A MODEST PROPOSAL

By Ron Rosenbaum

It’s rare that one is able to solve two profoundly troubling societal problems with one quick fix, but I feel I’ve done it! Well, in a metaphorical, Swiftian, satirical “Modest Proposal” way. I suspect that most Slate readers will be aware that Jonathan Swift’s 18^th-century “Modest Proposal” to solve the Irish famine by encouraging starving parents to eat their children was meant as satire, right? Because when I ran my own modest

proposal by a journalist friend, she took it a little too seriously, and heatedly informed me, “That’s the worst idea I ever heard!” That’s sort of the point! When things are bad, the only way to make the situation crystal-clear is to show how difficult it would be to come up with an idea that is ludicrously worse.

On the other hand, as they say in cheesy movies, “Sounds crazy, but it just might work!”

So: My modest proposal to solve America’s “intelligence” failures is to fire the entire CIA and our other many tragically inept intelligence agencies and outsource all intelligence operations to investigative reporters downsized by the collapse of the newspaper business. Thereby improving our “intelligence capability” (it can’t possibly get worse!) and giving a paycheck to some worthy and skilled investigative types—yes, some sketchy, crazed, paranoid (but in a colorful, obsessive, yet often highly effective way) reporters who once made the journalism profession proud, exciting, and useful, not boring stenography for the power elites.

How bad are things in U.S. intelligence? I refer you to a Jan. 20 Reuters report on the Congressional investigation into the failure to “connect the dots” on the Christmas bomber: the guy who—as just about everybody in the world except U.S. intelligence knew—was trying to blow up a plane. Why? (read more here)

SURE, Dan Brown and Sarah Palin are topping the best-seller charts, but the breakout of the holiday book-buying season just may have been an elaborate, richly illustrated tome that records the dreams and spiritual questing of an author who has been dead for nearly half a century. The list price for this 9-pound, 416-page volume? $195.

As online and big-box retailers hustle to outdo themselves in discounts, “The Red Book” by Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology, has surprised booksellers and its publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, by bucking the economy and becoming difficult, and in some cases impossible, to find in bookstores around the country. On Amazon.com, the book — which is not available in a Kindle e-book edition — “usually ships . . . . (read more here)

Last July, the publisher SHOMI—whose titles include Netherworld, Twist, Moongazer, Driven, Wired, Hidden, Countdown, and the outlier double-word titles, Time Transit, and Phenomenal Girl (a series, apparently)—sponsored a book trailer competition. They hired Stephen King to judge it. The parameters were simple. Participants were asked to “create [their] very own book trailer based on [their] favorite SHOMI novel.” As a marketing campaign, it follows one of the popular rules of contemporary promotion: get your audience to advertise your work for you. But whether the results proved efficacious seems less important than what such a contest suggests about the ubiquity of book trailers themselves. For SHOMI to plan this event, the concept “book trailer” has to be part of the colloquial language. No matter who is judging such a competition, if the potential applicants don’t understand the term in advance, the game can’t work.

The book trailer—that one to three-minute voiced-over montage—is designed to attract readers, using images and sounds, to a non-visual, non-auditory product. Pre Youtube, an affordable venue didn’t exist for book commercials, so very few PR departments made them. Historically, television has not been the place to sell a book, unless an author was appearing on a talk show. But now, due to the accessibility of hosting platforms, anyone with a novel or a memoir or a history can create, on virtually any computer, the sort of advertisement that ten years ago might have seemed prohibitively expensive. In the modern market, everyone-from Stephen King (Just After Sunset) to Electric Literature to Flatmancrooked-produces trailers. Three years ago, because these commercials were largely still a novelty, just making one guaranteed some press. Now omnipresence may be hampering their usefulness.

