THE LITBLOG CO-OP

The Jamestown Sausage Factory

"If you want to enjoy sausage or respect the law,” Otto von Bismarck reputedly said, “you should never watch either of them being made.” Much the same can be said for publishing. Everyone knows that Hollywood (be it movies or TV) is Babylon, that the record labels are corrupt and incompetent, that Broadway producers are shysters of the highest order, but few know that the primary difference between those worlds and publishing is just a few zeros at the end of every calculation. (Actually theater is in much worse shape now, but already I'm digressing far too much...)

In one sense this is not supposed to apply to independent publishing—we're supposed to be pure as the driven snow—but we're just one part of the supply chain: the agents are the agents, the distributors the distributors and so on through the wholesalers, the retailers large and small, the printers (of finished books and galleys). Not much of a % of the list price of a book published by us is any more independent than would be the case with a corporate publisher. Yet, at the end of it, I feel, in publishing Jamestown, we made a sausage I can be proud of, a sausage I can proudly show my daughter-to-be (yes, there's a SoftSkullette on the way...).

What were the mercenary/logistical ingredients of all this?

 

• To start with, a few weeks of creative haggling with the agent, involving a whole bunch of emails, 40-50 phonecalls, a wee bit of industrial espionage, 50-60 text messages, involving the agent and the Publisher and Editorial Director of Harcourt (who were going in with us as a paperback publisher, a la how MacAdam Cage published The Time-Travelers Wife). Over that time I invented in new way of creating a reserve against returns and a new way of defining when a bonus advance paid out—arcana for sure, but crucial stuff, let me tell you.

• A galley printer who shipped all the galleys to our distributors warehouse in Indianapolis, which caused them to be received as if they were finished books, causing them to get put into returns processing, but without a barcode that would allow them to be found...

• The tawdry hunt for a blurb, which I tried to avoid doing but, as Matt reminded me, when you don't have blurbs, people think there was something wrong with this book.

• (An incredibly smooth editorial process—but if editing were all that publishing was, everyone would want to run an indie press...)

• And, oh yes, the bankruptcy of our distributor. There aren't enough pixels on this screen to talk about how involved that was but here's what it took to get Jamestown printed:

1. PGW, aforementioned distributor in Chapter 11, shifting to Net Two Day Payment by Wire Transfer weekly.
2. Us crashing out five books in the first week of January so as to generate those Net Two Day payments in early/mid-February.
3. Harcourt agreeing to pre-pay the on-hardcover-publication component of the advance.
4. Matt's agent agreeing not to panic.
5. PGW's genius inventory specialist, Jennifer Pascal, orchestrating 30+ direct shipments from the Canadian printer to chain and wholesaler warehouses across the US (drop-ships, common domestically, very uncommon when crossing borders), "dropshipping" thereby triggering same-day invoicing, allowing us to get paid by distributor on net Two Day terms for about half the Jamestown sales, (because Perseus acquires PGW out of bankruptcy in the middle of he shipping process...)
6. All the above occurring the the faith that PGW won't in fact go into Chapter 7, leaving us all with nothing...
7. All the above also grist for the promotional mill of poor-indie-press-does-biggest-book-in-short-life-span-will-they-save-the-day stories.

• And lots more drama that, frankly, I'm just too embarrassed to relate, even now. Some things just aren't met for the public record.

Why regale everyone with this ugly stuff on a week when one is supposed to be celebrating this wild literary achievement?

Well, one reason is that I'm a blabber mouth and Megan and Dan both know this, so they knew I'd be good for a post, and I wanted to help out with something juicy.

And another reason is that I think it is healthy to let a little light shine on the process, for what it took to publish JAMESTOWN is ultimately not that different from what it takes to publish in general. (Oh, the glory of all the pixels that could be  blackened by what Charlie Winton and I went through to arrange the restructuring of Soft Skull to become part of his new Counterpoint enterprise...).

But the third reason is that there is something about that book, the glorious vulgar teeming social enterprise that is Jamestown that makes the above feel right to me.  As Megan pointed out in yesterday's post, Jamestown is a deeply truthful book, it seeks to expose everything—hypocrisy, shame, delight, anuses, intestines. It felt to me that the most truthful way for me, a publisher, to do justice to Jamestown was to disclose to the reader as much of the messy shameless hustle of being a publisher as I could in a reasonably brief post...

Jamestown Week Begins!

We're kicking off Jamestown week at the LBC. I'm pretty excited, since I'm the one who nominated this book (this means my reading taste rules). I posted about reading this book back in March. I had said that it was one of the best books I've read this year---and it still is, months later. I've read a lot of books since then (look here), but not many books have Sharpe's inventiveness and skill.

I've been trying to pinpoint what about this book I liked so much. I find it really hard to describe coherently what I enjoy when I read. It's almost as if I lack the right language. There are many things to appreciate about this book---the language, the pathos, the various characters---but I suppose it all came down to it's believability. Yes, everything felt real to me when I read this book. I know it's a fantastical novel, but I could imagine it.

