A Canadian book blog: Publishing, marketing, books and technology from a Canadian perspective
My friend Anita has reduced the price of her super cute Alert Bay house. This week July 1st to 4th will be open house viewing by appointment. Please call 250-650-1204.
http://britishcolumbia.bytheowner.com/home-for-sale-alert-bay-british-columbia-121866
Is Amazon Taking Over the Book Business? is a great article by Lev Grossman and Andrea Sachs in TIME on Monday, Jun. 22, 2009.
As I’ve said before, Amazon isn’t just a bookstore.
As numerous publishing journalists and bloggers have pointed out, Amazon has diversified itself so comprehensively over the past five years that it’s hard to say exactly what it is anymore. Amazon has a presence in almost every niche of the book industry. It runs a print-on-demand service (BookSurge) and a self-publishing service (CreateSpace). It sells e-books and an e-device to read them on (the Kindle, a new version of which, the DX, went on sale June 10). In 2008 alone, Amazon acquired Audible.com a leading audiobooks company; AbeBooks, a major online used-book retailer; and Shelfari, a Facebook-like social network for readers. In April of this year, it snapped up Lexcycle, which makes an e-reading app for the iPhone called Stanza. And now there’s Amazon Encore, which makes Amazon a print publisher too.
Posted by Monique at 10:19 AM. Filed under: Book Publisher • News • Technology •
BookCampTO was this weekend and it stimulated my brain.
Mitch Joel, who I admire greatly, was in attendance and we had a couple of excellent thought exchanges, one of which is playing out on his blog.
Here’s a fleshed out version of my comment “Gratis vs. Libre.”
The thing of value that publishers and authors have is the content of their books. Setting the value of that content at zero is not the way to go. (Although there are interesting examples of free PDFs that lead to great value for the publisher and author. See the D&M case study on The Tar Sands (PDF).—Thank you Alison for sharing!)
Giving the content away for free (in whatever format the book takes) is like my fellow apartment dwellers who toss books into the “free” box in the laundry room. Those books are gratis. They are one step above being thrown away. The value exchange between giver and taker is “meh”.
Freeing the content, as in libre, is what publishers and authors are after. It’s the quest to give—as in a gift—that allows the value exchange of the content to remain in tact.
Why did the D&M campaign meet its goals with the free PDF? Partly because it’s still early days for free PDFs. D&M captured our attention by giving away the entire book because there are few people doing that as a marketing strategy. There is value in the rarity.
More important though is that there was a strategy to this campaign. They set measurable goals in advance. And they didn’t set the only goal as increasing sales because they recognize that there’s not a direct correlation between a single marketing campaign (with multiple facets) to sales. But most important of all, they treated the PDF as a gift.
It was available for a limited time. And it was available, in particular, to journalists and bloggers as a file that they could gift to others. It was libre—free to travel, free to be shared.
And, quite cleverly, there are still reasons for us to talk about Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent by Andrew Nikiforuk because the publisher has created this case study to share as a gift to other publishers and authors who are debating the merits of posting a free PDF. Thank you again for sharing!
Book publishing is an industry in a cribbage game—and it’s not about avoiding getting skunked by your fellow publishers, it’s about avoiding getting skunked by every other industry vying for consumer attention. You are playing as an industry, not as individual players.
BookCampTO is one example of how we can work together and I really hope to bring that conversation to the west coast. Thank you for the Toronto hospitality.
I’ll be posting my BookCampTO notes at http://www.breakthespine.com/. If you’re interested in attending the Vancouver debrief session sign up for email alerts at Break the Spine, email me, DM me on twitter—chose your means.
Email Alerts from Break the Spine
Website: http://www.breakthespine.com/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/breakthespine or http://www.twitter.com/somisguided
Posted by Monique at 03:12 PM. Filed under: Blogging • Book Publisher • Douglas & McIntyre • Marketing •
Biblioasis and SeenReading have launched the Kill a Critic: A Revenge-Lit contest, to celebrate the Launch of Terry Griggs’s Thought You Were Dead.
The first entries are up at www.revengelit.blogspot.com and the deadline (pardon the pun) is June 12.
How to Entry
Write 250 words or so on the Death of a Critic (Literary or Art), and what they did to get there.
Send entries to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Visit RevengeLit.Blogspot.com for details
Background
Everybody Hates a Critic. Some people hate them more than others.
Terry Griggs’s new comic-noir biblio-mystery Thought You Were Dead kicks, err, off with a literary critic found under a hedge with a knife in his head, and literary revenge plays an increasingly important role as the novel unfolds. The literary world, and especially the Canadian literary world, can be a small, spiteful – and occasionally murderous – place. Character assassinations abound, books are regularly murdered in the (shrinking) book pages across our fair land, while others are smothered with damningly faint praise. More than a few knives, even if thankfully metaphorical, have been buried hilt deep in authorial backs.
