Interesting article in yesterday’s Washington Post, “Read Any Good Ads Lately?”, about the growing trend of marketers commissioning original novels to plug their products. Profiled is Los Angeles author Mark Haskell Smith who was paid an undisclosed sum of money and the use of a Lexus in exchange for writing Black Sapphire Pearl, a serial novel published in three installments in the Lexus quarterly magazine (sent to owners) and on the company’s web site, which features interactive features such as profiles of the main characters like Lydia Stark (see below), crime writer and owner of a missing Lexus LS 460.

Lydia Stark

“I bet you don’t even have a fedora.�

A best-selling author whose 10 mysteries starring ace detective Theo Rose have been translated into 16 languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide. Raised in the relative isolation and comfort of suburban Minneapolis, Lydia developed an interest in noir, hard-boiled detective fiction, and violent crime stories when she was left dateless for her high school prom.

Turn-ons: The Lexus LS 460, blue jeans, picnics, witty banter, a dry martini
Turnoffs: High school boys, Chihuahuas, diet soda
Favorite movie: L.A. Confidential
Favorite song: Anything she can dance to
Favorite book: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Life philosophy: “To thine own self be true. That’s the best advice ever given.�

“I can tell fact from fiction,” says the narrator in the opening chapter, but I wonder if readers can tell the fiction (or is it “fictomercial”?) from the branding. Then there is Electrolux’s comic Men in Aprons, available as a paperback or downloadable audio at  audible.co.uk/meninaprons. The novel, which British journalist Alex Mattis (Alex is a she) describes as a story “about misguided twentysomethings trying to forge careers against a backdrop of nightmare flatmates, failed romances and bad housekeeping”, does not mention the Electrolux brand but vacuuming is obviously a key plot point. 

Of course, this is really not new. Remember the controversy that broke out five years ago when British author Fay Weldon admitted she was paid to mention an Italian luxury-goods retailer in The Bulgari Connection? And chick lit writers have been brand name-dropping for years. Think The Devil Wears Prada, Gucci Gucci Goo. The only difference is these authors now should demand the big bucks and a plug for their own books on the marketers’ web sites.

  

It was a common scenario in the bookroom circa 1998: self-published or indie authors would call my line (I was then the assistant in charge of sorting galleys) looking for advice on making their books known. Often, said books had already been published and so were too late to be submitted to LJ. “What are my alternatives?” they’d inquire desperately. My eager response was, “Stage a reading at your local library!”

As I learned from a recent thread on Publib, however, librarians don’t seem so hot on this idea. Unless the author has a media profile, is backed by a reputable publisher, or has a ready-made audience owing to the local popularity of the book’s subject, they’d rather pass. Chances are, people would not turn up to see a writer without those credentials, and as Tom Cooper of the Webster Groves (MO) P.L. wrote, “[T]here’s nothing worse than working hard on an event that flops.”

Libraries, the message seems to be, want to compete with Barnes & Noble and Ye Olde Slam Poetry Bar down the street. They want in on popular culture—not at all an earth-shattering revelation for me, but it makes me feel for the nobodies who may have a worthy work on their hands. If they can’t find a forum for engaging in person-to-person contact at the library, where can they?

The obvious answer is MySpace and personal websites, but so many people are clamoring for attention now that it’s a miracle to capture and hold an audience. It’s been said that best sellers originate in libraries—a patron stumbles on a book, falls in love, and spreads word—but my feeling is that, increasingly, time-pressed readers are taking their leads from TV book clubs, radio shows, and off-the-cuff comments by established writers or actors and actresses.

The cult of celebrity has infiltrated American reading habits so much, in fact, that decided nonwriters like celebutant Nicole Ritchie (The Truth About Diamonds, now in paperback) and former model Paulina Porizkova (A Model Summer is due in April from Hyperion) can publish novels. I confess that I haven’t even cracked the galley of Porizkova’s book, but my point still stands: having a marquee name seems like more of a requirement for a book contract than being able to construct an artful sentence.

I know, I know. My gripes are older than Grandpa Simpson, but I dare argue that the celebritization of publishing has only gotten worse since I entered the fold nine years ago. Although Judith Regan’s getting the ax is encouraging, we’ve still got a long way to go toward putting democracy back in publishing. And libraries can help by mulling over a genius suggestion by Linda Ballard of the University City (MO) P.L.: “Have any of you experimented with having an evening or weekend afternoon ‘Local Authors’ Day,’ where these authors could come, perhaps speak for a few minutes apiece, and peddle their wares?”

