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.

It’s supposed to be a bad economic climate for brick-and-mortar bookstores, and it seems booksellers are closing their doors left and right. It might come as a surprise, then, to hear about the opening of a new bookstore, one funded by the federal government. The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), responsible for all sorts of government publications since 1861, recently opened a retail bookstore in Washington, D.C. The store is actually a reopening of sorts, since a GPO bookstore has been in existence since 1895. The new store was redesigned to mimic more closely contemporary booksellers. The redesign and renovation were handled in-house by GPO employees.

If you don’t live in D.C., you can always order books online. The GPO bookstore offers thousands of titles that cover a vast array of subjects, everything from the history of the United States to national parks and technical manuals. To illustrate the diversity of the bookstore’s collection, here are the top five best sellers from July 2010.

1. Federal Benefits for Veterans, Dependents and Survivors, 2010
2. Reports of the United States Tax Court, Volume 131, July 1, 2008, to December 31, 2008
3. Civics Flash Cards for the Naturalization Test, 2009
4. Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories, 2009
5. International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis as Approved by the World Health Organization, 2007

Also in keeping with modern times, the GPO has a Twitter feed as well as a blog.

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.

There are probably plenty of writers out there who kind of dread book tours, but author Jim Lynch isn’t one of them, or at least he isn’t at the moment—he has found a way to combine pleasure with work. An avid sailor, Lynch cruised from his home in Olympia, Washington, to various booksellers in the San Juan Islands (in the Seattle area) during a weeklong tour at the end of July. He promoted two of his novels on the tour: The Highest Tide, his first novel, and Border Songs, recently issued in paperback.

Lynch’s sailboat is a 1970 Bristol 32. He kicked off his tour on July 24 on Shaw Island as guest speaker at the Shaw Island Historical Society Annual Meeting. His final stop was on July 31 in Anacortes at Watermark Books. Lynch also made stops on San Juan Island, Lopez Island, Orcas Island, and Lummi Island. This month he will be traveling on land in Oregon and Washington. For more information visit his website. Also check out this article about his nautical tour in the Wall Street Journal.

Book clubs are pretty amazing things. I don’t belong to one at the moment, but I would say 80 percent of my friends are members of book groups. I really believe there is a book group for everyone. There are highly structured book groups, very laidback ones, clubs that read only classics, I could go on and on. Well, I just learned of a public book club in Minneapolis called Books & Bars. The group meets once a month at Bryant Lake Bowl, a theater that is adjoined by a pub and bowling alley.

Books & Bars has a moderator, comedian Jeff Kamin, and each session boasts about 70 attendees. Among the book club’s sponsors are independent bookseller Magers & Quinn and satirical newspaper The Onion. Participants are encouraged to purchase the selected books from Magers & Quinn and to enjoy food and drink at Bryant Lake Bowl during the gatherings. And even though it’s a book club, reading the book selection is not a requirement.

Upcoming book selections include The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, and illustrated novel Blankets by Craig Thompson.

Do you attend bookstore readings? I am fortunate to live in Portland, Oregon, home to many bookstores, including the venerable Powell’s Books. I could probably go to a bookstore reading on a daily basis, and I often read through the listings in the local paper with great interest. The truth, though, is that I rarely go to bookstore readings. I never gave it much thought other than to attribute it to laziness, but then I saw this article, “The Dreaded Question: What is a ‘Reading’?” in the Huffington Post. The piece is by bookstore owner Alex Green, who talks about how the label “reading” is not quite accurate. He writes that “many of us are reluctant to attend a reading because we don’t know what one is, and we become afraid that something egregiously uncomfortable, or boring, is going to happen.” Green then goes on to explain that readings, at least at his bookstore, are engaging and lively discussions.

Green’s article made me question why I don’t attend more bookstore readings, and I think he is right—I think they are going to be kind of boring. I fully expect the author to read a chapter or two from a book, and thanks, but I can do that on my own at home. I would rather know about the author’s writing process or reasons for writing a particular book, or maybe I want to know the author’s favorite flavor of ice cream. If Green is correct that “readings” are actually conversations between authors and readers, then I could get on board, but really, it’s hard to know what to really expect. So, what do you think of bookstore readings? Do you attend? Look forward to them? What do you like about readings?

*The photo is from the last “reading” I attended. It was at Powell’s Books for my friend Amy Karol, author of Bend the Rules Sewing and Bend the Rules with Fabric. At the “reading” she displayed and discussed some of projects in the book, took questions, signed books, and hosted a cakewalk, so no, it wasn’t a typical reading.

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.

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.

