John Green's Weblog

Indianapolis Next Monday: More Info

2010-02-03T14:20:00.002-06:00

Several commenters have pointed out that the UIndy web site seems to disagree with me about the scheduled time of my writing workshop next Monday.

This is because there are, in fact, two events.

There will be a free writing workshop at 4 PM on Monday Feb. 8th at the Wheeler Art Center (1035 Sanders Street # 111 Indianapolis, IN). I will talk about writing and we will do writing exercises and have fun. (Hopefully.) To attend that, rsvp to Bryan Furuness: furuness--at--gmail.com

That evening, I will be reading and talking about my books at 7:30 PM at Good Hall, which is at the corner of E. Hanna and Otterbein. More info on that here. Please attend both!

A Free Writing Workshop with Me

2010-02-02T15:39:00.002-06:00

Sorry for not blogging much. In case you don't follow me on twitter, I had a baby, which can really slow down your blogging. BUT:

If you live in or near Indianapolis and you are a high school student (or can convincingly pretend to be one), I'll be teaching a free writing workshop next Monday, February 8th, at the University of Indianapolis. The workshop will be from 4 PM to 5:30 PM at the Wheeler Art Center (1035 Sanders Street # 111 Indianapolis, IN).

If you'd like to come, RSVP to Bryan Furuness: furuness--at--gmail.com

The Future of Reading: Your Questions

2010-01-02T14:02:00.006-06:00

School Library Journal has just published an extensively footnoted essay I wrote about the future of reading, book publishing, This Is Not Tom, and some other things.

I'm going to use this blog post as a space to answer questions about the essay and continue the conversation about the future of publishing, but none of this will make sense unless you've already read the essay. Feel free to leave more questions in comments; I will update this post frequently over the next few weeks. Questions so far:

---

Q. What's this about Cory Doctorow abandoning his publishers? His new book is with Tor?

He does have a new book with Tor, but his short story collection With a Little Help is being published without assistance from traditional publishers. He is giving away ebooks and selling print-on-demand physical books. (He talks about this experiment here.) He's detailing the financials of this experiment publicly for readers and other people interested in publishing to determine if it makes financial sense.

Q. I like the smell of books, and I like cracking a book spine, and books aren't going anywhere.

Well, okay, you might be right, but I would argue that whether you're right doesn't actually matter. What keeps me up at night is not the thought of the format changing but rather the thought that there will be no physical place to buy books, and therefore a totally unregulated market.

Ebooks don't need to take a larger share of the market for the bookstore business to be in big, systemic trouble. We knows this because the bookstore business is already in big, systemic trouble.

Q. Can you explain why the millionth copy of a book makes more money for a publisher than the first copy of a book?

Yeah. Many of the arguments in the essay begin with the fact that publishers would rather sell a million copies of one book than a thousand copies of a thousand books. I promised that an explanation of why this is would make your eyes bleed with boredom, and because I don't want that to happen, I'm going to keep this brief, but:

A. The more copies of a title you print, the cheaper it is to print it. (This is particularly true if you are printing it in China, which you probably are).
B. Most of the costs associated with a book--layout, editing, copyediting, jacket design, shipping, etc.--are upfront costs.

There are also a lot of other reasons, but I'm worried about eye-bleeding.

Q. When are you going to finish This Is Not Tom?

A. Yeah. Soon. I told noted nerdfighter Valerie2776 that I'd finish it by the end of 2009, but that ship has sailed. I hope to finish it very, very soon and put it up with satisfyingly difficult riddles, but it's hard to balance my desire to finish TINT with my desires to 1. pay the mortgage, and 2. prepare for baby.

For those of you who do not regularly watch the videos...

2010-01-02T13:59:00.002-06:00

...you should probably watch this one to the end.

(Also, why don't you go subscribe to our youtube channel? It's far better than this old thing.)

