April 2, 2012
My blogging course begins again.
It’s true, it’s true! My course The Art and Business of Blogging at UofT’s School of Continuing Studies is offered again starting on April 16th and runs for the next 8 weeks. I’m looking forward to it. Space is still available so register now.
March 18, 2012
On books, "buzz" and magic
“You can almost always find chains of coincidence to disprove magic. That’s because it doesn’t happen the way it does in books. It makes those chains of coincidence. That’s what it is. It’s like if you snapped your fingers and produced a rose but it was just because someone on an aeroplane had dropped a rose at just the right time for it to land in your hand. There was a real person and a real aeroplane and a real rose, but that doesn’t mean the reason you have the rose in your hand isn’t because you did the magic.” —Among Others, Jo Walton
It’s like magic, the way good news of a book spreads. I’m currently reading Jo Walton’s Among Others because at our last book club meeting, Deanna couldn’t stop talking about it, and then Trish tweeted, “Dying to get on the streetcar so I can get back to reading Jo Walton’s Among Others“, and this is the kind of buzz I listen to. It’s real and you can’t buy it, but I trust it because it’s the sound of real people talking about a book that’s made a connection.
But it’s not magic, of course. It’s a chain of coincidence that begins with a writer creating a work that is really good, or sometimes a work that is not very good but happens to be exactly what readers are hungry for. And then the work drifts out into the world, and of course it helps to know a lot of people well-placed to help the drifting, to have a great cover design, be published by a press that newspaper editors pay attention to, to be photogenic and/or notorious (or fictional), to have a lot of time to twitter, and a knack for connecting with your audience. But then I’m thinking of a book like Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin where almost none of that happened, and the book caught on fire. What happened with that book was the most amazing chain of coincidence, a force onto itself, and no one ever could have made that happen.
In less magical terms, I despair when I listen to men on the radio talking about an invasion of Iran or moving the economy forward as though anyone actually has any understanding of or control over how matters of war or economics transpire– these things take on unforeseen trajectories and are carried by their own momentum. You can’t plot these matters the way you plot a book, and nor can you plot a book’s reception either. I recently read a comment by an author stating that he appreciated the way that social media gives him control over what happens to his books once they’re published, but that control is an illusion. The magic is going to happen or it isn’t, and it’s unfair expectation on an author to make him think he can steer it either way, or that he’d feel responsible when magic fails to occur (except perhaps for having written a book that wasn’t extraordinary or even good. I come across a lot of terrible books in my travels. It is my opinion that more writers should be feeling such a burden these days).
Sometimes the magic should happen and it doesn’t. For example, it blows my mind (and in a bad way) that there are books on this that anybody hasn’t read yet. It’s unjust. Or that Lynn Coady’s The Antagonist didn’t win a major literary award last autumn (though magic did happen there. People loved that book). It kills me when the books I love don’t take, but it’s the way it goes, and it’s in nobody’s hands. But then I go declaring Carrie Snyder’s The Juliet Stories as one of the best books of the year, the CBC concurs, and the book is getting rave reviews everywhere. This is what buzz is: a chain of coincidence that originates with a book that is awesome. (And now here, it’s your turn: buy it.)
Which is not to say that writers are powerless or that book marketers would be best sitting idle. Book marketing is a tool, and so is social media, and both are always going to aid the process. I recently purchased Emma Staub’s story collection Other People We Married because on one strange morning, she had turned up in every hyperlink I’d clicked on and somehow that managed not to be annoying. Now Straub is well-connected, which does help– I followed her on twitter after a recommendation by Maud Newton, who is a good person to know, I’d say. But mostly importantly, in none of the links I clicked on was Straub telling me how fantastic she or her book was. In one, she was using her experience as a bookseller to advise writers on “How to Be an Indie Booksellers Dream”. In another, she was included in Elissa Schappell’s “Books With Second” Lives feature. And then there was this. Such a chain of coincidence, I found, that obviously the universe was telling me to buy this book. And so I did.
So the writer is not powerless. But here it is, in two of these links, the magic had already happened– the book had connected with readers and they were telling me about it. In the other, Straub was putting her name and face out there, but doing so by participating in a wider community of readers and writers, giving them something other than a sales pitch.
