Writing about writing.

If you’ve ever wondered how independent bookstores go about selecting titles to order and how many copies to request, check out this post.

On the surface, this piece is about the unbelievably big names crammed into the fall Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group catalog. In addition to an evaluation of that lineup of heavy hitters, this piece also shows the interaction between a book buyer and the publisher rep. It’s a great insight into the process that many aspiring authors never see.

[via Nathan Bransford.]

There’s an interesting interview with Joe Lamacchia, author of Blue Collar and Proud of It: The All-in-One Resource for Finding Freedom, Financial Success, and Security Outside the Cubicle at NJ.com.

“And you know, I’m not saying I’m against education, but not everyone can go sit in a cubicle and be a white-collar person,” Lamacchia states in the interview. “And that was all I was really trying to point out. I’ve got five children, and going to schools and PTA meetings, all you hear is that without a doubt you have to go to college.”

L.A. Guns guitarist Stacey Blades is signing his debut book, Snake Eyes: Confessions of a Replacement Rockstar tonight at Book Soup in Los Angeles. If you’re in the L.A. area, be sure to stop by the event. You can find more info on the booksigning by clicking here. Or, call the store at 1-800-764-BOOK if you can’t make it but want a signed copy mailed to you.

Besides being an all-around cool guy, Blades brings an interesting perspective to Snake Eyes. From the time he was struck by lightning as a child to his years electrifying stages around the world, he’s seen it all. And his book reveals an interesting strata of musical careers that we regularly see. The superstars, the huge names who perform to hundreds of thousands of people and who sell millions of records, litter the bestseller lists. So we know about their private planes, Bentleys, and cocaine habits. And the starving beginner struggling to get gigs at coffee shops is a common pop culture archetype. We’ve seen that story before.

But Stacey Blades introduces us to a world of hard working, determined musicians. These guys aren’t hopping on their oppulent Gulfstream G4 and getting manicures as they travel to gigs. But they are performing in exotic locales such as Kyoto and Scandinavia. They may not get crushed by the paparazzi but they are adored by fans around the world. It’s a rockstar experience that we seldom experience.

So be sure to stop by Book Soup if you’re on Sunset tonight. Say hello to Stacey and get a signed book. And if a lighting storm rolls up, be sure to head for cover.

Earlier this week, the Atlanta Journal Consititution ran a catching-up-with piece that featured some juicy quotes from former professional football player Andre Rison. During his NFL career, Rison played for the Indianapoli Colts, Atlanta Falcons, Cleveland Browns, Green Bay Packers, Jacksonville Jaguars, Kansas City Chiefs, and Oakland Raiders. He was a Pro Bowl performer five times in his career and won a Super Bowl with Green Bay.

Rison was also known for some of his off-the-field issues. As the article points out, the wide receiver lived a life of contrasts. “One minute, he was the highest-paid receiver in the game,” Darryl Maxie writes. “In another, he was being jailed for failing to make child-support payments.”

The receiver had some idiotic interesting comments when asked about his football legacy. “Best receiver to ever play the game,” Rison replied. “I can’t show my highlights because I don’t own NFL Films, but all my coaches in college, in high school, in junior college, they all told me I could be the best. But they must’ve lied because that title was already given to Jerry Rice. Just because you have stats doesn’t mean you’re the best.”

Now, after you clean up your desk from spitting coffee all over it in an explosion of laughter, you might ask yourself, “What does this have to do with writing? Aren’t professional athletes required to be self-absorbed by law? This isn’t news.”

But if you look closer, Rison’s exaggerated confidence wouldn’t be out of place at many writers groups, literary conferences, publishing message boards, and other places that aspiring authors haunt. Let’s alter those quotes slightly and see how common they for frustrated, egotistical writers.

Rison: I can’t show my highlights because I don’t own NFL films.
Frustrated, Egotistical Writer: I can’t publish my work because I’m not an industry insider.

Rison: All my coaches in college, in high school, in junior college, they all told me I could be the best.
Frustrated, Egotistical Writer: My parents, my friends, my writing instructor all told me that my book is the best thing they’ve ever read.

Rison: Just because you have stats doesn’t mean you’re the best.
Frustrated, Egotistical Writer: Just because a writer gets published (or make the bestseller list or win awards or whatever the complaint of the day is) doesn’t mean you’re the best.

Now, Andre Rison was a professional football player, something that very, very few human beings in our culture achieve. And he was a Pro Bowler, which means he was one of the better players of his era. So in many ways, he has quite a bit to be proud of in regards to his career. But to lay claim to being the best receiver ever is just absurd. As is assertion that he is “coming out with my own hall of fame” to honor his career.