But with ubiquity comes the need for innovation. For fans of Stephen King, the N animation, produced in conjunction with Simon & Schuster and Marvel Comics, was not just an advertisement for Just After Sunset; it was an autonomous “work of art.” Simon & Schuster called N a web series, and released the animations daily for almost a month. Effectively, this created an internet show whose sole sponsor (and subject) was a book of short stories. The collection debuted at #2 on the New York Times fiction best sellers list at the end of November, and stayed in the top fifteen for eight weeks. For King this was not a resounding success, but the book was traditionally less marketable (novels always sell better than collections, and Thomas Friedman always sells better than everything).

Because the technology to make a book commercial is widely accessible, and because the mere existence of such a commercial is no longer extraordinary, the book trailer itself must now be exceptional. N qualifies as extraordinary because of its scope and quality, even if the underlying narrative language (and plot) is mediocre (at best). For smaller presses, though, partnering with Marvel isn’t an option. And stringing together some images with a soundtrack and a voiceover isn’t sufficient—that’s the thing everyone can do. In the next few years, most small publishing houses will produce an internet commercial, and most of their efforts won’t stand out. The majority will adhere, most likely, to the tropes of this fledgling medium. The outstanding ones, on the other hand, will re-contextualize the work they’re promoting.

It may even be a misnomer to call a book trailer a trailer. Film trailers get distilled from the films they’re promoting. But books don’t start out as movies. To summarize a book, therefore, may not be the best way to endorse it. Part of making successful book commercials in the second decade of the 21st Century shouldn’t be approximating film trailers. Instead, the micro publishing industry must create new, autonomous work that relates directly to the book being pushed, but which provides its own independent entertainment. On Thursday I’ll give some examples of presses that are already moving in this direction.

By James Kaelan, with special help from Molly Gaudry

When a used book is sold, not one dime from that transaction makes it back to the publisher or copyright holder. Next fall and spring, consider how many high school and college students, across this great land of ours, will read Catcher in the Rye. Then consider that a majority of those copies will be festooned with bright yellow USED stickers. In your face, Salinger!

Well, it’s payback time. There’s a new reading medium in town and it promises to capture all that lost revenue and redirect it to the rightful recipients. How? Back to the dinner party. The host simply can’t lend you the one e-book. To do so, she’d have to hand over the e-reader itself which means handing over all her e-books, perhaps even her entire library. You could ask her to suspend her hosting pleasures so she can burn a copy, but that would be very rude of you. And the e-book is priced to make you weigh the cost of the book against the cost of being rude. After all, you would like to be invited back.

Isn’t that how iTunes broke the wave of music piracy? By forcing the average law-abiding citizen to weigh committing a crime against paying less than a buck for a song? It helped that the recording industry had already begun suing little girls for piracy, as if someone in Legal had taken a page from Sun Tzu.

Your only real option is to go buy your own e-copy for $9.99. And wow, look at that! Revenue where before there would have been none.

Thanks, e-book!

How much will e-book piracy cost the industry? That’s a misleading question. But it’s equally misleading to ask how much lost revenue the e-book will recapture for the publishing industry and the copyright holders.

Anyway, isn’t this good news for writers? Maybe. One could argue that even if readers buy used, they’re still perpetuating the author’s work and reputation, which may have a much greater monetary payoff further down the road. For example, the work may remain viable for many generations simply because so many people have already read it. Then again, not all works are destined to join the canon, not even junior varsity, so it behooves the publisher and copyright holder to cash in as soon and as often as possible.

That the blogosphere is rampant with such debate is evidence of the havoc e-books are wreaking in the collective mind. Because the closer we look, the more we realize that e-books aren’t like physical books. The content is being divorced from the container. In the past, the buyer had the right to resell, trade, or give away the object. The copyright remained distinct from the object; buying a copy of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises didn’t include ownership of the film rights.

The e-book is already being understood more as something leased indefinitely. Or licensed like software, which one can buy but never really own. But the real limitation is the e-reader itself. When Grandpa died, his physical books were divvied up by his heirs. Some were kept, some were sold, and the rest donated. As physical objects, they endured in the physical world, ready for a new generation of readers.