The Sex Scene in Looking for Alaska

2009-12-03T10:39:00.005-06:00

The novelist Varian Johnson has written an essay about the dual sex scenes in my first novel, Looking for Alaska. The essay is much smarter and more interesting than anything I've ever said about the role that oral sex scene plays in the book.

I am profoundly grateful to Johnson, and I hope you'll read the essay.

EDIT!!! The blog post contains SPOILERS. (Sorry I failed to mention that before; I kind of don't believe in spoilers so I am always forgetting that. Sorry!)

A Video Response to Twilight and New Moon

2009-11-30T08:09:00.002-06:00

All of your comments on last week's blog post led me to think more and harder, which led to this video, so thanks!

On Liking Twilight

2009-11-19T09:49:00.006-06:00

Okay, briefly, because I'm trying to do NaNoWriMo:

The Washington Post* has published a story that basically argues that enjoying Twilight, like getting your period, is just an unfortunate fact of womanhood. (The piece also argues, albeit subtly, that women are weak-will creatures who will cannot help but give in to their lesser, shameful urges.)

And I just want to say: I am a man. I am a reasonably intelligent, well-educated adult man, and I think Twilight is insanely fun to read. Of course, I am glad we do not actually live in a world where it is socially acceptable for 107-year-old pedophiles** to have romantic relationships with high-school students, and I think Edward and Bella's relationship too often confuses obsession with love. But the books are fun and sexy and incredibly engrossing, and you don't have to be a woman (or ashamed!) to know that.

And I have not arrived at that conclusion because I have become light-headed in my oh-so-tight corset. I am a dude. I like sports.***

Nor am I embarrassed to admit that Edward is a well-drawn idealized other. (You don't have to be attracted to individuals who share his genitalia to recognize that; in fact, if you change Edward's name and gave him slightly larger pecs, he'd have a lot in common with some of my more celebrated ex-girlfriends.)

There are books that teach us something about the world in which we find ourselves, and then there are books that help us to escape for a few hours the crushing pain of humanness. To deny that these books have value is to deny the reality of suffering (or, to argue, as the WaPo story seems to, that suffering is limited to young and/or uneducated people).

* The Washington Post was a newspaper. Newspapers were these paper-based ways of distributing information.

** Which Edward is, make no mistake about it. The reason it's wrong for old people to have sexual relationships with children is not because we old people LOOK old. It's because we ARE old.

*** I particularly like soccer, and off topic, but I am so disappointed to see a great match between France and Ireland end with a flagrant handball, and while I'm disappointed in Thierry Henry for failing to tell the ref he cheated, it seems to me that the bigger problem is that no one in soccer ever owns up to violating the rules unless s/he is caught. It's as if a rules violation isn't a rules violation unless an official notices it.

The Whole National Book Awards and the Death of Genre and Stuff

2009-10-15T08:14:00.003-05:00

(This post is for publishing nerds only. And probably not interesting for anyone other than me. But anyway, please come see me live and in person at the Main Library in Columbus, Ohio on Tuesday at 6:30. There will also be a smaller event at the Hilliard Branch of the public library at 1 PM that day. 4772 Cemetery Rd / Hilliard, OH 43026.)

So, okay. The National Book Award finalists were announced yesterday, and one of the finalists in the books for young people category, David Small's STITCHES, was not published as a children's books and arguably is not a children's book. This has led to a bit of a stir. (The stir is probably also partly due to the fact that the most heralded book of the year, WHEN YOU REACH ME, was not a finalist.)

Full disclosure: I know and really like David Small. I also really like the book STITCHES. And I know and really like some of the judges in the category. (It's a small pond.)

To be honest, I have lately become totally uninterested in the question of whether a book is or is not for children. Ultimately, I think it is kind of a how-many-angels-can-you-fit-on-the-head-of-a-pin question.

