Michael Janairo

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Author: Michael Janairo

  • Adventures in self-publishing

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    I’ve recently been in e-mail contact with Capital Region novelist and musician J. Peter Yakel, whose recent book is “The Legend of Juggin Joe,” which he has self-published through Lulu.com (his Web site is www.lulu.com/yakel). His book is described as follows:

    J. Peter Yakel spins a fine country yarn in this hilarious hilltown tale. Somethin’s brewin’ in Westerlo, an’ it ain’t Doc Jeckel’s still full ah “Oh Be Joyful.” When a boy discovers he’s possessed with a rare musical gift, “Juggin Joe” is born! On the road tah international stardom, love blossoms betwixt Joe an’ a l’il mountain flower, Florentine. But her daddy, the Parson Sheppard, disallows the courtship, endin’ the romance, an’ leavin’ both young’uns with heartache bigger’n the Heldeberg mountains. Tarnation! In a moment ah angst, Joe sets aside his jug, an’ sets off with the Army. Overseas, fate crosses the greenhorn soldier with the President, an’ Joe’s musical prowess is called tah duty once ‘gain. But is it strong ‘nough tah alter the global balance ah power? What about Florentine? Will Joe find love ‘gain? Follow Joe’s knee-slappin’ journey, written entirely in J. Peter Yakel’s unique style ah “country-speak”, an’ see what real legends are made ah! http://www.lulu.com/yakel

    I asked him about his experiences with self-publishing, and he responded with an informative and insightful and, from what I’ve read elsewhere, a not untypical account of what self-publishing is like. Take a look, and feel free to respond with your own experiences – whether self-publishing or self-promoting – either by responding to this blog or by e-mailing me at mjanairo@timesunion.com.
    I should say here that with all the books being published these days (Publishers Weekly said about 172,000 titles were published last year), the Times Union (in continuing its role of filtering through the media landscape for its readers) does not review self-published books, though that doesn’t mean the newspaper doesn’t run event listings, news and features stories about self-published authors and their works.

    Yakel describes his self-publishing experiences as follows:

    As far as working with Lulu to get my books and music published, I have been very happy with the company. It has met my expectations in most ways. Lulu touts itself as a technology company; not a publishing company. They leave the role of publisher to the individual. There are no set-up fees; no minimum orders; authors keep control of their products and all rights to them; you set your own price; items, like e-books or music can be downloaded directly, and hardcopy items are printed on demand, so there is no excess inventory. The book quality is very good. Their customer service is also decent.

    click “more” to read more.
    (more…)

  • Events on Saturday, March 10

    tenth-circle-small.jpgBest-selling author is coming to town for a couple of events:

    Saturday, March 10 ALBANY, NY 11 AM BJ’s, Northway Mall, 1440 Central Ave., 518-438-1400 (signing only)
    Saturday, March 10 SCHENECTADY, NY 1 PM, Schenectady County ublic Library, 99 Clinton St., for info call 518-388-4533.

    BJ’s? That’s right. BJ’s.

    Here’s a video promotion — a book trailer — for her brand-new novel “19 Minutes” (could this be a growing publishing trend?):

  • Something odd this way comes

    There are a lot of contests out there, some of them more serious than others. Here’s one that is on the nonserious side: the oddest book title.

    Among the nominees this year is “How Green Were the Nazis.”

    And, yes, you — dear readers — get a chance to vote. Scroll to the bottom for the link.

    Here’s more from the AP:

    `How Green Were the Nazis?” could be the title to beat this year for the
    Bookseller/Diagram Prize for oddest book title.

    The book by Thomas Zeller, Franz-Josef Bruggemeier and Mark Cioc is billed as the first to
    examine the environmental policies of the Third Reich. It is published by Ohio University
    Press.

    Other nominees announced Friday:

    “The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: a guide to field identification,” by
    Julian Montague.

    “Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan,” by Robert Chenciner, Gabib
    Ismailov, Magomedkhan Magomedkhanov and Alex Binnie.

