Remembering

A few days ago, Gillian Polack sent an e-mail to Nicki and me with the ominous subject line: “Bad news.” Something like that always makes my heart shrivel up a bit with terror; what am I going to know?

Do you remember that one of the first things I did for BiblioBuffet was interview a writer called Paul Haines? How we talked at great length about his use of bad language and how it should be handled? How he was fighting cancer? Well, he fought beyond anything I’ve ever seen. He lasted long enough so that he got to see his child have her first day at school. The doctors kept saying “You won’t see Christmas,” “You won’t see New year” and he did. Today, however, he died.

I thought you ought to know.

Thank you both for letting me do that interview, and thank you especially for letting his language shine there on the page, without any cuts or alternates.

The interview to which she referred was her second column for BiblioBuffet. I didn’t remember it until I re-read it and reached the end where an excerpt from Wives, his novella was.

Now I remembered. I remembered the discomfort with which I read it. I remember the struggle within myself as editor and reader, the former arguing that my personal boundaries should not transcend my responsibilities as editor, the latter cringing at the scene depicted and the language used. And I remembered the discussion with Nicki over that discomfort. She had no problem with it, but it wasn’t her personal take on it that mattered. Nor, as we talked it out, was it mine. Ultimately, it came down to editorial accountability. Was BiblioBuffet willing to stand behind its motto of “writing worth reading”? If so, I had to face the fact that this might mean, as it did then, printing material that I personally found offensive.

Nicki and I both eventually won myself over. I didn’t have to like what went up all the time, nor did I need to print everything that came our way, but I did need to be true to the mission statement that I originally wrote for BiblioBuffet. For the first time I had to face, squarely, the fact that running a publication that possessed integrity meant going beyond personal boundaries. I couldn’t control what the contributors chose to write, nor did I want to. I don’t believe in hiring the best and then trying to stifle that excellence. Prior to opening BiblioBuffet I learned a lot of lessons as a writer. This was the beginning of my lessons as an editor.

To Paul and Gillian I owe a great deal of thanks for their contributions to my life—as a person, a writer, a reader, and as an editor.

Paradise Lost, Paradise Found

Editors come in all types. Most of them, I think, start out meaning well. They want to do good by their writers and for their publication. But time and experience change some—not for the better. And when that happens it can have a long-lasting impact on an inexperienced but talented writer.

What I didn’t know until recently was that Pete Croatto, our sports specialist and a skilled, confident writer who works very hard, had come from such a background:  

I think a large part of that mania comes from being a reporter at a small-town daily newspaper, where I was overworked, overstressed, and young. As a result, I made a lot of mistakes—which got editors angry—and pretty much meant they treated me like a child. It was a humiliating experience, one that ended with me screaming at the frustrated managing editor over the telephone.

Neither Nicki nor I can even imagine being that kind of an editor. Yes, when you have an unpublishable piece it’s frustrating. And scary. The tension as the clock runs quickly toward a fixed deadline is tremendous, and sometimes it comes out. But it shouldn’t. To me, this is an unforgivable action from someone who is supposed to not just supervise but mentor. Presumably older and wiser, certainly more experienced, the editor has the obligation to work with the writer, to make what the writer wants to say better, clearer, stronger.

That was 10 years ago, and I’ve been rebuilding my confidence clip by clip. But every time I make a mistake I’m filled with that hot shame of being 23 years old, rudderless, and at a complete loss of how something I love could cause such misery. I’m just now seeing that it’s time to get over it, that I’m human.

Fortunately, Pete has moved on. And become the writer he wants to be. I wish I could go back to that editor and tell him that whatever frustrations he had that day that he probably forgot them soon afterward. But his actions lasted a lot longer. It’s what I always try to remember in any interactions I have with writers. Humiliation kills. Kindness grows

Good writers truly are worth growing.

Fries with That Review?