Writers: stop tweeting the same links to your reviews over and over again (unless, perhaps, you’ve just been reviewed in the New York Times), stop spamming your followers, you don’t need to respond to every blogger’s review (and especially not if it’s a bad one), give your potential audience a reason to be interested in you besides the fact that you’ve written a book you want them to read. Social media is a conversation, and nobody likes anyone in a conversation who only talks about themselves.
But at a certain point, the writer has to take a step back and just let it happen. Magic can’t be orchestrated.
**
Speaking of magic, we high-fived over our pancakes this morning as The 49th Shelf received a shout-out on CBC’s The Sunday Edition in a discussion about the state of Canadian publishing. It was glorious.
December 19, 2011
Blogging course makes the news
Much of this Fall was consumed by the adventure my first round of teaching The Art and Business of Blogging at through UofT’s School of Continuing Studies. An article on the course was included in The Toronto Sun‘s recent continuing education supplement, and is available for your reading here. And just a reminder that the course will be offered again in the spring!
December 6, 2011
What I Hate About Book Bloggers
It’s certainly not a secret that publishers send me books to review. I’m currently indulging in a Goose Lane binge because of a package that arrived on by doorstep last week. Most of the new releases I review have come my way via my mailbox. But I don’t make a note in each post of where my books came from, because I promise you that it really has no bearing on how that book gets reviewed. Also because professional book reviewers are not required to disclose that they were also sent the book for free, so why should I have to? I don’t regard the books I receive in the post as compensation– books don’t pay the rent, my friend. I’m not obliged to do anything with the books that come my way, to review positively, or even to review at all. Regardless of how these books found their way to me, I am beholden to nobody.
Which is not to say that this has always been the case. Of course, I’ve never received compensation for a review on my site– that’s so not my style, plus the very best books don’t have to pay people to like them. But when I started receiving books from publishers about 5 years ago, I found the whole process pretty overwhelming. I was flattered by the attention, and anxious to please, and though I was never dishonest in my early reviews, I was sometimes more generous in my assessments than I should have been. Though I also think I was a more generous reader then– 5 years of reading so many middling books does tend to make a reader rather crabby. But I’ve also found my footing as a reader, as a critic (though it’s still evolving; it has to be), I’ve read so much more, and learned so much more that I feel more comfortable to simply term a book a disaster, rather than trying to puzzle through the writer’s intentions as I might have done once upon a time. Though I don’t often declare a book a disaster here on my site, partly because it’s inconsistent with the tone here, and also because I don’t have enough free time to devote to writing reviews of books that are terrible.
During the past week, book bloggers have been getting some attention after many received a letter from William Morrow laying down the laws of book bloggerdom– reviews must be posted within a month of the book’s release, failure to adhere to these rules will result in getting bumped off their mailing list. To be honest, I didn’t find the letter or its tone too surprising– since the economy broke in 2008, I’ve noticed a similar reining in of bloggers by the big publishers I deal with. Gone are the days when they’d send me any/every book in the catalogue (and sometimes screw up the ordering so I’d end up receiving the same books twice, or three times). And obviously, I’m not exactly heartbroken about this, because the three-book thing never really seemed like an excellent business plan anyway. Also because there were so many books that I was often overwhelmed, and I ended up reading books I wasn’t even particularly interested in, which didn’t make me happy at all.
The problem with the reining in however, in letters like William Morrow’s and elsewhere, is not that publishers are asking more of bloggers or that bloggers are practicing book banditry, but rather that the publishers are treating the bloggers like kindergarteners. There is an abject disregard here by publishers of what bloggers do, no understanding of their function beyond that of unpaid publicists, and it’s clear that bloggers are not being taken seriously as the force they are. And when I look out at the book blogosphere these days and see such an abundance of unfortunate blogs (enacting many of the problems William Morrow notes in their letter), I’m not sure the bloggers themselves are entirely to blame. Sure, there seems to be a lack of responsibility on behalf of the bloggers, but the publishers are doing absolutely nothing to cultivate an alternative, which it will be very much in their purview to do.
The upside to beginning to receive free books on my blog, along with the overwhelmingness and dangerous sense of flattery, was the notion that someone was taking what I was doing seriously. It was a revelation! And the individuals I was dealing with at various publishing companies did take me seriously, working to create a genuine relationship, reading and engaging with my blog, suggesting books that they’d considered and thought that I would like. Many of these individuals were book bloggers themselves, rather than marketing types straight-up, and so they understood how it worked, that a book blogger requires the autonomy that any reviewer does.