It's also a question that's starting to matter less. The main reason books are organized the way they are is that it makes it easier to sell them at bookstores and circulate them at libraries. As acquiring (and reading) books become less physical experiences, we'll have the opportunity to think differently about how we relate one book to another. (In fact, the Internet is already doing this in some interesting ways.*)

Books for teens will become books for teens because teens read them. Not to sound like a capitalist or anything, but I kind of look forward to a day when the market is free enough to tell us how many angels are on the head of each pin.

*Like, for example, my YA novels do not live in the same part of the bookstore as Katrina Vandenberg's brilliant book of poetry. But our audiences have gotten so intertwined that Amazon says we are "frequently bought together," the online equivalent of being in the same genre. These books have nothing in common except that the same people like both of them, but I would argue that "the same people like them" is the ideal definition of genre.

Upcoming Appearances

2009-10-12T09:03:00.001-05:00

TOMORROW, Tuesday Oct. 13th, I'll be in LaGrange, Illinois Tuesday, October 13 at 7 PM at the LaGrange Borders. (1 N. La Grange Road) This event will also be livecast at Penguin's cool new web site, www.pointofviewbooks.com

NEXT TUESDAY, October 20th, I'll be in Columbus, Ohio, at the Main Library, at 6:30. (96 S. Grant Ave. Columbus, OH)

Hope to see you!

Hey Hoosiers

2009-10-07T07:14:00.002-05:00

The Indianapolis public library is currently doing this amazingly awesome thing with my books called Pass the Book. Hoosier readers should check it out and participate; in fact, anyone working in libraries should check it out, because you should totally steal this idea.

Banned in My Hometown: What's a Kid to Do

2009-09-29T10:08:00.002-05:00

So my hometown (or at least my home region, since Orlando is not so much a place as a series of interconnected geographical ideas) is dealing with a challenge to many books, including Looking for Alaska.

The challengers involved say that my book would meet Florida's legal definition of obscenity, and that it shouldn't be available to teen readers in the public library of Leesburg. First, just let me note that I am not a pornographer:

Let me make this clear: An individual scene from a novel cannot be read out of context. It won't make sense. It will seem other from what it is. You cannot know whether a novel is obscene from a screenshot of a single page on television news.

Alaska is a novel about radical hope and the power of forgiveness, not about oral sex. The scene between Lara and Pudge--that humorous, massively unerotic scene--exists to argue against casual sexual encounters.

Readers get this. If a parent doesn't think his or her children have the intellectual sophistication to read critically, that's fine. Don't let your kids read the book. But a well-organized minority shouldn't be allowed to make collection decisions in our public libraries. As a community, we hire well-educated and highly qualified librarians to make those decisions. Those librarians serve the public, not just the shouting activists, and librarians should not be made to fear their collection decisions by cowardly city commissions.

As always, any parents with questions or concerns about any of my books are welcome to email me at me --at-- sparksflyup.com. This includes the parents in Leesburg.

Some Recent Videos

2009-09-14T08:54:00.001-05:00

My Puppy's Secret Shame:

My brother pwns CSI in one take (on his 23rd try):

And lastly, a video about Caster Semenya, sex, and the role of ambiguity in life and sports:

Omnivoracious

2009-09-10T08:12:00.002-05:00

Paper Towns was an Omnivoracious Daily Crush yesterday, complete with a very thoughtful and kind review. I know that Omnivoracious gets a daily crush on someone every day, but I still feel special.

Paper Towns Giveaway (and my puppy's secret shame)

2009-09-09T08:09:00.002-05:00

To celebrate the forthcoming paperback release of Paper Towns I am giving away one copy of the paperback each day for the next two weeks to my favorite ten-word comment. You can comment here, too, to be part of the contest. For aural/visual learners, the exact same information is contained in the video below (plus footage of Willy's secret shame):

The Health Care Debate

2009-09-03T15:34:00.002-05:00

The brilliant people at Thought Bubble took a video I made about the health care debate and used it as a script for the video above. Amazing, eh?

A Book Reviewer's Apologies

2009-08-27T09:05:00.006-05:00

So first, anyone who hasn't should read this brilliant blog post by Shannon Hale about book evaluation v. self evaluation.

