Now that I've been in the business for a spell, I'm reading a lot more literary journals than I ever have, both to see what's out there and because we have a lot funneling through the office. Two recommendations: 1) Hayden's Ferry Review is celebrating their twentieth anniversary with a very nice issue, and 2) Greensboro Review has some good fiction in it, particularly stories by Cam Terwilliger and Anthony Varallo.

In this New York Times article, David Oshinsky writes about the various manuscripts rejected by Alfred A. Knopf.  The rejection files run from the 1940's to the 70's, and include, among many others:

Jorge Luis Borges (“utterly untranslatable”), Isaac Bashevis Singer (“It’s Poland and the rich Jews again”), Anaïs Nin (“There is no commercial advantage in acquiring her, and, in my opinion, no artistic”), Sylvia Plath (“There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice”) and Jack Kerouac (“His frenetic and scrambling prose perfectly express the feverish travels of the Beat Generation. But is that enough? I don’t think so”).

Oh, add Anne Frank to that.  And Nabokov.  And George Orwell.  See?  Now aren't we all feeling a little bit better about our own, tiny rejection slips that we stuff so quickly away to the backs of our desk drawers?  At least if you get rejected, you'll know you're in good company. 

Thanks go out again to Daryll Lynne for finding this article by James Surowiecki from The Financial Page at The New Yorker.  The article, "The Science of Success," discusses the recent use of "prediction markets" by publishing companies to decide on which books to put their money into.  These prediction techniques have been used over the past few years by film and television companies, with what seems a relatively good success rate itself; but many are sceptical of the implications this may have in the book publishing trade.

From my perspective, though, I can't imagine any book I might ever publish would ever turn a profit.  I don't think books of poetry do very often, unless I put "Chicken Soup" in the title.  Hmmm.

This morning Jane Springer's book Dear Blackbird, arrived in the mail. (Yes, the comma is part of the title.) The book, which won the 2006 Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry, is exciting to me in part because it is so blindingly good, and in part because Sycamore Review published two of her "Dear Blackbird" poems in issue 18.2. 

J.D. McClatchy, who judged the 2006 prize says of Springer's work, "The skin of each poem quivers with the mind's contradictions, the heart's panic.  It is risky, not merely reckless; rapturous, not merely rapacious.  Memories spill over into fantasies, Southern lore collides with hipster know-how.  This book is the most exciting debut in years, and when we remember that 'debut' originally meant to score first in a new game, that is just what Springer has done" taken on a new set of terms and struck first, struck gold." Damn!

According to this very disturbing Guardian article, the "only fully authenticated" image of Jane Austen, the image that has been traditionally used by publishers, is being photoshopped into something "more appealing" by Wordsworth editions.  To quote the publisher's managing director:

Jane Austen wasn't very good looking. She's the most inspiring, readable author, but to put her on the cover wouldn't be very inspiring at all. It's just a bit off-putting.

Apparently the improvements included adding more makeup and hair extensions and removing her nightcap.  Wow.  It's like What Not to Wear for literary icons.  Except when I watch What Not to Wear, I feel all uplifted, because though Stacey and Clinton can dole out some pretty harsh criticism, it's really just tough love, and you can tell by the end of the episode that the person who was just made over is genuinely happy about their new look, because really, what were they doing wearing a bodysuit in 2007 anyway?  But this?  This just makes me feel sad.  Poor, poor Jane and her ill-fated nightcap.  What have we become as a society when we won't let one of the most celebrated writers of all time keep her nightcap? 

Issue 19.1 has been sent off to the printers.  It'll come back in a week or so in blue proof form, so let's all cross our fingers that Managing Editor Patrick Nevins and I didn't screw something up when we were printing it out and burning it to disk. 

Thanks to Daryll Lynne Evans for paper and Molly Martin for a non-dvd blank disc, by the way.  Putting the issue to bed is always fraught with one or two ridiculous problems. This time: I only brought blank DVDs rather than CD-Rs, and then we couldn't figure out why they were recording in slow motion.  Also: no printer paper. 

The issue will be out in mid-January, and will include Cindy May Murphy's prize winning poem "For My Father, Who Fears I'm Going to Hell."  It'll also have an interview with Michael Martone, an Indiana native who's featured as one of  the Underrated Writers of 2006 over at Syntax of Things.

Here, he writes an unncessary introduction to a quite good book by Monica Drake.  The book, Clown Girl, came to my attention because the review copy we got came with a rubber chicken keyring.

And here, a pun on his name makes Miss Snark take a second look. 

Apparently, the color green is taboo on magazine covers.  I had never heard this, but the opinion is, to quote Julia Turner, pervasive:

Cindi Leive, now the editor in chief of Glamour, remembers getting into "an almost physical fight" at Self over a cover that pictured Stephanie Seymour in a dark green sweater. "I liked the cover," Leive recalled. "But my art director … not only was she screaming, she was screaming in a thick and impassioned Finnish accent and telling me that dark green was the color of death …

[via DF] 

Seriously, as someone who teaches college English, I have no sympathy for text book publishers.  Now, instead of responding to the market's unwillingness to pay their outlandish fees, they have gone the way of the RIAA and started getting all litigious.  They threatened to sue Cornell when its professors made "material available free rather than requiring students to buy $100 textbooks."

