Only if it's relevant to the work and tastefully done.

I'm holding out for Honda. A new motorcycle every two years. And yes, BN, I'll wear chaps at every reading.

Just the chaps?

oh my

I've got a sweet little leather vest, too...

Good lord.

The great book heist of '04

I've been wondering about this for quite some time. It's the curse of my life to always be on the wrong side of something like this. I go to America with an OAC grant only to have it halved by the exchange rate. I come home with a fat savings US account only to have the CDN dollar surge. And to top it all off, publishers are sucking me dry with their exorbitant Canadian prices. Unfortunately, this explanation uses the DaCode as its exemplar. (Fair enough given that its unlikely anyone in Winnipeg ever bought anything else. Oh, I kid youse guys. Yer a fine, if cold, bunch.)

The jacket lists the U.S. price as $35, not bad when you consider all the pretty images.

The Canadian price is $48. Not that anybody will pay that much.

Still, wait a minute.

Some elementary math tells us that the difference between the U.S. and Canadian price is 37.5 per cent, more than double the current difference between the U.S. and Canadian dollar.

Why the big spread? Are book-buyers, the most innocent and trusting of souls, being gouged as the loonie climbs in value against the greenback? And if so, by whom?

Several people browsing bookstore shelves in recent months have been heard grumbling over these questions.

At the risk of oversimplication, let me answer them:

1) The big spread exists because of the lag between planning and delivery. The Da Vinci Code illustrated edition was priced last February, according to its publisher, Random House. Six to eight months in advance is average.

2) Yes, we are being gouged a bit. But as the husband murderer told the judge, "Your honour, remember how long I lived with him." In 1998-99, when the loonie was sinking at an equal pace, the time lag worked to the Canadian bookbuyers' advantage.

3) The publishers, who suggest the retail price when they print the book jacket, are the ones to blame, not the booksellers.

That said, the publishers are also the ones taking the risk, speculating both as to what will sell and what the currency spread will be. Copyright law limits them to charging 10 per cent over exchange rate plus 10 per cent of the difference.

(Thanks to Arts News for posting the story)



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Book biz Santa

Author MJ Rose's blog, Buzz, Balls & Hype, is running letters to Book biz Santa this month. Very interesting stuff in some of these. Like this from an anonymous agent:

No queries that imply your protagonist will harm me if I reject you. Color me neurotic, but personal threats that come from strangers are... eh, not so funny. Especially if the culprit is, oh right, a fictional character.



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Hear hear!

Brazil cuts out all taxes on books. World doesn't end. Economy doesn't collapse. Rich stay rich. Poor read, have a better chance to get rich. Somewhere, a dog barks. A butterfly lands on a flower. Fin. (From Moby)



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My name is Midlist and I have a problem...

Midlist goes into publishing lingo rehab over at BookAngst 101.

Seems there's no insult more insulting than being characterized as a midlist author... But why? When did the term cease to mean "dependable seller" (similar in this way to "backlist"), as it had for generations? And is there any hope of "rehabilitating" the term, giving it a make-over, a face-lift--of returning to it, if not glory, then at least a modicum of its former dignity?

Hopeless, you say? [Yes, a lot of you do...More posts on this subject to follow.] I say, maybe not. Let us consider the parable of the Tortoise and the Hare..

I, for instance, have several midlist friends. You know who you are.



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A ticket to midlist hell don't come cheap

Publishers and editors weigh in on the redefinition of "midlist" over at BookAngst 101.



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Shelf life
Fresh Eyes: A Bookseller's Journal has an interesting piece on the shelf life of new books (see Feb. 7 entry). It's connected to a discussion about placement (Feb. 6 entry).

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A Tip for the writing types

Fuck Valentine's Day, you know what I love? Getting an unexpected fat cheque in the mail. If you have a book or books out there and aren't signed up for the PLRC programme, you're a sap.



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Returns suck

Are returns killing publishing?

The answers to these questions, in part, is that a lot of smart people believe returns are a necessary evil—lousy, yes, but needed because their disappearance would make bookstores more risk-averse, less willing to carry wider numbers of different titles and even likelier than they already are to focus the majority of their efforts on promoting only the biggest and most commercial releases. Many fear the loss of returns would just give more leverage to the biggest of the corporate publishers and retailers; the people who would suffer most would be—you guessed it—independent publishers and the independent bookstores, who’d find it that much harder to compete.

With the current system, of course, no one suffers returns more acutely than small presses like mine, which don’t have the clout to push out six-figure advance orders, or the deep pockets to withstand the cost of 40 percent, 50 percent or even higher percentages of those books coming back. Even garden-variety returns of 20 percent (and as one successful small press distributor told me, “If you’re not getting 20 percent returns, your books aren’t well-enough distributed”) of a four- or five-figure advance order can be punishing to the bottom line and devastating to cash flow. But even thinking beyond my own self-interest, I believe that many of our industry’s strange inefficiencies would go away if returns went away.

I can tell you they kill me. How painful is it to see from royalty statement to royalty statement your numbers slowly slipping away... Sigh. (From Bookslut, bearer of good news)



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Meettheauthor

Ew. He's so much pastier than I expected... And his handshake is like a dead fish.


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Anatomy of a first book

Are you almost there, but not quite. This checklist might help. If you strip out the Christian stuff, this practical list can apply to almost any newcomer (huh, isn't that so often the way...). Yes, yes, I know, you're an artiste and you don't think about these things. Right. Are those Ramen noodles done steeping yet?


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