The Garret Tree
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Words: "Let's see what develops"
I heard the phrase "let's see what develops" recently, as two people, on a date, were discussing the early stages of what might be a relationship or perhaps a friendship or perhaps the cliche of two ships that pass in the night.
And that got me wondering about how words are born, live and die.
As a photographer who did a little, but not much, dark room work, I remember the magic of how the image on a print slowly emerged in the developing tray, grey blurs morphing into distinct, clear black and white images.
Today, with ten years of experience with PhotoShop, begun when I first became a web producer, all my work is digital. The image is there on the screen immediately. It can be morphed, but no longer are there those moments when something evolves from a blank pale piece of paper into what may be a stunning work of photographic art or just a mugshot.
So if two digital age people meet today, they might use the term "let's see what develops" but it won't have the meaning it had even fifteen years ago. And that wonderful phrase for a take it slow and let's see relationship will begin to fade just as another phrase about "holding a candle" to something is seldom heard any more.
And as I wrote this I thought "two ships that pass in the night" is also a phrase that is dying, a phrase from the era of the great ocean liners where one could sit in a deck chair and see the lights of another distant ship going in the opposite direction, a scene from the era of great black and white motion pictures.
I remember flying into San Francisco from Singapore and Hong Kong a few years ago and looking out the window in the late afternoon. The sun, setting back the way we had come, was illuminating the contrail of another aircraft high above us, flying south along the California coast, bound for Mexico or South America. Different technology, different image and for some reason not as romantic either.
Too bad.
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writing, photography, words, language, romance, love
11:22 PM posted by Robin Rowland
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And that got me wondering about how words are born, live and die.
As a photographer who did a little, but not much, dark room work, I remember the magic of how the image on a print slowly emerged in the developing tray, grey blurs morphing into distinct, clear black and white images.
Today, with ten years of experience with PhotoShop, begun when I first became a web producer, all my work is digital. The image is there on the screen immediately. It can be morphed, but no longer are there those moments when something evolves from a blank pale piece of paper into what may be a stunning work of photographic art or just a mugshot.
So if two digital age people meet today, they might use the term "let's see what develops" but it won't have the meaning it had even fifteen years ago. And that wonderful phrase for a take it slow and let's see relationship will begin to fade just as another phrase about "holding a candle" to something is seldom heard any more.
And as I wrote this I thought "two ships that pass in the night" is also a phrase that is dying, a phrase from the era of the great ocean liners where one could sit in a deck chair and see the lights of another distant ship going in the opposite direction, a scene from the era of great black and white motion pictures.
I remember flying into San Francisco from Singapore and Hong Kong a few years ago and looking out the window in the late afternoon. The sun, setting back the way we had come, was illuminating the contrail of another aircraft high above us, flying south along the California coast, bound for Mexico or South America. Different technology, different image and for some reason not as romantic either.
Too bad.
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writing, photography, words, language, romance, love
11:22 PM posted by Robin Rowland
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Saturday, December 03, 2005
The business of non-fiction books
This Saturday's Globe and Mail has declared that literary fiction is in trouble (The great fiction crash of 2005, story accessible for about two weeks from this posting).
Michael Posner says:
The problem as Toronto agent Bev Slopen told the Globe and Mail:
Yes, this morning Globe readers were told, if they didn't already know, that the beancounters, MBAs and consultants are ruining the book business just as they are ruining television and newspapers.
What seems to have prompted the article is that as a small part of the larger picture, the Canadian fiction renaissance which captured the world's attention over the past five years or so seems to be fading.
The answer, publishers seem to saying, is non-fiction. At which point every one in this country and beyond who has written a serious non-fiction book will roll their eyes.
First the idea that non-fiction will save publishing is as old as the idea that literary fiction is an uncertain part of the business.
The late Barbara Tuchman, a great literary popular historian wrote in the New York Herald Tribune Book Week, on March 6, 1966 about an encounter while skiing in Aspen.
Unless a fiction author is writing a historical epic or let's call it "insider" account, fiction requires little investment other than time.
Literary non-fiction, the kind the publishers seem to say they want in the post 9/11 world, however, requires a great deal of investment, in research, perhaps travel, interviews, archival searches, Freedom or Access to Information requests, fact checking, and then the writing and the rewriting. All the costs, both financial and in personal time are borne by the author.