As the publishing industry changes, and as technology allows for anyone to publish inexpensively, the number of books issued each year continues to grow. The self-published and vanity-published ones are mostly  destined to sell fewer than 100 copies each because no one knows about them, but even authors from the major houses feel the pressure to get to get and keep their sales up or risk not having future books accepted. That means publicity.

Publicity can encompass all kinds of things: book signings; book tours (virtual or, less commonly, real); postings on their own blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, or on forums; links, articles in magazines, newspapers, and online publications; and book reviews. 

Places that publish book reviews also span a wide variety of types and styles. There are trade publications such as Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus. These get the attention of those who can make a book such as librarians and booksellers. For general readership, the big venues are the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and similar. Sadly, most of these have cut back on their coverage because of insufficient advertising, but they still are the dream of most authors. With the exception of the NYT, several online sites that incorporate reviews are nearly as powerful: Slate, Bookslut, the Huffington Post. There are the lesser known but also high-quality sites and blogs—BiblioBuffet among them—that are exclusively book review sites or that review books as part of their offerings. What they all have in common is a well-designed product, fine writing, a passion for good books, and writing designed for readers seeking opinions on good books. In other words, they are the Parmigiano-Reggiano of the book world.

Over in the other corner are the Cheez Whiz of book review websites and blogs. Like vanity publishers, these are easily discernible by their pandering to authors, the inevitable bells and twinkles of amateur web design, and often poor writing. Not all of them do this, but it is not unusual for them to charge authors, not to get a book reviewed but to get it reviewed expeditiously. It’s still money, though, and it’s coming out of the author’s pocket.

Fact: Legitimate book review sites cater to readers. Excellent, legitimate book review sites cater to readers with high-quality writing, factual statements, honest opinions, insightful commentary. In other words, they know who their audience is and they care about that audience.

I dislike these “vanity review sites” as much as I do vanity publishers. The fuels upon which both feed are, in too many cases, naïveté and desperation. So next week I plan to do a compare-and-contrast analysis of two very different online review sites to highlight what one should look for and avoid regardless of whether one is an author or a reader.

The Times They Are A-Changin’

In a manner of speaking, they are changing. But only a bit. Our submission guidelines (for those seeking reviews) currently state this:

BiblioBuffet’s mission is to bring into the public eye high- quality books from small andmedium-size commercial publishers including university presses, though we review from large houses as well. We accept books, both fiction and nonfiction, in all genres except business, self-help, true crime, New Age, and romance. We do not review self-published or vanity-published books, which include but are not limited to those from Publish American, Vantage Press, Xlibris, iUniverse, Dorrance, Booklocker, and Lulu.

Two reasons exist for this: (1) it helps us manage our inflow by cutting down on the number of books we receive, and (2) it filters out books that lack any kind of editorial gatekeeping, that is, they have not been selected, paid for, and edited by houses whose goal is to sell books to the public.

When I originally wrote thes guidelines, I had in mind factors that would help determine how we would define a “commercial” press, especially because we wanted to find good books from smaller publishing houses. One of those factors was distribution. To keep it simple, I will say that distribution is the means by which publishers sell their books to the book buyers and owners of brick-and-mortar stores. Online stores, on the other hand, list every book that has an ISBN, a unique identifying number. The difference is important because online shopping, whether at Amazon, Powell’s, or your local independent store’s site, is rarely good for browsing. If you know what you want or if you are looking for a nonfiction title on a specific subject (“how to sail”) it can be excellent, but if you are a fiction reader wanting to browse new titles there is almost no way to . . . easily browse. You are up against millions of books. At physical bookstores, browsing is easy; you have fewer books but you have the ability to take them off the shelf, check out their cover art, skim the blurbs and jacket copy, and read enough to determine if it is a book you want to buy. These are comparison factors that can’t really yet—even with excerpts—be gotten online.

This is where recommendations come in. These could come from various sources: friends and family members whose taste you trust; book clubs; readers’ discussion forums like Dirda’s Reading Room, Book Balloon, LibraryThing, GoodReads; or some of the numerous excellent blogs and websites devoted to books and reading, whether they are connected to bookstores, magazines, or newspapers, or are run independently, and whether they specialize or are general.