Do you bear the scars of CanLit’s internecine wars? Have you spent a small fortune on postage and only have a drawerful of rejection slips to show for it? Has the world been slow to recognize your evident talent? Then, dear reader, this contest is for you.
To celebrate the launch of Terry Griggs’s Thought You Were Dead, Biblioasis and Seen Reading are teaming up to help you unleash the murder we know is in your heart with our Revenge-Lit contest. Pen a flash fiction of 250 words or so (though, in truth, no one is likely to count them) on the (fictional) literary critic whose body once filled the chalk outline and what he did to get there and send it by June 12th to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
The best of the entries will be published as they are received at RevengeLit.blogspot.com. The winning entry will:
1) Receive a one hundred dollar cash prize
2) Be published in a forthcoming issue of CNQ: Canadian Notes & Queries
3) A Biblioasis press catalogue of in-print trade titles (approx. 40 books, retail value approx. $1000.00)
Entries to be judged by Dan Wells, Julie Wilson and Terry Griggs.
Carnal Flower by Dominique Ropion is part of Frederic Malle’s Editions de Parfums. Dominique spent 2 years perfecting the formula for this perfume, which reportedly has the highest concentration of tuberose on the market.
So what? The “what” is that tuberose is a really heavy, dark, sexy floral essence. Tuberose flowers are white and light looking but they pack a powerful punch. Dominique’s perfume is not light but it’s not heavy either.
The first notes on my skin were citrus and green but as the hour wore on, the scent evolved to be a dull heady floral (and I mean that in a nice way). Most floral perfumes become really powdery on me but this one smelled a bit smoky and camphorous. It’s a bit like smelling the wrapper of a stick of Juicy Fruit next to a bouquet of tuberose.
As my mother used to say, “Do as I say, not as I do.”
I tell people that they should offer email subscription options as well as RSS because many people still prefer to receive email. That said, I had set up a Feedburner account, then crashed my website, then fixed it (thank you Hop Studios), then noticed the wrong “Sign Up for Email Alerts” was being used.
Alas ... I’m back up on Feedburner, thank you for your patience.
If you’re keen to receive missives via email, please subscribe here:
Subscribe to So Misguided by Email
sheddie
... a person who enjoys creating a comfortable space within an outbuilding (shed); not only for working on projects but a place to enjoy a pint and some darts as well.
In a sentence: All that sheddie does is drink beer by his woodstove and play darts.
At the beginning of May, James and I ventured over to Bowen Island to visit the Glave family and to stay in their Eco-Shed. (We drank wine instead of beer and, as you’ll see, there were no darts.)
Construction of the Eco-Shed is chronicled in James Glave’s book Almost Green (published in 2008 by Greystone Books). The book is an entertaining examination of the difficulty James went through when designing his eco-friendly, sustainable writing studio.
Having read the book, I knew that I wasn’t going to sleepover in some drafty garden shed, but I had no concept of how lovely the eco-shed really is.
Pretty little stove to heat the place. Kitchenette for toast and jam in the morning.
One of the most comfortable beds on the island.
Little writing nook and view of the mountains.
The fourth wall is all windows and looks out on this lovely garden.
And I’m a sucker for a cute bathroom. Think walk in closet but this one is tiled in green, and like a sailboat bathroom, everything is self-contained (toilet, shower). It’s beautiful.
For more news and notes on the Eco-Shed, visit Jame Glave at Glave.com, go to the official Eco-Shed website at Eco-Shed.ca or check out the photos on the Eco-Shed Flickr Pool.
Posted by Monique at 06:36 PM. Filed under: Book Publisher • Books • Party Tricks •
From the press release
This past weekend, Toronto Comic Arts Festival came to life at the Toronto Reference Library, and Vepo Studios were there to catch it all for Whazamo!:Ontario Graphic Novel Month on Open Book Toronto.
We wanted to share with you this video of highlights from the day starring such comic and graphic novel luminaries as Bryan Lee O’Malley (Scott Pilgrim), James Turner (Rex Libris), and Mariko Tamaki (Skim) and a surprise appearance from Cory Doctorow (Little Brother/BoingBoing)!
You can check it all out here on you tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7gatME_jpc
or at the Open Book Toronto site as part of Whazamo! Ontario Graphic Novel Month:
http://www.openbooktoronto.com/whazamo
And if you missed it, you can also catch our behind the scenes story of the photo-web comic A Softer World here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngNnKvJm3wg
Whazamo! Ontario Graphic Novel Month is a collaboration between Open Book: Toronto, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival and the production company Vepo Studios. Look for daily updates throughout May on the Open Book: Toronto website at: http://www.openbooktoronto.com.
UPDATE: Launch is Thursday night, in my enthusiasm I thought it was tonight.
Biblioasis’s only Vancouver-area launch of 2009 is happening Thursday, May 14! Come to the launch Cynthia Flood’s The English Stories. Publisher Dan Wells says “The English Stories is a quiet marvel of a collection, and certainly one of the highlights of our 2009 list. I’m hoping that you’ll consider coming to the Sylvia Hotel and giving it the launch it deserves.”