The problem is that advances for what is called the "mid-list" book have not kept pace with inflation over the past 25 years. Many non-fiction works these days are often, in the case of journalists or academics with a popular bent, spinoffs of stories where the costs are absorbed either by the journalist's employer or by academic grants. The original literary non-fiction book is often a "passion project."
Publishers will shell out megabucks for what they think will be blockbusters, often ghost written celebrity biographies, a rake of political diatribes and occasionally something with some meaning in it.
Then once the book is written, edited and published, comes the problem of promotion. The promotion a book receives is, 99 per cent of the time, not based on its worth as a book, or even its potential market. It is based on the advance, the original investment in the book, an investment the corporate beancounters want returned plus a profit. It matters little to the beancounters, MBAs and consultants that investing in promoting a better mid-list book might bring a bigger profit in the long run, it's not in their business plan.
As I have said before on this blog, when a book fails, it is always the fault of the author, never the publisher, even if the publisher didn't promote the book or promote it properly to the right market or the buyer for the book store chain put in the wrong category.
What the publishers who think non-fiction will save their bottom line forget is that these days authors are just as hard-assed business people as they are. Add up the costs of working on a book, compare to the likely advance and you will find that more projects these days don't even reach the proposal stage. Or if they reach the proposal stage the agent will tell the author it isn't worth it.
So why are there so many books out there that nobody is buying? It's the same reason that nobody is watching the 500 channel universe. There's nothing on television because every one of the 500 CEOs on those 500 channels are hiring the same consultants.
There are all those books nobody is buying because these days publishers don't sell books to the public. They sell books to the buyers for the book chains. And those buyers' jobs are dependent on how well their area does in a quarter. So they are not going take risks, and they are going to follow the formulae created in the book chain back office.
Posner concludes his piece by saying:
Well it's the same with authors, at the end of the day (as it is now) it's easier to knock off a few paragraphs on a blog and go out on the town or grab that DVD and relax for 90-odd mindless minutes.
The article by Barbara Tuchman was reprinted in her collection, Practicing History Ballantine 1982
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research, writing, book, journalism, Globe and Mail,Barbara Tuchman,
publishing,nonfiction
11:40 PM posted by Robin Rowland
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This Saturday's Globe and Mail has declared that literary fiction is in trouble (The great fiction crash of 2005, story accessible for about two weeks from this posting).
Michael Posner says:
Call it whatever you want -- the fact is that international demand for English-language literary fiction has gone seriously south....retailers are complaining that sales for new fiction are soft, that orders for reprints and back-listed books are down, and that publishing houses from Berlin to Boston are becoming choosier about what novels they buy, when they are willing to buy them, and what they are willing to pay.Of course to a writer, that story isn't exactly news, the same story could have been written in any year going back at least to the mid-70s.
The problem as Toronto agent Bev Slopen told the Globe and Mail:
the whole culture of publishing has changed. In the past, great publishers, from Canada's Jack McClelland to Britain's Andrew Deutsch, "believed they published authors, not books. They used to stick with an author through several books whether all the books made money or not." Now, whether a book made money or won prizes is less relevant. "If the next book doesn't suit their taste, their budget projections or their marketing issues," it won't get published.
Yes, this morning Globe readers were told, if they didn't already know, that the beancounters, MBAs and consultants are ruining the book business just as they are ruining television and newspapers.
What seems to have prompted the article is that as a small part of the larger picture, the Canadian fiction renaissance which captured the world's attention over the past five years or so seems to be fading.
The answer, publishers seem to saying, is non-fiction. At which point every one in this country and beyond who has written a serious non-fiction book will roll their eyes.
First the idea that non-fiction will save publishing is as old as the idea that literary fiction is an uncertain part of the business.
The late Barbara Tuchman, a great literary popular historian wrote in the New York Herald Tribune Book Week, on March 6, 1966 about an encounter while skiing in Aspen.
I shared a double-chair lift with an advertising man from Chicago. He told me he was in charge of all copy for his firm in all media: TV radio and the printed word. On the strength of this he assured me and I quote that "Writing is coming back. Books are coming back." I cannot tell you how pleased I was and I know you would be too."
Unless a fiction author is writing a historical epic or let's call it "insider" account, fiction requires little investment other than time.
