Kevin Allman

Book review sections: good news, bad news

In Publishers Weekly, Rachel Deahl speculates as to what the sale of the Tribune newspapers and the upcoming redesign (has there ever been a time where there wasn't an "upcoming redesign"?) could mean for those papers' book sections:

The tough times in the newspaper industry could spell more trouble for print book review sections. On Thursday the Wall Street Journal reported that Sam Zell, the new owner of the Tribune Company, would likely try to sell the buildings that two of the chain's marquee papers--the Chicago Tribune and the L.A. Times--now occupy....

Amid the pending real estate sale and newsroom cutbacks, rumors have surfaced about book sections being cut at Tribune-owned papers. One freelance critic told PW that the Tribune Company is planning to slash overall page counts across the chain. Although e-mails to editors who handle the book sections at both the Chicago Tribune and the L.A. Times were not returned, Michael Dizon, the communications manager at Tribune, said the paper is currently redesigning its print edition. When asked if this meant the book review section might be cut, Dizon said that "as of now" the coverage "continues to be an important part of the newspaper." Dizon added that the redesign is scheduled to appear in September.

If the Tribune Co. does reduce page counts across its papers, history indicates that book review pages will likely be the first to go.

Hmm. Whenever a newspaper executive says "as of now," people tend to get nervous. They remember.

The good news: NPR is beefing up its coverage of books, as reported today in PW:

National Public Radio has expanded the book coverage on its website, adding weekly book reviews, and has hired six new book reviewers—including a graphic novel reviewer—and added more features to an already existing lineup of author podcasts, critics' lists and other book-focused content.

NPR's expanded book page is here, and it looks great. Of course, NPR has two advantages that most newspapers don't: it doesn't deliver content on increasingly expensive newsprint, and it's not out to please stockholders.

Lucky NPR. Lucky readers. Lucky book reviewers.

New Orleans' best bars

Almost forgot to blog this: the staff at Gambit Weekly was nice enough to ask me to contribute to their cover story on New Orleans' Top 50 Bars. The selection process was a ton of fun -- it took three lunches and a lot of emails and phone calls, as well as visits to prospective taverns; I think the list was winnowed down from something like 200 candidates.

Consensus seems to be that it's a pretty good list, though of course people are talking about their favorite places that didn't make the cut, or questioning the placement of a few that did. And there's the usual suspicion of advertisers influencing the list; they didn't, as anyone can see who picks up a hard copy of the issue.

Here's how the Top 10 shook out:

1. Mimi's in the Marigny
2. Napoleon House
3. One Eyed Jacks
4. The Delachaise
5. Cooter Brown's Tavern
6. d.b.a.
7. Maple Leaf
8. Rivershack Tavern
9. Ernie K-Doe's Mother-in-Law Lounge
10. Arnaud's French 75

Thoughts? What did we miss?

Desperate times in the newspaper & magazine industries

I wanted to write about the week of layoffs in the newspaper world, but Mark Potts summed it up well on his site Recovering Journalist:

This has been a particularly rough week for the newspaper industry, whose decline seems to be gathering speed....

Total: Roughly 900 jobs eliminated just this week (and the week ain't over).

Of note: the Palm Beach Post is cutting 130 newsroom jobs, or approximately 40% of its reporting staff. You can argue the whys -- it's a combination of a changing marketplace and executive mismanagement in varying proportions -- but there's no way that the Post can spin that as cutting fat; it's cutting bone and limbs.

More interesting (and, I suspect, doomed) is a new concept called Maghound -- something that Folio is calling a "Netflix-style service for magazines." It launches in September, and here's how it's supposed to work:

Maghound.com allows consumers to choose titles from a variety of publishers for a mix-and-match “subscriptions” where they pay one monthly fee and have the ability to switch titles at any time. Unlike traditional subscriptions, members aren’t locked in their memberships and can cancel whenever they wish....

The pricing for a membership is tiered—three titles for $3.95 per month, five titles for $7.95, seven titles for $9.95, and $1 per title for eight titles or more.

The site isn't fully functional yet, but it sounds like the people behind Maghound expect customers to sign on to the website and futz around with their subscriptions, Netflix-style. Queues are great for online rental of DVDs, but can you imagine anyone dinking around on a magazine site -- "Oh, I think I'll take a couple of issues of Motor Trend, then next month switch over to Esquire for an issue or two. Might as well try one issue of Brides while I'm at it, and I think I'll swap out Cargo for Food & Wine."?

The whole point of magazine subscriptions is the set-it-and-forget-it model, which is why they always try to entice readers with steeply discounted 2- and 3-year plans. Magazine subscriptions are cheap enough already -- I can get a year of nearly any men's magazine for around $6 or $8, or a 52-week subscription to The New Yorker or Entertainment Weekly for about $25. (This morning I got an offer for 48 issues of New York for $12.99.) And if I want a single copy of a title, I'll pick it up at a newsstand or bookstore and get immediate gratification. Who wants to sign onto a website and dink around with an account just for one issue?

Then there's the customer-service aspect. Do the Maghound people really want to deal with angry customers emailing complaints like "I wanted the Tim McGraw issue of Redbook, and you sent the LeAnn Rimes! And you sent the November Better Homes & Gardens when all I wanted was Halloween recipes!"

