When Less is More

BiblioBuffet has changed its Write for Us page. The reason? We are now closed to those who seek to be regular contributors, that is, writers who want to have a column. However, we are still open to guest contributors who want to submit pieces to BibliOpinions.

As you may know, Nicki Leone and I have full-time day jobs. BiblioBuffet must be produced in our free time, and there is only so much of that to go around. Especially in Nicki’s case, as she works more than one job. Nicki is the content editor behind what you read on BiblioBuffet, and she works hard at it. She works hand-in-hand with the contributors to ensure that their writing, already top-notch, is flawless.

I focus primarily on copy editing, proofreading, and posting. I also pay the bills. Since we do not accept advertising (yet), the money comes out of my pocket; there is only so much to go around.

These are both important reasons for closing our application process at this point in them, but there is one more reason. And it may be even more important. We don’t want to get too big. We want to keep the spotlight on the writers we have now because we believe we have some of the best. The larger a site grows and the more writers it has, the less opportunity each writer has to shine. And we think that would be a shame.

We hope you enjoy reading the wide variety we do offer: Carl Rollyson on biography, Pete Croatto on sports, Lindsay Champion on modern memoirs, Laine Farley on bookmarks, Lev Raphael on anything that catches his literary eye, Gillian Polack on science fiction, fantasy, science, and Australia-iana, and Nicki Leone on, well, on anything except self-help.

We believe that by having less we actually have more. We give you a good look at some damn good books through some damn good writers and we don’t worry that we cannot cover everything. 

Still, we are open to many things we do not cover regularly through our BibliOpinions page. That’s where you’ll find things you won’t find elsewhere on our site, and where writers who are looking to share their work can still come to be part of our team. And when we do open up again to new regular contributors we will look to our guest contributors first.

The Right Direction

Since BiblioBuffet opened its doors on January 8, 2006, our policy for considering books for review has pretty much stayed the same. We consider trade books, that is, books from commercial or university presses in all genres except  books that are not self-published or vanity-published, in all genres except business, self-help, true crime, New Age and romance. Each one has its reasons for being on our “no” list.

More important, we do not review self-published or vanity-published books. The reason is that finding a book worth reviewing is like finding that needle in the haystack, and digging through mountains of dreck in search of the rare gem is not worth our time.

It still isn’t for the most part, but technological changes have wrought changes in industry practices. Recently, there have been a few literary agencies who have moved in directions from author representation to publishing. They don’t plan to compete with the publishing houses, but instead are moving to re-issue their clients’ backlists. In addition, some authors, including our own Carl Rollyson and Lev Raphael, are publishing new editions, both print and e-books, of their own works now that they have the rights back.

BiblioBuffet would not consider books like this to be self-published, though they technically are in their new editions. These books have been through what is termed the editorial gatekeeping process, that is, they were selected by a commercial trade publisher who believed in the book enough to put money, time, and editorial/design/sales/marketing/publicity talent behind it. What is being re-issued is not a raw book that only an author’s mother could love, but one that was successfully created for and marketed to the reading public.

We also have, thanks to Pete Croatto, our sports book reviewer, another aspect to consider—self-published books that are that rare gem. Belue to Scott! is one of them. It was written by Robbie Burns, a man with the passion for the team he wrote about but also with a professional writing background on sports and sports history. It made him uniquely qualified to write a self-published “gem.”

Those two reasons are why Nicki and I have been talking again about revising our “Submit Books for Review” guidelines, and this time it is going to happen. But we don’t want to open BiblioBuffet’s doors to everyone; we will continue to hold to our high standards for the writing we present and the books we talk about.

The revised guidelines will be some time within the next two weeks. Though they are still be written and edited, they will include the following so that we know the writers understands the process of writing a good book:

• Was there an editor? If so, who? What else have they edited?
• Has the author published anything else, either in print or online in a professional capacity? (Personal blogs don’t count.)
• Is the book blurbed by anyone recognizable?

These are not the only considerations but they will be a part. And while we haven’t yet finalized the wording, we do know that we must open ourselves to these new changes that have arrived because our mission statement—Writing Worth Reading, Reading Worth Writing About—does not say, imply, or infer anything less than that we at BiblioBuffet want to show you a few of the best books out there. We cannot do that unless we utilize the best of the industry changes. Or as Nicki phrased it, since “the gatekeepers are gone from the kingdom, it probably means we need to step in their place.”

We’ve seen the new direction, and we are ready for what it will bring.

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.”

Advantage: Point

In tennis, there is a term called “advantage.” This happens when the two players have reached a kind of point stalemate called “deuce,” which requires that one of them win two consecutive points in order to win the game. The player who wins the next point after deuce is said to have the advantage. If that player wins the next point the game is hers. If not, the score returns to deuce. This will repeat itself until one player is able to score two points in a row and take the game.

