I think One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich opened my eyes to literature as more than just telling stories. It was the first time I realized art could be a form of protest, could teach me more about the world than just what appeared on the pages or on the canvas or on the screen.
A Little More Info on BookSurge
BookSurge was acquired by Amazon in April of 2005 (I thought it was 2006; sorry about that).
At BookExpo America last May, BookSurge announced agreements with Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Princeton University Press, Lexis Nexis, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, McGraw-Hill, Pearson, Springer, Gale, and Kensington, among others, to ” use BookSurge’s Print on Demand service to make their current, backlist, out-of-print and large print books available to millions of customers on Amazon.com and through other distribution channels.”
Then in June, BookSurge and Kirtas, a company that digitizes print works, “announced a collaboration with universities and public libraries to preserve thousands of rare and inaccessible books from their collections and distribute them via BookSurge’s Print-on-Demand service. This collaboration, which will greatly enhance the selection of rare and historic books for sale on Amazon.com and other retail channels, represents a breakthrough approach to digitization and preservation that will ensure the public will have access to these works indefinitely via Print on Demand.”
I think the current tactics by Amazon are an attempt to expand these collaborations, not to punish small publishers. It’s entirely possible that whoever made the decisions and directed their implementation simply didn’t understand that online POD presses are the ones who would be the most affected, and that they’d have no problem complaining about it. Loudly.
Obviously I could be completely, utterly wrong about this. But as I said, it doesn’t make sense to me that Amazon would deliberately alienate small publishers; it seems far more likely to me that they were giving bigger publishers an ultimatum and instituted a one-size-fits all policy. We’ll see; I suspect there will be more announcements on Monday.
RIP Dith Pran
I first saw The Killing Fields when I was at university.
I’d heard of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, just as I’d heard of Hitler and the Holocaust. Intellectually I knew that individuals, and that groups of humans, could be cruel, even evil. That a charismatic leader could take insecurities and festering resentments and turn them into absolute horror.
But this movie, The Killing Fields, the story of Dith Pran, a journalist who survived the Khmer Rouge regime, somehow made it real. This movie is at its heart the story of a friendship: between Dith Prah, a Cambodian interpreter, and Sydney Schanberg, a New York Times reporter who was in Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge claimed victory and took control of Cambodia. Schanberg made it back to the United States; Pran did not.
Over the next four years, Pran survived the brutality and the capriciousness of the Khmer Rouge regime while around him, 1.5 to 2 million people–almost a quarter of the pre-Khmer Rouge population of Cambodia–were tortured, murdered, or died of starvation and buried in mass graves. Somehow he escaped and made his way to a refugee camp in Thailand, where he was reunited with Schanberg. Pran became a photojournalist for the New York Times and never stopped campaigning on behalf of the victims of the Khmer Rouge regime.
I can’t watch The Killing Fields without crying, just as I cannot watch Boys Don’t Cry without crying. It’s such an amazing depiction of the evil within humanity, and because it’s such a personal story, it breaks through the distance with the viewer and makes it real. I’m touched by the courage and the determination of people like Dith Pran and Haing S. Ngor, who were able to survive this experience and share it with us.
Something to consider
After reading yet another online discussion of self-publishing and publishing through small independent presses, I started thinking, and I wondered, how do people buy books? Where do most sales happen?
Turns out that a few months ago, Publishers Weekly summarized the results of a survey about U.S. books sales. I was a little bit surprised by the results, and once again reminded of the importance of bookstores.
In a nutshell, the survey found the following breakdown:
Direct sales (book fairs, conferences, etc.) = 3% of total sales
Book clubs = 12%
This surprised me, as I didn’t think that book clubs were still so big. But then I thought about Harlequin and all of their imprints that members receive on a monthly basis, and thought, that makes sense that genre book clubs might be doing well if readers regularly buy the new releases and like the convenience of home delivery.
Internet sales = 20%
This number also surprised me: only two of ten books purchased in the U.S. are purchased online. I would have expected this to be higher.
Total of direct sales, book clubs, and Internet sales = 35% of total sales
That’s pretty impressive. But if you think about it, that means bookstores account for 65% of total sales.
Sixty-five percent. That’s a huge chunk of total book sales.
This is extremely important because so many small presses rely on wholesalers and online book retailers for their total book sales, yet online sales account for only two of every ten books sold. Presence in brick-and-mortal bookstores is still critical for book sales.
So authors: when you’re choosing a publisher, make sure you can find their books in stores, on the shelves. This means the publisher has a distributor who is actively working to make your books available to consumers where most book sales are made.
ETA: As mentioned above, this survey represents the U.S. only. My understanding is that online sales make up a much larger proportion of total sales in the UK; I have no idea about other locations.
the role of art
I have a habit of reading books and watching movies that overwhem me. Sometimes I’m terrified (in a fit of sheer stupidity I read The Hot Zone, The Coming Plague, and The Perfect Storm in the space of about ten days, and I was somewhat reluctant to leave my house at the end of it all), and sometimes I’m angered or saddened or horrified at what we humans are capable of (this is how I felt after watching The Killing Fields and Boys Don’t Cry).
More than one person has suggested that I should perhaps back away from books and movies that leave me feeling this way, but I believe that art is not necessarily meant simply to entertain. Enjoyment can be the purpose of a work of art, but sometimes I think it’s good to be exposed to something provocative, something that makes me think, makes me want to learn more. Makes me more aware of the world around me.
A couple of weeks ago I watched a movie called Osama. The story is set in Kabul during the reign of the Taliban, and was filmed in Kabul by Iranian filmmakers in the immediate aftermath of the ousting of the Taliban. That the movie was filmed at all in such conditions is astounding; the director and cinematographer created a sense of spare immediacy that pulled me right into the story.
