Joining the Frey

NYT comments:

The memoir is, indeed, a loose and slippery genre - as loose and slippery as memory itself. And there's a difference, even in publishing, between the lies we tell about ourselves and the lies we tell about others. It is a rare publisher that troubles to fact-check an author's claims, especially in times when proofreading can seem like too much trouble. But Doubleday's defense of Mr. Frey isn't about the author or the genre. It's about the audience's response.

Also, it looks as though future editions will carry a warning. Perhaps they should have a picture of a set of eviscerated black lungs over half the cover. This is all well and good, but I think we're losing sight of the real tragedy here: we're all too late to help Oprah.


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You have only yourself to blame, Oprahtomotons

It's the readers done did it, see? You're off the hook again, Jimmy boy!

There is, however, a deeper issue worth considering buried in all this pop-cultural titillation: Why are people so easily victimized by this sort of emotional con man? For some years, book publishing, television and — more recently — a growing segment of the news media have been sinking deeper and deeper into a particularly fetid sinkhole carved by two social currents that now dominate our collective lives.

Why don't you celebrate with a wine spritzer and maybe a drive by insulting of some old lady. Gentlemen! To Evil!


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Yeah...calling him a con man gives him too much cred.

Michiko on Frey

And everyone else, like a truth seeking hybrid of missile/wolverine.

We live in a relativistic culture where television "reality shows" are staged or stage-managed, where spin sessions and spin doctors are an accepted part of politics, where academics argue that history depends on who is writing the history, where an aide to President Bush, dismissing reporters who live in the "reality-based community," can assert that "we're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality." Phrases like "virtual reality" and "creative nonfiction" have become part of our language. Hype and hyperbole are an accepted part of marketing and public relations.

There's no denying she's, as we call our son, a smartycakes. And in related news: glutton for punishment, or thumbing her nose? Oprah picks another memoir for her book club.


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CSM jumps right on that Frey story

Ah, the CSM... the daily that reads like a weekly. But seriously, is there anything left to say? Yes. When the Christian papers are crucifying you, you're pretty much facked.


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The year ahead in the book biz
Publishers are discovering this Internet thingy.

If 2005 showed one thing, it was that the web continues to explode in terms of importance to the book industry. Matthew Shear, senior vice president and publisher of St. Martin’s Press, summed it up: “We need to be [on the web] with our books, our ads, our blogs, our promotions and whatever it may be.”

In 2005, a website called TheNamelessNovel.com used interactive trivia, games and promotions to combine many of these aspects and promote the latest Lemony Snicket novel from HarperCollins. In 2006, HarperCollins plans to continue this trend to promote the 13th and final Snicket title, said Jim McKenzie, director of online marketing for HarperCollins Children’s Books. As long as Internet promotions “reach consumers and create community,” Jane Friedman said, “experimenting and being innovative will continue into 2006.”

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Fightened of the Ninjas, Jimmy-boy?

Frey cancels Toronto appearance. He's running scared. From the thought of a Conservative government. Liars can't stand each others' company.


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A million little angles

How can they come at Frey next? That's how you know you've written a good book. It can be dissected on a number of levels.


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The end of Canadian publishing?
Stephen Henighan wonders if bookstores are to blame. Can't say I buy his argument, but it's entertaining enough.

If the agent is right, we are currently living through the dismantlement of Canadian publishing. Evidence supporting this view is not in short supply. Publishers, to survive, need bookstores. The 2004 statement of Heather Reisman, whose Chapters–Indigo chain controls 70 percent of the Canadian bookselling market, that “our goal has always been to get as close to the Wal-Mart level of excellence as we could,” suffices to tell us where our bookstores are going. The dominance of Chapters–Indigo forces independents and smaller chains to reproduce the “Wal-Mart level of excellence” in order to compete. During three quick trips to Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba in 2004 and 2005, I observed that the selection of books for sale in the once well-stocked and engaging stores of the McNally Robinson group was growing thinner and thinner, just like the selection in Chapters.

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And just why don't you buy his argument?

