Read While Commuting

Shanghai has come up with a way to get people to read. They've created subway-only libraries for commuters to check out and read. The idea is that a commuter will pick up a book at one station, read as s/he rides, then leave the book at another station.

"Special bookshelves are installed at the metro stations, containing rows books for the taking. There's no registration necessary, and no fee; readers are simply encouraged to make a small charitable donation when taking a book."

Apparently, the program is a hit. During rush hour, there tend to be lines of people at the bookshelves.

Most of the books are returned. Some are not. But that's okay. As a writer, I would like it that someone so liked my book, they decided to keep it. The people setting up the bookstations aren't worried about non-returns either. "Even if some books are not returned, we believe the overall benefit is worthwhile," a staffer told China Daily.

You can read the full article here.  

Publishing News 7/16/13

From PW Daily:

Ria Julien has joined the Frances Goldin Literary Agency as in-house counsel and will also acquire selected projects for representation. Before joining the agency and being admitted to the New York Bar, she was a nonfiction editor and foreign rights agent at Seven Stories Press.

From The Smithsonian via Salon.com: 

New research suggests the secret to preserving mental agility may lie in simply cracking open a book.

The findings, published online today in Neurology, suggest that reading books, writing and engaging in other similar brain-stimulating activities slows down cognitive decline in old age, independent of common age-related neurodegenerative diseases. In particular, people who participated in mentally stimulating activities over their lifetimes, both in young, middle and old age, had a slower rate of decline in memory and other mental capacities than those who did not.

From The Daily Beast on Five Ways to Fix Book Publishing Houses:

This model of literary production is doomed. The idea that there should be centralized, massively consolidated, bureaucratic organizations known as the major trade houses, with multiple layers of editors, vast publicity departments, and books fed to them by an entity known as literary agents, only to take repeated losses and rely on a few stars to help them break even, is bound for extinction....

In short, writing needs to be reader and community driven, hierarchies need to be radically flattened, creativity needs to be diffused at the local level, and globalization needs to reactivate literary worth everywhere....

Thinking Outside the Book

It used to be that books stayed the same. You could count on them, hold them, smell them. You bought them at a bookstore, where you also had the chance to hear the author speak. Not so much anymore.

But that doesn’t mean authors and companies aren’t thinking outside the book.

According to an article in Fast Company, Unbound has “crowd-financed” a book. The principle behind Unbound is “to take the ancient, leather-bound business model of book publishing, rip out its crumbling pages, and replace it with crowd-funding, social interaction, and tandem digital publications and real hardback books.”

Unbound proposes a book on its website. People can then choose to donate or fund the book. The more you donate, the more “access” to the author you get, such as a dinner with him/her.

I think this particular model would work best with authors who are already names, either as writers or some other form of celebrity.

But…in a way, it is similar to the rise of the Internet as a way to promote yourself. Because of blogs and other social media, readers now have greater access to writers they love, as well as new writers. Knowing a writer online means you’re more likely to buy their book.

Unbound is revving up the idea, but so are individual writers. Each time you connect with a reader via your tweets or posts or other online method, you, in a way, give that reader access to you. And as they get to know you, they’re more likely to buy your book, read your book, possibly review the book, and buy the next book.

So, if you’re thinking that all the time you spend online is a waste, think again. It pays to think outside the book.

Never Too Young to Read

According to Hometown Life, it’s never too young to introduce your kids to books. At the Livonia Public Library, “Babies attend with their moms or other caregivers for a 20-minute program that includes a short story, lap bounces, rhymes and music.” Moms and caregivers are given a copy of the book to read to the 12 to 23 month-old babies.

The staff has been thinking about designing a storytime for even younger children, Novak said. One of the babies in Baby Storytime is just 6 months old. “He's our little experiment.”

What do you think? Are early readers life-long readers? Or is there an age that’s too early to introduce books?

Comics

On Monday, we talked about Top Cow, a publisher of comics, and some of the things they’ve done to stay in the business. Then today I came across this in PR-USA: One In Four Comic Readers Over the Age of 65.

Now that made me stop. I always envisioned comic readers as children up to around age 30. This article said I’m wrong.

"With nearly a quarter of the comic reading audience beyond the age of retirement, there is a misconception that needs to be corrected."

Keeping in mind that “comics” includes comic books, graphic novels, and manga, leave a comment telling us whether you read or have read comics. And include whether you’re over or under the age of 30. (Revealing if you’re over 65 is totally up to you.)

Are We Reading More?

Recently, The Wall Street Journal took a look at reading habits. It wasn’t based on a huge number of people, but it did show some interesting trends.