I give them credit for trying something new, but people want things to make their lives both richer and less complicated. The current round of newspaper cuts will do nothing to make anyone's lives richer, and something like Maghound promises nothing but complications.

Another self-published book becomes a bestseller

I'm a sucker for stories about people who self-publish their books and somehow, against all odds, manage to find success. In today's New York Times, Motoko Rich writes about William P. Young, a former hotel night clerk who self-published his novel The Shack, and found it move from Christian bookstores to, well...

Just over a year after it was originally published as a paperback, The Shack had its debut at No. 1 on the New York Times trade paperback fiction best-seller list on June 8 and has stayed there ever since. It is No. 1 on Borders Group’s trade paperback fiction list, and at Barnes & Noble it has been No. 1 on the trade paperback list since the end of May, outselling even Mr. Tolle’s spiritual guide “A New Earth,” selected by Ms. Winfrey’s book club in January.

Its publisher, Windblown Media, a company that was formed expressly to publish The Shack in May of last year, estimates that the book has sold more than one million copies.

The article says that Young filed for bankruptcy and lost his house at auction a few years back, and that "with proceeds from book sales, he has been able to pay several bills."

The Portland Tribune: what the hell?

Last month, in a terribly misguided attempt to save a few bucks, the Portland Tribune fired its copyediting staff. This was the result on day one:

Things don't seem to have improved, as Matt Davis discovered this morning:

And the story's been edited since then...to make it even worse:

This isn't a fuss over a misspelled word here or a split infinitive there; mistakes are inevitable at the best of papers, and by the best of writers and editors. This is the work of someone who doesn't know how to write, or just doesn't care enough to get it right.

If a newspaper can't master the basics of spelling and grammar, how can it expect readers to trust the information it presents?

Given the English-as-a-second-language level of this reporting, I've got a suspicion as to what might be going on here, and it involves outsourcing -- there's certainly precedent. And I kinda hope it's true, because I wouldn't want to think that anyone at a mid-sized American newspaper didn't even have passable, basic high school English skills.

Entertainment Weekly's "new classics"

Entertainment Weekly has published one of those all-lists issues that claims to identify "The New Classics" in various genres of the arts; their list of the Top 100 books of the last 25 years is here.

As usual, it's plenty silly and there's lots of room for argument, starting with the complete omission of Richard Ford (not my favorite, but probably better than 25% of the writers on the list). Probably more egregious, to me: not one Richard Russo title? Scott Turow, yes, but Walter Mosley, no? (Credit where credit is due: it's great to see Ruth Rendell there.)

Can one really argue a spot for Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code and not Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, or Joshua Ferris' Then We Came to the End?

Whatever. After all, EW's "Top 100" TV list manages to squeeze in Baywatch, Saved By the Bell, and The Bachelor, but omits Hugh Wilson and Tim Reid's masterpiece Frank's Place, which should not only make the list, but be in the Top 10. That's as big a mistake as any of the literary ones. Come to think of it, it is a literary mistake.

The author who sued the bookstore

Rachel Deahl of Publishers Weekly has the story:

A few weeks ago John Mitzel, proprietor of Calamus Books in Boston, was surprised to open his mail and discover he'd been named in a lawsuit filed by an author. The suit, filed by Larry Townsend's attorney for copyright infringement, stems from a dispute over unpaid fees allegedly owed the author by his distributor, the Oklahoma-based Nazca Plains Corp. Nonetheless, the suit charges that Mitzel, along with over 40 other booksellers (including Amazon and Barnes & Noble), infringed on Townsend's copyright by selling the author's books in his store.

I still think it's a weird case, but not as weird as it might first appear. Haven't music stores been sued for selling bootleg recordings? Is this any different?

Whatever the case, the bookseller says that the author is an old friend. Wouldn't a phone call have sufficed?

New article: The state of Internet radio

I've got a fairly lengthy article in the current issue of Gambit Weekly examining the state of Internet radio, the future of home broadcasting, and the implications for Louisiana music (which isn't represented on either terrestrial or satellite radio).

The outlook for Internet radio? Not good, according to most of the people to whom I spoke. Many of the regulations implemented by the U.S. Congress purport to compensate musicians, but it's pretty clear to me that the ultimate goal is to stifle competition in the marketplace. Internet radio broadcasters have yet to come up with a way to sustain themselves, but the traditional radio industry and the record companies seem determined to keep that from happening.

Meanwhile, if you like commercial-free Louisiana music, I recommend tuning in to Home of the Groove, New Orleans Jukebox Gold, or the Lagniappe Broadcast Network. Who needs consultant-driven playlists or monthly subscription fees?

New review: David Guterson's "The Other"

I have a review of David Guterson's new novel, The Other, in today's book section of The Oregonian.

More writing: Criss Angel interview

I have a cover interview with the magician Criss Angel in the June issue of Muscle & Body magazine. Criss was nice enough on the phone with me, and answered most of my questions without complaint, but the interview occurred right before he had a dustup with the Las Vegas Review-Journal's celebrity columnist Norm Clarke. I would've asked Criss about it and appended his take on things in the story, but the magazine had already gone to press. Maybe it's all for the best; look at the abs on that guy.

Here's Norm's side of the story; here's what Criss had to say.