Would You Like A Little Soundtrack With That Novel?

Might soundtrack recordings to accompany our books be the next big thing?

RCRD LBL and Virgin Books are going to be launching the soundtrack to Tim Molloy’s debut novel How to Break Bad News at a party tonight. The music was conceived by Eric Steuer of Meanest Man Contest and features songs by a number of bands, and you can download it from the website.*

The reasoning behing the move? Says Molloy:

Why put out a soundtrack for a book? Well, why not put out a soundtrack for a book? Movies, TV shows, and video games have them - so why should books get left out in the cold? ... People complain about the Internet pulling people away from books, and this seemed like a perfect way to pull people back. The gorgeous songs on the soundtrack add to the spirit and emotion of the book in ways I'd never imagined. Some people will discover the book through the songs, and some the songs through the book.

(The trailer for the book is pretty intruiging too.)

Now if all that sounds a bit gimmicky, another author putting out an accompanying sountrack is ... Margaret Atwood!

Her dystopian novel The Year of the Flood is to be published in September and includes the text of 14 hymns, which Ms. Atwood is having a composer set to music, so that the novel will have its own CD.

All that remains to ask is ... which of your favourite books would you like to have a soundtrack for and what do you think should be on it?

(*Thanks, Grace, for sending me this link!)

Why You Should Pirate Your Writing

Reading a new book is like checking in to a cheap hotel in a foreign city: you plan to spend a lot of time in there, but have no real idea how happy you will be until you've staked your money. Unlike music (which you can hear on the radio or at your friend's house) or even the movies (where you often see a trailer), it's often difficult to tell if you are going to like a new book unless you are lucky enough have the time to sit in a bookshop and read a chapter or two first.

Sean Dodson on the Guardian blog puts forward an excellent case for authors giving away digital copies of their work. He talks about how Paul Coelho* sent sales figures stratospheric by indulging in a little "self-piracy", setting up a blog, Pirate Coelho, with links to sites where readers could download his stuff for free.

Another example Dodson mentions is that of Canadian science-fiction writer Cory Doctorow who:

... has circulated tens of thousands of electronic editions of his novels and short stories, and it has helped to send his sales soaring ...

Well, closer to home, we know that although Awang Goneng's content is all up on his blog for us to read for free, the print book is seeing excellent sales.

There's something to be learned here, for sure.

*Incidentally, like Dodson, I couldn't finish The Alchemist and gave my copy away. All that pre-digested wisdom stuck in my throat.

Postscript:

Cerri Radford on the Telegraph blog writes about the rampant online-ness of Paul Coelho who blogs, Flickrs and Facebooks:

Which is a wonderful phenomenon, of course. But of all the authors in the world to want to interact with us, did it have to be this one?

The Blog Book Tour

Dina sent me this link to a New York Times article by Karl Jessella about how savvy publicists and authors are doing tours of blogs rather than tours of bookshops and other live venues:

Bloggers have written about books since, well, the beginning of blogging. But a blog book tour usually requires an author or publicist to take the initiative, reaching out to bloggers as if they were booksellers and asking them to be the host for a writer’s online visit. Sometimes bloggers invite authors on their own. In an age of budget-conscious publishers and readers who are as likely to discover books from a Google search as from browsing at a bookstore, the blog book tour makes sense. Although a few high-profile authors have had their books sent to bloggers — James Patterson recently promoted a young-adult book this way — most of the authors are lesser-known and less likely to be reviewed in the mainstream press. ...

Felicia Sullivan, senior online marketing manager of Collins is quoted as saying:

If I had to choose, I’d rather have an author promote themselves online. ... You can reach at least a few hundred people on a blog, and save time, money and the fear of being a loser when no one shows up to your reading.

The article also says that some blog-tour producers have even paid (shock horror!) bloggers to review books.

An author tour on my blog does seem an interesting idea, provided that the guest-blogged content is relevant and interesting to my readers in Malaysia (who make up two-thirds of my readership). I offer my space.

One Booker long-listed author has already taken up my offer.

I am approached all the time by authors and publishers from the UK and US. Sometimes I'm happy to put up a note about a book, if it is one that I think will interest my Malaysian readers. I would not want to write for money though ... I blog for love and not to be bought. I want to read what I want to read (or what's the point?).

But it would be nice to run some more competitions with book prizes if anyone is interested in sponsoring that!