As the editor responsible for assigning child rearing books, I must say I’m surprised it’s taken so long for a manual like Candice Kelsey’s Generation MySpace: Helping Your Teen Survive Online Adolescence (April, Marlowe & Co.) to rear its helpful head. Social networking sites have been around since the early 00’s, and MySpace.com—the leader by leaps and bounds with more than 100 million accounts—is definitely a force with which to be reckoned. Its multimedia capabilities require users to learn a set of technologies, and this is where I think adults got lost, and lost track of their kids in the process.

Kelsey, who cofounded a private high school in Santa Monica, CA, and acts as an evaluator for the College Board’s Advanced Placement program, seems to know her way around the site and more than that, as our resident teen expert Linda Beck points out in her starred review, Kelsey has investigated and witnessed the negative messages of online culture (among them, “privacy is not important”). And she shows parents “how to create a MySpace account safely and how to interpret what other bloggers are saying.”

For the full monty of Linda’s review, make sure to see the March 15th issue. See also her starred reviews of other recent teen-centered titles like American Academy of Pediatrics Caring for Your Teenager and Dianne Neumark-Sztainer’s I’m, Like, So Fat!: Helping Your Teen Make Healthy Choices About Eating and Exercise in a Weight-Obsessed World.

These are exciting times, let me tell ya. Borderline indecently exciting. But I digress. 

The 2nd annual New York Comic-Con is on the horizon! And, did you know that librarians can get a free weekend professional pass to the conference? Furthermore, did you know that on Friday, February 23rd (trade day), Library Journal is the presenting sponsor of four panels of librarian luminaries specifically for you?

So don your geek cap, wear that witty and irreverent T-shirt, put on those steel-toed Doc Martens, and slip on that backpack shaped like some weird plushy animal/alien. I, for one, am planning to put my hair in pigtails, because if I can’t wear pigtails at Comic-Con, then where can I?

And hey, if you see that corset vendor who was there last year - try one on! It’s a trip - and considering that your oxygen intake is cut in half, I mean that literally.

Be sure to sign up at the Professional Registration page - deadline is Feb. 12th!

For more information about the panels, go to this webpage and scroll down to the bottom. The panels ae all moderated by John Shableski of Brodart and the panel titles are:

Feb. 23rd: Panels for Librarians

10:00 AM: Superheroes and Manga: Making Room for Both at Your Library

11:15 AM: Format and Genres: Understanding Comics, Super Heroes, SciFi, Fantasy, Manga, Comics Lit, Humor and Web Comics

1:30 PM: Anime: Making the Most of this Video Entertainment

2:45 PM: Graphic Novel Classics Every Library (public and school) Should Shelve and Circulate

This Con is not to be missed. You make valuable contacts, learn from peers and publishers, get the pulse of the industry…while having fun with frothing fanboys and fangirls leering at manga, graphic novels, figurines, and anime. If the idea makes you giggle with glee (rather than back away slowly), this is the show for you.

I’m actually not as scary as I sound.

I assign political science titles for review in LJ. For the past many months, this classification has overflowed with books relating to the war in Iraq and the “War on Terror,” but another kind of book is coming in quite often now: the presidential candidate’s biography or autobiography. 

Bill Richardson was ahead of the game. He only just declared that he is exploring a 2008 run, but he put his autobiography, Between Worlds: The Making of an American Life, out in 11/05. I hope it doesn’t set the standard for all of these books. Our reviewer called  it “revealing — to a fault,” e.g., Richardson writes of loading up his Alfa Romeo to move to New Mexico in 1978. This tugged at how many readers’ heartstrings as they remembered their own trials with getting luggage into their Italian sports car?

John Edwards took a different approach in 11/06 and put his name, as editor, behind Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives, celebrating the value that each of us places upon the homes in which we grew up. The nostalgia (literally) was enough to give me neuralgia, but many have understandably, if predictably, admired the collection of memories and photographs from a spectrum of famous and ordinary individuals. Memories of souped-up tranportation were of living room Lionel train sets rather than Alfa Romeos.

To balance his coffee-table entry with wonkier stuff, Edwards is one of three editors of a volume due out in May from the New Press, Ending Poverty in America: How To Restore the American Dream. Will he gain readers? Will they turn into voters? If so, will they vote for him?

Is Nader planning another run? His most recent book publishes in a couple of weeks: The Seventeen Traditions, from HarperCollins. This is billed as Nader’s most personal book because he professes the importance of parents in raising children “of virtue and talent” (he quotes Jefferson on that). Is he trying to win some “family values” types who need to replace their worn-out volumes of Bill Bennett? Should libraries adjust their collections accordingly?

