Friedman’s not the first person to remind us that self-promotion—or “building a platform”—in the digital age is a nuanced and long-term project, a leap-of-faith investment, whose dividends are hard to quantify. But she hits the nail on the head nonetheless. Be creative, she is is saying. Participate. Bring something of immediate value to the table, and (this is critical) be willing to give it away.

Most importantly, it has to be about more than selling books—or whatever your goal might be. It has to be about what you stand for, and who you are.

Self-promotion, with integrity. Is that it? Coincidentally, this is the title of a great piece in Publishing Perspectives about Stephen Elliot and the interesting and innovative ways he has generated a following, both as founding editor of the online magazine The Rumpus and as author of The Adderall Diaries. With his house-to-house reading tour, his weekly personal e-mail to 5,000 subscribers, a self-designed iPad app for his book, and other outside-the-box initiatives, Elliot seems to exemplify much of what Friedman is talking about.

But it’s also notable that he is willing and able to live on $25,000 a year (in a co-op with a communal bathroom, no less) and that he disavows any aspiration to become a best-selling author. By his own account, Elliot will be content to know that he has made an impact on a relatively small but devoted readership and that his books will remain in print. The new literary model, the Elliot case study suggests, is not just about improvisational marketing strategies; it’s also about rethinking your definition of success.

I was going to write about Portland State University’s partnership with Hewlett-Packard and Lulu to create print-on-demand books, but then I came across this video. It may not be more newsworthy than the new print-on-demand machine, but it is much funnier, and sometimes that’s what you need.

I suppose the video clip IS somewhat newsworthy, though, since I was not even aware that pop star Justin Bieber had published a memoir. Well, until just recently I was not even aware of Justin Bieber at all! He’s not just another pretty face, dear readers! He sings and dances, and he is a published author. Lest you think I am being too sarcastic, here’s a confession: I saw Justin Bieber on the season finale of Shaq Vs., and I actually found him to be quite charming.

I have to confess that I have not really understood the point of book trailers. It seems counterintuitive to market a book with a video, but perhaps I just need to rewire my brain. Well, if more book trailers were like the one above for Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story, then I would completely be on board. It’s clever! Funny! Heart warming! Of course, not all authors are connected enough to have celebrity authors and famous actors appear in their book trailers, but I think there’s a lesson in the trailer nonetheless: it’s okay to have some fun.

This week Publishing Perspectives launches a new series of stories called Publishing People We Admire. The first installment features Lauren Cerand, a self-taught independent publicist in New York City, who helped discover the enormous book-selling power of “The Daily Show,” in addition to anticipating several years ago that “the online community would be the next stage in public engagement, presentation, and dialogue.”

On her website, testimonials about the quality of her work indicate that she is not only a discerning judge of talent but also a refreshing force of positivity and integrity in the industry. In Meredith Bryan’s recent New York Observer article called “My Town of Kind!”—which describes a new era of civility, earnestness, and colleaguiality on the Internet—Cerand is quoted as saying, “that very cynical voice worked really well from 2003-2006 . . . but really negative people, they don’t have a lot of friends.” (And in 2010, as we all know, “friends” = audience.)

According to Publishing Perspectives, Cerand’s main criteria for the projects she chooses is that they be “dynamic, meaningful and relate to the way we live in culture now.” The profile focuses especially on Cerand’s volunteer work with Girls Write Now (GWN), a New York City non-profit that mentors young, at-risk girls by helping them to develop their voices as writers.

I’m looking forward to following this series and learning about other creative, innovative figures on today’s publishing frontier. If you’ve got a hero in publishing, make your nomination today.

First there was the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile and then the Peeps Fun Bus, and now there’s the Penguin Anniversary-mobile. The automobile, which commemorates the 75th anniversary of Penguin Books, will be touring the United States and making stops for anniversary parties at bookstores. The Penguin Car, a flaming orange Mini Cooper emblazoned with the Penguin logo, will also be transporting authors to book signings and celebrations.

Penguin will donate a set of 75 of its most prominent titles to a library or literacy organization in each scheduled stop along the anniversary tour. In June the Penguin Car will visit Minnesota, New York, South Carolina, Kentucky, and California. Though Penguin’s official anniversary date is July 30, the anniversary tour will continue through the summer. At the end of the anniversary celebration, the Penguin Car will be auctioned off, and proceeds will be donated to a literacy group.