Antoher thing I respect about Sharpe is that he stuck with Soft Skull for Jamestown. Many authors, after some success with smaller publishers, jump ship to the larger houses. I understand their reasoning, but I appreciate loyaltly to a small, but great press. So Sharpe rates high in my book.

This week we'll be hearing from various folks, including Richard Nash of Soft Skull and Matthew Sharpe himself. I hope people check in daily and are encouraged enough to go read this book. 

LBC Podcast: Katharine Weber and Levi Asher

Click here to listen to the MP3.

The show runs one hour, eight minutes, and 26 seconds.  For additional streaming options, go here.

Nominee: Katharine Weber

Nominator: Levi Asher

Subjects Discussed: Fibonacci spirals and Sierpinski triangles, Fibonacci sidewalks, the unknown etymological origins of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, interview transcripts and excised questions, designing the Esther and Ruth Zion vernaculars, colloquies within the novel, .edu addresses that have been duped by counterfeited transcripts, Ian McEwan, Ruth Zion's character makeup and academia, MacArthur genius grants, the authentic requirements of contemporary novels, approaching historical events from a contemporary vantage point, James Frye, fact vs. fiction, intrusive footnotes and reader obedience, "based on a true story," the 2003 Station nightclub fire, comparisons between the Triangle fire and the World Trade Center, children's books about the Triangle fire, Henry Botkin and Gershwin, Thanksgiving and other American traditions, on seeing too many patterns in life, "crackpot magpie" research, not having a high school diploma, and being an autodidact.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Weber: It's not just that she's been speaking English for fifty years, but she's been speaking the language of the Triangle fire.  She's been telling the story and telling the story.  So what interested me wasn't just developing her use of English, but her developing and mutating over time relationship to the story, and how it stuck to the story, and how she wandered off the story and got details wrong over time. We all get details wrong over time.  If you now had to describe to me every moment of a car accident you were in thirty years ago, even if you think that's what happened, it might not match the police report.  And you may have changed it because someone saw something that you didn't actually experience, but now you've incorporated it into your experience.  And it becomes part of your telling of the story.  I'm interested in how we tell our stories, the agenda we bring to the telling of the stories, but also so much of the novel is about the agenda we bring to the listening of stories.  We ask our questions with agendas as much as we tell stories with agendas.

(A co-production of the Litblog Co-Op and The Bat Segundo Show.)

Triangle: 96 Years Later

I happened to be in Greenwich Village last night, and I thought to stop by Washington Place, just half a block from the beautiful Washington Square Park, where the fire described in Katharine Weber's Triangle took place. It's hard to imagine that there were ever sweatshop factories on this block, just steps from Henry James' elegant social swirl. I took a couple of pictures. Here's what the sidewalk looks like on Friday night, August 17, 2007, 96 years later.

But why end the LBC's Triangle week on such a despondent note as this? Instead, I'd like to thank everybody who participated in our celebration of this book, I'd like to thank Katharine for dropping by, and now let's swing over to Gwenda's place to find out Katharine Weber's favorite curse word and other interesting facts. Next up on LBC blog: Jamestown by Matthew Sharpe.

Oh Kay!

As Katharine Weber reveals in this interview, her novel Triangle drew from many deep sources in the author's life, and paid tribute to both of her grandmothers.  One was a garment worker in New York City, and the other was Kay Swift, a songwriter and jazz-age celebrity who was loved by George Gershwin (not for nothing did he write a musical called "Oh Kay!") and whose compositions were eventually recorded by the likes of Charlie Parker, Barbra Streisand, Art Tatum, Peggy Lee, Linda Rondstadt, Bing Crosby, Benny Goodman, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra.  Not too shabby!

Fine and Dandy was her most successful musical, and with song titles like "Machine Shop Opening", "Can't We Be Friends", "Let's Go Eat Worms in the Garden", "Up Among the Chimney Pots" and "Whistling in the Dark", it seems like a real corker.  There are whispers of future major productions of this show, and we can only happen that these rumors come true.  Till then, there's the Kay Swift website to enjoy.

The Incredibly Long Podcast with Levi Asher & Katharine Weber

It is far too late to prepare the appropriate graphics with any remote sense of coherence, but to hear the nearly seventy minute podcast with Levi Asher and Katharine Weber, check this out, yo.  More later.

Patterns ...

Booksquare has invited Katharine Weber to talk about her body of work and the patterns within.  She also reveals a bit about her ongoing experience of writing fiction:

I have learned from reflecting back on my own texts in these ways, because now that I see those connections I can set about making such connections within the stories. To see how everything connects to everything else – that’s challenging. Sometimes it’s called being psychotic. Sometimes it’s where the work gets richer and stranger. Seeing connections like this has helped me learn to trust my own strangeness.