John McCain took a cue from Bill Bennett with his Character is Destiny: Inspiring Stories Every Young Person Should Know and Every Adult Should Remember, written with Mark Salter. Later this year, the two will  be bringing out Hard Call: Great Decisions and the Extraordinary People Who Made Them, which may not seek to include the younger readership of the previous title because he too is now honing in on votership. 

As for McLain, there have already been a few biographies of Hillary Clinton. Most of the McLain studies are sympathetic to him, while perhaps one of the few balanced studies of Clinton is  Gil Troy’s Hillary Rodham Clinton: Polarizing First Lady, worth keeping in mind as the campaigns heat up.

Barack Obama published his second autobiography The Audacity of Hope, last October, following his Dreams from My Father. Now Black Dog & Leventhal is promoting the “first biographical portrait ever” of Obama, by People magazine’s Steve Dougherty. They distinguish it from Obama’s own books by titling it Hopes and Dreams. It’s due in about a month.

Last year at ALA in Chicago, both Mayor Daley and Senator Obama spoke to the convention. It was a fascinating juxtaposition: Mayor Daley was fire and brimstone, punching his fist into his hand, speaking with astonishing passion and flare. Obama was the relaxed and conversational communicator. There seemed no question that Mayor Daley’s speech was written specifically for America’s librarians, and that made his speech have a certain magic to us. He boasted, deservedly, of all the work he has done on behalf of Chicago’s public libraries, and he spoke of the values of reading in highly personal and meaningful ways. Senator Obama’s speech was the generic one that ALA members often hear from the visiting politician, all about how he loved libraries as a kid, how much it mattered to go there. As a librarian, maybe I was disappointed, but as a voter, my own hopes and dreams are newly alive.  

The 13th floor of 360 Park Avenue South (that is, LJ, PW, and Criticas) held our first grand free-books giveaway for other employees in our building last Wednesday. Now, before you balk and scream “Fairfax Library!” note that we’ve tried to donate them, but we’ve tried for years, in the meantime accumulating hundreds of mostly paperback and picked over books. (An editor with a Paris travel guide from 2003 in hand asked whether I thought much had changed there since then.) 

But the point is, as I was cleaning out what was left over after a day of passive weeding on our part and one of active acquisition on the part of others, I was struck by what was left: mass-market alien books and a lot of poetry.

So, with all that is ignored, what kind of poetry do people want?  A poetry best seller list that ran in the April 1, 2006 issue showed big names Billy Collins, Ted Kooser, and Mary Oliver; musicians/poets Patti Smith, Tupac Shakur, and Saul Williams; old classics Beowulf and The Odyssey; and, of course, a couple of anthologies edited by Garrison Keillor.

Check out Barbara Hoffert’s last best-poetry roundup—and look for the ‘06 list coming this spring—in which she encourages forming a poetry reading group. I was happy to see an overlap of poets Ted Kooser, W.S. Merwin, Wislawa Szymborska, and Jane Kenyon on Barbara’s list of the best and on the best seller list. 

So, poets and readers, be optimistic. Even if many books of verse are off to book heaven at a young age, the “best” are diverse and thriving. And start a poetry book club to save the new poetry! (Or we could work on reviving the consumption of alien mass-market books if you prefer.)  I’d love to hear how your poetry sections fare.

In my seventh year of handling self-help books, I’ve turned a corner that I didn’t know existed in publishing. Back before my eyes turned into computer-singed black holes, I couldn’t help but slam some of the genre’s offerings. “Who in her right mind,” I wanted to know, “dubs herself a ‘Tantric sex guru, motorcycle enthusiast, and life coach’?” Self-help, to an outsider, often seems like a pathetic and ridiculous alternate reality where people are incapable of figuring out anything for themselves. I kept waiting for a self-help guide to surviving self-help books.

Thankfully, I’m older, wiser, and blinder. Perverse self-marketing and shoddy writing suddenly don’t irk or amuse me in this new year. Self-help is what is, a formula that is often repeated with zero original twists. I’ve finally accepted that—only to have to readjust my view thanks to some singular surprises.

