter book club

Hey everyone. In an effort to find out how Augusten Burroughs got published by Picador, I stumbled across this link. The short article is about Picador's new Twitter book club, where readers of their published books can go online and post thoughts on specific titles at scheduled times. First up is Yoko Ogawa’s “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” set for April 10, 2009. I haven't heard of it but I'm also not a book-a-week reader. What I am is an Augusten fan, and his latest memoir "A Wolf at the Table" is an upcoming discussion.

To promote the club, Picador was giving away free copies of "The Housekeeper and the Professor" today on the Twitter site. At 2 pm, the first twenty people to "tweet" (seriously?) got free copies. It appears to be an ongoing contest, with every new release 20 people will get the featured novel a few weeks in advance. It's obviously a marketing ploy, but an effective one for those with free time. I'd check the site more often to be among the first to know of the contest if I wasn't so afraid Twitter was doomed to be the next Facebook. The idea of the site seems like a time vortex and probably not worth the constant supervision required to win (or most likely lose) such a spontaneously announced contest, or the price of the paperback itself. I will, however, keep checking Augusten and the Picador Book Clubs' sites and hope they post ads of the dates there as well.

John Wray, Poster Boy?

I agree with many of Julia's (and the article's) points. Frugality is something that has been missing from the publishing industry for decades now, it would seem. Gigantic profit margins are just not feasible in the American literary market. I don't think it should even be called a market, really. Innovation is something long due in the publishing world, as well. Technology certainly isn't everything, and relying on that to rebuild the industry would be foolish. In many cases technology simply poses in the guise of a new idea, rather than truly innovating. Just because something has been moved to the Internet does not mean it is completely new. I think for this reason e-books initially failed.

But the responsibility for innovation need not be solely on the shoulders of the publishing companies. Authors can do their part, too. In the current literary climate, it would seem that stylistic and promotional innovation are merging - at least in the case of John Wray, the author of The Right Hand of Sleep, Canaan's Tongue, and the just released Lowboy. For Canaan's Tongue he toured for two weeks in a makeshift raft down 600 miles of the Mississippi River, stopping to do readings on the way. The novel focuses on a horse thief who in reality haunted that same area in the 19th century. The story of this interesting though gimmicky move are detailed in this New York Times article. The readings were a bust, and the reporter notes that "there are few things more useless on a river than a novelist" but the scheme worked, in my opinion - I mean, it got a whole story in the New York Times. Similarly, Wray wrote the majority of his new novel on the New York subway, where most of its action takes place. I think by further collapsing the boundary between the author and his work, no matter how outlandish the work or the collapsing movement are, Wray's fiction rings with more of this "truth" that Stephen King and many other authors have spoken of. And as I said, it hasn't hurt his publicity.

Innovation is Key

This article in Publishers Weekly talks about the ways that some small, independent publishers have been able to prosper in this tough economy. The two primary reasons are that they are not afraid to be frugal and are not afraid to be innovative. A number of these companies have taken to helping authors grow their own businesses through promoting their books. Publishers should not be afraid to try out new, fresh ideas.
Independent musicians have become increasingly popular via social networking sites such as myspace. Indie film festivals and other events are all over these days. Certain groups of people are growing tired of big name movies and music; the publishing industry should capitalize on this and market to those who 'go independent' in their choice in films and tunes. Technology is important, but it isn't everything. Small publishers should recognize that every outlet should be utilized, not simply those outlets that are the most obvious.