The story is simple: Under the Taliban, women were not allowed to work, or even to leave their homes without a male escort. However, the Soviet invasion and occupation of the 1980s followed by the Soviet withdrawal and civil war of the 1990s and 2000s left a number of female-only households – families whose fathers and grandfathers were “martyrs” in the struggles of those 20+ years. How were these families to survive when the mere act of going outside could result in arrest?
Osama is the story of such a family: a young girl, her mother, and her grandmother are at the mercy of an extended network of family and friends, and when that network cannot provide them with the most basic necessities, the grandmother cuts off her granddaughter’s hair and turns her into a boy, Osama, who can get a job and support the family. Unfortunately, Osama is rounded up, along with the other young boys, and taken to be “educated” by the Taliban. Things soon go from bad to worse.
Although this is a movie with a clear message, that message is not delivered in the angry, over-the-top, “let me orate and show you the error of your ways” manner that characterizes a lot of American films. Instead, the story unfolds without anger, without rancor, but with a bone-deep sorrow. I couldn’t even talk about the movie after I saw it because I would have broken down into tears. For me, that increases the power of Osama: anger is an emotion that for me is easily dissipated because there’s so much of it in the American media. But this movie made me stop and think, and even now I’m still thankful to the filmmakers for telling this story.
I can’t recommend Osama as entertainment because it’s so difficult to watch. But as art, I think it’s amazing.
Editing
Somehow I managed to finish the massive editing project without skipping sleep or too many meals. Go me!
In a typical month, I do a variety of projects. Usually I’ll have a proofread or two, a nonfiction project, and some novels. Each project is different, obviously, but the requirements of my job vary depending on the type of project I’m working on.
another editing nitpick
utilize =/= use
No, really, it doesn’t. Two different words, two different meanings.
“Utilize” has a particular connotation: “to turn to practical use or account.”
For example, “Sarah didn’t know how to utilize the laptop she’d been given” means Sarah quite possibly knows how to use a computer, but cannot make practical use of this particular laptop. Perhaps there is no software loaded on the machine, or it’s running an operating system she isn’t familiar with. Or perhaps it simply isn’t powerful enough for her to make practical use of it in her job.
Avoid using “utilize” as a fancy way of saying “use.” According to the American Heritage Dictionary, “many occurrences of utilize could be replaced by use with no loss to anything but pretentiousness.”
POV is everything
When I was a kid, I had the usual Joan of Arc obsession. I thought she was the coolest thing ever. When my fourth-grade teacher assigned us to write a fictional letter by a historical figure, mine was written by Joan. (And yes, I burned off the edges of the paper.)
I loved Joan. Loved the dauphin. Loved the French.
Then, several years later, I discovered Shakespeare. Hated the “tragedies” but loved the comedies and histories. Loved Henry V. Quoted the speech: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” (No, I didn’t know who Saint Crispin was, but that’s beside the point.)
I loved Henry V. Hated the dauphin. Hated the French.
And then came the crisis: Henry V and Joan of Arc were fighting on opposite sides, but in the same (much larger) war. The dauphin Joan supported, whom I cheered so fiercely, was the successor to the dauphin whom I’d booed with such enthusiasm when Henry V opposed him. In fact, it was the claim to the French throne by Henry VI, son of Henry V, that led to the siege of Orleans! (He was a child at the time and this was done in his name, but you get the idea.)
POV is everything. A sympathetic main character can sway you, can influence you, without your even being aware of it. A charismatic figure can inspire personal loyalty that transcends a bigger conflict, which allows me to cheer both Joan of Arc and Henry V despite their opposing political and military goals.
I don’t really have much of a point here. Just a Monday-afternoon ramble 
Invisible Words
Sometimes when I’m reading something, either as an editor as a reader, I come across an awkward or clumsy construction that makes me stop and think, “Why on earth did this writer do this?” Nine times out of ten, it is to avoid “overusing” a common word.
Thing is, though, common words are just that: common. So common, in fact, that they’re invisible. The eye goes right over them. Examples of this are: he, she, is, was, were, did, had (as a helping verb), character names, and said.
This is important because a reader will not notice that you’ve used a character’s name twice in the same sentence if it’s needed to make the meaning clear. A reader will, however, notice if you’ve used some clumsy descriptor:
Mary burst into the room and upon seeing the hostages tied up in a corner, the tall blonde rushed to their aid.
Not only does it sound funny, but it actually makes things more complicated, especially to a nonvisual reader who might ask, “Okay, but where did the blonde come from?”
Also, a reader will not notice if you use said in dialogue attribution, because that’s what people do: they say their dialogue. They do not cough, smile, beam, chortle, chuckle, or laugh their dialogue. Try it sometime – you’ll find that it’s not really possible to speak while you’re performing these actions. A reader is far more likely to notice – and not in a good way – the avoidance of the word said than the overuse of it.
There are some other verbs that can be used. Asked, answererd, replied, and the occasional retorted are just fine. But if you’re going to use another word for said, you need to make sure of a couple of things.
First, is the verb describing a way of speaking? Ask is. Smile is not.
Second, is the verb intransitive? Far too often I see a dialogue attribution such as: she greeted, she admonished, she reprimanded with no direct object. A transitive verb must have an object, and to include the direct object (“Hello!” she greeted her sister.) is often painfully redundant, so you have the choice of either eliminating the dialogue or using a different verb.
Finally, a lot of writing/self-editing guides suggest eliminating unnecessary instances of the word had but do not go on to explain (probably assuming that writers will know that) this does not apply to formation of the past perfect tense (I had already been there for two hours when she finally arrived).
Now, off to work!
as if we needed one
This article provides yet another reason to love Ursula LeGuin.
(I did mention one of the books, The Road, here.)