Right, so for the last five years, I've been working on this book with David Levithan called Will Grayson, Will Grayson. The novel is about two different people, both named Will Grayson. (One WG is written by me, the other by David.)

It has recently come to my attention that this book comes out in 28 days. So you should preorder it here! Or here! Or here! Or here!

Also David and going on TOUR! I hope you will come see us.

First, NEXT MONDAY, MARCH 15, I will be talking about vlogging and books in Indianapolis at 7 PM: Indianapolis Public Library 40 E St. Clair St Indianapolis, IN

Then on April 6th, the real tour begins!

Tuesday April 6, 7PM
Andersons Bookshop
123 W. Jefferson Avenue, Naperville IL 60540


Wednesday April 7, 7PM
The Book Cellar
4736-38 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago IL 60625


Thursday April 8, 7PM
Boulder Bookstore
1107 Pearl Street, Boulder CO 80302


Friday April 9, 7PM
BookPeople
603 North Lamar; Austin, Texas 78703


Saturday April 10, 7PM
Madison Congregational Church, Hubley Hall
26 Meetinghouse Lane, Madison CT
CALL AHEAD TO RESERVE YOUR SEAT: 203-245-3959


Sunday April 11, 1PM
Symphony Space / Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre and Café
2537 Broadway (at 95th Street)
New York, NY
TICKETED EVENT: http://www.symphonyspace.org/event/59...


Monday April 12
New York City
TIME AND LOCATION TBD


Thursday April 22, 7PM
Borders
6020 E. 82nd Street
Indianapolis, IN 46250


Friday April 23
Los Angeles
DETAILS TO COME


Saturday April 24-Sunday April 25
Los Angeles Times Book Festival


Monday April 26, 7PM
Books Inc/Not Your Mothers Book Club
601 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco CA


If you have questions about WGWG (or anything else), leave 'em in comments. Also, if you want to keep up with the latest goings-on, subscribe to us on youtube or follow me on twitter. Thanks!

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!

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

Thanks to everyone who has responded to the essay I wrote for SLJ about the future of reading and publishing in the US. To answer a few more questions:

1. I am not in any way proposing that physical books are dying as a medium, nor do I imagine some all-digital future for text.

I do believe, however, that the survival of printed text won't matter very much from a business perspective, because the big issue is not the medium but the distribution network.

The distribution network--insofar as it still involves bookstores--is in big trouble. (As pointed out in the essay, the stock price for chain bookstores is a good indicator of how serious a challenge they face.) Whether you buy physical books or ebooks has no bearing on the survival of bookstores; all that matters is where you buy the books, and increasingly we buy them either at Amazon or at Wal-Mart.

2. Several librarians have commented and/or emailed that because they are not collection development specialists, they have little or no say in deciding which titles are purchased or how they are purchased.

I (respectfully and lovingly!) disagree, because, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but:

A. Librarians who work with teenagers and children can affect the circulation of titles in their library by being the ambitious bakers I talk about in the essay; collection development specialists pay close attention to circulation numbers.

B. The idea of "collection development" is a lot broader now than it was back before the Internet. You may not buy the books that get shelved in your library, but you can (if you want) turn your kids on to This Is Not Tom or many other hypertext novels, which amounts to collection development.

C. One may feel at times that collection development specialists listen to any person on the street as much as they listen to branch librarians, but you have (and should have!) advantages over the rest of us: You have more expertise and a deeper knowledge of your patrons. If your library system isn't set up to reflect this, then (imho) they're missing an opportunity.

More questions? Leave 'em in comments. Thanks!

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.