In the 1998 romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail, Meg Ryan stars as an independent bookseller whose livelihood is threatened by a behemoth bookstore chain owned by Tom Hanks.
Thats was fifteen years ago. Today, book selling is a different game, the pendulum having swung so much to the other side that it’s the few chains left who are fighting for survival against Internet book sellers and e-books.
In France, where bookstores are a common site along Paris streets, things are different than in the U.S., where bookstores are vanishing at a fast clip as the popularity of e-books increases. But in France e-book sales don’t threaten book sales, where less than two percent of book sales are e-books. The biggest threat to small booksellers in France comes from Amazon. And for now, small book shops are surviving quite well, selling books, not gifts.
NPR recently ran a segment about a French law that would go a long way toward ensuring the survival of bookstores. The French government has played a big role in fostering the bookstore-friendly environment and lately has accused Amazon of attempting to drive down the price of physical books, the opposite of what’s been happening in the States.
This month France’s lower house passed a bill that would prohibit Amazon from offering a 5 percent discount on books plus free delivery. Limiting discounts on books is one of the ways France is trying to ensure the survival of its independent booksellers. The French culture minister has also accused Amazon of spending several billion dollars on free shipping worldwide in order to gain a competitive edge.
One of Herman Hesse’s earliest novels, In the Old Sun (In der alten Sonne) was completed in 1904. The story is of novella length and comes long before the novels that were to make Hesse famous in the decades after World War II.
In his early years as a writer, Hesse turned memories of his childhood home of Cawl—called “Gerbersau,” after a favorite fishing spot on the Nagold River—into a steady flow of Novellen, which kept his coffers replenished; and the ranks of his reading public kept growing. “In der alten Sonne,” one of these recollective tales, was first published in Hesse’s Nachbarn (1908), a collection of five works of fiction about the natives of his birthplace.
The novel was first published in English in 1914 in Volume XIX of The German Classics: Masterpieces of German Literature by the German Publication Society. The twenty illustrated volumes in the series were edited by Kuno Francke. The publishing house, which was created specifically for this series, went bankrupt soon after the German U-boat sinking of the British ocean liner Lusitania in 1915. One outcome of the Great War was that America’s taste for German literature and culture dissipated overnight.
The translation by A[lexis] I[renée] du P[ont] Coleman is fairly modern. However, the text contains one slight error that merits correcting: the reference to one of the main characters, Heller, as a “sailmaker” is inaccurate; in the original German he is referred to as a Seiler, a rope maker. In addition to this correction, antiquated punctuation has been silently modernized.
Coyote Canyon Press is proud to bring back into print this “lost novel” by Hermann Hesse.
The Inside Random House series has released another video. This one gives viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the publisher’s offices as book designers explain their creative processes and the experience of creating covers for some of the world’s best-known authors. What’s great about this video is that we get to see some of the best book cover designers in the business, people like Chip Kidd and Peter Mendelsund of Knopf, Robbin Schiff of Random House, and Marysarah Quinn and Christopher Brand of Crown. Chip Kidd at one point picks up a manuscript and stresses the importance of a close reading of the text in order to understand how to approach its design. Aspiring designers can learn a lesson from the cover outtakes featured in the video, such as the multiple attempts required for The Dinner by Herman Koch; All That Is by James Salter; Salt, Sugar, Fat by Michael Moss; and Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish by David Rakoff. The video is not only insightful but entertaining too.
Stephen King’s latest novel, Joyland, was supposed to be published in a print-only edition by Hard Case Crime. The move was roundly applauded because it demonstrated some real faith in traditional print publishing. It was also a savvy business decision driving sales sky-high.
But as soon as it was released in paper, the book popped up online as a pirated ebook. In response, Hard Case Crime publisher Charles Ardai had a few things to say about it in an interview with Jason Boog at AppNewser:
“We’ve seen dozens of websites over the past year purporting to offer pirated downloadable copies of JOYLAND, and so far they’ve all been frauds – if you try to download the file, you get malware or a virus instead. But inevitably the book will eventually be pirated for real, just as every best-selling book and popular movie or TV show or piece of music is. As a publisher, you try to prevent it or to stamp it out when you discover it, but it’s like the “war on drugs” – good luck. Seize a boatload of heroin, and what does it get you? There are more boats, there’s more heroin. . . . In the end you have to rely on the good behavior of the vast majority of the audience – I see no reason to think that pirates represent more than a small fraction of all consumers. That doesn’t mean we don’t care about piracy – we do. But it’s just one of the many punches you have to learn to roll with in the rough-and-tumble world of modern publishing.”
It’s hard to see though how some pirated copies have actually slowed Joyland‘s meteoric rise up the bestseller charts. The book is currently the number one selling book on Amazon and has been in the Amazon Best Sellers Top 100 for the last two months.
Of course this feat is not likely to be replicated by many other writers. As everyone in the publishing business knows, people buy authors, not books. And the King brand name, along with a splashy publicity campaign, created a momentum guaranteeing massive sales. I don’t think King is losing sleep over these pirated copies, unless he’s thinking of using the idea in yet another novel.