Thursday, May 14
7-9 pm
Bistro Bar at the Sylvia Hotel
1154 Gilford St
Vancouver
Hey kids this is what we called a rotary dial telephone. It was used to make and receive phone calls. Weird, I know.
Oh the curtains will be coming up on Salome tonight at the Vancouver Opera.
It is an opera in one act so it’s hard for me to gauge when things will be happening timewise so I’ll tell you a little about it.
Salome, the opera, is by Richard Strauss, the libretto by Hedwig Lachmann, and it’s based on Oscar Wilde’s stage poem of the same name.
We start on the roof-top terrace. Narraboth, the young captain of the guard, watches the stepdaughter of Herod, Salome, at a banquet in the palace. He is besotted.
Salome’s father, Herod, has imprisoned John the Baptist. Amidst the sound of bickering banquet guests is the sound of John the Baptist prophesying the coming of the Messiah. John is usually portrayed as a strange man, think homeless with crazy hair. I’ll be interested in how this John is costumed.
The banquet is a bore. Salome leaves, hears the prophet, and decided to seek him out. He’s cursing her mother’s poor lifestyle choices (marrying the brother who killed her husband, you know how it is in these operas).
John is brought before Salome, who is reacts with a teenager reaction of freaky fascination. She wants to touch his skin, his hair, his lips. She’s obsessed. It’s rude. It’s weird. Then she wants a kiss. The prophet curses her.
Oh that besotted captain dies at some point here, which sets off Herod’s series of bizarre hallucinations. Depending on the staging, this is one of those stories that might be comprehensible if seen stoned. It’s a bit of a trip.
All of this leads up to the Dance of the Seven Veils.
This is where the nudity happens. Salome does a bit of a strip tease dance, and her reward is the execution of any of her heart’s desires, which happens to be the head of the prophet on a silver platter. Take a toke.
Her father freaks out and offers jewels, peacocks, half his kingdom, even the sacred veil of the Temple of the Jews, but Salome is determined.
There’s a bit of a necrophilia kissing of the severed head, which disgusted everyone and leads to Salome’s own death.
As I said, it’s a controversial and wildly seductive and erotic opera. I’ve seen it as a play, read it as a poem and watched it as a film. I would very much like to hear it as an opera because I bet the voices are powerful and strong.
He rejects her. She demands his head. There’s nudity and the famous “dance of the seven veils” (listen throughout the opera for the tambourine sound every time Salome’s dance is mentioned).
Vancouver Opera’s 2008/2009 season finale is Richard Strauss’ shocking drama of lust and prophecy in Judea.
Here is SALOME.
Live blogging and twittering the Opera tonight is @trishussey @NetChick @Miss604 @Kimli @hummingbird604
I am in Victoria and can’t make it back in time for the opera, but Salome is one of my favourites so I wish that clone was ready to deploy. If I can fit it into my schedule, next performances are Tuesday, May 5, Thursday, May 7 and Saturday, May 9.
Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Georgia and Hamilton in Vancouver.
7:30 pm.
Tickets are available exclusively at the Vancouver Opera Ticket Centre, online at www.vancouveropera.ca or by telephone (604-683-0222).
Richard Strauss’ Salome is based on Oscar Wilde’s French play of the same name, which borrows from the gospels of Matthew and Mark.
Salome rocks because it’s Biblical, erotic, macabre and sensational.
Salome is also controversial. According to the materials Selina sent along:
Opera Facts
Is there a coat check? And a bar?
Yes and yes!
Oh it’s time for band camp, or performing arts camp. American friends you have the privilege of watching MTV Camped Out this Saturday, 12 pm.
“Summer camp is not just about building fires and making smores anymore. Tune in on Saturday, April 25th at 12pm – 2pm et/pt as MTV News & Docs premieres with a 2-hour special of “Camp’d Out”. This special will take viewers inside the lives of three individual campers: Alana, Lauren, and Mia, and their different summer experiences at French Woods Performing Arts Camp.”
Reality tv. Bands. Music. Teen Madness. What could go better?
Why do I care? Because Canadian band Two Hours Traffic plays the theme song “Stuck for the Summer” and I really, really want it to be summer.
Matthew Snyder roped me into being in love with this band and helping them promote the MTV gig and because I like Canadian music I said yes. We are going to Victoria to see the Weakerthans next week. Independent Canadian music is what keeps me going.
Good luck guys!
Plain Words, Uncommon Sense
A blog on books, writing, tap dancing, technology, and the other amusements of Monique Trottier.
Monique lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada and is a litblogger, among other things. Find out more ...
"So misguided." A comment often uttered in my eclectic salon.
Send me book galleys, ARCs or review copies. Contact me at
monique at somisguided dot com
Contact me at Boxcar Marketing
What I read, what I recommend: Amazon Listmania
Eat local. Eat smart.
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