(Photo from NYT shows author Amy Cohen making a guest-appearance on blogs.)

One Disaffected Bookseller

As promised. You can listen here to a BBC World Service special on the launch of Harry Potter 7, and a certain "disaffected" bookseller from Bangsar telling it as it is!

Rowling apparently has a great deal of gratitude for independent booksellers. What a pity the marketing behemoth now excludes the very people who stood by her books in the early days.

Book Snobbery

Glenda writes about how genre fiction (and fantasy fiction) is looked down upon by the self-appointed guardians of literature.

She slips in a nice quote from David Langford's March edition of his sci-fi newsletter Ansible in which he talks about UK writer, Iain Banks, who writes both 'literary' works and science-fiction:

Iain Banks's new book... is variously described. An invitation to the related `The Herald Sunday Herald Book Series' event calls it `his first literary novel in almost five years' -- as distinct from illiterary novels like The Algebraist (2004)? ... Private Eye's phrasing is `Banks's first "proper" novel (as opposed to the sci-fi stuff he turns out under the name of Iain M. Banks) for five years.' ... And Radio 4's Saturday Review, after acknowledging this author's habit of alternating the `terrestrial' and the `intergalactic', went on to say: `The Steep Approach to Garbadale is his first novel for five years ...'

Glenda has her own interesting tale of prejudice closer to home:

When I first had books published in Australia, they were unavailable in Malaysia, because I couldn't interest the publisher's distributor in supplying them to book shops here - Australian books, he said, were too expensive for the Malaysian market.

But I was being well-reviewed in Malaysian newspapers, so I approached a bookshop in Bangsar. I also wanted a bookshop I could send people to when they asked where to buy copies. I offered the proprietor a win-win solution. I was willing to supply the books, and he didn't have to pay me until they were sold. He refused the offer, and told me that he didn't stock non-literary works and the kind of people who read 'those' kind of books (i.e. trashy fantasy?) didn't come into his shop anyway.

While saying goodbye to him, a customer caught sight of the sample book I had brought along, started talking to me - and bought the book from me, right there in the shop where 'people who read those kind of books' weren't supposed to shop, right under the nose of the proprietor.

The next time I was in that bookshop, I saw he had copies of Harry Potter all over the place.

I believe it was Oscar Wilde who said "There are only good books and bad books."

Go and grab a book in a genre you don't normally read, today!

Beyond the Author Website

We were talking not long ago about author websites, the need for them and what we want to see on them - bio ... author photo ... book cover ... and extract ... reviews ... perhaps an essay or two.

Tom Cox in the Times looks at authors who go beyond the basics to exploit the full potential of the web with interactive websites which provide add-ons for their readers, among them author Jasper Fforde sees his site (which brings him about 2,500 visitors a day!) as:

... a kind of after-sales service for readers who only see a new Fforde book ever year. ... I also see it as an extension of the books — allowing readers to dive back into that world for a little longer. ... a reader-writer contract that I hope will induce people to keep reading me year after year.

Other sites Cox likes:

www.jkrowling.com Designed to look like Rowling’s wrapper-strewn, pen-cluttered desk, this is an interactive delight, and the only place for reliable Potter news.

www.iainbanks.net For the buzzing forum, in which Banks is referred to respectfully as TMH — “The Man Himself”.

susan-hill.com Veteran author and publisher sounds off in her regular blog.

www.nickhornby.co.uk Music, football, books, and plenty of top-five lists to please the anoraks.

jeanettewinterson.com Lots of fresh content (including a monthly column), stylishly packaged.

Podcast Your Book!

If you're finding it tough to get an audience to read your books, why not podcast them in installments?

Andrew Adam Newman in the New York Times, tells how science-fiction horror writer Scott Siegler (left) was snubbed by publishers for years before he began to record his work and offer it via podcasts in installments for subscribers to download for free.
Before long, he had 5,000 subscribers. And now he has 30,000.

And of course, with a substantial fan-base, he's managed to attract a publisher.

Other authors (and it seems sci-fi writers are the most tech savvy!) are turning to website Podiobooks.com (founded by Evo Terrato, co-author of Podcasting for Dummies) to get their words heard. The site has about 100 titles, mainly science fiction and fantasy. There's a great deal of help and advice at the site about making a podcast of your book.