But in the future, what will happen to all the e-books on Grandpa’s e-reader? Unless the device is relatively new, it’s likely to be stacked up with the rest of his outdated gadgets. If you don’t agree, just consider what happens today when one is bequeathed an old laptop that has too little memory and still runs Windows2000, if it still runs at all.

Hello, electronic waste recycler. Good-bye books.

By Andrew Dugas

Say you’re at a party. You eye the host’s book shelf, spot Interesting Title, and pluck it forth. You start to read and find yourself captivated. You can’t put it down; indeed, you wish you could run home with the book right then and there.

The host sidles over and smiles. Ah, yes. Renowned-But-Not-So-Renowned-To-Be-Uncool Author. Are you a fan?

Yes, you say, but I’ve never read Interesting Title.

It’s Author’s best book. I’ve read it a million times, and there’s always something new. Why don’t you borrow it?

You’re taken aback. An otherwise pleasant conversation has taken a sinister turn. One minute you’re innocently discussing Author, the next you’re being invited to commit a crime. Good day, you say and take your leave. After all, you’re no pirate.

All conversations about e-books inevitably lead to the subject of piracy. The Napster card always gets played. Remember all that peer-to-peer file sharing of MP3s? Even grandpa was burning CDs of ill-gotten music downloaded from the Internet! Music sales slumped, and only the combination of iTunes and thug-worthy litigation by the recording industry could save the day.

What about the e-book, though? How can we as a law-abiding (ahem) society prevent a Napster-like calamity in publishing?

Don’t get too distracted by the ongoing emotional debate about digital rights management (DRM) and competing reading device formats; Sony vs. Amazon vs. iPhone; how the soulless “electronic reading device” can never approximate the tactile joy of a physical book with actual pages; how to determine fair pricing and royalty structures; and of course, the piracy, oh the terrible piracy!

These and many other e-book debates, while interesting and not inconsequential, distract from the more profound, and possibly sinister, implications of the e-book. No, I’m not talking about any of those crazy, paranoid delusions about Amazon suppressing controversial content or even summarily deleting books from one’s Kindle.

I’m talking about the death of the used book. The shared book. The physical artifact that persists through time, across decades, availing itself to many overlapping generations of readers. Until now.

Used books. The very term conjures up rainy afternoons spent in the creaky aisles of funky stores with overstuffed chairs and resident cats, volumes on every subject imaginable stacked floor to ceiling. Our collective history, wisdom, and information; our mythologies and imaginations; our successes and our failures.

As artifacts, physical books endure through time. The books on those shelves have had many prior readers. Open a random cover and you’re likely to find birthday wishes, dates, names, places. A phone number. A special kind of currency, used books travel from person to person via stores, garage sales, and thrift shops, even the Lost & Found. Friends and lovers lend each other books and sometimes they’re never returned. And when someone dies, their books remain, ready to be dispersed and rediscovered by still others.

But don’t worry, those days are over. The e-book has given notice to this casual piracy!

Not piracy, you say? If you shared e-books with such flagrant disregard—if it was even possible—it would be piracy indeed.

Sure, such sharing has never been considered piracy, but only because the book as content and book as object were inseparable. Books were merchandise and piracy generally took the form of plagiarism, if only because photocopying an entire book was too time-consuming and costly to be worthwhile, especially if you could find it used.

But make no mistake. Used book sales have always represented lost revenue to the publishers and copyright holders-so much so that they’ve taken the trouble to calculate it.

According to a 2003 article in Publisher’s Weekly, used books accounted for $533M in annual sales in 2002. But wait, there’s more! The article also says that this figure represents as much as $1.5B lost in new book sales. Yeah, that’s right: 1.5 BILLION. In other words, every dollar spent on used books is a three-dollar slap in the face to the new book industry.

Now, read Part II.