I think the argument's fairly sound myself. The decline of the independent bookseller is fairly well documented -- there are fewer and fewer of them, and I can tell you from personal experience that those that remain are less willing to take a chance on a new writer -- or press -- than there used to be. There are exceptions to this -- This Ain't the Rosedale, Pages, Bryan Prince, Munro's, Pages on Kensington, even Nicholas Hoare, among others -- but they are fewer and fewer. Booksellers also seem to becoming more regional in their selection of authors, especially if published by smaller, literary presses: I have had a bookseller, very prominent too, from Alberta tell me that she'll no longer order small press books by any writer east of Manitoba: they simply won't sell (she says) (Interestingly, she also told me it was the JoyRead campaign that confirmed her in this, which is also a shame, since the idea behind that programme, if perhaps not always its implementation, was a very good one, and should work). Buying habits seem to me part of this: the Oprahfication of taste means that people seem only to be looking for a few select titles. They're no longer willing to browse, give things time, see what strikes them. And the Walmart effect, the deep discounting of bestsellers as loss leaders means that booksellers can no longer count on the revenue generated from these to allow them to carry titles that are important, but may move more slowly.
The internet, as a marketplace, where all titles can be found and purchased, I suppose, may allow for some of the lost ground to be made up, but certainly not all of it. A knoweldgeable and committed book selling community is essential to the health of publishing in Canada, and it is no coincidence that both are now in decline. I've had one bookseller in the past few months get behind a couple of our titles, selling over 30 of one and 70 of another since October: this type of hand selling is getting more and more scarce, and is irreplacable. And it's certainly obvious by now that Chindigo won't be filling the void (even Heather's Picks are not favours freely bestowed.)

Generally, I find a decent public library a great place to find books past and present by specific authors, more so than bookstores. In fact, surprise, surprise, it was in a library where I discovered the thrills of browsing and dreamy reading.

I guess Henighan has a point to a point, although he shows signs of righteous (is that self?)catastrophic thinking. Does it follow that literary presses really publish the best literature? Is a writer middlebrow because he/she does not share Henighan's aesthetic? Or being published by Random House rather than Turnstone? These are puzzling questions.

Literary agents are business people who have to sell big to pay their rent. Why give them more credence than they deserve?

/m448:

It's this part I don't really buy:

In the past, a young reader who discovered a writer whose work spoke to him or her could find a thorough selection of the writer’s books on the shelf of a good bookstore. The bookstore trained new readers by presenting the full arc of writers’ careers and the evolution of the reading experience.

The Internet works just as well, if not better. He's got a point in that it's harder for more fringe/experimental/less mainstream writers to get space in bookstores, but that may be a temporary thing only, as we're seeing increasing distribution and promotion over the Net.

Ultimately, it all comes down to marketing. If publishers/writers can find an effective way to market their books, people will read them no matter where they're sold, whether they're good or bad.

P

My book sells quite well (for poetry, meaning one or two copies a month) at my mother's craft booth in the Charlottetown Farmers' Market. Unless there's a zealous handseller actively peddling your wares for you--or unless your name is Tupac or Jewel or Billy Collins--bookstores are where poetry collections go to die (or at least where they go to get as dusty as they can before they're unceremoniously returned). As far as sales of poetry go, the onus is on the authors, who really can't complain about neglect (or the publishing industry or booksellers or anything else) if they haven't worked hard to put their work in front of readers. In a perfect world, all the "dirty" work of promotion and sales would be handled by our eunuch servants leaving us free to be emotionally-fraught and misunderstood geniuses having poolside epiphanies--but the pleasant political climate isn't amenable to the involuntary castration of boys. It's a matter of shifting paradigms from "solitary romantic" to "troubadour." And for this paradigm to work, the publishing industry is really more of a convenience for authors than a necessity. Just look at the example of Stuart Ross for how much poetry can be bought and sold without the intervention of the whole burdensome and costly publisher/distributor/seller network.

Awww...! Look at those hangdog expressions! Let's buy them some presents!

Or rather, Oprah hangs Jimmy out to dry (while not addressing any root issues behind either the gaping maw that is her following or her role as tosser of fish to these barking seals) in front of the same audience for which she scrubbed him up and sent him out to dance.


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Hey, I just noticed something: Jim Frey --- Win Frey

Coincidence?