The ongoing debate about digital media vs. traditional publishing and ebooks vs. paper books got me all nostalgic about past digital transitions. Do you remember when you got your first personal computer? I think I was a junior in college, and I inherited my brother’s IBM PC. It used those 5.25″ diskettes, and I had to type DOS commands. I had a dot matrix printer! Before that I used what I believed to be a very fancy electric typewriter—a Swintec. I tell you I was the envy of my dormmates. And when I learned to type? A summer class in high school on an IBM Selectric. See? I bet you’re feeling nostalgic, too!

No matter which decade we are in, it seems there are always people who have vintage and retro sensibilities. About 15 years ago a friend and I regularly corresponded by U.S. mail via letters typed on manual typewriters. Even then it was rather retro. I used my father’s portable Hermes 3000, a sleek green typewriter with smooth keys. It should still be in my house somewhere (it better be, or someone, ahem, cough, husband, will be in big trouble). I also have an Hermes 3000 with cursive script that I picked up at a garage sale for $10 some years back. I was really surprised to discover that these typewriters now sell for hundreds of dollars, but I guess that is just evidence that no matter how many newfangled gadgets there are, there will always be value in the good old stuff.

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.

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.

Tim Parks, who blogs for the New York Review of Books, had an interesting post recently about the pressure that writers (particularly non-American writers) feel to reach an international audience and the way this is affecting what and how they write:

There is a growing sense that for an author to be considered “great,” he or she must be an international rather than a national phenomenon . . . [M]ore and more European, African, Asian and South American authors see themselves as having “failed” if they do not reach an international audience.

Parks goes on to describe how this pressure has increased with the advent of electronic submissions, which enable an author to send a new work simultaneously to publishers all over the world, such that international rights may even be purchased before the writer has found a publisher in his or her own country:

An astute agent can then orchestrate the simultaneous launch of a work in many different countries using promotional strategies that we normally associate with multinational corporations. Thus a reader picking up a copy of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, or the latest Harry Potter, or indeed a work by Umberto Eco, or Haruki Murakami, or Ian McEwan, does so in the knowledge that this same work is being read now, all over the world . . . This perception adds to the book’s attraction.

The disturbing side effect of this global market consciousness, Parks suggests, is that authors may be inclined to tailor their work for ease of translation and “remove obstacles to international comprehension,” particularly by keeping the language simple:

Kazuo Ishiguro has spoken of the importance of avoiding word play and allusion to make things easy for the translator. Scandinavian writers I know tell me they avoid character names that would be difficult for an English reader . . . What seems doomed to disappear, or at least to risk neglect, is the kind of work that revels in the subtle nuances of its own language and literary culture, the sort of writing that can savage or celebrate the way this or that linguistic group really lives.

It will be unfortunate if the proliferation of literature in translation can only happen through its homogenization.

Written in the aftermath of the 2005 riots in the Paris suburbs and published by La Fabrique in 2007, L’insurrection qui vient was denounced by the French government as a terrorist manual. The text first gained significant attention in 2008, following the arrest of its alleged authors, a group of youths now known as the Tarnac 9, on charges of sabotaging French train lines.

The English translation was published last year in the United States by Semiotext(e), a leftist California press known for publishing such household names in French cultural theory as Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, and Jean Beaudrillard. The Semiotext(e) edition had an initial print run of only 3,000 copies. Incidentally, too, the text is available for free online in both French and English. And yet the book is now in its sixth printing, and M.I.T. Press, its distributor, reports that it can barely keep enough copies in stock.

How has this fringe book become such a hot item? Some initial U.S. publicity for the book was generated by a guerrilla-style reading event in New York last June. But the real force behind sales appears to be the conservative commentator Glenn Beck, who launched a seven-minute diatribe against the book last July, which concluded with the inadvertent plug: “I am not calling for a ban on this book,” Beck explained. “It’s important that you read this book, [so] you know [what is coming,] and be ready when it does.” Recently Beck devoted an entire segment to the book, calling it “quite possibly the most evil thing I’ve ever read.” A Publishers Weekly article cites MIT Press associate publicist Diane Denner as saying that the book experiences a spike in sales every time Beck mentions it.

Ironically, while Michael Moore mentioned the book as his most recent read in an August 2009 interview with the Hollywood Reporter, his own “endorsement” had no such effect.

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!).

Congratulations to The Rumpus, which just celebrated its one-year anniversary and, therewith, its “fitness for survival in the age of the interwebs.” Founded in San Francisco by Stephen Elliott, author of the much-acclaimed Adderall Diaries, The Rumpus is a relatively edgy magazine seeking to offer fresh coverage of books, music, art, comics, politics, film . . . and sex. From their statement of purpose:

We’re focused on culture but not “People Magazine culture.” We want to introduce readers to things they might not have heard of yet. The Web was supposed to diversify content and so far it hasn’t. If anything, the Internet has amplified the echo chamber so all the big online magazines are focusing on the same stories.