Of course, the book blogosphere was smaller then, so such relationships were easier to foster, and I know that publishers’ resources have become unbelievably stretched in recent years. But I can’t help thinking that publishers themselves could have had more control over what has been the general decline of book blogs (or maybe what I mean is that they had more control than they imagined in the decline itself). Why, for example, do they send books to bloggers whose blogs are terrible? Does it still count as “buzz” if it’s generated by idiots (and it’s probably at this point that you clue in to the fact that I’m really not a marketer, no?)? Why send books to those bloggers who think a “review” is a 50 word assessment, and a pasting of the book’s marketing copy? Why do you send YA books about dragons to 35 year old men who like reading Malcolm Gladwell? The point of bloggers is to create buzz, yes, but that buzz is only going to buzz if it’s coming from a legitmate conversation. And publishers have missed their opportunity to heighten that converation’s tone.
Now I’m sounding like Jaron Lanier, I think, sitting back in my rocking chair wearing my enormous black t-shirt. Back in my day, I’ll tell you, things were different. I lament the decline of the individual voice in book blogs, I hate the standardization, the memeishness. I can’t stand the “In My Mailbox” meme, and I do wonder how anyone finds the times to read all those books, which are so often the very same books that other bloggers are receiving, so that the conversation is an echo chamber, and what is lost for that.
I do hope that the bloggers receiving so many free books continue to do their share as readers by actually buying books– I certainly did my bit with a $240 splurge at Book City last week (and hey everybody, guess what you’re getting for Christmas from me this year!). I want bloggers to keep exploring the fringes of the literary scene, whether it be with new books by independent presses or dusting off old books from the shelves. Blogs have always been interesting for being an alternative to what we might find in our newspaper’s dwindling review pages, and not simply a regurgitation. For the discoveries they yield that no mainstream medium would have been able to bring forth, and for the small, specialized communities they foster. For the genuine connections that happen.
And I don’t hate book bloggers at all, of course (though I am well-versed in writing an attention-grabbing title). I have as much hope for the what we can offer to books and literature in general as I ever did. But I just think that when publishers ask more of us, it should be about not simply towing their line, and that it’s most important that we never stop asking more of ourselves.
October 2, 2011
What's the point of being a sell-out if you're not getting paid?
I have never, ever blogged for free. Well, except for the times I did, here and elsewhere, but it’s different, and I will tell you why. But first, I want to underline how much I appreciated Russell Smith’s column last week about his bafflement with young writers who have no qualms with slinging words for nothing. Writers, I suppose, like me, who’ve spent the last decade slapping my life up online: “Ever since they were teenagers, they had clever thoughts, they posted them online, people reacted immediately… They can get famous fast this way, and it’s gratifying to have a huge audience.” (Or a tiny audience, or any audience at all. Hi Mom!)
I appreciated Smith’s article because it’s good to have occasion to step back and question the absurdities of one’s own life. And also because I think he’s right, in particular in the case of online magazines like the Huffington Post, “the cash-cow possession of a giant media conglomerate. There is no question that the HuffPo can afford to pay, and pay well.” And I’m sure he’s right, because when I blogged for the literary journal Descant from 2007-2009, they could afford to pay me. Not a whole lot, no, but no one pays me a whole lot for anything I do. But no one who pays me has a whole lot either, and I have even less, so it actually comes to be not insubstantial in the end. (And isn’t that the great thing about living on little– it doesn’t take much to make you feel rich.)
Anyway, my experiences have actually been the fulfilment of what Smith so scathingly rebukes. Though I promise you that I’ve never given a thought to my “brand” (because such a thought, I think, would undermine the fact that I’m a person), much of my writing career has come about as an extension of the work I’ve done for free. Indeed, it’s paid off pretty well. (I used to have this theory that perhaps I’d done okay because I was a person instead of a brand, but then I discovered there exists this wildly popular circuit of bloggers who do nothing but go to parties and wear ridiculous shoes, and realized that beating hearts, in fact, count for little.)