The opening of the Amazon facility at the former Norton Air Force Base has proven to be a boon for the city of San Bernardino, which is reeling from a recent bankruptcy filing and workforce layoffs.
The facility, which was completed Oct. 1, handles shipments of products purchased online. City leaders hope that the tax on sales will help turn the city around since California law allows Amazon to designate which city is a “point of sale” for sales tax purposes, thus allowing San Bernardino to pocket 1 cent on the dollar for all sales processed through the center.
The wages are also a big plus, averaging about 30 percent higher than most traditional retail work. Those interested in working for Amazon, can apply online.
Claremont Graduate University is handing out a couple of huge poetry prizes here in Claremont, California.
Earlier this month in a press release, CGU announced Marianne Boruch won the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for her book The Book of Hours. The prize, given to a mid-career poet, is one of the largest cash prizes a poet can win in the United States. Boruch teaches creative writing at Purdue University and is also involved in the low-residency Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
Heidy Steidlmayer of Vacaville, California, won the $10,000 Kate Tufts Discovery Award for her book Fowling Piece. The annual award is given for a first book of poems. Steidlmayer’s poems have appeared in Poetry, TriQuarterly, Ploughshares, and in other prestigious poetry journals.
“We are delighted to honor these poets and celebrate their achievements,” Wendy Martin is quoted as saying. Martin, who is vice provost at Claremont Graduate University and director of the Tufts Poetry Awards program, goes on to say, “These Awards will help them gain wider recognition and will sustain their continuing commitment to writing outstanding poetry.”
The press release describes The Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards as having been established in 1993 at Claremont Graduate University by Kate Tufts to memorialize her husband, a Los Angeles shipyard executive who had a passion for writing poetry. The goal of the award is recognize a poet who is no longer a beginner but is very much in mid-career.
A ceremony will be held at Garrison Theater (231 E. 10th Street in Claremont) on Thursday, April 18.
The following poem was delivered by inauguration poet Richard Blanco at President Obama’s second inaugural today. The text of the poem was provided by the Presidential Inaugural Committee.
“One Today”
One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.
My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper — bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives — to teach geometry, or ring up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.
All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.
One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.
The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind — our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.
Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
or whispers across cafe tables, Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,
buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me — in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.
One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.
One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn’t give what you wanted.
We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always — home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country — all of us —
facing the stars
hope — a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it — together
Coyote Canyon Press just published the first of two novels by Hermann Hesse, an endeavor we’re calling our Hermann Hesse Project. Just published is Gertrude. The text for this edition is taken from Adele Lewisohn’s translation of 1915, Gertrude and I, published in New York by The International Monthly.
Gertrude was the first novel by Hermann Hesse published in English and not part of an anthology. The novel deals with the destructive nature of love, its central theme the narrator’s enduring and hopeless passion for Gertrude, whom he meets through their mutual love of music. “Music was important to Hesse,” says Thomas Fasano, who wrote the Introduction to the book. “As a child he loved to listen to the church organ, learned to play the violin, and developed a passion for Chopin. His interest in music and painting and his lifelong association with musicians and painters greatly informed his writing.”
Fasano writes in the Introduction:
Hesse’s pre-World-War-I heroes are esthetes who live only in their own world of dreams, who shrink before bold action. Temperamental artists, they are paralyzed by their chronic indecision and consumed by loneliness—timid souls to whom the art of life and the art of love are forever unobtainable. They ask little of life and expect much. Such is the nature of the child of nature, Peter Camenzind, and the timorous composer, Kuhn. Such too was Hermann Hesse.
The second book in the Hermann Hesse Project will be a rediscovery of sorts: In The Old Sun, a novel published in English over one hundred years ago and essentially lost since then — until now. We’re planning a beautiful edition of the novel both in hardback and Kindle. In The Old Sun was actually Hesse’s first book published in English in the United States. It was part of an anthology called German Classics and has never been published as an individual book until now.
The Presidential Inaugural Committee has announced that Richard Blanco has been chosen to read a poem at President Obama’s inauguration ceremony on Jan. 21. The choice marks a couple firsts: Blanco will become the first Hispanic and the first gay poet to read at a presidential inauguration. He will also, at 44, be the youngest poet to do so.
In a recent posting on the NPR website, Blanco said, “Even though it’s been a few weeks since I found out, just thinking about my parents and my grandparents and all the struggles they’ve been through, and how, you know, here I am, first-generation Cuban-American, and this great honor that has just come to me, and just feeling that sense of just incredible gratitude and love.”
The New York Times writes that Blanco, a son of Cuban exiles, has felt “a spiritual connection” with Obama from the moment he burst onto the political scene. Like Mr. Obama, the Times reports, “Blanco has been on a quest for personal identity through the written word. He said his affinity for Mr. Obama springs from his own feeling of straddling different worlds; he is Latino and gay (and worked as a civil engineer while pursuing poetry). His poems are laden with longing for the sights and smells of the land his parents left behind.”
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