A book is a book, part 2

My generation often grumbles about “social media” on the internet. But I confess that my surrender to Facebook has bestowed unexpected delights.

I taught and coached at Oxbow High School for 16 years. That’s a lot of kids under the bridge. In the past, I would occasionally run into former students, and it was a pleasure to hear how their lives have evolved.

Facebook, however, transformed that trickle into a stream of reconnections with nearly 200 “kids” who used to sit in my classroom or wield fencing foils under my command. Beyond brief encounters, I now see pictures of their homes, hobbies and children.

Best of all, we exchange ideas, life philosophies, and political rantings. The meaty stuff not usually on the table in chance encounters.

So last week, when Bunker Hill Publishing posted my column “A Book is a Book” on their website, I asked my Facebook friends to read it and weigh in with their preferences: books, eBooks, or both.

Their responses were so eloquent and interesting, I quickly shot off messages asking permission to quote them.

Dan Gilson, who now lives in Alaska, likes his eReader “because it takes up the space of about one book yet can contain the wisdom and entertainment of thousands of books.” He was one of several respondents to mention this valuable characteristic.

But, Dan notes, his eReader is “missing something.”

“I call it the ‘romantic notion of a book,’” he writes.

“When I have a book in my hands, I can flip back and forth between pages, write in the margin, place a bookmark in ‘my spot.’ I can stick pieces of paper containing notes between the pages. I can dog ear pages. I can place the open pages on my chest when I fall asleep.”

“When I pick up an old book,” Dan continued, “I can wonder whose hands have held it, whose eyes have scanned its pages.”

Keith Stockwell finds that when reading on computers, “I seldom want to read more than a page or two at a time. Something in the nature of it just urges me to flit betwixt that page and some random website, then email, and so forth, like a sparrow by the McDonald’s dumpster.”

While he admits that eReaders are nicer, “Books, real dead-tree editions, will always hold a special place. There is something different and warm and calm about them. There is nothing to break (except the spine, I suppose), nothing to fail or have a bad switch or return for warranty, no issues with some formats not being supported.”

“It is a book,” Keith concludes, “a thing that simply works.”

While Dan and Keith accept both, Tina Gilson differs emphatically.

“REAL books only for me,” she writes. “I will never read a book off an electronic device. I love books, I love bookstores. An eReader will never replace the real deal!”

This is one of those times when word count limitations here bedevil me. There are so many wonderful reflections on books from my former students…

Stay tuned for more next week.

(by permission Journal Opinion)

by Nessa Flax (author of Voices in the Hills)

 Regular readers here may recall a deliriously delighted column I wrote last spring reporting the acceptance of my collected-columns manuscript by Bunker Hill Publishing.

 Since then, I have been immersed in various stages of book production. It is a stress-inducing, crazy deadline, arcane process to a neophyte like me. Each step has been executed by electronic means. From reviewing cover design to seeing the work transformed into professional typeface, I have beheld the evolution of the manuscript.

 But it all existed only on my computer screen. Until last week.

 At a table in the Local Buzz, I held in my hands the stapled-together, not-yet-cut-to-size proof pages of Voices in the Hills: Collected Ramblings from a Rural Life. In my hands, I held the cover. In my hands, I held the blank-cover, blank-paged mockup of what Voices will be—feeling its heft and its physical book-ness.

It lives and breathes. It exists on paper.

 When I sat down at home—proofreading to be sure all the columns were there, in the right order, pages properly numbered, and the content scanned from one page to the next—I could curl up with my almost-a-book. No longer upright in my office chair staring at the screen.

It was in my hands.

 With the advent of eReaders and eBooks, the ultimate demise of traditional books has been predicted by geeks and publishing honchos. Lower cost for consumers and producers is a major factor. Storage is touted as another benefit. Libraries and readers can have thousands of “books” at the touch of a finger. Housing and dusting not required.

 I hope they’re wrong. I hope they’re as wrong about this as they were about the predicted demise of local newspapers when major papers moved into cyberspace. (While big newspapers have gone out of business by the dozens, small-town newspapers are thriving nationwide.)

 I hope they’re wrong, because a screen is a screen and a book is a book.