(Hale's blog is one of my favorites about books, and that particular post brilliantly articulates a bunch of things I've been trying to think about, but I kept finding my brain unequal to the task, and it's such a relief when someone says things you've been trying to think, which is also one of the things I enjoy so much about Hale's books.)

I've written many hundreds of book reviews for Booklist Magazine, and I've also reviewed books elsewhere. I stand by most of those reviews, but Hale's blog post made me think about the times I've been dead wrong.

All reviewers are sometimes wrong, of course--but in the spirit of Hale's post, I thought I'd post a couple re-evaluations.

1. Hale points out in her blog post that contemporary reviewers often place way too much emphasis on whether they "like" a book--as if the only thing a book can do is be likable. (One often hears, for instance, that Catcher in the Rye is a bad book because Holden isn't likable. Teenagers may have a hard time liking Holden, because the things that annoy other people about us are the things that annoy us about other people, but this isn't an indication that the book is bad; it is an indication that the book is good.) Roger Ebert taught me that the question is not whether the thing was fun; the question is whether the thing accomplished what it wanted to accomplish, and whether that thing was worth accomplishing.

Anyway, I have totally made this mistake in my reviewing career. The example that stands out most is Chuck Palahniuk. I don't think Chuck Palahniuk's books are finally very good, but I totally missed what is good (or at least seductive) about them, because I find his stories (except for Fight Club and to an extent Invisible Monsters) so disgustingly gratuitous. I was so overwhelmed with not-liking-it that I did not give his books their due. Instead, I should have acknowledged that they accomplish the thing they set out to accomplish, although I still believe that thing is not worth accomplishing.

2. Sometimes, you react negatively to something for stupid personal reasons that you don't have enough self-awareness to recognize. There are many examples of this in my life, but the one that stands out is TTYL by Lauren Myracle. I reviewed that book tepidly when it came out, because I felt like it was gimmicky and didn't really sound like kids IMing.

But in fact it did sound like kids IMing, which we know because a gajillion young people love that book and its sequels. And in fact, so do I--years later, I still find myself thinking about TTYL and the girls in it--the ways drama comes from within and without, and the weird mix of fragility and strength in teen friendships.

The reason I felt like it didn't sound like actual teenagers IMing is because it didn't sound like me IMing, and I was not yet accustomed to the idea that my way of experiencing the internet might be dated. I fancied myself such an expert in online communication that I felt I could be very high and mighty about emoticons.

Okay. That was embarrassing, but also kinda cathartic. Anyone else want to share book re-evaluations?

Here's to the transformative role books can play in our lives--even (perhaps especially) the ones we initially think we don't like.

(Except The Fountainhead. It just sucks.)

My Birthday: An Overview

2009-08-25T09:10:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was my 32nd birthday. Getting old is one of those things--like marriage and childbirth and standing in line at the grocery store--that happens to everyone but feels particularly significant when it is happening to you, which makes the triteness of the feelings involved sort of maddening. So, yeah, for the last week, even though I know birthdays are meaningless constructions and etc., I was feeling all those totally cliche feelings associated with not-being-as-young-as-you-used-to-be, and worrying that the best of it was behind me, and that I had failed some really important test, and yeah. You know. Or if you don't, you will.

But then, my actual birthday was amazingly fantastic. First, I got up and watched Liverpool FC's 2005 come-from-behind victory against AC Milan.

Then I read for a long time. (I finished this book, which was excellent and is an obvious hint.)

Then Sarah and I went to see Inglorious Basterds, which I liked a lot.

Then I got a pretty amazing birthday present: Tickets to see Inter Milan play Udinese IN ITALY in October. (Those are Italian soccer teams.)

Then Hank and the nerdfighters made me this, which was amazingly nice of them and made me cry and everything. (Also: ZE FRANK WISHED ME A HAPPY BIRTHDAY.)

