Emdashery Blog

Harry Potter kills books?

The death of books. We've heard it before. Advancing technology will make the paper-based, hold-in-your-hand book a thing of the past. Glenn Derene at Popular Mechanics takes a look at the effect of the last Harry Potter book showing up online for free four days before its official release. Is the end near?

"The pirating of a blockbuster novel onto the peer-to-peer networks is one of those seminal moments that is supposed to herald a new era, wherein the old way (books) is cleared out by the new way (computers, e-books) and the days of paperbacks and hard-bound volumes become marginalized to the sentimental periphery of culture along with vinyl records and postcards.

"But the book world is a hard target for digital technology. If anything, the Harry Potter piracy should serve as an interesting anomaly. Whereas digital music, mail and now cinema are quickly changing the landscape of communication and entertainment, digital books seem to have had a much slower evolution. If digital novel sharing marks the death of books, I assure you it will be a long, slow death."

Here's the whole article... Warning, however, don't even read the article's first sentence if you haven't finished The Deathly Hallows but plan to.

Imus hawk my book a different way now--

Shock sells. Until, of course, it doesn't. Now that the Imus feeding frenzy is over, the collateral damage is being accounted for. In addition to his now endangered charity work and his wife's shelved tour for her book on environmental cleaning, authors have lost a sure-fire avenue for hawking their books...

In the last decade, Don Imus cleverly transformed his soapbox into a book-hawking bazaar second to none...

"The Imus impact was worth hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars to the book publishing industry," one seasoned book agent told me this week.

It's no wonder then that when the curtain fell on the I-man, it wasn't the nation's major book publishing houses or his author/guests pulling the strings. Big publishing stood by Imus throughout the week, even as far larger sponsors, including Proctor & Gamble and GM, ran for the exits. It was a pure business decision: there simply was no better place to sell a nonfiction book.

If you live by the sword making offensive comments, then you die by the sword making offensive comments. Maybe the rap industry will come to the aid of despondent authors looking for shock that still sells...

Check out the full article here...

A spotlight stolen by James Frey and Kaavya Viswanathan--

The New York Times has listed its Top Ten Viewed Book Articles for 2006. Three of the top six viewed articles are "best of" type articles: The Ten Best Books of 2006, the best American ficion in the last 25 years, and the 100 Notable Book of the Year. But guess what the other three articles in the top six refer to?

Yep, you guessed it: James Frey.

In case you vacationed in a cave during last January, you'll recall that James Frey was the author that invented significant portions of his "memoir": A Million Little Pieces.

Two of the remaining articles in the top ten dealt with Kaavya Viswanathan, the Harvard sophomore accused of plagiarizing parts of her widely read novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life.

Not exactly a bang up year for author ethics...

James Frey was far from the end of it--

It's ethics day here at the Emdashery...

Seems there are always enough accusations of fabrication, plagiarism, or uncited sources to keep people talking. Augusten Burroughs and his hugely popular Running with Scissors is next up to bat. According to an upcoming Vanity Fair article and as reported here:

Sure, "A Million Little Pieces" author James Frey is a fraud, but Augusten Burroughs is an even bigger phony. So says Buzz Bissinger, who blasts the best-selling author of "Running With Scissors" as a complete impostor in the new issue of Vanity Fair...

"Running With Scissors' contains little strands of fact that were wildly embellished, and if you take those away, you don't have much of a book."

Ugh. Here we go again.

And then there's an ex-president of ours...

Jimmy Carter: Provacations, Not Ethics?--

Jimmy Carter has a new book out that's attracting plenty of attention. In Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid, Carter takes a tough (if not one-sided) look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The book, however, provoked Professor Kenneth Stein, the first Executive Director of the Carter Center and a Middle East Fellow of the Carter Center, to  resign his position. Stein says:

President Carter's book on the Middle East, a title too inflammatory to even print, is not based on unvarnished analyses; it is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments. Aside from the one-sided nature of the book, meant to provoke, there are recollections cited from meetings where I was the third person in the room, and my notes of those meetings show little similarity to points claimed in the book. Being a former President does not give one a unique privilege to invent information or to unpack it with cuts, deftly slanted to provide a particular outlook.

On top of that, Dennis Ross, former Mideast envoy in the Clinton Administration, claims Carter used maps created by Ross without attribution.

Double ugh.

But in the You-Can't-Win category, novelists are now taking flak for citing sources in their books...

When novelists fight back--

Novelists are joining a letter-writing campaign in defense of Ian McEwan, who was accused of plagiarizing from a historical memoir.

“If it is sufficient to point to a simultaneity of events to prove plagiarism, then we are all plagiarists, and Shakespeare is in big trouble from Petrarch, and Tolstoy stole the material for ‘War and Peace,’ ” wrote the Australian writer Thomas Keneally, the author of “Schindler’s List.” “Fiction depends on a certain value-added quality created on top of the raw material, and that McEwan has added value beyond the original will, I believe, be richly demonstrated.” If not, Mr. Keneally added, “God help us all.”