    “Di Mascio’s Delicious Ice Cream, Di Mascio of Coventry, an Ice Cream Company of Repute,
    With an Interesting and Varied Fleet of Ice Cream Vans,” by Roger De Boer, Harvey Francis
    Pitcher, and Alan Wilkinson.

    “Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium.”

    “Better Never To Have Been: the Harm of Coming Into Existence,” by David Benatar.

    The winner will be chosen by the public. You can vote online at http://www.thebookseller.com. The prize will be announced on April 13.

    Last year’s winner was “People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It,” by Gary Leon Hill.

    Go here to vote in the poll www.thebookseller.com.

  • NBCC winners

    The National Book Critics Circle has announced its winners for the previous year in six categories. Here’s the link to Critical Mass, the NBCC blog.

    Here’s what the AP’s Hillel Italie had to say:

    Kiran Desai’s “The Inheritance of Loss,” a narrative of global discovery
    and displacement that has already won the Man Booker Prize, received another literary honor
    Thursday night: the National Book Critics Circle fiction award.

    “To be claimed by the place in which you live means so much,” said Desai, a native of
    India who now lives in New York.

    The daughter of author Anita Desai, she worried about the “perverse” luck of her book,
    although she was clearly prepared to win, reciting a poem by Jorge Luis Borges, “The Boast of
    Quietness,” which reads, in part, “More silent than my shadow, I pass through the loftily
    covetous multitude.”

    Six prizes and two honorary awards were handed out at the 33rd annual critics award
    ceremony. Simon Schama’s “Rough Crossings,” a history of slaves who fought with the British
    during the Revolutionary War, won for general nonfiction. Julie Phillips’ was the biography
    winner for “James Tiptree, Jr.,” the pen name for science fiction author Alice B. Sheldon.

    Phillips, who took 10 years to complete her book, accepted the award by quoting Sheldon,
    who committed suicide in 1987: “Life is fair. Some people have talent; other people get
    prizes.”

    Daniel Mendelsohn’s “The Lost,” a memoir of six family members lost in the Holocaust, won
    for autobiography. Troy Jollimore’s “Tom Thomson in Purgatory,” a debut collection, was a
    surprise for poetry, chosen over such celebrated finalists as W.D. Snodgrass, Frederick Seidel
    and the late Miltos Sachtouris.

    “I’m stunned, and I may not be the only one,” said Jollimore, who smiled and shook his
    head in disbelief when he heard his name announced as the winner.

    The criticism prize went to Lawrence Weschler’s “Everything That Rises,” which beat out,
    among others, Bruce Bawer’s controversial “While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is
    Destroying the West from Within,” a book that even members of the NBCC have called racist and
    anti-Muslim.

    Steven G. Kellman, whose work has appeared in The Texas Observer, The Georgia Review and
    other publications, won the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. Longtime
    critic John Leonard, who has written for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books and
    The Nation among others, won the Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award.

    Hundreds gathered at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium in downtown Manhattan at a time
    when critics have been reminded yet again of their precarious status, with the Los Angeles
    Times expected soon to cut its Sunday review section and combine it with the Saturday opinion
    pages, a day of lower circulation.

    In accepting his honorary award, Leonard joked about appearing before “a roomful of people
    so innocent of the profit motive.” The head of the book critics circle, John Freeman, began
    the evening by noting the trend of shrinking review coverage and reminding the audience … who
    needed little reminding … that criticism was a kind of “Ellis Island” for culture, a
    passageway for the best writing.

    The National Book Critics Circle, founded in 1974, has nearly 500 members. There are no
    cash prizes, but a great deal of prestige. A solid majority of nominees showed up, including
    such high-profile writers as novelists Richard Ford and Dave Eggers and historian Taylor
    Branch.

  • Value of unimportance

    In grad school, one class got into a debate about a published comment that art was meaningless, meaning it was a thing outside commerce and utility. This seemed overly idealistic, or maybe only true in the eyes of the creator. And it seems Jonathan Lethem has stepped into this debate in the Boston Globe with the statement about his latest book “You Don’t Love Me Yet” as being “a profoundly unimportant book.”