And that Frustrated, Egotistical Writer on your message board probably does have somethings to legitimately be proud of in regards to his writing. He probably did well in some workshops, maybe won some awards here and there, and quite possibly wrote a good story or two. But to make the outlandish statements that we so often see from these egomaniacs is just hilarious.

So the lesson of the day is this: vent when you need to vent about the harshness of the publishing industry. Prop yourself up when necessary to keep your confidence from flagging. And rant and rave when necessary. But still keep some perspective. Going overboard like this only hurts you in the long run and makes everyone else think you’re crazy.

Oh, and be sure to read the rest of the article for more great opinions from Andre Rison.

I was doing some traveling the last couple of weeks. Upon my return, I was saddened to learn that two of my former Square Books colleagues had passed away unexpectedly. Elaine Cremaldi worked the day shift at the bookstore so I didn’t interact with her as much as I would have liked. But I do remember her to be a lot of fun, a dedicated worker, and someone with a sharp wit and tongue.

A more close coworker was Jim Higgins. He showed up one day after Padgett Powell had sent him to Oxford, Mississippi to study with Barry Hannah. To this day, I remember one of Jim’s short stories as being the most hilarious piece I’d ever read. Jim worked the Sunday shift with me and a couple of other guys. I could always gauge the quality of the previous night’s celebrations by the presence of sports drinks. If Higgins walked in on a Sunday morning with a bottle of Gatorade, then you knew it had been a wild night.

Like Elaine, Jim left us far too soon. In his memory,
Barry Hannah is presenting a creative writing workshop. The class starts tomorrow night on Thursday, June 11 and runs for four or five Thursdays following. If you’re in the Oxford area, this is a great way to improve your craft while also remembering a dedicated short fiction lover.

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USA Today has an interesting profile of bestselling author Dean Koontz that covers his background, current home, career, and love of dogs.

For someone who grew up in a ramshackle home, the author now lives in a mansion that includes “a 20-seat movie theater; a wine cellar that can hold 2,000 bottles; an elevator; a state-of-the-art home gym; two pools; a custom-designed library that holds most of his 40,000-volume book collection.”

And most surprising of all is his sales totals. The article points out that he’s sold a total of 400 million books worldwide

I suppose this would be the appropriate time to cue Etta James’s “At Last.” But it’s in the wrong musical genre for this post and I don’t want to copy a Hoover vaccuum cleaner advertisement. Nonetheless, with a deep sigh of relief and excitement, I’m linking to this news story.

Publishers Weekly has the announcement of my new book deal. Power Chord: One Man’s Ear-Splitting Quest to Find His Guitar Heroes closed with HarperCollins recently. It’s been a long, long quest to reach this point. In many ways, this book deal was about 18 months in the making. It’s been exciting, exhausting, thrilling, nerve-wracking, and every other -ing you can think of.

In the coming days, I’ll recount the trek to this book deal and share some lessons I learned along the way. Even though I’ve spent years observing the publishing industry for this blog, there were still so many aspects of the business that surprised me duing this experience. I’ll give you those surprises so hopefully you can be even better prepared when you submit your own book.

Oh, and one clarification for the record, the PW report has a typo in it. I don’t actually have a MFA. Instead, I have a Master of Arts with an emphasis in Creative Writing. Same amount of workshops, same amount of having Barry Hannah rip my stories to shreds (which I masochistically adored), but different degree.

Short story master Alice Munro won the Man Booker Prize yesterday. The judges stated, “To read Alice Munro is to learn something every time that you never thought of before.”

HTML Giant recently had a nice post from a former student of Barry Hannah’s that details the master’s rules for stories. Definitely check it out because the poster even featured a copy of Hannah’s handwritten notes, which sometimes frustrated me for hours as I tried to decipher the script.

Although, Hannah’s handwriting made it difficult for other students to skim over your grades. In the good old days when teachers just left a box of marked up papers outside their office door (how amazing is it that professors regularly posted social security numbers on the wall?), it was easy to flip through the pile to see how your classmates performed. But with Barry’s scrawl, it took time to read the comments, and you would have to be pretty ballsy to stand there with a colleague’s story in your hand for ten minutes.

In the New York Times, Motoko Rich examines the problems surrounding pricing e-books in an article entitled “Steal this Book (for $9.99). It’s an interesting look at how the publishing industry needs to balance the consumer’s perception that digital literature needs to be dirt cheap with the economic realities of the costs involved in making a book that can be released electronically.

Sarah Weinman probably sums it up the best when she writes, “We all know the answer lies as it did with the music business: the prices will be cheap whether we like it or not.”