Take these starred books from the January 15th Self-Help Column by Deborah Bigelow: Melissa Kirsch’s The Girl’s Guide to Absolutely Everything, Steven Solomon & Lori Teagno’s Intimacy After Infidelity, and H. Norman Wright & Sheryl Wright Macauley’s Making Peace with Your Mom. There are even more goodies in the February 15th installment: Jane Isay’s Walking on Eggshells, Varla Ventura’s Wild Women Talk About Love, and Kenneth Adams’s When He’s Married to Mom.

What’s it all mean? Can self-help actually serve a meaningful, practical purpose and not just gaze into its shallow navel? Having just taken my first successful dip into the genre (see This Girl’s Guide to Absolutely Everything), I’d have to say yes, but I don’t kid myself. A self-help golden age this probably ain’t (though 2005 had its moments, too—see the best of the genre here). There’s a tidal wave of crap coming any second now, and I’ll be there to soak it up with my new, improved Zen-like attitude.

So I take it all back (see Staying alive a la biography). Elvis fans have a King-sized new publication to look forward to in August (which will mark the 30th anniversary of his death): Adam Victor’s Elvis Encyclopedia (Overlook Press). For $60, you get 420 pages of A-to-Z entries, complete with 250 full-color and 150 black-and-white images. The blad I have offers a sneak peak of the A’s, including info on former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, whom Elvis met in 1970 and gave ”a gold-inlaid .357 Magnum revolver.” And under “Aging,” we learn that Elvis “became more openly interested in spirituality” as he neared 30.

Victor’s book represents what I think will become a trend in reference publishing: semischolarly (i.e., often opinionated, “voice”-heavy) studies of popular music icons. Last year, Michael Gray gave us the excellent Bob Dylan Encyclopedia (Continuum), and tomes on the Beatles and Rolling Stones can’t be far behind.

Those bands and more will no doubt warrant coverage in the fourth edition of Oxford’s The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (its 1998 incarnation earned a star). Colin Larkin returns as editor of some 27,000 entries that span the gamut. Hellbent for leather? The EOPM doesn’t just delve into heavy metal, but its wimpier, pale-faced stepbrother, emo. For a complete review, check out the March 1 issue.

‘Tis the season for stocking stuffers, caroling…and romance novels? Last year, when LJ expanded its romance reviewing to six times a year, one reason was to make sure we could provide early coverage of the flood of titles we always anticipate for Valentine’s Day. This year’s December column includes a few little red-hot treats, but, like the October 15 column, it is piled high with a veritable sleighload of Christmas romances. In addition, the October 15 issue featured our second roundup of general Christmas fiction, with titles ranging from mystery (Anne Perry’s A Christmas Secret) to humor (Dave Barry’s The Shepherd, the Angel, and Walter the Christmas Dog) to biblical retellings (Elizabeth Berg’s The Handmaid and the Carpenter). So why is the Nativity so hot? Perhaps it is the success of Richard Paul Evans’s seasonal fables, starting with The Christmas Box; or the holiday’s high profile in our consumer society; or, alternately, and especially regarding romance, the neat parallel between the reclamation promised by Christmas as holy day and the reclamation promised by love. Or maybe Valentine’s Day had worn out its possibilities. In any case, as we anticipate the spring season, with titles like Christopher Moore’s You Suck: A Love Story on the horizon, here’s betting that the next big holiday for romance is Hallowe’en.

‘Tis the season to stuff our faces, so I’m not surprised to spy cookbooks in the top 25 of the big best sellers lists (the New York Times, Amazon, and, of course, Library Journal). As of today (for LJ’s, I’m drawing on the December 15th list), all three feature Irma Rombauer and others’ Joy of Cooking: 75th Anniversary Edition and Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa at Home.

Holding the No. 1 slot of the NYT’s Hardcover Advice list, however, is an even more enticing entry (at least for this editor): Mehmet Oz and Michael Roizen’s You: On a Diet: The Owner’s Manual for Waist Management. At least some portion of the population, it seems, is already thinking about how to rid themselves of the gingerbreadmen and -women ringing their middles. LJ’s got just the thing for those forward thinkers. For the last few years, we’ve reviewed the slews of diet/fitness books that publish in January and February, just in time for those “I’m going to lay off the Oreos” resolutions.

From 2005 and 2006, respectively, there’s “Starting on a Lighter Note” and “Diet and Fitness Roundup,” both by the very ambitious Susan Hagloch (I don’t know who else could, er, stomach reviewing a dozen diet books in four weeks). Susan has my respect because she can suss out commerical appeal and sound nutritional advice. Her 2007 roundup will publish early next month and would make for an excellent starting point for those sorry Janes and Joes who ate their way through a Paula Deen butter-and-lard fest.