 Many claim this is a generational issue. That younger generations are more at home with electronic gadgetry than those of us who equate a computer screen of any size with work. Younger folks supposedly don’t have the sentimental attachment to books.

 Cyberspace discussions on the topic, however, give hope to booklovers.

 What I encounter is an attitude of both, like the young man who wrote: “I have 78 books on my Kindle. But all of them are not available in my country. It’s great for traveling. But I always bring a real book along. I love reading with a nice book. Nothing like flipping pages.”

 Another wrote: “If you could give an eReader that new book smell, it might have a slim chance with me.”

 My favorite was a poster who noted that eReaders are delicate gadgets: “Drop them or get them wet and they are toast. A book will last centuries.”

 Her sentiment was echoed by another—a kindred spirit—who said books will never be obsolete because “people will still want to read in the bathtub.”

 Right on.

*originally published in Journal Opinion 

Nessa Flax

Nessa Flax has been a freelance journalist since 1993. Her features and book reviews have appeared in a variety of publications. She began writing for the Journal Opinion in 1994 and launched her “Rambling Reflections” weekly column the next year. Initially attending Riverside City College and SUNY at Stony Brook, she received her degree from Dartmouth College with the first graduating class of women in 1976. Her professional career has taken her from a secretarial desk to selling motorcycles, into a sixteen-year teaching career that included establishing and coaching the only varsity fencing program in Vermont and New Hampshire public high schools. From her home in Ryegate Corner, Vermont, Nessa writes, provides management consulting services for small businesses, and communes with the forest.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Voices in the Hills

List Price: 22.50
Sale Price: 19.13 
Savings of 15%

Voices in the Hills is a book with all the color and rhythm of the seasons of New England. Timeless and yet personal, universal and yet so local you recognize your neighbors, can count the logs in their woodpile, smell the smoke from chimneys on a sunny cold autumn day and savor the taste of last summer’s raspberries.

#Occupy Back to Basics

Our world has definitely become electronically determined and most of us are running full speed into this commercially controlled revolution anxiously awaiting the next device to enhance our lives. Not only are we falling prey to these idiot devices, an apt (no pun intended) description I came across in an article last week, but we are subjecting our kids to them as well. I recently read that a mother was dismayed that her 4 year old was sharing her electronic reader with her 2 year old brother and she observed when her todler was holding his board book, he kept running his hand over the page hoping that it would turn.

In order to gain a love of reading we have to be given the pleasure of being read to. Whether it be, by words alone or words with pictures to highlight the story, nothing is better than being taken on a verbal journey. Just observe a group of very energetic 3 year olds at story time in pre-school or the local library, fully engrossed and quiet.

Yes these electronic devices are helping simplify our lives but let us all be very careful that we don’t let them take total control of them, forever changing the way we find pleasure in certain basic joys.

Helping Santa

It is finally out and will be in stores in late October.

Last October I was invited to a holiday gathering of a local PEO Chapter in Shelburne,VT. At that time Susan Kapsalis, now the chapter president, read this wonderful story. As she was reading, I was envisioning illustrations done by Bert Dodson, who we had done another children’s Christmas book with in 2009, Favor Johnson: A Christmas Story.

Helping Santa

After the presentations I asked Susan where she had found this story, for if it was a book that existed I wanted to get it for all my grandchildren. She told me that it was a story circulating on the internet and that the author was unknown. After some research I did locate the story on various websites, all the time getting more excited. I then did a copyright search at the Library of Congress and could not find one, it was meant to be and I could publish this book. I would title it Helping Santa: My First Christmas Adventure with Grandma.

One Warm Coat

Before I got into publishing, and had more time on my hands, I was able to volunteer at a daytimes women’s shelter in Boston, MA, The Womens Lunch Place. I really had been missing that good feeling one gets when one reaches out, giving and caring about those less fortunate. The basic message of this book was just that, a little boy buys a coat for a classmate who needs one in order to be able to play outside at recess. I wanted to find a charitable organization with that premise. More research, I do love the internet, brought me to Sherri Lewis Wood and her foundation One Warm Coat . I initially left a phone message hoping it would be picked up. Not too worry, she got back to me 5 minutes later, the first of many conversations. A new friendship was made and partnership formed to get the message out so that no one should go without a warm coat this winter. A portion of the royalties generated by the sale of this book will be going to One Warm Coat. Sherri’s conviction for what she is doing and her immediate understanding of how this book can be used as a vehicle to further her cause was exciting.