For colleges, rising textbook prices are fueling Internet use in courses. U.S. college students spent an average of $898 on books and supplies in the 2003-04 academic year, and textbook prices have climbed an average of 6 percent each year since the 1987-88 academic year, according to estimates by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, Congress's investigative arm. 

An what's bringing this wave of outcry from publishers?  Is it flagging sales?

The higher-education segment of the U.S. book publishing industry had 2005 sales of $3.35 billion, 5.3 percent higher than 2004, the publishers association says. Sales for the entire book publishing industry were $25 billion in 2005, an increase of 9.9 percent.

They're making more money than ever, it seems.  Their problem is that they could be making even more money.  My heart bleeds for the text book publishers of America.

All you dirty minds out there can just calm down...The Showgirl Princess isn't the name of a new Skinemax flick, it's merely the title of Australian pop star Kylie Minogue's just-released children's book.   Ah, Kylie...first the remake of "The Loco-Motion," and now children's literature...will your influence on the world's youth ever cease?  Apparently the book's publication is causing some real children's books authors to strap on their fightin' gloves:   

Leading children's author Geraldine McCaughrean, whose official sequel to J.M. Barrie's classic "Peter Pan" is released this week, said resentment was not only about money.

"What really gets up writers' noses is when people who have no association with books or talent for writing do it as if it's something that anyone can produce," she told Reuters.

Oh, and apparently it's my bad for deeming the book "children's literature," because

"I think it's a nice, frothy, bubbly confection," said Graham Marks, children's editor at Publishing News. "It's not literature, but there's nothing wrong with that."

If I ever get published, I am totally finding a way to get "A nice, frothy, bubbly confection" as one of my blurbs.  Read the article here.

 
Boldtype is a monthly book review that comes in your email.  I  signed up last week (because Veer told me to), just in time to get their August issue (which you can also read online here).  This is a great twist on the online magazine metaphor, actually "delivering" the "magazine" to "you."

This month's issue is titled "Escape" and reviews book by Bill Buford, Daniel Caulder, and a handful of others.  If you think this is a good idea you should check out their musical version (Earplug) and their arts version (Artkrush).  All of these monthlies are available on their respective websites, as well a being emailed to subscribers.

Boldtype is brought to you by the same people who would have brought you Flavorpill, if only you had wanted it and not scoffed at the very idea.

Bookninja has been following this story for a few days now, and I wanted to weigh in.  An Australian newspaper submitted the third chapter of Nobel Prize winner Patrick White's 1973 novel The Eye of the Storm under a pseudonym to see whether a "great" author could find a publisher in today's market.  They were shocked (oh my stars and garters) to find that the manuscript was rejected by all the publishers they sent it to.  Then Peter Craven wrote an Op-Ed admonishing basically the entire world.

 As usual, the Ninj calls it correctly:

...why didn’t the publishers just come out and say what is more likely the truth: that the manu[script] was unsolicited, that one chapter is not the typical submission (and that therefore they assumed the writer was unseasoned), that they’d never heard of Wraith Picket and so knew they couldn’t market the guy on any platform (except his very odd name, that is) and that even if the writing was good, it wasn’t, like, now and, taking all those details into consideration made it difficult for them to be excited about publishing this writer.  

But what I want to talk about is the spirit in which this plot was even conceived to begin with, because I think it relies on some common misconceptions about the reading and selection process in the publishing industry, an industry in which I am peripherally involved.

Even being the greatest writer in the world will not guarantee you immediate publication.  One of the things that worried the editorial assistants when I was working the fiction side of things was the idea that they would fail to recognize the greatness of a story and reject something that went on to win a Pulitzer.  Then, they feared, they would really look like jerks.

But the reading process has to consider many things besides literary merit.  As Bookninja (two things I was surprised Canadians even knew about) rightly points out, publishers publish what it is in their own interest to publish.  You can say that that's selfish, but if the company goes out of business out of a sense of public service, they aren't going to be doing anybody any good (which is not to say public service is bad, don't look at me like that).

More importantly, I think there is this misconception of the overnight success that needs to be combatted whenever possible.  You are not going to wake up one day and be universally recognized as the greatest living author in the world without getting rejected more times than you can count.   Even if you're brilliant.  It just doesn't work that way.  And the idea that after you've achieved some success, your work should just get a free pass regardless of its presentation or context is ludicrous.

Plus, Peter Craven uses the phrase "objectively dispiriting," and he should just know better in this day and age.

If you missed it, Style Weekly had a great article up last month about Ted Genoways and how he transformed Virginia Quarterly Review from a dry, staid literary journal into a hot, award-winning magazine.  The secret: lots and lots of money (they pay about $100 a page). 

Bookslut hearts VQR, by the way.