Another fun part of Penguin’s celebration is Penguin Ink, which pairs six tattoo artists with six Penguin titles. The tattoo artists designed new covers for the titles, which include Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee, From Russia with Love (yes, it’s a James Bond title) by Ian Fleming, and The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace.

Visit Penguin’s special anniversary website here to follow the Penguin Car and read about the history of Penguin Books.

Some of the published titles are already well-known works, such as Natsume Soseki’s Botchan and Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories. The selected works cover a number of genres, including mysteries, poetry, short stories, and novels. Upcoming titles (for which, I believe, the publishing rights are still available), include an introduction to contemporary Japanese poetry, fantasy novel The Mandala Way by Masako Bando, historical novel Tokyo Seven Roses by Hisashi Inoue, and literary biography A Thousand Strands of Black Hair by Seiko Tanabe.

Thanks to the very informative Three Percent blog, which focuses on international literature, for clueing me in about JLPP! I’m definitely going to check out some of these books.

Anyone who ever looked at picture books as a child knows that books aren’t just about text. Visual images can be just as powerful as the written word. I find myself drawn to books that celebrate visual images, whether they are photographs, graphic designs, or hand-drawn artwork, so I was excited to discover viction:ary, a Hong Kong-based publisher that specializes in collaborative image books.

viction:ary’s books cover a range of topics, including tattoos, architecture, fonts, and logos. The firm’s latest offering is Nice to Meet You Too: Visual Greetings from Business Cards to Identity Packages. It’s a sequel to, you guessed it, Nice to Meet You, which was published in 2006. I learned about this book via Yuko Uemura, a graphic and textile designer whose screenprinted towels I have purchased. Her business card is featured in this edition.

Here are a few more covers to tantalize you:

Musikraphics, a book that shares designs related to music, such as album covers and music posters.

Tattoo Icons, complete with trial tattoo stickers!

Weale is a founding member of Livity, a socially responsible marketing agency based in south London. In 2004 the agency launched Live magazine, a publication produced, marketed, and distributed by local youth ages 13 to 21. In creating a platform for young voices, Live has also captured a young readership. The project has enjoyed considerable success, spawning sister publications in other areas of London. Now a multimedia enterprise, Live Futures also provides youth with the opportunity and tools to produce their own music and videos.

Check out this video to get a glimpse of the tremendous energy and positivity that Live is generating:

Weale believes that there is similar energy (and a huge market) just waiting to be tapped in South Africa. On a recent trip to the country, where the population consists of 4 million whites and 39 million blacks, he was “shocked by the small, inward-looking” publishing industry, which does not engage with the black audience at all, despite the fact that 80 percent of South Africa’s disposable income is spent within the townships. Here, as in London, Weale sees enormous potential in the convergence of entrepreneurship and social engagement. “Not only could [publishers] use the power of their brands to improve literacy and deprivation, but also to open up a new market,” he says.

Convinced that social responsibility is the future of business, Weale and his colleagues at Livity would probably agree with a previous article in Publishing Perspectives, “The Rise of ‘Cause’ Publishing,” which cites Dave Eggers’s Zeitoun and other McSweeney’s projects as evidence that “literary activism is fast-becoming the new arbiter of cool.”

Gabriel Levinson, who wrote the “Cause” article and has spearheaded some literary activism of his own in Chicago, makes a critical observation about all of this “publishing with a purpose”—which is that its success, both socially and in business terms, revolves around building and engaging community. Strikingly, it’s the same principle that’s driving so much innovation in publishing right now, from websites like Fictionaut to Richard Nash’s new Cursor project.

In the world of literary translators, Edith Grossman is a rock star. She is known for her mastery of translation, which includes the seemingly insurmountable ability to merge translated language with cultural nuance and style. Grossman is responsible for the English translations of a number of titles by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, including Love in the Time of Cholera, as well as the 2003 translation of Miguel de Cervantes’ classic Don Quixote.

Though many acknowledge that translation is an art form, there are plenty of others who hold translation in lesser regard, not giving it the credit it is due. It’s possible they consider translation a technical task, something a translator can plow through, dictionary in hand. Grossman takes offense to this, and she details the importance of translation in her forthcoming book, Why Translation Matters (release date March 30, 2010).

Works in translation are not wildly popular in the United States. According to research firm R. R. Bowker’s 2005 report, translated works make up only about 3 percent of book releases in the United States each year. Works translated from English, on the other hand, are plentiful (double-digit percentages) in other parts of the world. This is partly due to the dominance of the English language in print.

