The usual subject of our Monday morning water cooler conversation – Mad Men – was supplanted by the sad news of Reading Rainbow which is going off the air after 26 years. (This makes it the second longest running show after Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street.)
That song! That butterfly! The show will be sorely missed.
Over the weekend, Eoin Purcell pointed our attention to Robin Sloan, a writer in San Francisco. Robin is using Kickstarter to fund his latest project: publishing a book. The book, which he describes as “a detective story set halfway between San Francisco and the internet,” will be a novella about a female investigator (the Sherlock Holmes of the 21st century) whose cases involve the digital and the occult. Take a few minutes to watch his introductory video here.
Robin is doing something off the beaten track to get his book published: all of its funding is being raised from pledges – designated amounts of money that will support the production of the book and guarantee you a copy (or four) of the book once it’s done. He makes sure you know what you’re getting into by offering up some of his previous work for you to read for free as well as outlining the project without spoiling it. You can pay $3 for a PDF of the finished book, or $39 for four bound copies with your name in the acknowledgments that you can distribute as you wish. Various levels exist in between, but they all give you a front row seat to Robin’s work. And after watching the video, who wouldn’t want that?
Robin is making sure that the reader is fully involved in the book, from the tailored purchase/pledge to the behind-the-scenes updates that will be coming on a weekly basis. It feels like you’re more of a collaborator than a reader, and the end result will be that much more interesting because you know that you had a hand in its creation. Robin has reached his initial goal, the one that will guarantee that the project will actually be funded, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to stop. The more money he raises the better the book will be (better materials, more colors, and possibly a hardcover format), making sure that readers get a nice return on their investment.
I sat in on a Twitter discussion called #FollowReader yesterday. It’s a weekly discussion on Twitter with some topical guidelines for the bookish community, lightly moderated by @KatMeyer and @CharAbbott, who provide a new topic each week. Yesterday’s topic was “What you (as readers) want publishers to know,” but past topics ranged from libraries to book genres to discussions with Random House sales reps. You can catch up on past discussions with Kat’s recaps over at Follow the Reader.
This being my first #FollowReader, all I could manage to do was sit back and watch as the tweets popped up at lightning speed. Kat advised using TweetChat to participate because it let you retweet or reply directly and automatically included the chat’s hashtag in every post. It also updated in real time and would pause the updates if you needed to scroll down and view older tweets. TweetChat is an excellent tool, and I hope to be able to use more of it during next week’s discussion. This week though, tweets came in too fast for me to respond to someone without missing someone else.
It was a great discussion, lively with a broad range of posts. Issues with e-readers were voiced, from pricing to formats, as well as misleading blurbs and book covers. It wasn’t an hour set aside for simply complaining about publishers though; Kat made sure to ask what publishers were doing right. I would say it was a very encouraging chat, because the feedback from readers and publishers let us know what we should continue to do and what we need to work on. The best part for me though, was that I was immersed in a passionate group of people that could not stop talking about books (in a good way!). Kat is moderating from 4 – 5 pm on Thursdays, but the hashtag is used all week long to bring excellent ideas and discussions to the table.
Jessica Amason and Richard Blakeley shared a sneak peek of their book with the folks at Gizmodo. Click on over to check out a slideshow of “10 Meat Structures That Require Engineering Degrees to Build and a Death Wish to Eat”
If you manage to make it through without having a heart attack (congratulations!) then please Digg it. This Is Why You’re Fat goes on sale October 27, 2009, but you can pre-order it now.
ETA: Want to know what New York Magazine thought of the cover? They break it down for you here.
Along with the news of moving up the pub date of Senator Kennedy’s much anticipated memoir True Compass, Twelve announced the publisher would sell a limited number of leather bound special editions for $1,000 each. These editions bear Kennedy’s electronic signature and contain family photos not available in the regular copies. I think this is brilliant and will be curious to see how many copies are sold. (As of this morning the book is #11 on Amazon, almost three weeks before its publication on September 14th.) via @USA Today
Farrar, Straus and Giroux's No Impact Man by Colin Beavan
I read this article in The New York Observer yesterday about book jackets, and how some publishers are forgoing dust jackets in favor of stamping a design directly onto the cover boards. It got me thinking about how I read my books, and if I would actually prefer hardcovers without jackets. Sometimes I do remove the jackets before reading because they slip around when the book is opened, and they’re less likely to be torn or folded when set to the side. Other times though, I use the jacket as a bookmark, taking one of the flaps and inserting it between the pages. I tend to dog-ear paperbacks, but if I have a flap handy, I’ll use that. So, I personally value book jackets for the designs that I don’t want to ruin and the less obvious uses. The tell-tale designs also clue me in to what others are reading with a quick glance – if you’re on a Kindle or have removed the jacket, you’ve probably had people have to ask you what you’re reading before launching into a conversation.
The way most books are printed today, the actual boards are minimally designed with simpler fonts and two-toned material, with the understanding that there will be a jacket in place to please the eye. The jacket, which is easier and cheaper to produce, allows for range in the color, typeface, images, and even texture of the design. Printing or stamping directly onto the boards is limited, even if one were to design without a jacket in mind. Covers can still look attractive and appealing without jackets, but it’s more difficult to differentiate between books if manufacturers can only produce certain color boards and stamp certain typefaces. Since we all know that people do actually judge a book by its cover, jackets are still needed to make most books stand out.
This isn’t to throw out the idea of designing uncovered boards – in fact I really appreciate books that can offer an aesthetically pleasing and unique cover when the jacket is removed. (We added a little bit of flair to Who Is Mark Twain? by stamping Twain’s signature onto the board.) Maybe what we need is a happy medium, where books won’t be considered completely naked if stripped of their jackets.
(Yes, we realize this has nothing to do with books, but wanted to make you smile on Monday morning.)
If anyone has ideas, please let us know!
The Perfect Library