In publishing, the line between vanity houses and trade houses has until quite recently been firmly anchored. In my opinion, as far as books are concerned, it’s still firm. Most self-published and vanity-published titles are godawful things. The rule of thumb is that somewhere around 95% of all manuscripts submitted to trade publishers are un-publishable. (Unsolicited manuscripts are the stuff of which nightmares are made as anyone who has ever worked with them knows painfully well.) Of that remaining five percent, most of those are rejected for various reasons, leaving a mere one percent or so of all manuscripts in the “pubishable” arena.

But with the technological advances in printing those formerly un-publishable manuscripts are now being printed. I’ve mentioned before that nearly three times the number of “non-traditional” books as “traditional” books are being issued but regardless of their classification they are all looking for publicity. That often includes book reviews.

BiblioBuffet is accustomed to receiving press releases, both print and electronic, e-mail requests, and books for our consideration. Some come from authors, but most are from publicists or publishing houses. It doesn’t matter to us. But what does matter is who publishes the book. Even before we opened our virtual doors, we had set a policy in place that precluded consideration of self-published and vanity-published books. In my previous work as books editor for a local newspaper I dealt with vanity-published books as well as with the slush pile in my earlier work as executive assistant for a local publisher. When the concept for BiblioBuffet started to metamorphose into a real site our submission page, one of the first written, was firmly grounded in those experiences. There are far too many excellent books produced by viable commercial and university presses that we’d never be able to get to so why add to that with books that were unlikely to be worthy of anyone’s reading? The answer was obvious. We excluded them from the get-go. It simply wasn’t worth our time to plow through what were sure to be haystacks of books seeking those very few golden needles.

So when I received a large box filled with books recently from Vantage Press I was astounded. Vantage Press is an old-time vanity house, having been around since long before technology made vanity publishing easy and inexpensive. To their credit, they have never been less than honest about their pay-to-play model, and their products are good-looking and durable. But given our policy, I had to politely e-mail the publicist and let her know that due to the nature of their model and our policies that we could not, unfortunately, consider any of their books for review. I wish her luck in her marketing efforts, and I sincerely meant it. And I assumed that was the end of that.

To my surprise she wrote back a couple of days later. Normally this is not a good thing since it is the point at which, in the past, the answer to me reflects an unhappy person with an urge to snark. But not in this case. She was kind and thoughtful, and had obviously read our policies and understood the reasons for them. And then she went on to point out that this old-time vanity house would, in spring 2011, be opening a new “traditional” branch called Vantage Point, one that intended to be a commercial publisher with all the bells and whistles (editorial gatekeepers, author advances, royalties, bookstore distribution, publicity and marketing) of any other commercial press, and that would compete in the public marketplace. They would offer eight books in their first season, she said, and would BiblioBuffet be willing to consider them for review.

The answer is yes. Yes, we will because it matters not that part of their enterprise is a vanity house. (A number of commercial publishers now offer vanity arms, and the two are kept, so to speak, at arm’s length.) It only matters that Vantage Point is going to have a regular trade division staffed with people from the commercial world.

Frankly, no one is more surprised than I. It will certainly be interesting to see how this works out. And who knows . . .  maybe we’ll find some darn fine books.

Are We Riding Waves of Literature or Are We Drowning in Crap?

An American Editor is one of the blogs I read regularly if not daily. This past week he has been looking at “e-Books and the Downfall of Literature.” Today, he focuses in on the role literature plays in our society. What struck me in particular was this:

When following the traditional publishing route, an author strives for excellence because the author needs to separate his or her work from that of the masses. The competition for gatekeeper recognition that drives an author to strive for excellence doesn’t exist in the direct-from-writer’s-computer-to-Internet-ebook world. I’m not suggesting that the direct-from-writer’s-computer-to-Internet-ebook authors do not strive to do their best, but rather that the pressure to do whatever it takes to be the best no longer exists; that an author more quickly reaches the point of saying his or her work is good enough. . . . Good enough becomes the great leveler. . . . The standard of good enough is not a high enough standard for literature.

He has one comment so far, which I believe brings up a valid point:

It seems that you are pointing out the loss of our culturally accepted “gatekeepers.”

If you really compare “judgment by the few” (cultural gatekeepers) with “judgment by the many” (Internet feedback and such) you see that neither is better or worse, they are just different. . . . Just because we no longer rely so heavily on professional reviewers and publishers, doesn’t mean we are without means of filtering the influx of literature. The difference is that there is a much broader range of authorities to choose from.