Thank you nerdfighters, and thank you Hank, and thank you Internet--for making my birthday so nice, and also for reminding me what awesome looks like.

Truth or Fail: The John Green Books Edition

2009-08-21T15:53:00.003-05:00

Okay, so here's how this works. First, play the video. Then, click on the answer you think is right, and it will lead you to a series of more questions and answers about my books. (That is, unless you have somehow turned off youtube annotations, in which case it won't work at all. But it should work.)

Truth or Fail is an internet video gameshow that Hank and I have created. If you like this episode, you can check out many more at Truth or Fail Headquarters.

A Window into Book Challenges

2009-08-19T09:30:00.002-05:00

There's a story on the New York Times web site today about the Brooklyn Public Library's response to book challenges. The story mentions my book Looking for Alaska in passing:

"The 11 written objections to Brooklyn’s collection include complaints about “Beloved,” by Toni Morrison (sexual content), and “Looking for Alaska,” by John Green (obscenity and denigration of religion)."

First, let me just say what a pleasure it is to appear in the same sentence as Nobel laureate Toni Morrison. Anyway, the coolest thing about the story is that the Times reprints the complaint letters and the library's responses.

Everyone who has to deal with challenges should take the time to page through those documents, because I think the library's response is pitch perfect. They don't try to argue that Alaska isn't obscene (although it isn't) or that it doesn't denigrate religion (although it doesn't*); instead they just point out that lots of people feel the book has literary value and that libraries aren't in the business of being parents. Amen.

Also, this complaint letter about Beloved is totally worth reading because it begins, "It said stuff about [word blacked out] cows," and it is fun to imagine what that word might be.

*This of course I find particularly galling, obviously. But it's not the library's job to defend the religious cred of the book, or to defend it against charges of obscenity. That's my job.

What I Was Up To

2009-08-06T04:53:00.000-05:00

(I remain interested in the question of whether and how made up people become real.)

What I'm Working On

2009-08-04T07:47:00.004-05:00

S-s-s-something from the comments:

K writes, "Does Paige have to do with The Sequel? Or the book you are writing with David Levithan? Even if she doesn't, can we have more information on those projects? It doesn't seem like you talk about what you are doing with them like you talked about what went into Paper Towns."

K, thanks for reminding me that before this blog was about boring publishing crap, and before it was about inexplicable dj biographies, it was about books. Specifically, my books. Here's a rundown on what I'm writing these days:

1. I wrote a book with David Levithan that comes out in April of next year called Will Grayson, Will Grayson. David and I have been working on WGWG since early 2005, right around the time that my first book came out.

I feel a smidge uncomfortable talking about the book without David since he wrote half of it, but basically: I wrote the odd-numbered chapters and he wrote the even-numbered chapters, and the book is about two different guys who are both named Will Grayson whose lives intertwine for a brief moment in the middle of the book.

2. Over the last few months, I've also written a long sci-fi-ish story called "This Is Not Tom," which is available free on the Internet provided that you are really, really, really good at solving riddles. A lot of readers have asked me if I will publish TINT as a book. I will not. For one thing, it doesn't belong to me, really--my brother and Alexander Basalyga make the riddles, and many of the ideas in the story are taken from a series of eccentric emails I received from a young woman. Also, TINT was intended to be free.

TINT fans: The last six chapters will be posted in six consecutive weeks beginning August 15th. (You can join the fan community at thisisnotforums.com.)

3. I've also been working on two new books--one is indeed called The Sequel. But it generally takes me 2-3 years to finish a book. When I started talking about Paper Towns during Brotherhood 2.0, I'd already been working on it for more than a year. I haven't been working on The Sequel (or the other thing) quite as long yet, so I still feel totally unqualified to discuss it, since I have no idea what happens and why and etc.

4. Paige Railstone has nothing to do with The Sequel. More on her later.

Also, I'm starting to work on revisions of the Paper Towns screenplay.

So that's the writing news from around here, K. What are y'all working on?