A study of 1,200 e-reader owners by Marketing and Research Resources Inc. found that 40% said they now read more than they did with print books.

The study by Marketing and Research Resources Inc. looked at three devices: the Kindle, the iPad and Sony’s Reader.

You might argue that 40% is not a big deal, but consider that a 2007 study by the National Endowment for the Arts found that about “half of all Americans ages 18 to 24 read no books for pleasure.”

Forrester Research estimates that “11 million Americans are expected to own at least one digital reading gadget by the end of September.”

Thriller author Michael Connelly has the same attitude as my husband:

"There is the advantage of being able to carry multiple things. I travel a lot—believe me, I notice the weight."

There’s a lot more to read in this article – including ebooks and libraries, the number of male reader vs female readers of ebooks, and the problem with page numbers in ebooks.

Do you have an eReader? Do you read more?

A Call for Young People to Read

There’s an article in the Huffington Post that’s convoluted, but worth reading. It’s called Reading With or Without Depression by Robert David Jaffee.

The article starts with a story of a young boy with behavioral problems who couldn’t read. One teacher introduced him to Mother Goose and the illustrations and poems caught him and he began to read.

The author tells his own story of not liking to read. He says his struggles came from depression. He now judges his mental health by how well he reads.

As a species, we have been speaking for at least 50,000 years, but we have been reading for only about 5,000, so speech comes much more naturally to us than does reading, which is not as hard-wired into our brains. Studies by neuroscientists have revealed, however, that the more one reads the more neural activity goes on in one's posterior lobe.

Jaffee questions how the children of today will develop their reading skills when a Kaiser Family Foundation study showed that children and teens spend more than 7 ½ hours on electronic activity every day.

A recent study by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, found that when low-income children were provided with free books over the summer, their test scores went up. The study also revealed that children improved their reading comprehension even when they were reading books that would not be considered literary.

Both of my kids read a lot as kids and teens. They still read a lot. What about yours? Are they young? Grown? Do they read?

Newspapers

How many of you subscribe to a newspaper? How many of you read the newspaper?

I haven’t subscribed for years. The local paper, the Austin American-Statesman, seems to be hurting. They often throw free sample papers on our driveway (and others). I assume they’re hoping I’ll find it so interesting that I’ll subscribe.

Not gonna happen. I can thumb through it in probably fifteen minutes and spend most of that on the comic section. I find it much easier and faster to target-search for news. Most of the time, I click on “Latest Headlines” on my browser. If I want to know what might be on TV, I have the TV listings bookmarked; one click and I’m there. Want to find out the weather? It shows up on the browser when I connect to the Internet. If I’m searching for news on the publishing industry to blog about, I don’t turn to a print newspaper that’s at least a day old. I Google search and find things that are minutes old.

I used to scour the newspaper. That was years ago, though. I wonder how newspapers are surviving, since I doubt I’m alone in the abandonment of newsprint. I also think the “get it right now” mentality is contributing to the rise of e-books. Why get dressed, get in your car, and go to the bookstore… or even go to your computer, click to a virtual bookstore, order a book and then wait for it to be mailed, when you can click on your eReader, download a book and begin reading within minutes?

There are still those that love reading the newspaper (not me) and those that still love print books (me), but times are changing. New generations are growing up without newspapers and even print books. I think newspapers are fading faster than books.

So, how about you? Do you still read the newspaper?

Re-Reading

How many of you have favorite books you re-read many times? Maybe a childhood favorite that every few years you drag off the shelf and read again. Maybe a new book that was so different and interesting, you revisit it to make sure you didn’t miss any fabulous tidbits or ideas.

My husband will do that with movies. I might watch a movie at the theatre and later rent the DVD to watch. My husband likes to buy DVDs so he can watch movies over and over. He’ll pick something like The Bourne Identity and watch it, then watch it again a month or so later and then … again and again. I can’t do that. About the only movie I can tolerate more than perhaps twice is Jumping Jack Flash, my favorite, although I haven’t seen that in years.

My daughter gave my husband, one Christmas, a full season of the TV show 24. He’s a huge fan of that show. He watches it every week and if he’s out of town, I have to tape it for him. He’s seen them all. But that didn’t stop him from beginning a 24 marathon the day after Christmas.

We’re not even on the same wavelength when it comes to some TV shows. He likes 24, obviously. I like The Good Wife. But, oddly, we tend to like the same books. We’re both into Lee Child and are working our way through the series.

I don’t see myself re-reading the Child books, but I do occasionally re-read a book in order to study the structure or skeleton of the writing.