What we have truly lost or are losing is a culturally-shared body of work—or, I should say, we have fragmented into micro-communities with localized “cultural literacies.” But we have gained access to a much broader and more diverse body of literature. So, with loss comes gain.

I believe both points of view are valid and true. Literary gatekeepers—the editors and publishers—do filter out the fine from the flawed. But they also use other filters to choose manuscripts that have little to do with literature and everything to do with business survival such as the bottom line. If it means publishing forgettable but popular books, they do. And it is unquestionable, at least to me, that some manuscripts worthy of becoming Literature are bypassed not because they don’t meet “gatekeeper standards” but because they won’t sell enough.

On the other hand, I miss newspaper book sections far more in theory than in fact. The New York Times has shown its biases for its own writers and for male authors. The Los Angeles Times  was, frankly, boring in many cases. Its reviewers often seemed more concerned with their own self-knowledge than with the book under review. Losing them is a loss to the literary community. But while the world of literary websites, forums, and blogs offering “judgment by the many” may lack the professionalism and standards that “judgment by the few” possess, they have something rarely seen in those newspaper review sections: enthusiasm. Ground-floor passionate enthusiasm for books and reading that encompasses everyone. Many more books get talked about and become known to readers. They are helping to stimulate reading! And no amount of grousing by the “old guard” is going to change that—even thought their standards are worthy of being emulated.

Aside from the interest the article generated for me, I think it is timely. Last week I talked about why BiblioBuffet has a policy of not reviewing self-published or vanity-published books. It really comes down to two reasons: (1) too many books, not enough time, and (2) needles are really hard to find in haystacks. On rare occasions, however, a self-published book (never a vanity one, in my experience) comes along that is breathtaking. Amazingly, I saw two—a coffee-table cookbooks and a book of historical fiction about Somalian immigrants—this past weekend at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. What made me stop was that they were virtually indistinguishable not only from a regular trade book but even from a top-of-the-line publisher like Knopf. I ended up buying one of them there and ordering the second when I got home. These are books I would like to review.

In fact, Nicki and I are currently discussing BiblioBuffet’s current book submission policies. What if anything will happen is unknown. But I see all this change in the publishing industry as creating tidal waves of changes in books. Hopefully, we won’t drown in crap but instead find ourselves riding our literary horizons gently onto the worldwide shores of Literature.

Writers’ Guidelines

All good writers are readers. So why, I sometimes ask myself, don’t those who send us queries read our writers’ guidelines. Many do, but a surprising number of applicants don’t. Or at least their submissions give no such indication. Real life examples of writers who waste their time and ours:

• Writers who assume we are a content site. BiblioBuffet does not publish “content,” defined by me as anything designed to attract website hits for advertisers. Content does fill up otherwise empty space, but provides very little in the way of good literary nutrition.
• Closely related to “content” producers are writers who propose articles on topics unrelated to what BiblioBuffet does publish: beauty, cars, finance, travel, etc. Their modus operandi is to create generic e-mails that they send out to websites without having any idea what the site is about. To their credit, they are generally polite when sent form rejections. 
• Writers who possess less than excellent English skills. Having these doesn’t assure good writing, but it is the starting point for every good writer. If a writer’s first language isn’t English but the writing is powerful and close to what we want we will definitely work with that writer on small grammatical errors. But when a writer tells me she has a Ph.D. in English yet her query letter is no better than a fourth-grade American student would put out, not only are we not going to respond but we are going to put her on our spam list. Along that same line: if a writer claims that Ph.D. and has a website that appears to back that up (excellent English, good writing) but his query is riddled with errors all we can deduce is that he is in the habit of attempting to scam editors into giving him a chance. It won’t work. The writer just made *the* list. And we will never have to worry about either writer clogging our in-boxes again.
• Writers who don’t understand that there is writing and then there is writing. “Writing worth reading” is writing that is worthy of a time commitment from readers. Today, there is so much competition for readers’ attention that the value of that attention has risen. Our writing must give readers such a good return on their “investment” that they choose to spend it with us every week.
• Writers who haven’t read BiblioBuffet but are just looking for outlets are not usually writers who impress us. By reading BiblioBuffet writers learn what types and level of writing we seek. And writers should be honest with themselves: do they want to write what we write about, and if so are they able to write to our standards?
• Writers who don’t read the our guidelines before they query. Anyone who has knows that we do not accept book reviews from guest contributors, that our word count requirement runs between 600 and 6,000 words, that our guest column area carries no deadline, and that we accept darn near any type of writing except poetry as long as it relates to books, reading, or related subjects.  