One of the things I like about The Rumpus is its effort to bring attention to books that would otherwise fall by the wayside in the unforgiving world of Dan Brown novels and Sarah Palin memoirs.

For more on the origins of the magazine and its editorial philosophy, see Elliott’s interview with Jacket Copy in April of last year. Not only has Elliott created in The Rumpus a vibrant new forum for cultural commentary on the web, but he is also rethinking the standard author book tour in ways that seem more rewarding for the author, both in terms of meeting the reading public and in terms of book sales. See his recent essay, The D.I.Y. Book Tour, in the New York Times.

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.

Recently on a flight from the United States to Europe, I read a book by Paulo Coelho, worked on my computer, glanced at a magazine article about Tiger Woods, listened to Bach and Francis Cabrel on my smartphone, read the paper, and watched part of The Proposal. What’s strange is that, while flying thousands of feet off the ground in a metal tube, it’s normal to have so much “content,” so much power to satisfy our wishes and needs.

And more is coming. Airlines have started offering in-flight Wi-Fi, and someday soon we might be able to make cell calls from the sky.

KLM is now considering one more way to distract passengers: e-readers containing books, magazines, and newspapers. According to KLM, which provides service to numerous countries, passengers would be able to choose material in their own language. The idea emerged from a contest sponsored by KLM, Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, and the Dutch social networking site Hyves.

But before dismissing the idea as a gimmick or merely ho-hum, take a look at this video of an electronic magazine of the future, the kind of magazine airlines might one day provide their passengers. Instead of functioning merely as receptacle of articles, this electronic reader, conceived by Swiss media company Bonnier, tries to mimic the pleasure offered by the magazine in its current paper form: the surprise and beauty experienced as we turn the page.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

On November 30 Electric Literature (about which I posted earlier in the month) launched a bold experiment with author Rick Moody, using Twitter to publish his latest short story in “microserial” fashion. It was Moody’s idea to write a story expressly for Twitter, and the task of writing a narrative that could be transmitted 140 characters at a time turned out to be quite challenging. “I became obsessed with the idea of creating for that character clock,” he told The Brooklyn Ink.

The resulting story, “Some Contemporary Characters,” took Moody five months to write and was tweeted in 10-minute intervals over three days, for a total of 153 tweets.

The project ran into some unforeseen difficulty, however, as the story was being simultaneously tweeted from about 20 other sources (who were invited by Electric Literature to participate), including Vroman’s and other bookstores. Anyone who was following more than one of these Twitter feeds received an onslaught of identical tweets. Also problematic was the decision by many sources to inject the story installments into their regular ongoing twitter stream, so that the story was constantly being interrupted by extraneous tweets.

The annoyance caused by these logistical oversights brought on quite a firestorm of criticism, especially from inside the book world. Vroman’s abandoned its broadcast of the story midway through, while the Melville House blog called the microserial adventure a “fiasco.”

But Electric Literature remains unapologetic. As cofounder Scott Lindenbaum told Media Bistro’s Morning Media Menu, the magazine gained more than 10,000 new readers during the 3-day storytelling—an increase of more than 300 percent. Also, positive comments on Twitter outweighed the negative ones by a ratio of 10 to 1. For his own part, according to Lindenbaum, Moody was a bit awed by the potential of Twitter to reach such a wide readership instantaneously.

Will the magazine publish narrative fiction on Twitter again? Absolutely.

I’ve always been a sucker for the whole “gift with purchase” thing. Offer me something for free, and I will most likely purchase something I don’t need or even want just so I can score the free item. I am a marketer’s dream. But really, who doesn’t like to get something for free or for a good deal?

Japanese marketers caught on to incentive marketing long, long ago. I remember visiting Japan during Japan’s prosperous years, and it seemed like every time I bought something, no matter how inexpensive the item, I would get a little gift (”omake”) or a raffle type of ticket that could be reimbursed for a “prize” of some sort. Nowadays Japanese companies aren’t as willing to dole out freebies, but the phenomenon certainly is not extinct. I recently visited Japan, and I received plenty of goodies, including gift socks at one hotel chain for making online reservations.

The concept of omake is still prominent in Japanese publishing. Publishers sometimes run campaigns to promote best sellers. My mother, for instance, once received a wizard’s cap and tote bag for purchasing one of the Japanese-language Harry Potter books. Magazine publishers have taken incentive marketing a step further by sometimes including brand-name extras with issues. For example, fashion magazine Sweet has enjoyed phenomenal growth in readership since offering popular, designer omake, such as Anna Sui wallets and Charlotte Ronson makeup cases. According to website Japan Trends, circulation for the magazine has grown to some 700,000, and many may be purchasing the magazines solely for the gift.

So do you suppose book sales in the United States would increase if publishers included a little omake with the books? This would certainly provide an advantage over digital books; after all, with a digital download of an e-book, all you get is the book. The horror!