But all is not lost, as works translated to English do have an audience in the United States. Take, for example, the popularity of such books as Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (translated from French) and of the crime genre “Nordic Noir,” including The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell (Swedish) and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (Swedish).

To read more about Grossman and translation, see this article.

We have a deep interest in translated works here at Thomas Riggs & Company. Not only are we planning to publish translated books but we also have personal interests in various languages (one coworker even uses French software). The other day we were discussing the power and difficulty of translation; when translating works of fiction or poetry, how literal should the translator be? How much liberty is the translator allowed? Language is infused with cultural nuances, so how are those translated? So, yes, it’s very complex, which is why good translators should be applauded.

The 2010 Best Translated Book Awards just announced its winners, and the fiction and poetry winners both came from independent presses. The fiction winner was The Confessions of Noa Weber, a book in Hebrew by Gail Hareven, translated by Dalya Bilu and published by Melville House Press. Bilu has been translating Hebrew literature for some time and is highly respected in her field. The poetry winner was The Russian Version by Elena Fanailova, translated from Russian by Genya Turovskaya and Stephanie Sandler and published by Ugly Duckling Presse. Turovskaya, a poet herself, immigrated to the United States from the Ukraine, and Sandler is a professor at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.

Here’s a list of the other fiction finalists, in case you need more titles to add to your reading lists!

Ghosts
by César Aira
translated by Chris Andrews
published by New Directions
language: Spanish

The Twin
by Gerbrand Bakker
translated by David Colmer
published by Archipelago
language: Dutch

Anonymous Celebrity
by Ignácio de Loyola Brandão
translated by Nelson Vieira
published by Dalkey Archive
language: Portuguese

Wonder
by Hugo Claus
translated by Michael Henry Heim
published by Archipelago
language: Dutch

The Weather Fifteen Years Ago
by Wolf Haas
translated by Stephanie Gilardi and Thomas S. Hansen
published by Ariadne Press
language: German

The Discoverer
by Jan Kjærstad
translated by Barbara Haveland
published by Open Letter
language: Norwegian

Memories of the Future
by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
translated by Joanne Turnbull
published by New York Review Books
language: Russian

Rex
by José Manuel Prieto
translated by Esther Allen
published by Grove
language: Spanish

The Tanners
by Robert Walser
translated by Susan Bernofsky
published by New Directions
language: German

For a list of the poetry finalists and more information about the Best Translated Book Awards, go here.

The Second Pass, an online journal devoted to reviews, essays, and blog posts about books, is celebrating its first birthday. Founded by Brooklynite writer/editor John Williams, the site is building a reputation for its thoughtful and unpretentious coverage of all kinds of titles, from underpublicized debut novels (see Carrie Tiffany’s Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living) to obscure works by best-selling giants (see Stephen King’s nonfiction treatise on the horror genre, Danse Macabre).

On the occasion of the anniversary, in the spirit of The Second Pass’s commitment to championing little-known titles, Williams asked contributors to write about their favorite out-of-print books. The founder reflected, “one of my main goals [in launching the site] was to approach reading the way that readers do, not necessarily the way that publishers and even many other reviews do. Publishers naturally want to tell you about what’s new or what’s evergreen. But most readers know the pleasure of somehow discovering and falling in love with a book that has fallen from view. And no status is farther from view than the dreaded ‘out of print.’”

The resulting list is wonderfully eclectic and edifying. Standout titles for me are Julian Cope’s “LOUD and FAST” Krautrocksampler (1995) and Wilfrid Sheed’s “deeply smart, hysterically funny, and impossible to resist quoting” Essays in Disguise (1990).

The Second Pass has compiled some other interesting/provocative lists, too, including The 2110 Club (books from the last 10-15 years that are likely to be read a century from now) and Fired from the Canon (a list of hallowed tomes for which life is too short).

The site has already expanded my reading horizons.

People seem to have very strong feelings about digital media. It seems every day I read articles embracing digital media and articles dismissing it. And even within the differing camps there is discord—Kindle vs. iPad vs. whatever the e-readers from Sony and Barnes & Noble are called. Putting aside the nuts and bolts of publishing costs, I just don’t understand what the big deal is. If you want to read books on paper, then read books on paper. If you want to read ebooks, go right ahead. Can’t we all just get along?

