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.

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

I was going to write a blog about why you should weigh in on the publishing panel, but Richard Nash beat me to the punch and said it better than I could.

In cased you missed it, here it is (please vote: http://bit.ly/2d9Pqr)

photo credit: Adrian Kinloch

I don’t know how many of you know this, but HarperStudio Marketing Goddess Sarah Burningham is an author in her own right. In fact, she just published her second book with Chronicle called Boyology. I have to say, as someone who’s been in publishing for quite a long time, Sarah’s got the magic: the books are great (and as I always say, it goes back to the book); she’s got a great hook (self-help books for teenage girls by a young woman who’s old enough for the Mom’s to feel comfortable with and young enough for the girls to identify with and look up to); and she lights up like a lantern when the camera turns on.

From the moment I saw Sarah do her first television interview, I knew the days of her working in house were numbered. It was only a matter of time before she came to me, as she did a few weeks ago, and said that she’d like to leave her day job and start writing books full time.

We are all thrilled at HarperStudio for Sarah and wish her the very best and will be cheering her on every step of the way. As I told Sarah when she came to me, there is not one iota of a doubt in my mind that she is going to be a hugely successful author.

Which now leads me to the next announcement. We’ve hired a new Marketing Director. Her name is Jessica Wiener and she comes to us from Hyperion Books. She’ll be starting right after Labor Day, and we’re thrilled to have her. She’s been the the wizard behind the curtain of the campaigns for Mitch Albom, Randy Pausch, Candace Bushnell, Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver, Kelly Corrigan, etc. etc. etc.

Need I say more? We feel extremely fortunate to have someone with such great experience stepping into Sarah’s big shoes.

To be continued…

We enjoyed Preface publisher Trevor Dolby’s article in BookBrunch, questioning the traditional advance/royalty agreement. Indeed, HarperStudio’s model makes the author a full partner—if, that is, they are willing to take less up front (we pay advances of $100,000 or less; the author gets fifty percent of the profits, with no “Hollywood accounting” along the way). The good news is that we’ve acquired more than fifty books we’re enormously excited about on this basis, from a wide range of authors including business leaders like Michael Eisner, Tom Peters and Gary Vaynerchuk; chefs such as Emeril Lagasse and Mollie Katzen; anthologies edited by Toni Morrison, Harold Bloom and Erica Jong; single-topic studies by Eric Asimov, Stanley Fish and Roy Blount, Jr.; books by a wide range of people we like from the performing arts (Fifty Cent and Robert Greene, Isabella Rossellini, John Lithgow, Philippe Petit), not to mention ambitious narrative non-fiction from dozens of brilliant young journalists. The bad news is that most of trade publishing continues to work on the advance/royalty model, in spite of skyrocketing unearned advances and adversarial author relationships. As John Lennon sang, “We hope someday you’ll join us…” Come on in, guys, the water’s fine!

There are a ton of insta-books on Michael Jackson and other MJ books in the pipeline. How is Rolling Stone’s book different from the others?

This book will be the definitive look at Jackson’s life and music. We will tell the full story of his career, in a fascinating essay by Mikal Gilmore, who has been writing about Jackson since the early days, and we will delve deep into his music — examining in detail the early years at Motown, his move to become a solo artist in the 70s, and his key blockbuster solo albums: Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad. We will also draw on deep reporting into Jackson’s private life for a piece that looks at what went wrong in his later years, and we will provide sharp, authoritative critical guides to his songs, videos and other work. It will also contain intimate tributes from artists who knew and worked with Jackson. Unlike the insta-books flooding the market, this book is the ultimate guide to Michael Jackson, with beautiful photographs and elegant design, in classic Rolling Stone style.

The music industry has obviously changed dramatically since the eighties and the media in general is much more fragmented. Does the death of Michael Jackson represent the death of a certain kind of popular culture?

Not really — Michael Jackson was a one-of-a-kind icon, on par with Elvis and Sinatra. His music is alive in so many different styles of R&B, rap and hip-hop – from the Black Eyed Peas to Justin Timberlake to Ne-Yo and Usher.

 Someone who is not a Jackson fan said to me recently that Thriller has the sound of a TV commercial. What do you make of that? I instantly disagreed but have been thinking about how pivotal that Pepsi commercial was in his career.