Five Books of Disaster and Woe

Here's something different: on the About Last Night blog, Katharine Weber describes her Top Five Tales of Disaster and Woe!

Reviewing the Reviews

            The Litblog Co-op attention for Triangle has been immensely gratifying; thank you, thank you, to everyone involved. It’s an incredibly heady experience when smart, thoughtful people engage with one of my novels. I’ve been trying to think of some fresh ways to talk about this experience, the feelings of being read and also the feelings that are stirred by being misread.

            We who write novels sit alone a great deal. We make it all up. We sit alone for so many hours, working the sentences, conjuring with the sensibilities and the narrative strategies, playing and playing with all the elements as they drive the characters through the events of the novel. We write and write and revise and revise until we have taken it as far as we can take it on our own. If we’re lucky, we work with a good editor. If we’re immensely lucky, we work with a great editor, and in that I am beyond immensely lucky, because John Glusman is my editor. And then we revise and revise some more. Then comes publication. The book is in the world.

            Then come the reviews. The wise readings, the ridiculous readings. The misreadings. The scolding, reluctant praise.  Razor-sharp mixed reviews, empty-headed raves. Crackpot Amazon “reviews.”  In print and online, Triangle has received an extraordinary volume of reviews and response, more than any of my previous books (thanks in part to the ever-expanding world of blogging), from wonderfully astute close readings to disdainful and grotesque dismissals.

            I read them all. I am energized by the smart reviews, the reviews that make me feel that the writer really, really got it. I want my readers to be moved, and I want them to be entertained, and when a review makes clear that has happened, it’s a triumph. When I come across a random blog featuring a half-baked and clueless takedown, hostile and semi-literate though it may be, it is both irritating and enervating. And I berate myself for caring. And it’s disappointing. I know that I will never write novels that appeal to all readers, and I know that some very smart readers have valid critical things to say. Those reviews are instructive, they make me think past my reflexive defensiveness and I have respect for them. It’s the really silly ones, and -- dare I say it?  -- the dumb ones, that wear me down.

            For years, certain writers have insisted that they never look at reviews, good or bad. Presumably those same writers these days also never look at websites and blogs. There’s so much more to not read than there used to be. I suppose I admire their discipline and restraint, but I cannot imagine not caring about the world’s response to my work. Even when it makes me want to bang my head on my desk.

            All of that said, I have been really blindsided by a certain kind of criticism for Triangle, the criticism specifically leveled at the “unfair” handling of the blinkered, agenda-d hyperfeminist Triangle scholar, Ruth Zion. It’s the damndest thing, seeing blog entries and Amazon reviews that could have been written by Ruth Zion herself.  Most recently, a hilariously negative Ruth Zionesque review at Amazon said, “As someone who once did a short stint of historical research into a feminist topic, I winced at the shabby treatment accorded this character by the other characters and the author,” which prompted me to succumb to the temptation of commenting (now that Amazon has added yet another layer of comment opportunity, so the hall of mirrors of consumer product ratings of the reviews can create even more “content” – who are the people “voting” so avidly yes or no on “helpfulness” of reviews?), and I confess that I posted, “Ruth, is that you?”

            Even when the negative response to Ruth Zion (she would be self-righteously thrilled to get so much attention) isn’t prompted by identification with her, there has been a pattern of, let’s call it reservation about her, concern that she is too much, unreal, not believable, not like someone you would ever meet, and often this is the sole criticism reserved for the traditional “however” paragraph that usually occurs in the antepenultimate paragraph of a traditional print review that is otherwise a rave. The Ruth Zion criticism has been more than counterbalanced by much Ruth Zion appreciation from all over, which has been immensely gratifying. (My favorite moment at a library event in New Hampshire last month was when a woman whose book group had just discussed Triangle raised her hand during the q and a to say she just wanted to say she loved the way Ruth Zion used the word “irregardless.”)   

            I am intrigued, however, in a more general way, by the notion that a character in a novel shouldn’t seem too much like a character in a novel. As a self-taught writer who learned by reading, which means that my greatest teachers were probably Edith Wharton (Undine Spragg, anyone?), Philip Roth, Muriel Spark, and Vladimir Nabokov, I know that I have always been especially drawn to the characters who do loom a little large. Isn’t that why we read novels, to encounter people we wouldn’t meet in our ordinary lives? Did this sort of character in fiction go out of fashion and nobody told me? If I had gone to an MFA program, would these new policies on characters in novels, these requirements that all characters must be utterly realistic, devoid of any symptoms of fiction whatsoever, have been spelled out clearly?  Anyone want to talk about this?

            

            

Talking Triangles with Katharine Weber

As promised, the LitKicks Interview with Katharine Weber We chat about history, gender, DNA, triangles, what September 11 has to do with it, what George Gershwin has to do with it, and what Ms. Weber has got in store for us with her next novel.

Katharine's guest post coming soon.