The details are here...

Oh, Joy. O.J. Simpson is back--

In some previous posts, I speculated that a few ways to increase books sales was to encouage speculation about running for president or to write a book in a foreign language. Well, now I guess we can add murdering two people to the list.

In a new low for the publishing industry, ReganBooks, an imprint of HaperCollins Publishers, will be releasing a book by O.J. Simpson. In If I Did It, Here's How It Happened, Simpson gives a "hypothetical" account of how he would've committed murder if he was the real murderer (and not actually searching for the killer on the finest golf courses in the U.S.).

While the book's account of the murders is purely...<cough>...<clear throat>...fictional, the publisher believes otherwise. Janet Regan says:

This is an historic case, and I consider this his confession.

The Fox network, which must struggle to stoop lower than previous attempts, will be airing a two-part interview with the killer on Nov. 27 and 29. The network says that:

O.J. Simpson, in his own words, tells for the first time how he would have committed the murders if he were the one responsible for the crimes.

Although I'm sure the interviews will bring in huge ratings, I'm guessing the book won't sell as many copies as the publisher hopes. I just don't see millions of people plunking down money for a book by a murderer that will go to a murderer.

But if I'm wrong, no doubt others will try to find riches by giving hypothetical accounts of their non-transgressions. I'm already hearing rumors of the following books:

If I Did Take Steroids, This is How I Would Inject Them
by Barry Bonds

If I Did Plan on Building Nuclear Bombs, This is How I Would Assemble Them
by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

If We Did, All Along, Fully Know We Were Adding Addictive Ingredients to Cigarettes, This is How We Would Add Them
by The Cigarette Company CEO's

If We Did Not Actually Write a Single Word of Many of Our Books, This is How We'd Still Collect Millions
by James Patterson and Tom Clancy

If I Did Intend to Ridicule U.S. Soldiers, This is How I Would Deliver the Joke So Smoothly that the Dumbest Marine (and they all are, of course) Would Pitch and Haw on the Floor with Pandemonic Joviality
by John F. Kerry

Jonathan Littell isn't so little--

Last week, I posted about a new American author, Jonathan Littell, who's recent novel has captured the attention of the French literary scene. In addition to that unlikely occurrence, the novel claims a German SS officer as its hero, and some critics have accused Mr Littell of not being the actual author.

Yesterday, Littell won France's top literary prize, the Goncourt Prize, for Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones). The novel is 900 pages and written in French.

By avoiding public ceremonies and interviews, Littell has only added to the suspicion of those critics that doubt his authorship. When this award was announced, Littell was apparently absent again, preferring to stay away from the public's attention.

Les Bienveillantes has sold 200,000 copies since its August release, and it caused quite the sensation at the Frankfurt Book Fair. HarperCollins recently won a bidding war for its 2008 release in the U.S., apparently offering $1M for the rights.

Littel chose to write his novel in French to honor some of the french authors he idolizes. But that decision eventually contributed to the attention he's received as French readers discovered a style that was different from typical French authors.

Last week, I determined that coyly encouraging rumors of a presidential run was a great way to sell books. Now we can add writing a book in a foreign language. For my next book, I suppose, I'll write about my city council aspirations in pig-latin.

Jonathan Littell: An American in Paris--

This is an odd story...The french literary scene is currently enthralled with a...[are you ready for this?]...a novel by an American author.

On top of that unlikely ocurrence, the novel's hero is an SS officer who defends and gives horrific details on his wartime atrocities.

And on top of that, a few critics claim Mr. Little couldn't have written the book himself, and the author only adds to the suspicion by avoiding interviews and award ceremonies.

Update: Jonathan Littell isn't so little--

James Webb and his novel passages--

A few days ago I posted about a political race in Texas where the democrat candidate was attacking the republican for having penned a romance novel that the democrat considered "pornography."

Now, another one-time author is seeing his novels used against him in a political campaign. James Webb is a democrat running against George Allen for Allen's Senate seat in Virginia. Webb had a long-time military career, and he's written several military novels, which he's talked about during his campaign. However, the novels apparently contain some pretty racy stuff, that now, eleven days before the election, Allen is bringing to the light of day.

So, a lesson to all you writers considering a future in politics. Be careful what you write about. All's fair in love and politics.

But is this fair? James Webb wrote novels. They're not autobiographies. I wouldn't write the stuff, but should it be used against a writer who was trying to paint a "realistic" picture? Or was he just going for the shock effect, and it's fair that what's disturbing to the reader might be more disturbing to the general public?

This USA Today article has more links and comments on the subject.