E-book reader Kindle 2 to Debut?

Books, Writing No Responses »
Jan 282009

Apparently Amazon will announce a new version of their popular e-reader, the Kindle, in New York on Monday, February 9th.

What to look for?

• A better black and white screen. Color will have to wait for another edition, but the buzz says the greyscale images will be better. Greyscale is how black and white photos and other images are displayed.

• Smaller or relocated buttons  On the original version, the button that turns the pages is on the unit’s side often causing you to turn the page by mistake. Supposedly, here are bootlegged photos of the new version.

• Better battery life.

• Quicker search functions.

There’s no reason to delay ordering one until this new one comes out, Amazon ran out of Kindles before the end of the year and is taking orders for Kindle 2 to ship in four to six weeks.

BTW, if you own the rights to a book, you might want to check out the recent settlement that Google made in the class action suit about them illegally copywriting whole libraries.

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 2:32 pm Tagged with: , , , , ,

The Pope on YouTube?

Publishing, Writing No Responses »
Jan 242009

“New technologies have an extraordinary potential, if used to favor understanding and human solidarity.” —Benedict XVI via video on the Vatican’s new YouTube channel.

The Pope on YouTube? Amazing. I wonder how this new media will change the message the Catholic Church as been delivering for over 2,000 years.

Change the message you ask?

Yep. The media used to deliver information is thought to form that information to one extent or another.

Years ago, media guru Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message” which, as I understand it, means that the media used to deliver information actually affects the content of that information.

Is this so? Consider, say, a mystery novel made into a movie. More of the story background and the personal thoughts of the characters can be available to the reader than can be expressed on film. Because of this, the message the viewer takes away with him likely will be somewhat different than the message the reader takes away.

We see this effect in e-mail when it takes the place of phone conversations. E-mail has a chance of sounding curt or cold because the vocal tones that can be conveyed over the phone are missing.

Thus the information or message received by the reader of an e-mail can change from the one that would be conveyed in a spoken conversation. Of course neither one of them includes the body language that is so much part of the communication—and part of the message—when the media is a person conversing with another face to face.

McLuhan, a deep thinker when it came to communications, coauthored a book titled The Medium Is the Message. As the story goes, when it came back from the printer, a typo made the title The Medium Is the Massage. McLuhan, feeling this mistake was supportive of the point he was trying to make allowed the title, as misprinted, to stand.

As readers, authors, and publishers we need to embrace the best parts of the new technologies and retain the best parts of the old.

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 3:46 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

Fiction Cheaper than Nonfiction?

Books, Fiction, Nonfiction 1 Response »
Jan 182009

I stayed in a motel in San Simeon—home of the opulent Hearst Castle—over Christmas. In the motel lobby are two full bookcases. My kind of place. (By the way, the room was $36 a night for a large, ocean-view room. I went to sleep listening to the relaxing sounds of the surf. E-mail me and I’ll tell you the secret of getting the same.)

One book in the lobby, the 1947 novel Mountain Time by Bernard DeVoto, had been rubber stamped on the inside cover. It read:

This Book is the Property of

THE MAY COMPANY

No Membership Fee

Time Limit on All Books

THIRTY DAYS

Non-fiction [sic] 3¢ a day 8¢ Minimum

Fiction 2¢ a day 5¢ Minimum

Books will be reserved on the payment of

five cents for Fiction and eight cents for

Non-Fiction. This payment covers a

notice to you that the book is being held

for four days from the sending date of notice.

I wonder why fiction was cheaper than nonfiction. Is it today? Are you willing to pay a higher price for a how-to or self-help title than a novel? How about a memoir? Or a political expose?

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 3:49 pm Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Narrative Nonfiction Informs and Entertains

Books, Nonfiction, Publishing, Writing 1 Response »
Jan 162009

I recently finished reading True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa, a book by Michael Finkel, who was fired from the NYT Magazine for falsifying a story. It’s both his memoir of the actions that lead to his dismissal and the story of a man named Longo who killed his family.

When Longo fled to Mexico after terminating his family, he took the persona of Michael Finkel, reporter. He’d read some of Finkels work and just started saying he was Michael. The FBI wasn’t amused or fooled. He was captured and returned to the States. 

The real, unemployed Finkel was staying incommunicado at his home in Bozeman, contemplating why he decided to falsify the story. On the night before the Times was going to go with the story of his firing, his phone rang and it was a Portland Oregonian reporter asking what his connection was with Longo. Finkel had never heard of Longo, but eventually they began a lengthy correspondence.

While, as a journalist, I dislike the liberties Finkel took with his reporting and hope he has discarded this practice, he has written a fine book. A good example of narrative nonfiction.

I think the best way I can define narrative nonfiction is character-driven nonfiction. The author lets the reader see into the minds of the characters as well as letting us see their actions. Along the way, the reader learns of the issues at hand. It makes for entertaining learning. Other great examples of narrative nonfiction are The Perfect Storm, Black Hawk Down, and Indecent Exposure.

At Quill Driver Books, we publish Peter Rubie’s book on how to write narrative nonfiction: The Elements of Narrative Nonfiction. Hmmmm, we were really inventive when we titled that one!

Word for the day: tomicide. The destruction of books.

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 11:59 pm Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Authors as Kites and Publishers as String Holders

Books, Publishing, Writing No Responses »
Jan 132009

My son, Josh, who owns American West Books, a wholesaler of books to the warehouse clubs and book trade and I are having dinner with some people from Andrews McMeel Publishing tonight. (We are in Bentonville, Arkansas for a Sam’s Club event.) I wanted to bone up on AMP and so went to check out their website. 

Here is a quote from the site:

Inspired by one of Erma Bombeck’s columns, Kathleen Andrews, vice chairman of Andrews McMeel Universal, says, “Creative people are like kites. They fly high above the rest of us, inspiring us and filling us with awe. But there has to be somebody down here, on the ground, holding the string, pulling it tight, letting it out, or the kite couldn’t fly. If you let go of the string, the kite will crash. But if you don’t give the kite enough string, it’ll never fly as high as it can. That’s what our company does. We hold the string—not too tight, not too loose. The kite is the creator. And the flight of the kite is the creativity.”

There’s a creative way of looking at the synergy of writers and publishers.

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 6:17 pm Tagged with: , , , , , ,
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