But I am sure that I have had some success as a blogging writer precisely because success as never been my primary objective. (This is going to be a discussion we return to many times in my blogging course, which starts on Tuesday. [I realize now this looks like product placement. It isn’t. I’m just excited, and have blogs on my mind].) When I stared blogging, no one did it to attain anything, except maybe a weird boyfriend on the other side of the country who looked like a hobbit. I’ve blogged for so long because I like the platform, yes, but mostly my blog has been useful to me in all manner of ways beyond that– my blog is a record, an infinitely valuable catalogue of memories, it has made me into a better writer and a better reader, it has allowed me to tap into communities of readers and writers who’ve become my friends (some in my neighbourhood, even!), it has allowed me to write rambling pieces (ie this one) that develop my ideas and has clarified my world, and it’s also a fine way to keep in touch with friends and family near and far. If no one was reading my blog, I would still be doing it.
But of course it’s a minefield, trying to answer these questions of why do we blog exactly. A less nice way to phrase what I wrote in the preceding paragraph is that blogging is inherently self-indulgent. Of course, I like getting positive attention. But I really do like to think that I’m serving the books I read, the authors who wrote them, and their readers. For me, it always come back to the Virginia Woolf quote: “The standards we raise and the judgements we pass steal into the air and become part of the atmosphere which writers breathe as they work.”
Last week, I read another article about blogging, this one about women bloggers who wield enormous influence, and are paid in consumer goods by companies who are hungry for some online attention. These women appear to be more frustrated with the system than Russell Smith’s bloggers, but it’s remarkable to me how much these women are corporate slaves as much as the HuffPo bloggers are, how much blogging has come to have everything to do with furthering corporate interests and making people spend more money on shit. It seems remarkable how many bloggers are compromising their integrity to be courted by corporations who really don’t seem to make the best suitors– I mean, what’s the point of being a sell-out if you’re not getting paid?
This isn’t blogging as I’ve come to know it. These women are doing it wrong.
And yet. I mean, I’ve got my own corporate relationships here. For years, publishers have been sending me books for review, and this has been something it has been tough for me to negotiate. Initially, I was pretty bad at it. Initially, I thought these publicists were doing me a favour, and this is probably reflected in a review or two in which I went a little too easy. I didn’t understand that our relationships were actually reciprocal, and I’ve slowly figured it out, I think. That I’ve got to keep buying books in order to exercise my power as a consumer and my independence as a reader, and that I’m allowed to criticize the books that come my way, and that I deserve to be taken seriously as a reader and reviewer (but I’m not to be an asshole about it. I’m a blogger after all. I get that too.). I claim the right not read certain books, and to stake out my territory as a reader– it amazes me to see bloggers reading totally out of their comfort zones because a publicist “was kind enough” to send a book that didn’t suit them. I guarantee you the publicist was less kind than kind of lazy.
But I also appreciate the publicists who do take the time to highlight books that are up my alley, and who care about good books as much as I do. I like to think there is an important distinction between books and the vast amount of unnecessary crap that mothering blogs, or gadget blogs, and the advertisements accompanying both are always trying to convince you that you need. The difference is that books aren’t stuff, they’re culture, and when book bloggers are doing their jobs right, that culture is enriched.
September 12, 2011
My blogging course starts in 3 weeks!
I was supposed to begin teaching The Art and Business of Blogging in the spring, but we did not get the numbers required for the course to proceed. And so I’ve been somewhat nervous as the fall start date has drawn closer, trying to achieve the unlikely balance of not getting my hopes up but also getting the course prepared. It was my pleasure then today to discover that we’re just one body short of a class at the moment, and there are three weeks left before the course starts. I’ve got a good feeling about this, am so looking forward to the course, but wanted to put the word out there for anyone who’s interested that you can register today.
We’ll be covering the basics of blogging how-tos, but using this as a platform to take on the bigger questions– what’s a blog for, what are its unique capabilities, how do you make it worth your time, how do you make some money from it, what are the ethical questions involved, what is involved in blogging well, and how can you create a blog that you’ll be comfortable with taking into the wide open future.