So there it is. Not quite in a nutshell, but well laid out, I think. Treat us right. Don’t try to overstate your credentials. If you don’t fit our requirements now, write more. Get into a critique group that isn’t hesitant to be brutally honest. Make yourself work harder to become better. Don’t think that publication should be easy just because the Internet allows it to be easy. Push! Trust me, the reward will be worth it regardless of where you dream of seeing your writing published. 

Writing and Waterfalls

It’s still amazing to me how grumpy many editors can be when just being nice to writers—and encouraging them to do what they do best—pays much higher dividends. An example is last week’s post (December 24) in which I shared Pete Croatto’s compliments to BiblioBuffet’s editorial team. The next day I received this in my e-mail box:

I’ve been reading your Behind the Words blog for a while. Your recent post about your editing style struck a chord with me. The chord reverberated so soundly that here I am, writing to you at an unholy hour.

I would very much like to write for BiblioBuffet. I am an Australian writer, historian, teacher, editor and reviewer. Sometimes these things are serious business. Sometimes they’re not. The interaction between the different parts of me always take my writing into odd corners and haunts. I get to meet interesting people and their books. I get to dissect old tales and new. It’s a lot of fun.

I would love to take the moments that most fascinate me and turn them into entertaining reading. There will be books in those moments, because there always are books in my life. I can write pretentious twaddle (have PhD, will twaddle) but I’d really rather not. I’d rather explore genre and Australian writing or the relationship between place and books or between books and food or explore the seamier side of Indigenous Australian copyright. That’s just this week. I don’t know what I’ll encounter next week or the week after, but I know it will be fascinating and that I would dearly love to share it.

When I finished laughing—“have PhD, will twaddle”—I e-mailed Nicki, then, faster than the proverbial speeding bullet, we told Gillian we wanted her.

It’s easy to see why editors can become grumpy. When queries come in that are inappropriate—for god’s sake, I sometimes want to shout, read the submission guidelines we took the time to write out and post for your convenience!—or even illiterate we try our best to maintain a respectful correspondence. But when we regularly see queries that read like (freshman) high school book reports, or beginner blog posts, or that make claims they cannot verify, the process becomes annoying.

Then along comes the next one and . . . suddenly there it is! The query that makes us sit up. Take notice. Smile broadly. And say “Yes!” Honestly, finding one of those is like coming upon a gorgeous waterfall in a fern-laden forest clearing. Picture it: you step into this gorgeous space, strip off your hot, sweaty cynicism, and dive into the cool, clear waters of excellent writing. When you surface you shake your head, letting the words and emotions spin off you as you revel in the sensual feeling of being surrounded by something wonderful. It’s such a joy that it has the ability to wipe away all the grubbiness you accumulated during your slogs through the slush pile.

I know rejections are hard for writers to receive. Even jaded editors know how painful they feel to the writer. To be honest they are hard to write. I hate turning people down when they put themselves out there on offer. But our obligation is to BiblioBuffet’s readers. And we simply cannot accept less than the best.

In the last month, we have had four worthwhile writers appear. In January we will begin the process of working with them. We don’t yet know if they will all work out but we are excited. What we do know, however, is that we would probably not have had the opportunity to find out about them were we still grumpy about the other ones.

Folks, there’s a reason we all have “pearly whites” beyond needing them to chew food. Use ‘em, and smile. The next great query is out there. It’s always out there. And we at BiblioBuffet have no intention of scaring it away.

Watch Those Fingers!

BiblioBuffet has guidelines for those seeking to submit books to us for review. They are few in number but clearly stated. We don’t review business, self-help, true crime, New Age, or romance. And we do not review self-published or vanity-published books.

Today I received another email from an author, this one loudly bewailing our policy. I politely explained that this woman’s vanity-house publisher precluded our considering her book for review but thanking her for letting us know about it. I even took the trouble to refer to her a couple of places that did review self-published and vanity-published books. 

She didn’t take nicely to my gesture. Ah well, no good deed and all that. Her second email informed me, in rather strident tones, that I was wrong, that her publisher was a “traditional publisher.” She even helpfully provided a long-distance phone number so I could call and ask them.

Now I try to maintain a Zen attitude when things go wrong. I am not always successful, but it does help when I am informed of typos in the new issue (ACK!) or problems with the tech side (groan). I’ll admit I lost a little of my calm at her demand that I make that call.

Fortunately, I have a personal rule that prevents an inappropriate response in certain situations. I allow my brain to scream at me, “Keep your fingers to yourself!” The scream is loud so I tend  to listen to it. In this case, I closed the email for a couple of hours. When I later came back to it I was able to compose a calm, quiet, wonderfully Zen-like response. The author is still not happy, but had I not listened to my brain I might have actually made her miserable. I would certainly have made myself miserable. And perhaps even tarnished the real life as well as the online persona I value so highly.