It made me very happy when Bert Dodson agreed to do the illustrations, I think partly because he enjoyed my enthusiasm for the project, for he has a demanding schedule. His watercolors bring the story and all its endearing characters to life. Bert works with live models and actual locations to achieve the level of realism his illustrations portray. He used an existing store, Hill’s 5 & 10, in Bradford, VT where his studio is so I thought as a small show of gratitude we would change the stores name from that which was in the original story. Other than that the text pretty much remains as I first heard it, a powerful little story with a big message.

I can’t wait until November when I can bring out this beautiful book and read to my 8 little granddaughters!

Ellen Sousa is a Massachusetts-based garden coach and teacher whose enthusiasm for creating backyard habitat sanctuaries has made her a popular speaker and natural-style garden tour guide across New England. She lives in Spencer, MA with her husband, Robert, along with 2 dogs, on a small farm landscaped as a natural habitat for farm animals, wild birds and pollinators. She writes about habitat gardening in New England at blog.THBFarm.com and is a team member at BeautifulWildlifeGarden.com and NativePlantWildlifeGarden.com

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Green Garden

List Price: 34.95
Sale Price: 29.95
Savings of 15%

Whether you have just purchased a new property with a garden to tend, or have made a rash personal decision to go ‘Green’ or are just looking at the same old backyard that needs attention, this book is definitely for you! Read More…

The Green Garden

List Price: 34.95
Sale Price: 29.95
Savings of 15%

DESCRIPTION

Whether you have just purchased a new property with a garden to tend, or have made a rash personal decision to go ‘Green’ or are just looking at the same old backyard that needs attention, this book is definitely for you!

Designed and written in a practical no nonsense comprehensive style The Green Garden is an inspirational guidebook. If you are looking for low-cost, beautiful and earth-friendly ways to “green” those landscapes and outdoor spaces and supply an adequate habitat for a whole variety of declining species, including birds, native pollinators, honey bees, amphibians and turtles, this book will be invaluable.

It includes an extensive Plant Guide, detailing the best wildlife-friendly plants suitable for the varied conditions and microclimates found across New England, along with cultivation hints and tips, and the species attracted by each plant.

Broken down into sections for Annuals, Vegetables and Herbs, Bulbs and Perennials, Shrubs, Vines, and Medium to Large “Mast” Trees, The Green Garden includes an introduction and photos from renowned native plant author and propagator William Cullina, formerly from the New England Wild Flower Society, now Curator at Coastal Maine Botanic Garden.

REVIEW

Maureen Horn, Massachusetts Horticultural Society, What makes a ‘green’ garden? Aren’t all gardens ‘green’ by definition? Ellen Sousa has some strongly held and eloquently stated views that an ‘eco-friendly’ and ‘beneficial’ habitat is essential to our long-term environmental well being. She has written a book that is specific to New England that tells how to create such a garden.  click here for full review

Debbie, Garden of Possibilities, The days of simply viewing our gardens as pretty accessories that adorn our homes are waning. Instead, smart gardeners want a green garden — one that supports local wildlife, is a haven for birds, butterflies and bees and is beautiful. click here for full review

Marilyn K. Alaimo, Chicago Botanic Garden “When perusing these pages, readers can’t help but recall the words of Midwest landscape architect/gardeners Ossian Cole Simonds (1855–1931) and Jens Jensen (1860–1951) who introduced and advocated the use of native plants in the landscape. Ellen Sousa has furthered their thoughts in this manual on the importance of creating and maintaining grounds that support nature.” click here for full review

PRODUCT DETAILS

Hardcover: 224 pages, 225 color  photos
ISBN-10:
ISBN-13: 978-1-59373-091-8
Language: English
Dimensions:
Weight:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ellen Sousa is a Massachusetts-based garden coach and teacher whose enthusiasm for creating backyard habitat sanctuaries has made her a popular speaker and natural-style garden tour guide across New England. She lives in Spencer, MA

List Price: 17.50
Sale Price: 14.88
Savings of 15%

DESCRIPTION

This is the story of Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) the first African American painter to achieve fame in both Europe and America. An inspiration for the Harlem Renaissance artists and later generations of American painters, his story is retold by Faith Ringgold, one of today’s leading African American artists, to inspire another generation of children to become the artists of the future.