As one of these general independent websites, BiblioBuffet takes its responsibilities to its readers seriously. We have what we believe to be some of the best writers around. We give them maximum freedom to find books that interest them, and we encourage them to write honestly.

One of our guidelines for reviews and reviewers, as noted above, is that we do not review self-published or vanity-published books. But that “rule” has loosened up a bit lately because we have run across a few—a very few—independently or self-published books that go above and beyond the usual self-published level. One of those was a book called Bound for Evil: Curious Tales of Books Gone Bad, issued by Dead Letter Press, a niche publisher of fine limited edition books of new and classic fantasy and horror fiction. DLP’s books do not have the traditional channel of distribution to bookstores. Instead, they must be ordered from the publisher’s website. But . . . these books are as carefully conceived, planned, and executed as any other—and more so than most.

More are coming too. Nicki Leone is working on a column about a new book of poetry, an unusual book in several ways (“about race in the south by the former NC poet laureate, printed in a limited letter press edition, selling for $100, with covers made from old pulped confederate flags”). And Pete Croatto recently e-mailed us to ask about the possibility of reviewing a self-published book he discovered that he feels is going to be fantastic.  (We said yes.) Neither of these books is going to be available through bookstores, but they are available. And because they are excellent you, our readers, deserve to know about them.

During our e-mail discussion with Pete over the book, Nicki wrote what I feel was a to-the-point summary of our goals: 

The most important thing is that BB’s writers have the freedom to write about what moves them. I trust all our columnists to understand when a book is worth reviewing and when it isn’t, so if you have found a self-published book that covers an important or interesting topic or event, or that you think is particularly well done, or brings up an interesting issue that you want to tackle, then that seems like enough justification to me to write about it. 

Lauren’s points about BB’s original criteria are worth keeping in mind, and should be honored for their intentions, if not followed to the letter. . . . if you do decide to review a self-published book, it needs to be evaluated as if it had received all the editorial work one expects from a traditional press. If it doesn’t show that level of craft—if the text is rambling, the typesetting bad, the cover looks like someone’s first Photoshop project, then the review needs to fault the book for it.

I don’t recommend changing the official submission policy, all the while keeping in mind internally that there may be a difference between “self-published” and “vanity” and that once in a blue moon the former can be considered, if one of our writers is interested enough or passionate enough about the book.

So while our original guidelines are not changing they are incorporating flexibility so that we at BiblioBuffet can continue to bring you news of books that offer “writing worth reading” and are “reading worth writing about.”

The Ethics of BiblioBuffet

Even passionate book reviewers can feel overwhelmed with books at times. When I go to the post office and see half a dozen book packages or boxes I get excited. (What book lover wouldn’t?) But opening them is a little different. Not all interest me. Sometimes none do.

Many, of course, go out to BiblioBuffet’s reviewers to await their turn in the reviewer’s spotlight. Right now, there are six books for review on my desk, the oldest of which has been there for, um, a while. Like cats, they are very good at instilling guilt—their equivalent of “I’m starving!” is “I haven’t been read!”.

Reviewing books is a matter of picking and choosing. It has to be. There are too many good books published and too few good reviewers to do enough of them justice. Even if BiblioBuffet had 100 reviewers writing weekly we couldn’t cover even a small fraction of what is published on an annual basis.

Not that we would try. There are a lot of good books in which no one at BiblioBuffet has an interest, or that are inappropriate either because they are in a genre we do not review or because they were self-published or vanity-published.

That still leaves a whopping number of worthy books. So when I am faced with that, what happens? First, I e-mail the reviewers to find out who wants what. Sometimes, if I know a book will be of interest to a particular reviewer, I contact that person first. But often the e-mail is a group one, and whoever gets back to me first gets the book, especially if more than one reviewer wants it.

What happens to the books that no one wants?

