entertainment

Cover designers often work with stock photography for various reasons, but finding the perfect low- or no-royalty image that isn’t overused can be a major challenge.

We've all seen the stock photos of serious business people gathered around a boardroom table or happy shoppers walking through a mall with their arms full of shopping bags, and while the images may be a bit overused, it's because they depict somewhat realistic situations.

And then there's some stock photos that make no sense. We don't think these images will be overused anytime soon.

At least we hope not.

Image courtesy of Getty.

I like to Twitter. Really, I do. But sometimes I have these dark, nightmarish moments that the little Twitter bird is going to peck out my eyes and feed on my soul. And in these dark, nightmarish moments, the Twitter bird looks like this.

Literary agent Rachelle Gardner knows that selling your book is as much the challenge, pleasure, burden and fight of authors as of publishers. And this is why.

Titling is key for any book, but methinks these celebrity memoirs were much more focused on memorable kitch value then brilliant book names.

The Abbeville Manual of Style presents a wonderful interview with Ed Champion, host of The Bat Segundo Show and book blogger. And because he likes Victorian literature and mint juleps, I’m automatically a shameless fan.

Maybe Chris Anderson of Wired shouldn’t have named his new book FREE (subtitle: The Future of a Radical Price). He was certainly thinking ‘free’ when he cribbed several of his ideas from Wikipedia and then did not edit or change them, leaving word-for-word passages in the final copy of the book. Whoops.

With the recent debacle regarding J.D. Salinger’s attempted copyright of his character to prevent J.D. California’s publishing of a sequel at a standstill (a federal judge has placed a restraining order on publication of the sequel), people are asking… who cares? Apparently, Holden Caulfield is not quite as captivating to today’s teenagers as he was in yesteryears.  Yes, I thought he was angst-filled, snobbish jerk too.

Just when you thought book censorship was becoming a pastiche, angry citizens demand books be pulled from a summer reading list… or burned at the stake. In Illinois, Sherman Alexie’s THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN is remaining on the summer reading list for freshman at Antioch Community High School despite protests from several parents, while in Wisconsin Francesca Lia Block’s BABY BE-BOP nearly got a library sued over its accessibility, which has LGBT groups and free speech committees fighting to keep it from being burned.

Erin Miller of About.com gives us the first half of her “Best Books for 2009.” Agree? Disagree? I’m happy, but that’s because Guillermo del Toro’s THE STRAIN is sitting happily on said list.

Dick Cheney has just signed a deal with Simon & Schuster to write his memoir, which is anticipated to be published in spring of 2011. One might be curious if certain news-making incidents involving hunting companions will be included, but that doesn’t exactly fall into the realm of Washington politics.

Please don’t talk about sex… write about it. Times Online asks us: Who writes best about sex? Discussed? Taboos, full-frontal, the Kama Sutra, fantasies, the erotic lexicon, and more.
And not only that, but provides some tailor-made articles:

• How to write sex: a woman’s tips
• How to write sex a man’s tips

My new favorite agent-blogger, Chip MacGregor (what a name!), gives us an overview of ten items detailing where the publishing industry will be in 5 years. I don’t know about you, but I’m willing to put money on most of these.

The Royal Society is offering a £10,000 prize to writers of science books, proving that popular science is, well, popular. The shortlist is out, so if you haven’t started already, illuminate your mind.

A blog we recommend for all you comic, graphic novel and manga readers, one of the best resources out there is Publishers Weekly’s The Beat, the News Blog of Comics Culture by Heidi MacDonald. Chock full of news, links, YouTube videos, comic reviews and recommendations, this is an excellent resource for the casual reader and avid collector alike.

Perhaps it is not quite literary, but in an age of democracy, there are still kings. And when those kings pass, the elegant ways in which we remember them are worthy of any book. The King of Pop is dead, and TIME presents a beautiful article on the glory, the revulsion, the sadness and the eccentricity surrounding the rise and fall of Michael Jackson by means of a literary reference—the endearing but heartrending man-child, Peter Pan.

When I was in elementary school, I experienced the advent of a life-changing new media as it became widely used by the public for the first time. That phenomenon was the Internet, and at twelve years old I was at an ideal age to become absorbed in this novel method of connecting with the world around me. I was impressed, but believed that this was merely a doorway to the virtual reality full-body immersive video game technology that they swore was just around the corner.

Needless to say, on this front I remain disappointed.

As a fervent book-reader, much of my time spent browsing was on the website of publishers and booksellers, authors and fansites as they sprang up all around me. For the first time there were easily accessible forums to learn about books and authors and connect with other fans. And I loved it.

(A few short anecdotes in no particular order: (a) I was an enthusiastic member of an extremely active website/e-mail fan club for YA author Christopher Pike based on his book The Midnight Club; (b) I played the Animorphs video game on my old-school PC; (c) I browsed the PBS website in search of trivia on my childhood television/book series, like Arthur and The Magic School Bus.)