Faith Ringgold’s depiction of Tanner’s struggle to achieve his dream and his success as a painter on the world stage will inspire and challenge young readers to look at the artist’s work and maybe go out and buy a few brushes and dry pigments (like Tanner did as a young boy in Philadelphia just 3 years after the Civil War) and set out to achieve their own dreams.

The book is published to coincide with a major exhibition of Tanner’s work at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts: Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit.

PRODUCT DETAILS

Hardcover: 32 pages, 20 color photos and 30 color illustrations
ISBN-13: 978-1-59373-092-5
Language: English

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Faith Ringgold, artist and author lives and works in Englewood, New Jersey. Ringgold’s art has been exhibited worldwide. She has written and illustrated fourteen children’s books including, Tar Beach which has won more than 30 awards including a Caldecott Honor and the Coretta Scott King Award.

Spring and autumn, Spring List and Fall List, Publishers have two seasons not four.  Summer and winter are, in a way, seasonal interludes between the other two.  Yes books are published every month but the vast majority fall into these two periods.  As the Psalmist wrote “He made the moon to mark the seasons; the sun knows its time for setting”.  Not on publishing though, not just yet.

It was in the late eighties that some corporate wonder with an MBA attached told me not only that   publishing was a “sunset industry” but that publishers were really “Brands for Products”. He even showed me a new fangled thing that was already called PowerPoint to explain whatever bit of what he said he thought I didn’t understand.  I told him PowerPoint wouldn’t win any graphic design awards and, as to his dusky comment, reminded him that we lived in a Copernican world and what goes around, including the earth about the sun, comes around. The man was really a newspaper executive and in the music business too so I feel entitled these days to a little schadenfreude on both counts.  The man didn’t reckon on us publishers discovering the ipad and the e-book.

And so we head into the future not just with an e-book plan but now an App strategy. Makes you feel young really when you launch into things you know nothing about. As always it’s who you know and not what you know and we now have an e-person and an App-person who are both clearly slated to give us and our authors a run for our money.

Talking about running for money we are having an interesting if friendly contractual and semantic tussle with an author and a lawyer in California. The issue is what is Dramatization and what isn’t. Apps apparently (no pun intended) have muddied the water. Not in my view but there you go. To me what is Theatrical and Broadcastable comes under Dramatization and what is not (ebooks and Apps) can be comfortably stabled in the electronic publishing rights clause.  Everything falls into one or the other. We’ll see.

Today seems to be the day for contract queries. Here’s another from closer to home from a co-publishing partner who is worried about competing with their own book. Don’t, is the simple answer if it will undermine sales in the first one without any significant benefit to the second. The matter is alas complicated by the fact we are not publishing the second book. Often books can compete and increase each other’s sales but that does need planning.

I quoted my favorite contract line to another author who has promised to dine out on the quote: Viz: An old mentor of mine, and a lawyer no less, insisted that punctuation ought to be eschewed in contracts as it was often the lazy person’s way of avoiding issues or the hard work of making sound syntactical sense in a clause. He would also append those lovely, now long neglected, initials E & OE to the bottom of his covering letters – Errors and Omissions Excepted.  The acronym could cover a multitude of sins from hangovers to spelling.

Brief digital discomfiture with designers and editors under pressure can make one nostalgic for the days of Wraps and Inserts, for those salad days when paste-ups were cumbersome piles of paper hiding that long extinct being The Paste-up Artist, Grant Enlargers occupied the corner spaces, and designers worked at tables rather than screens.  An unholy amount of sweat and skill is going in to ensuring The Green Garden gets to press on time but the mind boggles at the thought of pulling this off twenty or so years ago!

Romeo

Romeo: The Story of an Alaskan Wolf has sold out.  We are reprinting for the fall. The book got the most remarkable and generous endorsement from the great and wonderful Farley Mowat. After a paragraph of fulsome praise for the book he ends with a salute to our author “I envy John Hyde as I have never envied another human being.” You can’t get much kinder than that. Thank you again Farley!