    Here’s a bit from The Elegant Variation:

    According to a Q&A between the Boston Globe and Jonathan Lethem on Sunday, Lethem says You Don’t Love Me Yet is “a profoundly unimportant book.”

    What does it mean for a book to be “unimportant”? Surely not “Don’t even bother to read it, it’s that unimportant.” I have a hard time believing he’d have bothered to write it. The interview gestures at a definition of “unimportant” that belongs to Nabokov: literature serves no social function, only provides artistic delight. But that’s a form of importance, right? To me, that’s one of the primal important things. I haven’t read You Don’t Love Me Yet yet, so there’s no insight here, but so what if it’s not original, or educational, or politically conscious. Those aren’t the only requirements for relevancy. If it’s about “language and life and the impulse to make art [and evoke] feeling in the reader — laughter, embarrassment, yearning,” well, those things are important, no? Maybe the quote was cut off. I’d like to believe he said, “It’s a profoundly important book for being a profoundly unimportant book.”

  • Reads like teen spirit

    Media Bistro links to a Seattle PI article about the rise in teen buying of books:

    The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Celia Goodnow checks in on one of the happier publishing trends, where teens are buying books in numbers not seen in decades. “Kids are buying books in quantities we’ve never seen before,” said Booklist magazine critic Michael Cart, a leading authority on young adult literature. “And publishers are courting young adults in ways we haven’t seen since the 1940s.” Credit a bulging teen population, a surge of global talent and perhaps a bit of Harry Potter afterglow as the preteen Muggles of yesteryear carry an ingrained reading habit into later adolescence.

    From the PI article:

    Horror and other pulp series prevailed, most titles were aimed at ages 11 to 14, and older teens were becoming an “endangered species” in the marketplace, Cart chided in his 1996 book, “From Realism to Romance: 50 Years of Change and Growth in Young Adult Literature.”

    Reached by phone in Indiana, Cart laughed softly and said, “That was then and this is now.”

    There are many reasons for the turnaround, not least the sheer size of the teen population — well over 30 million kids with ready cash in their pockets. Called Gen Y or Millennials, they trail only the baby boomers in number.

    More interesting articles in the PI:
    On teen trends.
    On books that may be too mature for young kids.

  • Books as art

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    Ramon Lascano uses books as a medium for his art, some of which is now on display at the Martinez Gallery in Troy.

    Here’s an excerpt from his artist statement from the Carrie Haddad Gallery Web site:

    I began making my series of altered books three years ago. My work began with experimental folding to create shapes using the pages. After many months of working with open-faced single books I sought ways to display them in combinations making both wall mounted and free standing sculptures. My groupings of books often form architectural and geometric shapes. Many form rhomboids, columns, and diamonds to name a few. Pieces range from a single folded book to dozens in large murals and installations.

    My altered books are about exploring pattern and shape. Combinations of books create visual rhythms both in the overall shape and of the folds. The text wraps in and around the folds creating additional patterns which are complemented by light and shadows falling on the pages.

    The books I use are primarily encyclopedias. Due to the advent of the Internet encyclopedias have become a thing of the past in most homes. Discarded volumes are abundant and easy to come by.

  • The Asian American Literary Award

    Since 1998, The Annual Asian American Literary Awards have honored Asian American writers for excellence in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, memoir, stage plays and screenplays. Literary awards recipients are determined by a national panel of judges who are selected on the basis of expertise in a literary genre and/or experience in academic environments relevant to Asian American literature; residence in the U.S. and ethnic background as to create a diverse committee.

    To qualify for our next award, a work must have been written by an individual of Asian descent living in the United States and published originally in English during the calendar year preceding the award year (for example, works published in 2004 are eligible for the 2005 Literary Awards). No self-published works will be considered. Award submissions are accepted in Spring, with award recipients announced in Fall, and publicly presented during our Winter awards ceremony.

    More info is here:

    http://www.aaww.org/aaww_awards.html

  • POLL: How Do You Discover Books?

    hey, reader, check out this quick and easy poll and Media Bistro. The poll through Tuesday, March 13. Go here:
    http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/polls/poll_how_do_you_discover_books_54534.asp?c=rss