 Jackson was such a huge artist that his music was everywhere – on the radio, MTV, in TV commercials - Thriller sold more albums than any other in history and for a time it became so big it was like the white noise of our pop culture, and globally too. My wife tells a story of going to Egypt on tour in the 90s, and people came up to her in small villages and asked if she knew Michael Jackson. He was that big. For some people, perhaps, the ubiquity diminished the value of the music. But go listen to Billie Jean or Beat It now and tell me it’s not amazing…

Where did Jackson learn to dance? (Did he get the pulled up pants from Fred Astaire?)

Complicated question: he learned from all over – breakdancing, old movies. I can go into this more later if you want.

Some people feel Jackson’s later albums are interesting musically. Do you agree?

Absolutely! Especially Bad and Dangerous, but Invincible and History have very interesting elements to them too that were often overlooked at the time. We will have a piece specifically addressing these later albums.

 We’ve been talking a lot about the cover of MICHAEL. Why aren’t there more quality portraits of Jackson?

Michael wasn’t photographed a lot in his later years – and he was rarely photographed casually. He was very concerned with how he looked and his image, so there aren’t a lot of photographers he was comfortable with. Also, Michael bought up many of the photos that do exist so they are not on the market.

What is your favorite Jackson song?

“Rock with you” and “Don’t stop ‘til you get enough” are probably my all-time favorites. There’s something about that album [Off The Wall] that’s just so exuberant, like he’s breaking loose for the first time, it’s impossible to resist.

As part of our ongoing Q&A series with people in publishing, we talked to one of our international colleagues, Scott Pack, publisher at The Friday Project, an imprint of HarperCollins UK in London.

Q: We have to ask – why The Friday Project?
A: There was a significant, if somewhat tongue-in-cheek, social movement a few years back which called for everybody to be given Friday off work. By making the weekend longer we’d all be happier. The founders of The Friday Project (TFP) subscribed to that notion and the name was chosen.

Q: You’re the publishing arm of HarperCollins in the UK but you function pretty independently. What’s the biggest difference between the US and UK publishing industries?
A: On a commercial level it is the discount. Retailers in the UK can, and usually do, discount books significantly from publication. So you can usually find the biggest book of any given week at half price in the shops. Some people think this is a bad thing but anyone who has ever been hooked by a 3 for 2 promotion (probably the biggest vehicle for selling books over here) can testify that it definitely works in terms of selling books. Elsewhere, I don’t think we have any one influencer that can make a huge book overnight. A wonderful New York Times review or a mention on Oprah can often create a bestseller in the US but there isn’t anything with that impact here now that Richard & Judy have left terrestrial television.

Q: What’s the hot trend right now in the UK? Cat books? Vampires? What should we be watching for?
A: There do seem to be a lot of vampire books around, and zombies. Right now every publisher and his uncle is rushing out a Michael Jackson book (we are not, I should add). I guess there are always mini-trends or waves of interest but ultimately the only consistent trend is the readers’ love of a great story.

Q: What do you wish every US-based author knew before getting his or her book published in the UK?
A: That there are a hell of a lot of ways you can promote a book without leaving your seat. If you make yourself available through Skype, blogs, instant messenger, Twitter and really put some time into online promotion you can reach many UK readers even if your publisher doesn’t have the cash to fly you over. Also that we really don’t care about the baseball or basketball scores over here. Not a bit. Your excitement is not ours to share.

Q: eReaders. We can’t do a Q&A without asking about them. Love or hate? Or both?
A: Love them, in all their forms. At present the Kindle isn’t available over here and Amazon doesn’t seem to be in any great rush to change that. To be fair, I think it is down to the fact that they will need to have an option for the whole of the EU, not just the UK, before they go live. That means that the Sony Reader has a genuine foothold here. But there are still issues over pricing, availability and content for eBooks that need to be resolved before they will really take off. They are part of the future and we need to adapt to that.

After more than 150 years at the top, Roget’s Thesaurus has finally met its match. The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, which comes out this August, is 44 years in the making and will be the largest thesaurus when published.  The Historical Thesaurus not only has over 800,000 meanings but it also provides a chronological history of words. So now you can see just how slang words became slang or how curses became curses. However, the cut-off date for words was 2003 so don’t expect to see ‘tweets’ in the collection. Nevertheless, the Historical Thesaurus allows for a remarkable insight into the cultural growth of English speaking people.

    Check out the history of the word Trousers (which also seems to be a case study on Victorian prudishness) here or click here  to learn more about the tumultuous history behind this gargantuan thesaurus

Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vermont has invited Joann Davis, David Black, Bob Miller, and Debbie Stier to speak about the changing publishing landscape.
Please come if you can! It should be fun. It’s November 7, 2009 from 4-6:30 pm. Then we can go skiing on Sunday