A Dream of Dragons

And speaking of fulsome praise and Northsome folk Willem Lange and Mary Azarian will be talking about their book A Dream of Dragons: A Saga in Verse this Thursday June 9th and Sunday June 12th at Everyone’s Books in Brattleboro http://www.everyonesbks.com/ and the Village Square bookshop in Bellows Falls http://www.villagesquarebooks.com/event/willem-lange-mary-azarian-dream-dragons respectively. We are getting to the end of a marathon of appearances but nothing has dulled the joy of watching these two transport their audience with their art and poetry. Your publisher will be there too to make sure!

Now where was I – oh yes we have a dose the hoary old saw called Commas and Capitalization. I’m sworn to secrecy but we have had our fingers rapped by better Grammarians than I Gunga Din! So long as they don’t start in on my colons I’ll be ok. I know Googling is the first and last refuge of the desperate but on this occasion Commas and Capitalization got me 577,000 results in 0.08 seconds, Comma 226,000,000 results in 0.20 seconds and Capitalization 13,800,000 results in 0.09 seconds.

I’m ready.

The Green Garden

The Green Garden and its cover: Grace won over Green. It is going to be a classic look. I liked the original but perhaps more for the conceit than the result so all’s well, author’s happy, one less moving part to worry about. Here it is:

Belle

The color proofs for Belle: The amazing Astonishing Magical Journey of an Artfully Painted Lady. They are everything we wanted and have been packed off to the author before going back to the printer with a few minor comments. The printer in Hong Kong is getting restless and wants to know how many to print. Scary stuff – overstocks and too many returns loom through the haze of enthusiasm and optimism. Ordering paper has also become an issue what with all the Japanese paper mills disrupted by the crisis over there. Have to tell them this week. The calculator is getting hot. Here is where the adventure starts (in the book I mean).

Sometimes the moving parts move about of their own accord. Next year we are publishing a monumental (in more ways than one) study of English Armor in the 15^th century: The Armour of the English Knight (note the English as opposed to American spelling, noblesse oblige!). Author now wants the book split into two volumes and to publish volume two first. Makes absolute sense if you know what I mean. There’s more to this than meets the eye.

“Thus far, with rough and all-unable pen,

Our bending author hath pursued the story…”

As the Bard opined, but we digress. We will return to this in time!

At the risk of extending the moving part metaphor to breaking point my desk and computer screen can look like a mechanic’s bench as I try and resist taking a monkey wrench to an awkward contract or over-inking a sales blurb in red marginal screams.  I work in piles of paper old style. It is the season for Fixits as we move into full gear for the fall list.

As in the wall list above the bench:

Intro to our web catalogue not strong enough: Fixit

Contract for our amazing The Very Scary Monster has scary clause: Fixit

Sales need sales material yesterday: Fixit

Two more bookshops want events with Henry Homeyer for his Organic Gardening (not just) in the North East: Fixit. Can’t: Henry’s boondoggling down the Grand Canyon for some Travel Magazine. Alright for some…(note to self: remind him to Tweet next time)

Rep’s Tipsheet for one of the fall titles has gone missing: redo from scratch argggh!

You get the picture…

We are delighted to now offer Favor Johnson’s Fruitcake. The Favor Johnson Fruitcake is a sweet spicy holiday treat, a great gift for your neighbors or yourself. Purchase Favor Johnson written by Willem Lange and a fruitcake for a family close to you. Favor Johnson Fruitcake is all natural. Made by Old Cavendish, absolutely packed full of real fruits and nuts, slow baked, drenched with liqueurs, then cooled to perfection. Wishing a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all.

[wpsc_products product_id='48']

[wpsc_products product_id='47']

[wpsc_products product_id='26']

Bunker Hill Publishing has joined with Old Canvendish to make the Favor Johnson Fruitcake. Taking the ingrediants that Willem Lange mentions in his book, Favor Johnson. We have created the Favor Johnson Fruitcake, an all natural sweet and spicy holiday treat. The fruitcake is available for purchase on our website and in many stores in New England.