Honestly, I don’t re-read many books. I’m usually ready to move on to something new. What about you?

Best Books Read in 2009

Yesterday, I read an article in the MetroWest Daily News called “Holmes: The best book I read in 2009 was….” Holmes, the Opinion Editor for the paper, asked his colleagues to name and describe their favorite read from 2009 - not necessarily published in 2009, but read by them this past year.

The Daily News staff and bloggers had a wide-ranging selection of favorite books. Of all the ones they listed, I had read zero.

Zero.

I would say that I need to increase my reading, but I don’t think I can. I’ve read some good books this year (even wrote recommendations here on Straight From Hel) and I’ve edited a lot of good books, as well, plus turned in three of my own, two of which are now out.

I don’t know that I could single out one book as the best, though. How about you? Can you name one book you read in 2009 that you would rate as the best?

The Importance of Books

Surfing the news net, I came across an interesting article in the LA Observed called Future of Book Publishing is Unknowable. At the rate things are changing in the industry, I think most of us would agree with that title.

Here are a couple of what the author of the article, Kevin Roderick, called “tidbits” from a keynote address by Steve Wasserman, former Los Angeles Times book editor, now agent and book editor at Truthdig.

Wasserman quoted Randall Stross of the New York Times, who asked:

With the new devices in hand, will book buyers avert their eyes from the free copies only a few clicks away that have been uploaded without copyright holder’s permission? Mindful of what happened to the music industry at a similar transitional juncture, book publishers are about to discover whether their industry is different enough to spared a similar fate....”

Wasserman added this:

In the United States, bricks-and-mortar bookstores continue to disappear at a rate rivaled only by the relentless destruction of the Amazonian rain forest. Twenty years ago, there were about 4,000 independent bookstores. Today, only about 1,500 remain. Even the two largest U.S. chain bookstores—themselves partly responsible for putting smaller stores to the sword—are in a precarious state…

Click over to read what Wasserman sees as the three overlapping and contending crises facing the publishing industry. According to the article, Wasserman said: “[Readers] know in their bones something we forget at our peril: that without books—indeed, without literacy—the good society vanishes and barbarism triumphs.”

I think Wasserman is right in that statement. Without the ability to read and comprehend, society is in trouble. I would add that people also need a choice in what they read and the ability and freedom to discern truth from propaganda and hot air.

What do you think?

Surviving Books

One of the big topics at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany this week is online writing and the effect it has on the book publishing industry. According to EarthTimes,

The spectre haunting the industry is the discovery that today, everybody is a writer.

There are a lot of good writers out on the Internet and they’re putting their words online for free.

"Digital content is completely altering the publishing industry," said Eoin Purcell, a consultant and writer, warning that even the most respected names in publishing will not be able to claim any "right to survive" in the new book economy.

Not everyone believes free online content will destroy print publishing.

The other camp argues that publishers should stop whining, devise new and irresistible ways of selling information, and roll out digital books faster and better than the so-called pirates. …

Kassia Krozser, a respected New York blogger, urged the book industry to no longer regard paper books as their prime product. Her slogan is: "Digital first, print maybe."

Edward Nash, a consultant, perhaps summed it up best:

"We as publishers have to abandon the notion that our previous business model is permanent."

There are still plenty of readers out there. Some now do the majority of their reading online, but even the most avid bloggers or FridayFiction writers are also book readers. The industry can survive with both.

Remembering Books

Ever wonder about the life of books? They’re here, then they’re remaindered and gone. If, somewhere along the line, the author becomes a huge best-seller, the book may be reprinted. But most books aren’t. Their shelf life is short -- sometimes only a few weeks, sometimes less. I remember reading about a huge airport with many bookstores - the shelf life there of books that weren’t big sellers was a counted in minutes - the time it took the person doing the restocking to box up the ones not selling, put out others, and move to the next store to repeat until he made a circle of the stores and started over again.

Some people DO remember books, though. To prove it, I present to you BookFinder’s Top 10 Most Wanted Out-of-Print Books. I’m listing the number 1 in each category, but you can follow the link to see the rest:

Arts & Music
Currier & Ives: Printmakers to the American People
Harry Twyford Peters

Biography
And I'd Do It Again
Aimee Crocker

Children's
The Pink Dress
Anne Alexander

Crafts, Hobbies & How-To
Carpentry for Beginners: How to Use Tools, Basic Joints, Workshop Practice, Designs for Things to Make
Charles Harold Hayward

Fiction and Literature
Ticket to Ride
Dennis Potter

History
Folklore of Highland County
Violet Morgan

Mysteries and Thrillers
Legally Sane
John K. Hahn with Harold C. McKenney

Popular Science & Technology
Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record
Carl Sagan

Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror
Masques
Patricia Briggs

Society and Culture
In a Dark Place: The Story of a True Haunting
Ray Garton

And before you ask, I have no idea why there’s not a list for Romance.