Paige Railstone

2009-08-02T07:34:00.007-05:00

Paige Railstone (July 31st 1987 - ) is a popular underground dj and budding singer-songwriter who currently resides full-time in hotels around the world. (When asked by a reporter recently if she was American, Railstone said, “Sometimes. Sometimes I am Canadian, sometimes European, sometimes African, sometimes Asian. In this world, it is not enough to be who you are. You must also be where you are.”)

Childhood

Railstone was born and raised in a small agrarian community in rural South Dakota. Her father, Daniel Railstone, worked as a tax preparer until his death in 1994, when Paige was seven. Paige’s mother, Rhonda, continues to live in South Dakota with her second husband, Paul, a loan officer. Paige has one sibling, Joseph, who was born in 1983 and has long worked as Railstone’s manager and handler.

Paige Railstone rarely consents to interviews (and when she does, her answers are notoriously vague), but when asked if her childhood was happy, Railstone has answered, “All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

DJ Career

Railstone was home-schooled with Joey until she was 14. On September 13, 2001, they ran away together, hitchhiking to New York City. After several days of homelessness, they found bunks in a semi-converted warehouse they shared with several dozen other young castabouts and runaways in Brooklyn. The warehouse was managed by a shady conglomerate of Estonian immigrants. Joey worked for a brief time for an Estonian-run moving company and Paige started spinning records at warehouse house parties. Little is known about Railstone’s development as a dj at this time, but by January of 2002, the Railstones were in Tallinn, Estonia, and Paige was establishing herself as a major dj in the underground Estonian club scene.

The details of the Railstones’ move to Tallinn are still unclear, although there are persistent rumors that Joey, known for partying, had gotten into debt with some kind of unsavory characters. It is known that they were accompanied on the trip from New York to Tallinn by Andrus Hillar, an Estonian talent manager who continues to book gigs for DJ Railstone.

Railstone’s postgenre dj selections and instinctual understanding of crowd behavior made her a natural at dj. She soon became known for mashing up lyric-driven songs with the thumping bass and drums then popular in the eastern European club scene. The Railstone siblings were soon traveling to other former Soviet republics, and then to Budapest and finally Berlin, where Railstone famously spun for 12 hours in a warehouse in Prenzlauer Berg. Several more famous djs had time slots after Railstone, but all of them ceded their time to her.

Years later, Railstone would be asked when she felt she had made it. “I don’t feel like that. But after the show in Prenzlauer Berg, when I was 17, we went back to the hotel that morning and I slept for like three years and then we got up and it was pretty late in the afternoon, and Andrus took us to this Asian restaurant to get some noodles and on the walk there, I saw a sticker on a lamppost that said, “DJ RAILSTONE SAVES LIVES,” which seemed, you know, promising.”

Recent Notoriety

Because Railstone rarely played big clubs and was always hyperprotective of her privacy (so much so that she usually refuses to allow her face to be visible in the dj booth), Railstone managed to make a living as a dj while remaining almost entirely unknown—that is, until a series of tracks she’d put together called Off the Railstone found its way onto file-sharing servers in mid-2009.

Off the Railstone, a collection of mash-ups Railstone is said to have dashed off in a hotel room in Bratislava during two weeks of nonstop work, spread virally through the Internet, forcing Paige out of obscurity. On her 22nd birthday, Railstone and several dedicated fans launched a web site and several facebook fan pages. Railstone also maintains a twitter account. She is currently taking a break from touring, although she often spins at parties and clubs unannounced. What Railstone has called her “post-locational disposition” makes it hard for fans to keep track of her, although she updates her tumblr photogblog periodically with clues as to her current location.

In early August of 2009, Railstone made an announcement on her official twitter. “Working on my own stuff (she said vaguely).”

Facts about Paige Railstone

She is 5’ 7” and has dark brown hair and blue eyes.

She initially became popular when she was 17, in 2003.

Despite being an internet music phenomenon, she has never had a Top 40 hit.