Digital interconnectedness for today’s twelve-year-olds is as commonplace as any other marvel of the modern world, and today publishers and authors are scrambling to entice the ever-more technologically savvy youth to read an ordinary, paper book.  Especially with the advent of electronic book-reading devices, including the Kindle and Sony E-reader, and the increasing popularity of video and computer games, kids and teens today are coming to expect their entertainment on a digital platform.

Rachel Deahl of Publisher’s Weekly discusses the publishing industry’s response to this trend in her article “The New Storytelling: Multimedia Children's Publishing,”  which examines the multimedia platforms being developed to add multidimensional layers to the book reading experience. In short, books are developed that have several interlinking elements outside of the paper copy, including websites, forums, media content, cards, and even handheld games. Fourth Story Media’s The Amanda Project is one such example. The company, which focuses on new media content, describes The Amanda Project as an “interactive, collaborative mystery series” targeting teen girls. The intrigue of title alone would certainly have grabbed my attention when I was twelve.

But the challenge of any book that seeks to extend itself beyond its traditional form is in maintaining the integrity of the storytelling. Scholastic’s The 39 Clues, a collaborative book project utilizing a card set and website tie-in, marketed itself as a “built-in bestseller” meant to follow the success of Scholastic’s flagship title, the Harry Potter series, but has so far seen little of the media and public attention that its traditional predecessor received. Reviews of the series have been generally positive, though not enthusiastic, and make frequent reference to the “gimmick” behind the books. Such is my personal fear and trepidation about many of these projects—that story will play a secondary role to technological entertainment.

Rick Joyce of Perseus Book Group, which in 2006 published the highly unique Cathy’s Book, a predecessor of young adult interactive fiction, acknowledges the difficulty of keeping a story focused and characters interesting by asking the essential question: “Do I want to spend time with these characters?”

But publishers and authors alike seem to realize that whether or not they choose to embrace it, the future is already here. While multimedia and multiplatform young adult (and perhaps even adult) fiction are still at an experimental level and do not seem poised to replace the book-reading experience as we know it now, it certainly offers this newest generation a chance to shape for themselves how they choose to consume a story.

Tell us your thoughts on digital content and multimedia in young adult fiction. Intriguing new element to books or publicity stunt that detracts from them?

Bad news for those of you who lament theater marquees glutted with remakes, sequels, and cinematic versions of preexisting media: On October 19th, the partnership announced nearly two years ago between Random House and Focus Features will come to fruition with the release of Reservation Road. Based on the novel by John Burnham Schwartz, Random House is assuredly hoping the film will be an auspicious beginning to a new model that–if successful–guarantees large-scale book sales. Not to be left out, HarperCollins announced a deal of its own this week; the publisher will enter into a similar "strategic partnership" with Sharp Independent, giving the New York studio access to material in HarperCollins' heavyweight-laden roster.

From a marketing standpoint: genius.

A trade paperback edition of Reservation Road will coincide with the film's release date later this month, and a mass market paperback is also newly available. There’s no question that the increased visibility afforded to Schwartz’s work by the big screen will help move books. And for better or worse, the Hollywood touch appeals to many browsers who want Cusack on their High Fidelity, Witherspoon on their Vanity Fair. Although the trade paperback of Reservation Road is mercifully restrained, the mass market paperback’s cover gives the lead actors from the film that big-dramatic-face treatment employed by so many DVD covers.

One of the obstacles to the arrangement is that an experienced literary agent often holds film rights and sells them off separately, which may exclude some of Random House’s backlist, according to Stephen Zeitchik of Variety. There is also the issue of creative control: In the deal struck between Focus and Random House, the two entities would collaborate on the film from start to finish, jointly obtaining rights, overseeing production, selecting the director, and handling marketing and publicity, which may render the movies Random House Films produces an over-cooked broth. And where does the author fit in to all this? "[I]f writers are selling their work to be made into a film, they must be willing to relinquish artistic control of every aspect of their work," said Julian Friedman of Blake Friedman Literary and Script agents in a talk at the London Book Fair last year.

There’s also no way to tell how the agreement will affect acquisition of new titles by Random House—will a new component of manuscript evaluation be megaplex viability? Will the very personal act of writing a novel be compromised by the ultracollaborative movie-making process? Fortunately, Random House exercised good taste in choosing a partner for this venture; Focus Features has an impressive literary track record that includes film versions of The Pianist, The Constant Gardener, and Brokeback Mountain. Here’s hoping for continued output of creative, thoughtful adaptations. If handled well, this situation could provide helpful business symbiosis for both industries as well as quality artistic output.

As Variety's Stephen Zeitchik also points out, books and film have long coexisted within the same conglomerate, but never before have in-house deals of this scope been struck. And if you'll excuse a dated buzzword, the synergy doesn’t end with movies of Random House books; the publisher would also get dibs on novelizations of original screenplays.

Upcoming projects from Random House Films include Dean Koontz's The Husband, Yasmina Khadra's The Attack, and Bob Drogin's Curveball.