There are some interesting ones on the lists, including two of Stephen King’s books.

The Reading Hour

It’s Sunday. For most of us, Sunday is an “off” day. A day to relax, read the paper, watch sports on TV, go to church, and call Mom. I’d like to propose that Sunday become a time to read.

Maybe an hour. Maybe two. Everyone in the family gathers in the living room, picks a book, and reads. If the kids are too young to read, then an adult reads aloud to them. There could even be family discussions on a book that everyone reads.

I grew up reading. That was before online games, Wii, texting, and cable television, though. I’m guessing here, but I don’t think there’s as much reading for pleasure anymore.

There are benefits to reading. You learn. You can experience other cultures and other viewpoints and learn about history through compelling characters. Your vocabulary increases. Your spelling improves. I dare say reading makes you smarter. Plus, if you do it as a family, even though you’re reading silently to yourself, your family ties are closer than if everyone’s off doing his or her own thing.

So, I’m calling for a Sunday Family Reading Hour. It might just give a whole new meaning to “time out” -- for the kids and for the parents.

Making Books The Drug of Choice

Joanne Rendell with the Huffington Post has an idea I like. She proposes that the publishing industry follow the lead of the drug industry if it wants to be successful. To quote her: “Publishing industry, listen up, it's time to sell reading."

Indeed.

Instead of putting all their rapidly declining marketing dollars behind single authors and their new releases (think of those rather dull ads on the subway or in magazines which feature an author's grinning face, a book cover, and a few generic "thumbs up" quotes), why don't publishing companies run campaigns which would make reading itself a desirable lifestyle choice? Why not help craft a new, exciting, and sexy "reading" identity for people to aspire to?

She admits doing this probably goes contrary to the established practices of the publishing world and confesses she’s not a marketing person. But she does have some ideas:

New spaces need to emerge where people will meet and discuss books and, importantly, be seen and respected for discussing books. TV and movies need to show sexy readers, much like they showed sexy smokers back in the day. Celebrities need to be caught reading books -- or Kindles -- on the beaches of the Caribbean. Book groups should not be left to form themselves; they need to be propagated and supported by the book industry. Expert voices should be everywhere, in newspapers and on Oprah, talking about the intellectual, personal, health, and even sexual benefits of reading!

Celebrities reading? Sexual benefits of books? Movies with characters reading and they’re not nerds? How radical.

I like it.

Free e-Reader, Free e-Books

I got an email on Friday (and a lot of you probably got the same one) from Barnes & Noble. After our recent discussion of Barnes & Noble competing with Amazon for e-readers, I found the email quite interesting.

B&N not only wants you to buy e-books from them; they want you to come to their stores to do it. They’re now offering complimentary Wi-Fi service in all stores -- no fees, no charges. As they put it:

With complimentary Wi-Fi service in all stores, Barnes & Noble is like a home away from home. Stop by. Enjoy a cup of coffee or a light meal in the café. And be sure to bring your laptop or smartphone so you can check your email and browse eBooks in our new online eBookstore.

Oh … to sweeten the enticement, they’ll let you download the FREE (all caps is theirs) B&N eReader app, which they say will work with iPhones, BlackBerries, PCs and Macs.

And! ... if you download the eReader right there from your computer as you read their email, you’ll get free eBooks.

Okay, clearly this was a sales pitch. Big time. But are all sales pitches bad? When we talked about this B&N vs. Amazon thing, some of you thought it was a good idea, especially since B&N’s e-reader seemed compatible with more versions of e-books. So, will you take advantage of this offer of free eReader software and free books and free WiFi in their stores? I’m thinking about it … I like books and I do like free.

Innovations in Reading Prize

This was the first I’d heard of the Innovations in Reading Prize, given out by the National Book Foundation. When I read about this year’s winners, I thought, what a great idea. There are probably groups out there who might qualify, yet haven’t heard of it either.

Each year, the National Book Foundation awards a number of prizes of up to $2,500 each to individuals and institutions--or partnerships between the two--that have developed innovative means of creating and sustaining a lifelong love of reading.

How cool is that!

A selection process was created based on the following criteria: level of innovation, impact and need, with innovation always carrying the most weight. Impact and need came into play only in cases where two programs were judged to be equally innovative. “Innovation” was not limited to meaning only technologically innovative. In some cases, innovation meant identifying a need in the community and developing a program to address that need in a simple and effective way. In all cases, selections were made to reward programs that create and sustain a life long love of reading.