Old Cavendish Products comes to you from the heart of Vermont. We’ve been a family run business since 1986 and are committed to providing only the finest in Vermont Specialty Foods.

Using time-tested recipes and wholesome, preservative free ingredients, we are proud to offer you our Old Cavendish Fruitcake, three garden fresh Herb Vinegars and our famous Vermont Volcano Mustard.e invite you to share the tradition of Old Cavendish quality with family and friends by purchasing a Favor Johnson Fruitcake today.

We invite you to share the tradition of Old Cavendish quality with family and friends by purchasing a Favor Johnson Fruitcake today.

St Augustine once observed his master St Anselm and wrote: “When he read, his eyes scanned the page and his heart sought out the meaning, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still.” This was more than sixteen hundred years ago, when reading to oneself was virtually unheard of. In his History of Reading (Penguin, 1997), the translator and editor Alberto Manguel suggests this did not become a habit until the 10^th century, when the Vikings were settling into Northern France and William the Conqueror was not even a glimmer in an Olaf’s eye.

Since then, reading has become a personal affair, a private communion between consumer and book. So used are we to this that we no longer think of the book as a technology, much less an engine for the voice.  True, book clubs have been on the rise of late, but they are formed largely to discuss the individual interpretations and opinions of their members rather than to listen to a recitation.

Not long ago, and just before the new boom in digital and social marketing, these clubs were lauded as the new Eldorado of bookselling. They seem much less threatening now to those of us who cussedly favor privacy in our reading (pace the Patriot Act).  Now they seem quaint reunions of old timers desperately clinging to a reenacted past that includes an absence of television.

So where are we now, with our Kindles and iPads? What can we say after five thousand years of book collecting of one type or another (no pun intended) when faced with something so fragile as a digital connection and a screen which we cannot mark or dog-ear? My private possession of a book is now transformed, a public list of downloaded files that Mr. Jobs and his ilk can seemingly interfere with at will. What I read is quite literally posted property that I can pay to view but cannot own, cannot shelve, cannot take down and put back in a different order.  I cannot look at the spines and see old friends and new acquaintances sharing my life with me. I can no longer have a library of my own.

As a part of this unwieldy market, I will have become a satellite of unpredictable and unknown sources, of what I used to be able to buy, keep, toss, or use as a doorstop. Now I can purchase only its shadow, which I can only have and hold on a screen. Like Plato’s prisoners staring at the wall of their cave, I can only see a reflection of a reality I cannot grasp.  I am no longer in possession of a faithful (or unfaithful) copy of an author’s oeuvre as I would be otherwise.. Now I have sight of something I cannot control or check, compare with another edition or, more mundanely, just lend to someone.

E-books are not published in the same sense as the printed book. We readers are given only piecemeal reproductions and a limited viewfinder. When presses e-publish, we do not publish in multiples but provide one copy at a time vicariously.

This reminds me of another fad from the fifties and sixties, of publishing collections of slides packaged with a book. One put them in a portable viewfinder with one hand and read the book in the other, or so it was proposed.  It didn’t work, but, then again, these slides were printed (if transparent) and tangible documents… Unlike the e-book, which is seemingly as erasable (pun intended) as chalk on a blackboard.

So, for those of you wedded to this new fashion, what to make of Bunker Hill Publishing producing its own e-book versions of our list? More to the point, what are we at Bunker Hill Publishing supposed to make of it? Will we publish e-books without the printed versions? The temptations are there, as the production costs must be significantly less. We independent publishers have to count our pennies.  Can we succeed in giving you, our clients, something physical to treasure in return for your hard won greenbacks, or will we be simply a source of digital files that can only be download?  There are so many questions, and more that we haven’t even thought of asking in the face of something we have little precedent for. For now, let’s settle in for the duration and make the best of a strange new world.

Our first publication was Disney Looking at Painting, after which any title has been a doddle to produce! Reconciling high Brit culture with the demotic of Disney was a gas. Overall, it turned out quite well, with 110,000 copies in print.