In case you feel a bit sniffy about it all, consider the case of Mark Jeffrey, one of the first writers to put his work on Podiobooks. The Pocket and the Pendant, a "Harry Potter-esque fantasy" novel drew about 20,000 listeners. The book was then self-published with Lulu.com and now the author is evaluating three Hollywood offers to put the novel onto the big screen and accompanying publishing deals.

So it seems that with a fan-base behind them, authors can expect publishers to start knocking at their doors!

A Little Rant About Author Websites (Or Lack Thereof)

I think that every author needs a website. Nothing big and elaborate. No bells, no whistles. Mothing that would cost you an arm and a leg and a left ear.

Just a space with a short and current biodata and a photo or two. A single page is enough, with perhaps a link to another page or pages for the book(s).

A website - not a blog: although I love author's blogs, of course, I often need information in a rush and I don't want to be sidetracked or have to wade through more material than I need.

And if you want to get really elaborate with your website, you could add a book extract or two ... perhaps an essay about a topic close to your heart or some stuff about how you write or how your book came about ... perhaps some reviews.

As a blogger, as a sometime writer about books, as a reviewer, as an organiser of events, I am so frustrated when I look for information on an author or a book and there is none or when I am looking for an author's photo to download and find nothing online.

Local authors are not much better. I come across recently published books and cannot find anything about them online. It makes me ask myself if the author, and in many cases the publisher, is serious about promoting the work.

But as I write this I also realise that I need a web page apart from this blog and never seem to get round to it, though Chet registered a domain for me some time back. I have no right to preach ... or maybe I am talking to myself as much as to you.

So which author sites do you think are the most effective? Nominate them and then we'll take a look when I'm not so frazzled.

Thinking Outside the Bookstore

Selling a beautiful book on Malay fashion and cultural aesthetics in a coffee shop or Penguin paperbacks among the baked beans doesn't seem such a bad idea after reading this piece by Julie Bosman in the New York Times today. She notes that:

Books are turning up in the oddest places these days. ... With book sales sagging — down 2.6 percent as of August over the same period last year, according to the Association of American Publishers — publishers are pushing their books into butcher shops, carwashes, cookware stores, cheese shops, even chi-chi clothing boutiques where high-end literary titles are used to amplify the elegant lifestyle they are attempting to project.

With proper placement, book in other retails stores are likely to sell far better than they do in bookshops, and catch the customers who do not usually browse in bookshops. And of course:

... publishers have stumbled on advantages that often come with this territory: outside of a bookstore, a title enjoys less competition, a more inviting display space and the store’s implicit stamp of approval.

Now does anyone here have a book to market?

Teh Tarik Books?

My old man went to Wak Chai, his favourite kedai makan in Taman Tun, to ta pow some noodles for his supper, and came home with another kind of takeaway!

The cafe was selling copies of Azah Aziz's beautiful coffee table book, Rupa & Gaya, along with the kopi.

The title translates as Form and Fashion and the book looks at traditional Malay fashions both past and present. It's lushly illustrated, with plenty to have the modern fashionista running to copy some of the tailoring. But I love all the old black and white photos most of all (below right).
The book is even more pleasing to the eye with the gold edging to the pages.

You can't talk about the history of fashion in a vacuum, and the book gives an overview of traditional Malay arts and culture (textiles, woodcarving, jewellery making, music, dance) along the way.

The text is in Malay but even for this linguistically challenged mat salleh, quite accessible and very informative. And there's very nice poetry scattered in, which delights me no end. Here's a lovely pantun that accompanies the picture of a musician:

Tiup seruling lagunya lama,
Bagailah bunyi buluh perindu;
Jikalau rindu aku adinda,
Kirimlah salam di angin lalu.

The book is published by Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, but I wonder if they have really been promoting it, as I haven't come across it in bookshops and I can't find a single reference to it online, which is very sad.

This is too beautiful a treasure to be marketed with the mee!

Promoting Your Book Online

Of interest to those of you with books out, or in the pipeline, and a small or non-existent promotional budget.

Anthony Thornton tells in the Times how he promoted his book The Libertines: Bound Together by adopting the same strategies on the internet as the band he was writing about. He had no advertising campaign and says there was no guarantee that his book would get any media coverage at all. But by working to make friends on the web, Thornton managed to hit Amazon's Top Ten bestselling pre-orders!!