By Andrew Dugas

It’s very hot in Sacramento, and the air-conditioning in our office is not impressive. Nonetheless, we’ve been spending more time together than usual, brainstorming and budgeting and writing endless copy for the new site and various press releases. We’ve been marking up our calendar feverishly and refusing to look at it for at least an hour afterwards in order to avoid panic. And if Hall & Oates comes on the radio, we all have to stop what we’re doing and listen, also in order to avoid panic. We have been sustaining ourselves mostly on Diet Coke and peanut M&M’s, and are very tired of looking at each others’ sweaty faces.

Why, you might wonder, have we been subjecting ourselves to this?

So many reasons. We were going to wait until we launched the new site to reveal our secrets. Like a pious bride-to-be a month before the big day, we have tried to abstain. But we can’t wait any longer. We’re too excited. Or maybe it’s just the heat. Either way, we’ve had enough with being coy. Flatmancrooked is pleased to announce the first of the highly innovative projects we’re undertaking with our new website.

It’s called LAUNCH. The idea behind it is that Flatmancrooked takes a writer we’ve published, whom we believe has a tremendous amount of talent, but, given the current circumstances of publishing, hasn’t received due attention. We set up a profile page on our site that features proof of the author’s talent-in the form of short stories we’ve published previously in our anthologies, along with an excerpt of a new piece that we’d like to print as a stand-alone book.

If our readers like what they read and are interested in seeing more of from the author, they can “invest” in said author and help “launch” his or her career by purchasing any number of the available shares. Each $5 share will go towards turning the excerpted story into a little book. Quite literally, a little book. Pocket-sized, if you will. A mini-novel, which is sometimes called a novella, or a novelette. Either way, it’ll be a satisfying piece of literature that you can handily read in an afternoon.

Throughout the investment period, we’ll update the LAUNCH page with the number of shares still available and all working drafts of the book design. For every share purchased, the investor receives a signed and numbered copy of the book (a book that becomes dearer and dearer as the writer flourishes). Not only will these generous Patrons of the Arts be demonstrating exceptional fiscal savvy (as the list price of the book will be equal to or more than the cost of a share), they will be responsible in part for securing the writer’s future. After production costs are covered, the author receives a 50% royalty of all investments and sales. That’s right. Fifty percent. Thus, not only will the book be produced out of a democratic, merit-based support of good literature, but our writers will also get to eat some food.

Based on the idea that LAUNCH authors will be writers we’ve worked with in the past who have shown tremendous potential, after a little discussion (talent, marketability, Facebook networks) we came to a unanimous decision: Flatmancrooked is very proud to present our first LAUNCH author, Emma Straub.

Emma received an MFA from the University of Madison Wisconsin where she was the Jay C. and Ruth Halls Emerging Artist Fellow. She is also the co-editor of Avery: An Anthology of New Fiction and is the E of M + E (www.m-plus-e.com). Her first story with us, “Hot Springs Eternal,” appeared in First Winter, and came to us as a cold submission. It’s a love story, and there are hot springs involved, and the smell of sulfur. We liked it so much that we nominated it for Pushcart Prize. When the time came to put the second anthology together, we immediately asked Emma for another story. “Snowbirds” is a story about vacationers, Floridians, and the way those things can mix unhappily. It appears in our Anthology of Great New Writing Done During an Economic Depression. Her stories are terrifically funny and subtle, and we think she’s one of the most promising young writers in the country.

Beginning with Emma, LAUNCH will feature a new author every four months. It’s our intention that in a time when traditional publishing is less and less able to provide writers with a way to earn a living, readers can become a direct influence on the careers of the authors they like to read-by investing in future works. A serious writer will write to write, but what’s a greater secondary impetus than the public demanding to see more work? Good faith begets a good product. LAUNCH is designed to facilitate that very idea.

In early August we will begin republishing Emma’s stories in our Features section. We will also unveil Emma’s LAUNCH page, with cover artwork, excerpts, and maybe even a little film. Just wait and see.

By Deena Drewis