Literary non-fiction, the kind the publishers seem to say they want in the post 9/11 world, however, requires a great deal of investment, in research, perhaps travel, interviews, archival searches, Freedom or Access to Information requests, fact checking, and then the writing and the rewriting. All the costs, both financial and in personal time are borne by the author.
The problem is that advances for what is called the "mid-list" book have not kept pace with inflation over the past 25 years. Many non-fiction works these days are often, in the case of journalists or academics with a popular bent, spinoffs of stories where the costs are absorbed either by the journalist's employer or by academic grants. The original literary non-fiction book is often a "passion project."
Publishers will shell out megabucks for what they think will be blockbusters, often ghost written celebrity biographies, a rake of political diatribes and occasionally something with some meaning in it.
Then once the book is written, edited and published, comes the problem of promotion. The promotion a book receives is, 99 per cent of the time, not based on its worth as a book, or even its potential market. It is based on the advance, the original investment in the book, an investment the corporate beancounters want returned plus a profit. It matters little to the beancounters, MBAs and consultants that investing in promoting a better mid-list book might bring a bigger profit in the long run, it's not in their business plan.
As I have said before on this blog, when a book fails, it is always the fault of the author, never the publisher, even if the publisher didn't promote the book or promote it properly to the right market or the buyer for the book store chain put in the wrong category.
What the publishers who think non-fiction will save their bottom line forget is that these days authors are just as hard-assed business people as they are. Add up the costs of working on a book, compare to the likely advance and you will find that more projects these days don't even reach the proposal stage. Or if they reach the proposal stage the agent will tell the author it isn't worth it.
So why are there so many books out there that nobody is buying? It's the same reason that nobody is watching the 500 channel universe. There's nothing on television because every one of the 500 CEOs on those 500 channels are hiring the same consultants.
There are all those books nobody is buying because these days publishers don't sell books to the public. They sell books to the buyers for the book chains. And those buyers' jobs are dependent on how well their area does in a quarter. So they are not going take risks, and they are going to follow the formulae created in the book chain back office.
Posner concludes his piece by saying:
When you think about the opportunities people have for how they spend free time . . . sometimes at the end of the day it's just easier to pick up a Get Shorty DVD for $9.99.
Well it's the same with authors, at the end of the day (as it is now) it's easier to knock off a few paragraphs on a blog and go out on the town or grab that DVD and relax for 90-odd mindless minutes.
The article by Barbara Tuchman was reprinted in her collection, Practicing History Ballantine 1982
Technorati tags
research, writing, book, journalism, Globe and Mail,Barbara Tuchman,
publishing,nonfiction
11:40 PM posted by Robin Rowland
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The case of the stodgy podcaster
When I lived in London back in the early 1980s, The Daily Telegraph was the stodgiest, dullest national newspaper in the United Kingdom. Conrad Black, of course, shook things up a little when he took over the paper.
Its current management has decided to podcast the paper. Earlier this week, the Telegraph announced that editors would chose about three top stories a day that would be then be podcast to those who wanted to listen to, rather than read the news.
And one more note from Sunday's Telegraph, reporting that Sir Richard Branson wants to take on Rupert Murdoch and is bidding for the rights to Britain's "Premiership" and that's more important than politics, it's football (soccer to us.) Branson is now looking at convergence--soccer on the cell phone.
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writing, journalism, podcasting, Daily Telegraph, news, Richard Branson
10:25 PM posted by Robin Rowland
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When I lived in London back in the early 1980s, The Daily Telegraph was the stodgiest, dullest national newspaper in the United Kingdom. Conrad Black, of course, shook things up a little when he took over the paper.
Its current management has decided to podcast the paper. Earlier this week, the Telegraph announced that editors would chose about three top stories a day that would be then be podcast to those who wanted to listen to, rather than read the news.
And one more note from Sunday's Telegraph, reporting that Sir Richard Branson wants to take on Rupert Murdoch and is bidding for the rights to Britain's "Premiership" and that's more important than politics, it's football (soccer to us.) Branson is now looking at convergence--soccer on the cell phone.
Technorati tags
writing, journalism, podcasting, Daily Telegraph, news, Richard Branson
10:25 PM posted by Robin Rowland
Permanent Link