Then we met Rob DeSalle, Ian Tattersall, and Patrica J. Wynne, sciences professionals at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and devised Bones, Brains, and DNA and Brain. Next, after doing The Summer of Cecily, a story of author Nan Lincoln‘s heroic rescue of a harbor seal, it seemed like a good idea to do the story through the seal’s eyes–thus Cecily’s Summer. The trick is finding the right people to do the right books and in this we have been very fortunate. Of course, you want a strong text and great illustration but you also want to create a book that doesn’t look like all the others on the shelf. Luckily for us, our writers and artists have strong stylistic senses and return to us with new, fresh material time and again. We work around their skills and the subject at hand, designing the format to suit. Authors are never wrong and artists are always right. The rest is, er, finesse!

In all seriousness, though, we maintain that the aesthetics and sensibilities of our authors, illustrators, and author-illustrators are of the most importance. Commodity publishing, or “just giving the public what they want,” is a distracting idea when what we publishers do is fall in love with an idea and work out a way to share it.

And these ways are changing. Looking at and reading books will soon be only the first step in the adventure, with website tie-ins, multimedia components, and interactive materials to follow. Hardback, paperback, audio, digital, and the rest are all zones of publishing, different ways of reaching what remains the same public. Though fads and fashions change the pitch and alter the balance of forms as time goes by, the zeal of their audiences remain a constant.  It’s a case of “play it again, Sam,” as the famous mishearing of the old Bogart line goes. Only now we’re “playing it” on a new set of instruments and in a shifted key.

Amid such a constantly-shifting technology, it is interesting to note that children’s books haven’t changed substantially in content since the Victorians invented the genre. Still, reprints of old favorites are hard to come by. There are fewer and fewer “classics” now. Quality is also an issue, as older books — like the French Babar series, for instance – that had a high quality of production now appear in a tatty, cheapening form.  Beatrix Potter’s long-running Peter Rabbit has fared better with Penguin, but such cases are rare.

My advice? Hoard your precious, dog-eared copies of Caps for Sale, your (original!) Curious George, the Madelines and Ferdinands and Flat Stanelys of your childhood — if you still have them. If they’ve disappeared from your parents’ house, your storage space, or been hand-me-downed to friends and family, fear not. Likely within months or minutes of this writing, you will be able to read them to your favorite tots from the screen of your Kindle.

Forcing Nature

List Price: $35.00
Sale Price: $29.75
Saving of 15%

DESCRIPTION

This lavish and unusual portrait of Los Angeles celebrates, in formal portraits, the city’s heroic trees – poised like so many talismans in the often surreal landscapes of concrete and tarmac. Impeccably crafted with latest digital technology, George Haas’ exquisite photographs evoke the hidden and mysterious in the most mundane rear-view mirror settings of LA’s famously artificial horizons. As twisted and neglected as the Los Angeles River itself, they catch the eye as silent witnesses to the excesses of the modern urban sprawl.

REVIEW

via Amazon.com (c) 2007 – “It is a big beautiful hard covered book. Anyone would like it as a gift. I, myself, was given this book as a gift and am simply amazed by the work. Haas’ photographs are sometimes sad, sometimes funny and always intelligent and interesting. He captures trees all over the city in color and in black and white – trees that seem miraculous given the fact that the city is so unwelcoming. As you look at a picture of a fiery red tree exploding from the sidewalk in front of a convenience store, with cars speeding by graffiti competing for attention, you cannot help but be startled and overwhelmed. We keep the book in our living room and everyone who looks at it adores it. The essays are really really good also, and it is nice to have intelligent commentary about the art. But the pictures speak eloquently for themselves.”

PRODUCT DETAILS

Hardcover: 96 pages
ISBN-10: 1593730500
ISBN-13: 978-1593730505
Language: English
Dimensions: 14.4 x 11.1 x 0.7 inches
Weight: 2.8 pounds

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

George Haas is a Los Angelan portraitist, film-maker and photographer who works in the grand tradition of American documentary and landscape photography.

No shows booked at the moment.

Mike Slosberg is an ageing novelist, playwright and cartoonist. This is his fourth published book. Mike writes Haiku instead of doing crosswords, putting boats in bottles, and lamenting his age.

Pimp My Walker

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Sale Price: $8.46
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DESCRIPTION

I’ve a pacemaker
But whenever I sneeze hard
The channel changes.