One thing on which we can probably all agree is that the traditional publishing model is outdated and needs to be modernized. So, whichever tribe you belong to, you might find some humor in this tongue-in-cheek article from The Atlantic.

I remember back when Giant Robot Magazine first started up. It was some 15 years ago and launched by two young UCLA graduates. The magazine focuses on Asian and Asian-American popular culture, and it introduced me to a brave new world of artists, designers, musicians, movies, trends, food, and more. The magazine has spawned several Giant Robot stores/galleries, as well as a restaurant, gr/eats, and it has launched the careers and boosted the visibility of a number of artists and musicians, including Japanese artists Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara.

As we all know, times are tough in the publishing industry. Independent publishers such as Giant Robot that already operate on a shoestring budget have been hit harder than others. Even though Giant Robot Magazine is a well-established organization that cranks out a professional product, it still operates like a start-up, with just two full-time employees (the founders, Eric Nakamura and Martin Wong) and two part-timers. The company is as streamlined as it can be. This is why it has decided to launch an online fundraising campaign. The publication hopes to raise $60,000 so it can continue, at least for another solid year, to produce an uncompromised, quality magazine. The online campaign began about a month ago, and so far it has raised just over $18,000. To read more about the magazine and to donate, go here.

Classroom Publishing is a revised second edition and focuses on introducing publishing in the classroom and using it as an educational tool. Ooligan has set up a dedicated website and blog for Classroom Publishing, a twitter feed, and an e-mail newsletter. The website is much more than a mere advertisement—it serves as a guide, offering educator resources, news, and links to helpful information and sites. It continues the dialogue introduced in the book.

Ooligan will be hosting a launch party for Classroom Publishing on Friday, February 19, at p:ear gallery in Portland, Oregon, from 7 to 9 pm. See you there!

A while back I mentioned the popularity of cell phone novels in Japan, the land of the tiny and compact. Well, now the rage seems to be the Twitter novel. It’s probably not really possible to write an entire novel in 140 characters, even if they do happen to be information-packed Chinese characters, but it is certainly an interesting concept, and bully for the Japanese for trying! It is likely that most Twitter novelists serialize their novels.

The web site Japan Trends reports that by the end of 2009 there were more than 30,000 Japanese Twitter novels. In addition to novels, Japanese forms of poetry have also appeared on Twitter. Some novels have been anthologized into print versions as well.

To find examples of Twitter novels, just search for #twnovel on Twitter, and you will get your fill. I wonder what the next “literature” trend in Japan will be?

Steve Almond, author of Candyfreak and My Life in Heavy Metal, among others, has taken publishing matters into his own hands. Though Almond is still a hot commodity (his Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life will be availble April 13, 2010), he found that one of his book ideas was not generating much interest with publishers. His idea was a book that could be flipped over and read in two directions. One side would offer short stories, and the other side would contain essays about writing. The title? This Won’t Take But a Minute, Honey.

Unable to secure a large publisher, Almond decided to self-publish the book on demand using the Espresso Book Machine. His first reading was at Harvard Bookstore, which has an Espresso Book Machine that pumped out copies of the book as Almond read.

Almond isn’t ready to overthrow the corporate publishing model, but he does delight in the innovations that make such self-publishing possible. This Won’t Take But a Minute, Honey is available only at Almond’s readings. Read more about Almond’s experience here (it’s entertaining!).

French President Nicolas Sarkozy; image by guillaumepaumier via Flickr

Imagine the plight of the French. They want to protect their language and culture. They have what many consider to be one of the most beautiful languages, and their literary history is rich. From Molière to Flaubert to Sartre, the French have given much to the world.

Unfortunately for those who think literature is more than mere Internet “content” to attract advertising dollars, the times are changing quickly. Google is in the process of digitizing every book it can (admittedly to the great benefit of people who don’t have the resources otherwise to obtain certain texts), and soon Google and other American companies, such as Amazon and Apple, might dictate the publishing terms of books both old and new worldwide.

Faced with the possibility of losing control of its literary heritage, the French are mulling over possibilities. Even the conservative French president Nicolas Sarkozy—who has been called “Sarko l’Américain” for his pro-American sentiments—is concerned. He recently said of Google, “We won’t let ourselves be stripped of our heritage to the benefit of a big company, no matter how friendly, big or American it is.” He said France would finance its own book digitization program.