That was recently the focus of a week-long discussion on Book Balloon, the literary forum to which I belong. Its main question: Why shouldn’t reviewers sell the books they get for free? And why shouldn’t buyers save money by buying  the ARCs (advanced reader copies) that other reviewers are selling on Amazon or eBay, or that they have sold to the Strand Bookstore?

Some members feel it is their right to cheaply priced or pre-publication copies, that is, unfinished, books. Managing Editor Nicki Leone and I are adamant that selling books we receive for review (whether they are reviewed or not) and don’t intend to keep are never to be sold or given to a person or entity who is going to sell them. In fact, one of the few rules we have for contributors is that this is not allowed. How do we enforce it? Well, we can’t. All we can do is be clear about our policy in our Writers’ Guidelines and rely on our contributors’ ethics.

The reason for our stand is two-fold. First, ARCs are unfinished books. They come with a warning that they are not to be quoted from as they are still in progress. They also have a large “Not for Sale” notice on them. These are not meant for the marketplace because the editing and rewriting is still going on. So if you read an ARC you are not seeing what the author and editor intend you to see, and if your opinion of an author’s work—especially if you talk about it on Library Thing, Amazon, in a book club, or elsewhere—is based on the unfinished version that may well do damage to the book, the author, and the publisher. It also cheats the reader of the true experience.

We feel strongly that it does not matter that the publisher prints ARCs specifically to be given away because the publisher does not, in our opinion, relinquish their rights to their disposition of it after it leaves their offices. The book is not designed to be sold in the normal manner of business, thereby benefiting the publisher and author.

Note that I am not talking about a re-sale but the initial sale. When you buy a book, part of the price you pay is returned to the publisher and then onto the author and her agent. A profitable return is what keeps everyone in business, keeps them writing and producing more books for readers to buy. But when the marketplace decides that its “right” to rip off the publisher and author is more important than supporting them it risks wounding, perhaps, over time, fatally, the business that produces the product it wants.

Aside from that, and even more important to Nicki and me, are the ethics involved. The books, finished or unfinished, are not given to us as free merchandise. To use them as such is unethical. There is no way around that, no justification that can override the wrong involved in using the books in a way that brings income to us but not to the publisher and author. Nicki stated it perfectly:

If you are a book reviewer and you benefit financially from anything besides the fee you receive for your writing, then you are being an unethical journalist. No gray area there.

It’s an issue of transparency and accountability. If we make money from something we are reviewing, our legitimacy is compromised. If we in any way financially benefit from something we are reviewing, besides our paychecks for writing the columns, our legitimacy is compromised.

The system in place is such that for all published books—and newly released films, issued DVDs, etc.—the creators of the product get a share of the first sale. It’s how they are paid for making the book. Anything that ends up on the market that bypasses that first sale cheats the author and publisher. It doesn’t matter if publishers “know” that review copies end up on eBay or at the Strand. It doesn’t matter if the book “given” out is an unpaginated advanced reviewer copy, an uncorrected proof, if it is stamped “not for sale” or if it is a finished copy and there is nothing to distinguish it from from one on the shelf at the bookstore. It was provided to reviewers or booksellers for a specific purpose and it is as unethical for them to turn around and sell it as it would be for a DVD store to play their movies and charge a ticket price.

As the founder of BiblioBuffet , it matters very much to me that my credibility as a literary website owner, and as a book reviewer, is spotless. It also matters that BiblioBuffet’s reviewers take their credibility as seriously as I do. It matters that our readers know that what we state about a book is our honest opinion, that no influence has come down, that we hold to standards of journalistic professionalism, and that we continue to hold to those standards after the review is done and finished.

BiblioBuffet takes pride in its commitment to integrity and honesty. We treat not only our writers with respect but you, our readers. Furthermore, we act with the highest regard for those who work with us to get you information on books: the publicists, editors, publishers, and authors. Because when it comes to ethical standards, there isn’t a slippery slope. You are either on one side of the line or you are on the other. BiblioBuffet stands proudly on the ethical side.