(Writing articles about writing your book is another excellent promotional tool. And no doubt I've just done my bit for his cause too by blogging this. )

Your Creative Side

A sort of postscript to my last couple of posts.

If you feel madly creative and are at a lose end, you might like to try out one of the following projects:

create a storyboard for a one-minute trailer of the book of your choice. (If you can't draw - like me - you can just describe it. If you want to go one better, make the video!)

or:

tell us about the "not book" you'd like to see on the market (or better still, draw the cover).

I will put the best efforts up on this blog so that you will gain eternal fame and fortune. And okay, I will rummage out a prize for the entries the readers like best.

(Doncha just love blogging where you don't have to ask an editor's permission to do these crazy things?)

VidLit?

Need an attention grabbing way to publicise your book? It seems that just as film trailers create interest in the latest movies, book trailers on the internet are the latest ploy in fiction marketing. According toElise Soukup in Newsweek :

Publishers and authors are increasingly commissioning trailers for books—some with dramatizations by actors that could easily be mistaken for movie trailers—that can be viewed on their Web sites and even aired on TV and in movie theaters.

The concept was initially pioneered in 2002 by Circle of Seven Productions (which cleverly trademarked the name "book trailers" so everyone else has to refer to them as "book videos").

The first mainstream publisher to have jumped on the bandwagon appears to be HarperCollins Canada. (Check out the video for Gautam Malkani's novel Londonstani and see if it tempts you to rush out and buy the book!)

The Book Standard recently announced the winners of a contest in which film students created videos for three new Bantam Dell titles. (I found the trailer for Stuart: A Life Backwards horrendously Pythonesque, though.)

Anyway, think the idea will catch on??

Food for the Mind - By Vending Machine

If you're in Paris and suddenly need a quick fix of The Odyssey or Alice in Wonderland , or need a couscous recipe in the middle of the night, or are stuck for how to conjugate an irregular verb after hours, a dash to the nearest book vending machine can put the right book in your hands in seconds and at the very reasonable price of $2.45 per copy. The great thing about book vending machines is that they will appeal to people who do not normally buy books, and thus make reading much more accessible to the average Joe. Surprisingly, book vending machines have actually been around for a very long time. The first - in fact the first vending machine of any kind - was invented by English publisher and bookseller Richard Carlisle in the 1880's. Book vending machines were introduced in Germany in 1912, and by 1917 there were 2,000 of them. When Penguin Books first went on sale in 1935, they were apparently sold from towering wood and glass vending machines which were given the lovely name Penguincubators. Apparently these are very much in demand among collectors and I was sad that I did not manage to turn up a picture of one. The US apparently had Read-O-Mat and Vend-A-Book machines from the 1950's and original Bantam Books were sold this way. And now there seems to be a world-wide revival in selling books in this way. There are book vending machines in the Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro metro stations selling Brazilian classic literature, cookbooks and Paul Coelho's novels. The books are sold at the same low price (about $1.50) and are proving to be a success, selling 250 copies a month each. And this one was snapped in Santiago, Chile. Germany is apparently rediscovering the book vending machine. A German publishing company decided to use this strategy a year ago to give their new unknown authors a chance to get noticed. Unfortunately the machines sell not only books, but food too so you get your book chilled along with your sandwich. How cool can you get! Britain is also getting in on the act: book vending machines are being introduced onto platforms across the UK's rail network: a business venture by two well-connected entrepreneurs to dispense short stories from vending machines on station platforms. each story will be between 7,000 and 12,000 words long, cost £1 and, because they are designed to be read in forty minutes or so, they will be printed on one sheet of paper and will fold up like a map.

Authors selected so far include PG Wodehouse, Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde, and Katherine Mansfield. The board of editors is no less illustrious and includes Beryl Bainbridge, Martin Amis, Dame Muriel Spark and William Trevor. The latter two have even written short stories especially for this imprint.

(Wow! If anyone comes across one of these machine, please buy the whole lot for me!) Now don't you think that this is an idea that might catch on here in the Klang Valley? Can't you just see folks at LRT and Commuter stations popping a ringgit or two into a slot for a daily measure of entertainment? Mind you, e-books are probably set to become the next big thing. But apparently there's now vending machines even for those - and apparently the first country to jump on the bandwagon is Australia! Hmmmm ... aren't you glad you came to visit this repository of totally useless information today?