She sometimes plays rock, sometimes country, sometimes alternative, and sometimes hip hop.

She is sometimes funny, but not a comedian.

Paige has piercings in her nose, lip, and ears. She also has two tattoos.

Paige is not married, but she is widely rumored to be dating art rocker and vlogger Alan Lastufka.

Paige does not play sports.

She is not religious.

She is right-handed.

Although she does not perform in public as a musician, she is believed to play the guitar, the keyboard, and the piano.

Paige has never been on a television show or in a movie.

Paige appeals widely to teenagers.

Paige is the younger of two children.

She wears make-up.

Paige is multi-talented.

Paige's political affiliations are irrelevant.

Paige is not a lead singer. (Not YET, at least.)

Paige is not graceful.

Paige is said to be straightedge—she does not smoke, drink, or do drugs.

If you have other questions about Paige Railstone, leave them in comments.

Links

Paige Railstone's web site

Paige Railstone's twitter

Paige Railsone's official Facebook fan page

A fan-created Facebook fan page

Paige Railstone's photoblog

Four Truths in Defense of Book Publishers

2009-07-30T08:32:00.012-05:00

The past few weeks, publishers have taken a bit of a beating here at sparksflyup. First, many people read my post on excessive book advances as an attack on publishers. (It wasn't, really, but more on that in a second.) Then I criticized a publisher for putting a photograph of a white girl on the cover of a book narrated by a black girl.

While it's easy to demonize publishing companies, I think that we--as writers and as readers--chronically underestimate their value. The truth is usually more complicated than our vitriol.

TRUTH: Authors should not have final control over their book covers.

Letting authors control their cover designs is just bad business. As an author, I feel qualified to make the following generalization about authors: A lot of times, we are pretty stupid. Also, as a rule, we are poor graphic designers.

I do think authors should be consulted about covers. Penguin has always given me a seat at the table in conversations about my book covers, and they've always listened to me when I didn't like a design, and I doubt they would ever print a cover without my approval.

But I'm not a graphic designer or an art director, and if I tried to act like one, it wouldn't help get my books to readers.

TRUTH: Publishers are not to blame for the crap state of the book business.

It is true that for years publishers have spent too much money on too many books. But authors and agents are equally responsible for that.

I would argue that the core problem is ultimately not that publishers are aggressive about trying to acquire books that will sell well, but that agents and writers and publishers all wrongly view money as something we take from each other, when it should be something that we make together.

TRUTH: Not everything that goes wrong with a book's publication is the publisher's fault

We all have a habit of totally overlooking how good publishers sometimes are about getting books to wide readerships. Twilight is a can't-put-down book with uncommonly compelling world-building, so it might have succeeded regardless, but Little Brown got that book into all the right hands in the weeks before its publication.

On a smaller scale: Penguin's launch of Paper Towns was absolutely masterful. They got fantastic bookstore placement for a contemporary realistic novel at a time when contemporary realistic novels weren't in vogue. Everyone was extraordinarily well-organized and diligent, and every opportunity was capitalized upon. And as a result, the book did 1000% better in its opening weeks than either of my first two books.

But what if the book hadn't done well? I know from experience that sometimes a publisher does everything right, and an author works tirelessly, and the book just doesn't take off. At those moments, one wants to blame the publisher, or the cover, or the lack of a publicist, or the lack of a tour.

But the truth is that not all books have huge audiences. Fortunately, a novel's success is not measured only in copies sold.

TRUTH: Publishers make a lot of good books and do a really good job of getting those books to people.

This is actually quite amazing when you think about it. There were maybe two good TV shows created last year, even though thousands of people spent gajillions of dollars creating hundreds of TV shows.

But there were hundreds of good books--really, legitimately good--published last year. Authors were responsible for some of that work, but by no means all: Without Julie Strauss-Gabel, Paper Towns would have been a boring and self-indulgent novel with far too much information about the history of post office boxes. Without book designers and art directors, it wouldn't have had the cool package. Without publicity and marketing and sales, Paper Towns would have reached far fewer people than it so far has.

