Anyone who reads this blog knows that I’m obsessed with Mad Men’s cult following. Given the character’s fictitious presences on Twitter and the dazzling Mad Men Flickr stream, I was not at all surprised to read the show may take its costume design to retail. With Tivo’s purchase feature through Amazon, it may be only a matter of time before you can buy Betty’s yellow bikini with your remote. [Mediabistro]

When the proposal for my book about a young Thurgood Marshall was making the publishing rounds last year, the feedback from editors was immediate and positive. It was just the reaction I was hoping for. A true-to-life version of To Kill a Mockingbird, starring one of the most dynamic and flamboyant lawyers the country’s ever seen. I didn’t think anyone could resist it! And they couldn’t.

“This is a great story,” I’d hear, and the excited editor would bring the proposal into an editorial meeting, hoping to acquire it. But something strange was happening. The sales and marketing teams were nervous. Black narrative history is a tough sell these days, they said. Weeks passed, and I was in shock that I might never be able to tell this Thurgood Marshall story.

At the same time, something strange was also happening in America. An African American was running for president, and he was gaining momentum. His opponents tried to derail him by subtly referring to his race and reminding the public that, “He can’t win.” But it was obvious. Barack Obama was not running as a black candidate. He was running as an American. And he began to win.

Obama’s victories were inspiring and I couldn’t help but see the connection to Thurgood Marshall. Marshall studied under the firm hand of Howard University law professor and NAACP litigator, Charles Hamilton Houston, who drilled it into his head that he couldn’t afford to be thought of as the Negro lawyer in a courtroom full of well-trained white lawyers. “If you expect to win,” Marshall soon discovered, “you better be better.”

And Thurgood Marshall was better. He built an unmatched record of wins before the US Supreme Court and eventually became, in the eyes of one historian, “the most important lawyer of the 20th century.” Thurgood Marshall defied the odds, and he did so with his tenacity and intelligence, his beautiful words and the belief that history was on his side. Just like Barack Obama was doing.

One day, I got a call from Julia Cheiffetz at HarperStudio. We talked about Thurgood Marshall and my proposal and even the “black narrative histories are a tough sell” piece. We both agreed that like Barack Obama, Thurgood Marshall transcended race in his time, and that this story was not just a part of black history, but a part of American history. It was a “Yes We Can” moment, and I was reminded of a speech by the man whose shoulders Barack Obama claims to stand upon.

Early in his career, Thurgood Marshall said, “A most gratifying source of inspiration has always been the challenge thrown down by the poor souls who have repeated over and over again, “It can’t be done.” These court cases and the decisions from them have been made possible by the stalwarts who held faith with our Constitution and the men who have interpreted it to prove, “It CAN be done.”

-Gilbert King

King’s book on Marshall will be published by HarperStudio in 2010.

A transatlantic shout-out to our colleagues at The Friday Project, the new division of HarperCollins UK just announced today.  Come on in, the profit-sharing/digital distribution waters are fine!

According to Google we’ve been mentioned in this blog post.  Unfortunately it’s in a language that none of us understand!  Can anyone help us with a translation?

We must write where we stand; wherever we do stand, there is life; and an imitation of life we know however narrow, is our only ground. – John Updike (1932 – 2009)

We’re joining the rest of the world in mourning John Updike’s passing and we are honored to be publishing one of his pieces in our upcoming book Burn This Book. 

I’ve known Liz Swados, the legendary warrior of downtown theater (Runaways, etc.) for years, and have always admired her books. She has hesitated to write her memoirs until now. Liz’s life is a story of family secrets that she has woven into art, and while we were first discussing a book about the nature of secrets, what emerged was the need to embody those ideas in her own story. We’re glad she’s entrusting the book to HarperStudio, and look forward to reading what she will bravely write.

A few months ago we posted the following blog:

Website vs. Blog

We’ve been having a debate on the 26th floor about what sort of web presence we “need” to make our publishing business successful.

Given that we’re planning extensive digital marketing campaigns for each of our books, we need a great website, right?

While we figure out the next step, we started this blog, www.26thstory.com …..for about $15 a month; It’s scrappy. It’s no frills…….but it does show videos and photos, and it takes questions and comments, and has living, breathing author pages such as these for Emeril and Joann Davis, and will have one for each author as we sign them up.

Which then leads me to ask: Why do we “need” a website? We’ve been looking at proposals for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I am still not clear what we would accomplish with a website that justifies that amount of money. I certainly understand the difference between their functions, just not the ROI.

Nearly everyone who’s opinion on the matter I highly regard says we need one. Certainly the companies we’ve looked into hiring say yes. And yet no one seems to be able to explain to me “WHY” in a way that makes sense to me.
So I’m asking YOU……what could we gain with a website that’s worth spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on?

Your comments to the question were AMAZING. I read and used every one. The result is that we decided to forgo the expensive website and instead build a WordPress site. We had a developer named Steffen Rasile, from SRA Design Studio in Helena, Montana, work with us on the technical stuff. Love Steffen. He’s great to work with.

The whole thing came in under $10,000. It’s easily maintainable by all of us and our authors. We hope it’s a fun place to hang out. It’s a work in progress.

Here it is, day 1. Would love to hear what you think.

Thank you for always being so helpful!

–Debbie

This morning we had a Social Networking brainstorm with our authors. Everyone had such great experience and information to share. We had 13 authors in person, and another 5 via WebEx.

Here’s the Power Point that was the outline of the conversation: Download Social Networking PPT

Special thanks to Chris Brogan, whose Social Networking presentation I attended via O’Reilly WebEx …..and to Gary Vaynerchuk whose video blogs I watch as fast as he puts them up, and where a lot of this information comes from.

We started off by going through the new White House web site and discussing how absolutely perfect it is: It’s fun, authentic, engaging……

We also watched a Kelly Corrigan video on YouTube as the example of the perfect author video: effective and inexpensive.

And we ended with a conversation about Tribes by Seth Godin. Everyone left with a copy.

Overall, a lot of fun!

–Debbie

Stanley Fish’s analysis of Obama’s inauguration speech is one of the most incisive I’ve read:

“It is as if the speech, rather than being a sustained performance with a cumulative power, was a framework on which a succession of verbal ornaments were hung, and we were being invited not to move forward but to stop and ponder significances only hinted at.

And if you look at the text – spread out like a patient etherized on a table – that’s exactly what it’s like. There are few transitions and those there are – “for,” “nor,” “as for,” “so,” “and so” – seem just stuck in, providing a pause, not a marker of logical progression. Obama doesn’t deposit us at a location he has in mind from the beginning; he carries us from meditative bead to meditative bead, and invites us to contemplate.

Of course, as something heard rather than viewed, the speech provides no spaces for contemplation. We have barely taken in a small rhetorical flourish like “All this we can do. All this we will do” before it disappears in the rear-view mirror. But if we regard the text as an object rather than as a performance in time, it becomes possible (and rewarding) to do what the pundits are doing: linger over each alliteration, parse each emphasis, tease out each implication” [NYT]

(Fish was in the office this morning for our social networking breakfast and is excited to get on Twitter.)

-Julia

Blogs are popping up all over HarperCollins.  There’s Collins Backstage, which started a few months ago when Shawn Nicholls began as their Director of Online Marketing.  And then HarperOne launched Good Books In Bad Times, where I discovered my new favorite book, Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now.