Amazon is also causing concern in France. Amazon has already battled France over the country’s prix unique du livre, which allows publishers, not booksellers, to set the price of a book. Because of this law, Amazon sells books for the same price as a small bookstore in Paris. Now five of France’s largest booksellers, including Fnac and Virgin, have proposed a nationalized ebook “hub.” There French publishers and booksellers would work together to sell ebooks online at a price determined by the publishers, preventing Amazon and other sites from competing with lower prices.

Guillaume Decitre, CEO of the French bookseller Decitre, said, “If we don’t manage to do this, what’s going to happen? We will find ourselves in front of a platform, or hub, already made by a private company . . . whether Amazon, Google or Apple.” In order to establish a nationalized ebook platform, the booksellers would have to persuade not only the French government but also French publishers, who don’t necessarily have the same interests. In fact, French publishers are thinking about creating their own single ebook platform without the booksellers.

Americans are often mystified by the French approach to politics, and many love to mock it. But if we are entering what comes to be called the Chinese century, it will be interesting to see how Americans react to their own declining empire, their own experience of being a small part of an economic world, this time dominated by Asia.

Everything must pass, but in publishing things are dying off at an uncomfortable rate. I was just getting used to the idea of the world without Gourmet magazine. Now there’s an obituary on the Stanford publishing program website.

The Stanford Publishing Course for Professionals has closed, a victim of both the economy and larger transitions in the program’s core fields. This move comes amidst broad cost-cutting at Stanford University. University Librarian Michael Keller writes: “It is deeply troubling to all of us who have been involved in the SPPC over the years, but the recession is affecting the publishing industries and higher education, as it has all other sectors of the global economy.”

The Stanford publishing program was the industry’s most prestigious. Publishing professionals, many from outside the United States, would spend a week living “among talented publishing colleagues in the heart of Silicon Valley, where U.S. innovation is born.” According to the website,

You’ll step away from the day-to-day demands of your job to study your business, immerse yourself in new ideas, and rethink your strategies. You will reinvent the way you work.

Oddly, the website also says, “This year has told the story: innovate—or die in the old paradigm.” I guess Stanford forgot to innovate. The program, which also included Web and digital publishing courses, is hoping to find a way to reopen one day. It will try to determine if a “revised pattern of revenue and a different programmatic governance structure might yield an SPPC that is self-sustaining.”

In case you want to see what you missed, here’s the promotional video.

Quick, name some Japanese authors. I bet you couldn’t come up with many names, could you? Plenty of English-language books get translated for the Japanese market, but not many
Japanese-language books get translated into English. Japanese book editor Hiroki Sakai decided to do something about this inequity and in 2001 founded Vertical Inc., a small publishing house that specializes in translated works of contemporary Japanese fiction and nonfiction.

Vertical publishes books in a number of genres, including graphic novels, comic books (manga), games, cookbooks, craft books, mysteries, and historical fiction. The company has a small but capable staff well versed in translation, marketing, and book design. Vertical is responsible for introducing American readers to the works of such authors as Kenzo Kitakata, a popular mystery writer who had published more than 100 novels in Japan yet was virtually unknown in the United States.

For a somewhat dated yet detailed article about Sakai and Vertical, go here.

“While people are busy ranking the hit books of the last 10 years,” the Guardian says, “many a publishing insider is quietly mourning a volume that unaccountably never made the ‘best of’ or bestseller lists, but should have. Here publishers, agents and translators speak up for the ones that really shouldn’t have got away.”

It’s fascinating to get this behind the scenes perspective on books that were expected to do well but didn’t.

Take, for example, the case of Mutiny (2001), the fourth novel by Lindsey Collen, a critically acclaimed and award-winning South African author (now living in Mauritius) whose readership was thought to be growing. The book was “published with great energy and commitment by Bloomsbury” and received a few excellent reviews, including John Berger’s declaration that it was “a break-out and a breakthrough.” Still, “somehow it just never quite took off.”

Or Black Juice (2006), a collection of short stories by Margo Lanagan. Simonn Spantz, the editorial director at Gollancz, recalls that the in-house excitement about the book “was like having a new Angela Carter on your list.” Black Juice was packaged and marketed well. And it got great reviews. But 60 percent of the print run was returned, leaving the publisher “[c]rushed. And utterly mystified.”

Reading these accounts of miscalculation and inexplicable failure, one is reminded that the book business is capricious and nothing if not humbling.