And so it goes. Old Age really sucks, and one has to be philosophical and poetic to survive. Humor is the only defense, the alchemy which can magically turn tragedy into comedy. Pimp My Walker is brimming with 60 Haiku poems that celebrate the cardinal aspects of growing old, softened only with hilariously appropriate illustrations.

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Willem Lange

From 1968 to 1972 Will directed the Dartmouth Outward Bound Center. From 1972 until his “retirement” in 2007, he was a building and remodeling contractor in Hanover. He’s an adopted member of the Dartmouth Class of 1957.

In 1981 he began writing a weekly column, “A Yankee Notebook,” which appears in several New England newspapers. He’s a commentator or host for Vermont Public Radio and both Vermont and New Hampshire Public Television. His annual readings of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol began in 1975 and continue unabated. He’s published several audio recordings and six books and received an Emmy nomination for one of his pieces on Vermont Public Television.

In 1973 Will founded the Geriatric Adventure Society, a group of outdoor enthusiasts whose members have skied the 200-mile Alaska Marathon, climbed in Alaska, the Andes, and Himalayas, bushwhacked on skis through northern New England, and paddled rivers north of the Arctic Circle.

He and his wife, Ida, who is the proprietor of a kitchen design business, have been married since 1959. After forty years in New Hampshire, they moved recently to East Montpelier, Vermont. They have three children and four grandchildren.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Favor Johnson

List Price: $16.95
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With all the elements of a classic American winter folktale, Favor Johnson: A Christmas Story has been a favorite Vermont Public Radio story for twenty-five years and is now a bright and lively picture book. Favor Johnson is a compelling curmudgeon, a loner who lives on a farm with his livestock and faithful dog. Read More

A Dream of Dragons

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A Dream of Dragons is a proper and modern Norse saga written with all the power of Melville and Hemingway and a true story now retold in the ageless rhythms of blank verse as irresistible as the beautiful and especially commissioned wood cuts of Mary Azarian. Read More

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Harold Evans

Harold Evans is the author of two critically acclaimed best-selling histories of America:  The American Century and They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators. This book was the basis for a four-part documentary of the same title on PBS, which he wrote. It is also being adapted into a college curriculum. His latest book is My Paper Chase: True Stories of Vanished Times, a memoir covering his early life, his years in Britain’s newspaper business and his move to America. He is editor at large of The Week magazine, and moderates The Week’s panel discussions with political and economic leaders.

Evans graduated M.A. from Durham University and held a Harkness Fellowship at the Universities of Chicago and Stanford. In London, he was the editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981, and editor of The Times from 1981 to 1982. His account of these years was published in his best-selling book Good Times, Bad Times. He was regular presenter on the TV series What the Papers Say.

Evans moved to America in 1984. He was the founding editor of Conde Nast Traveler magazine and President and Publisher of Random House Trade Group (1990-1997) From 1997-1999 he was Editorial Director and Vice Chairman of U.S. News & World Report, the New York Daily News, The Atlantic Monthly and Fast Company, a position from which he resigned in January 2000 to write full time. (Evans remains a Contributing Editor at U.S. News & World Report.)

Among many recognitions, Evans was awarded the European Gold Medal by the Institute of Journalists. This followed his successful Sunday Times investigation and campaign on behalf of children injured by the pharmaceutical thalidomide. In 1999, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the UK Press Award Committee, its highest accolade. In 2000, Evans was honored as one of 50 World Press Heroes on the 50^th anniversary of the founding of the International Press Institute in defense of press freedom; for the IPI’s 60th anniversary, he will deliver the keynote address at their 2010 conference in Vienna. In 2001, British journalists voted him the greatest all time British newspaper editor, and in 2004 he was honored with a knighthood in the Queen’s 2004 New Year’s Honors list.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

War Stories

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The war correspondent trails clouds of glory. The names of the pioneers of the trade are stardust: Ernest Hemingway, Alexander Dumas, Henry Villard, Winston Churchill, Stephen Crane, John Reed, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Richard Harding Davis, John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, Jack London, George Orwell, Philip Gibbs, Luigi Barzini. The names from World War I, Korea, and Vietnam, the Gulf War, and Kosovo are likewise as redolent of adventure and derring-do, with photojournalists and radio and television commentators crowding the pantheon.Read More…

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