I don't know why this pleases me so much, but it does. Social networking (or "social not working" as a friend of mine calls it) has become an important part of twenty-first century book publicity. I've never seen any information that proves definitively that Twittering hourly or creating fan pages on Facebook leads to greater book sales, but because the matter is so uncertain, there's a tendency for nervous authors and publishers to overcompensate. So it was with a frivolous sense of joy that I saw today that The Poacher's Son has reached the magical milestone of one hundred fans on Facebook. What amuses me is that the novel is still three months from publication, and very few people have read the advance galleys, so most of my fans are voicing their support of the book on faith alone. If nothing else, that's a terrific boost of confidence. Now if I can just get to two hundred....
The Amazon Macmillan Kerfuffle
The big news in the publishing world today is Amazon's decision to stop selling all Macmillan titles, including those like The Poacher's Son published by Minotaur Books and other Macmillan imprints. Pricing seems to be the sticking point, according to an article in today's Engadget:
Macmillan's US CEO, John Sargent just confirmed that Amazon pulled its inventory of Macmillan books in a powerful response to Macmillan's new pricing demands. Macmillan offered the new pricing on Thursday, just a day after Apple announced Macmillan as a major publishing partner in its new iBookstore—a revelation that certainly factored into the discussions along with Skiff and other emerging e-book distribution and publishing models.
If you go to my book's page on the Amazon Web site you'll see that the company is no longer accepting pre-orders. Instead there's an annoucement that reads: "Sign up to be notified when this item becomes available." It's unclear what has happened to existing pre-orders for the book, whether they will be filled if Amazon and Macmillan eventually reach an agreement over book pricing, or whether they've been lost in cyberspace.
In the meantime BN.com and Indiebound.com are still accepting pre-orders for The Poacher's Son, as are many of the online and brick-and-mortar sellers listed on the left side of this page.
Update: Until this dispute is worked out (if it's worked out), I'm disabling my Amazon link.
Norman Mailer on Negative Reviews
In 1955 Norman Mailer received a fusillade of negative reviews for his third novel, The Deer Park. Most novelists will tell you that there's no point in responding to scathing reviews, however mean-spirited or unjustified you might think they are. You just come across as thin-skinned and whiny. Mailer, however, hit upon an unconventional response to his critics; he tried to co-opt them. He wrote and paid for an ad in the Village Voice quoting the worst slams against him. Later, he explained his reasoning in Advertisements for Myself:
I had the tender notion—believe it if you will—that the ad might after all do its work and excite some people to buy the book.
I doubt Mailer's ad accomplished his goal, but you have to admire his ingenuity.
Booklist Starred Review
My novel is now four for four with ★ starred reviews among the early journals, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, and now Booklist:
Doiron’s debut crime novel is set ...in the North Woods of Maine, the home of rookie game warden Mike Bowditch. As tensions rise across the state with the impending sale of huge tracts of paper- company forest land to an out-of-state developer, Mike receives a strange message from his father, left on the same night the paper company rep and a state trooper are shot and killed after a heated town meeting. Doiron, editor-in-chief of Down East magazine, is well acquainted with the current political and cultural tensions that crisscross Maine, and his local knowledge drives this fast-paced and twisty narrative. With realistically flawed characters and a strong sense of place...the novel avoids tourist stereotyping, of Maine itself and its citizens. One hopes this fine novel is the first in a series starring Warden Bowditch, who could quickly become the East Coast version of C. J. Box’s game-warden hero Joe Pickett, who patrols the range in Wyoming.
—Booklist, ★ Starred Review
Yes, it's mind-blowing.
Get Your Free Books Here
I'm of two minds about this trend reported in today's New York Times. Book publishers, including my own house Macmillan, are giving away free digital copies of certain titles to drum up interest in authors whose book sales could use a boost:
Publishers including Harlequin, Random House and Scholastic are offering free versions of digital books to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other e-retailers, as well as on author Web sites, as a way of allowing readers to try out the work of unfamiliar writers. The hope is that customers who like what they read will go on to obtain another title for money.
“Giving people a sample is a great way to hook people and encourage them to buy more,” said Suzanne Murphy, group publisher of Scholastic Trade Publishing, which offered free downloads of “Suite Scarlett,” a young-adult novel by Maureen Johnson, for three weeks in the hopes of building buzz for the next book in the series, “Scarlett Fever,” out in hardcover on Feb. 1. The book went as high as No. 3 on Amazon’s Kindle best-seller list.
Apple has been doing something analogous on iTunes for years. It gives away free songs, usually by little-known musicians, in the hope that you'll like what you hear and buy more songs at 99 cents a pop. I know this has worked because my wife has downloaded a bunch of free tunes by artists she had never heard of and then purchased others by those same musicians. And clearly, something like that happened on Amazon.com with "Scarlett Fever."
On the other hand, everyone acknowledges that the book publishing business is going through a transformative time. A question looms over the industry: Does it tame the digital bronco and figure out how to ride e-books to profitability, or has that horse already left the barn? Some publishing houses are worried that a generation of readers will grow up expecting all books to be free, which is what happened with music after Napster flattened the old record labels:
“At a time when we are resisting the $9.99 price of e-books,” said David Young, chief executive of Hachette Book Group, the publisher of James Patterson and Stephenie Meyer, “it is illogical to give books away for free.”
Similarly, a spokesman for Penguin Group USA said: “Penguin has not and does not give away books for free. We feel that the value of the book is too important to do that.”
The current situation reminds me of screenwriter William Goldman's axiom about the movie business: "Nobody knows anything."