Applications fell into these categories:
Education & Community Outreach
Tools & Technology
Schools & School Libraries
Public & University Libraries
Literary Magazines & Publishers
Book Clubs, Reading Series & Performance
Individuals

And who received the 2009 Innovations in Reading Prizes?

Fathers Bridging the Miles (a program of Read to Me International)
Eloy, Arizona

Maricopa County Library District (Perry Branch)
Maricope County, Arizona

James Patterson’s ReadKiddoRead.com
New York, NY

readergirlz
Tacoma, WA

Robert Wilder
Santa Fe, NM

Go to the website to learn more about each of these programs.

Your Reading Place

Do you have a reading place? A room or a chair or a spot where you like to go to read?

I was thinking about that this morning. Our reading room is the living room. Every morning, with an occasional exception, my husband and I sit in the living room and talk and/or read. It’s become something of a ritual. This morning we talked.

We’ve lived in this house for years and until this year we’d never had a TV in that room. For Christmas we got a flat screen TV and the only place to put it was there. We thought a long time about it, but in the end, there it went. So far, we’ve not turned it on in the mornings though.

That room is ours.

We do watch TV in there in the evenings. Perhaps I should rephrase that, my husband dozes on the couch while the TV runs. I watch a bit, leave and go to the computer, watch a bit, do stuff in the kitchen, listen to it from another room, work a bit… It’s hard to keep up with any shows that way, I’ve found.

But that’s okay by me. I’m glad we’ve kept it as the reading and talking room.

Reading Habits

A recent article in The New York Times had good news about adult reading habits. With all the publishing woes and cutbacks lately, we could use some good news.

After years of bemoaning the decline of a literary culture in the United States, the National Endowment for the Arts says in a report that it now believes a quarter-century of precipitous decline in fiction reading has reversed.

The report is from a survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2008.

Among its chief findings is that for the first time since 1982, when the bureau began collecting such data, the proportion of adults 18 and older who said they had read at least one novel, short story, poem or play in the previous 12 months has risen.

Of course, it wasn’t all good news. The proportion of adults reading poetry and drama continues to decline. But today, we’re reporting good news.

Nevertheless the proportion of overall literary reading increased among virtually all age groups, ethnic and demographic categories since 2002. It increased most dramatically among 18-to-24-year-olds, who had previously shown the most significant declines.

Dana Gioia, outgoing chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, attributes the increase in literary reading to:

community-based programs like the “Big Read,” Oprah Winfrey’s book club, the huge popularity of book series like “Harry Potter” and Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight,” as well as the individual efforts of teachers, librarians, parents and civic leaders to create “a buzz around literature that’s getting people to read more in whatever medium.”

The Bookmobile

Have you ever lived in an area where a bookmobile came around? I don’t know how popular those things are now, but they used to travel rural areas or to places that didn’t have easy access to libraries. Although it’s hard to believe nowadays, those bookmobiles were greeted like ice cream trucks. The books inside the bookmobiles brought travel to different lands and escape into other lives, with no calories. But you don’t hear about them much anymore.

At least not in the U.S. You do hear about them elsewhere.

In Ethiopia, there’s one that is hugely popular. It’s not a traveling bus filled with rows of books, though. It’s a cart on wheels pulled by two donkeys. When it comes into town, children run to it. The “librarian” lets the donkeys rest in the shade, parks the brightly painted wooden cart, lowers the sides to reveal the shelves of books, and the kids choose a book and sit in the shade to read.

In the homes of these children, there are rarely books. There’s not many at school either. The children look forward to greeting the donkeys and filling their minds with the words in the books.

When it’s mid-afternoon and time for the traveling bookshelves to move to the next destination, the children help put the books and the stools they have been sitting on back into the cart and harness the donkeys. The books are not the only teaching tool of the mobile library. The donkeys are as well. In Ethiopia, donkeys are generally despised and ill-treated. By using the donkeys to pull this precious cargo, the project tries to teach children to respect animals, even the lowly donkey.

The children are leaning many things through this Ethiopian Books for Children and Educational Foundation (EBCEF) project.

The staff say the children have made great strides in their learning and in their behaviour since getting regular access to books.

Most are from poor families; for them, even the modestly priced picture books published by EBCEF cost something like two days' wages.

Mezrasha Kibret, EBCEF’s project manager in this area, believes books are the key to everything.

"If we are interested in changing the world," he says, "then we have to read."

If you’d like to read the full story of this project, check out the article in the BBC News.