But forget me. Let's look at a better book, like The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing--a long and gorgeously written but at times challenging historical novel written in 18th century dialect with a largely African American cast. Not the kind of thing we think of as having "teen appeal."

And yet Candlewick got that book onto the New York Times' bestseller list. And while people still line up to say, "Teens won't like that book; it's too smart for them," Candlewick is still there, proving the doubters wrong.

Book Covers and the Death of Publishing

2009-07-27T07:16:00.006-05:00

I am very late to the party re. the discussion of Justine Larbalestier's stunningly honest blog post about the cover of her excellent new book LIAR. (I say stunningly honest because Justine is the biggest liar I know. I mean, other than myself.)

Here's what happened: LIAR's hugely unreliable narrator is black. But she is portrayed as white on the book's cover. Justine was (understandably) horrified about this, and never agreed to it, but authors do not have final say in book jacket design.

There are certain cover rules that everyone in publishing believes, including: 1. photographic covers sell, and 2. images of African Americans on covers don't sell. Both of these rules are absolutely idiotic if you think about them for longer than about three seconds. The rules of covers are another cart-and-horse problem, the sort that businesses often run into when they operate via anecdote and "the gut" rather than collecting and analyzing data.

Ultimately, I think retail accounts share the blame with publishers. B&N and Target are gun shy about making big buys of books featuring photographs of African Americans on the cover, and so are independents.

So, okay. I'm going to argue that 1. Book cover design strategies are currently driven by short-sighted misassumptions, but that 2. (un)fortunately, it won't matter much longer anyway.

Argument 1: U Guyz R Doin It Rong

Right now, book covers are intended to get a book to the broadest possible audience without being too dishonest about the content of the book. (Publishers are regularly somewhat dishonest, which is probably why Bloomsbury thought they could get away with the LIAR cover.)

An example: The original cover of An Abundance of Katherines featured math on it, because it is a book about math. The new cover features clone-like images of pretty girls. Now, there can be no question that pretty girls appeal to a broader audience than abstract mathematics.

But but but but but but: I would argue the job of a cover is not to get the book to the broadest audience but instead to get the book to its best audience.

Cover design is important at point of sale, but most books are sold by word of mouth--friends recommending the book to friends. The pretty girl cover will sell more at point of sale, but will it sell to the people who will like the book and recommend it to their friends? That should be the first question about a cover.

The centrality of that question gets lost in bookstores, which by their nature overvalue point-of-sale purchases and undervalue word-of-mouth purchases. (After all, a word-of-mouth purchase may or may not occur at your store; a point-of-sale one definitely will.) So by overvaluing the opinions of retail accounts, publishers can end up hurting their overall long-term sales.

Argument 2: (Un)fortunately, it won't matter much longer

So, like, no one seems to have noticed this, but publishing is, like, dying?

(Quick observation: The market capitalization of Barnes and Noble, Borders, and Books a Million COMBINED is about $1.75 billion. The market capitalization of the video game store Gamestop is $3.92 billion; if you include the market cap of independents, our entire brick and mortar retail business is worth less than half of Gamestop.)

So here is the bad good news: It's pretty difficult to imagine physical bookstores being a widespread phenomenon in 10 years. There will be some stores, of course. (More independents than chains, I suspect.) Publishers will finally throw off the oppressive yoke of free returns, whereupon they will discover that they still can't make money. They will shrink or go out of business.

All of that will suck, but this won't: BOOK COVERS WON'T FREAKING MATTER SO MUCH AS A SALES TOOL. Designers will be liberated to design the coolest jackets without so many commercial constraints, because the focus will be on the right audience instead of the broad audience. Word-of-mouth will be king again.

We've seen this happen in the recording industry. And we'll see it in ours.

That said, publishers and retail accounts shouldn't wait to abandon racism as a marketing strategy.