UPDATE: Course is on! I’m so excited. But there’s still room for you…
July 6, 2011
Literary Women: The Womanly Art of Blogging
I’ve written a short essay on women and blogging for the wonderful blog Women Doing Literary Things, in which I write, “I’m not saying there aren’t any male bloggers—I just don’t read many of them. Though I also don’t read a lot of blogs written by women too: craft blogs, parenting blogs, home renovation blogs, fashion blogs, pregnancy blogs, infertility blogs, food blogs, and blogs about vintage rocking chairs. But the blogs that interest me, the literary ones— from the perspectives of common readers, academics, novelists, poets, mothers, book fetishists, illustrators, librarians, literary gossips, and critics alike—almost all of them are written by women.”
You can read the whole thing here, and I’d love it if you did.
May 29, 2011
Uncustomary Blogs
“It is now customary for authors to have character blogs…” someone tweeted from the Writers Union of Canada AGM this weekend, which made me think a bit. And then some more after I’d attended the AGM’s “speednetworking” event and spoke to a number of writers with questions about blogs and how to use them. “My publisher told me I should have a blog,” said one of them, but she had no idea what to do with that advice. What I thought about all of this finally is that the most successful author blogs have nothing customary about them.
Madeleine Thien’s blog was noted as the “customary” author blog, but I haven’t seen many other blogs like it. Set up to complement her latest book Dogs at the Perimeter, the blog uses her novel as a platform to launch further and deeper into Cambodian history, to expand upon the research she used for her book, and to round out her characters with a bit of metafictional fun. That her novel so nicely intersects history and story offers great potential for both of these to work together on the blog, to further engage readers who want to know more about the story’s background, to use visual materials that wouldn’t have worked in the novel, and to create a blog that is a work of art onto itself.
Sean Dixon has created blogs for both his novels that work in a similar way. I remember finding The Lacuna Cabal blog once I’d finished reading his novel The Girls Who Saw Everything and being so thrilled that these characters I’d been following could live beyond the page (and it’s not that the page wasn’t enough. It’s that I liked it so much, I wanted more). Unlike with Thien, Dixon is straightforwardly the author of his blog, but his work similarly blurs lines between fact and fiction and the blog is a great place for such blurring to continue. Dixon’s characters are so real to him that he’s happy to tell use more about them, and to provide more background information on how his story grew into an actual book. He’s having similar fun with the blog for his new novel The Many Revenges of Kip Flynn, using photographs of locales depicted in his book, and making connections between his book and the world through links to various things.
What makes these blogs work (and Ami McKay also did a fine job of this with The Birth House, also Amy Lavender Harris with Imagining Toronto), however, is that clearly their authors are enjoying what they’re doing, they’re invested in the project, the blog for its own sake instead of as a marketing tool. The blogs work because the authors find links they want to share with us, the blogs become compendiums of fascinating stuff, and their eclectic-ness is a reflection of the authors’ personalities. That personality is what makes readers keep returning, a blog as unique as the individual who wrote it. The chief attraction of blogs, of course, are the glimpses they offer into the people behind them.
But not all authors need to create blogs of such scale. Perhaps their books don’t lend themselves, or (importantly) the author is a not a big appreciator of blogs and has no idea (or interest) in how they work. It would sort of be like someone who’s never read a book trying to write one– inevitable disaster. Successful bloggers, I think, never have to try that hard– if it doesn’t come naturally, if it doesn’t seem fun, then it’s not worth it.
Blogs are useful for keeping websites current, however, and having a blog but calling it “News” is an easy way to get that practical benefit but not have to pour one’s heart into it. I also like the idea of a blog as a limited project, as with Anne Perdue’s road trip blog, so that the challenge of maintenance is no longer an issue. Establishing at the beginning that a blog will not be updated too often is also a simple way to keep it sustainable.
The nice thing about a blog is that it can be anything, and a writer can adapt the form to suit her needs and interests (and can further adapt as needs and interests change). She can decide how much of her personal life she wants to share, how much focus she wants stuck to a specific book, if she will take the voice of a mentor, an expert, or a friend, if she will focus on herself or her work, or other stuff in the world. She can create a blog that is not only of interest to her readers, but is also useful to her as a writer and a reader. She can–like Madeleine Thien did–choose not to make what is a customary blog, and it’s probably a wise choice. Because who wants to read the blog that is like everybody else’s? (Which, incidentally, is the blog that eventually fizzles out anyway.)
May 17, 2011
Book Blogospheres
The most important thing I’ve learned about blogs since I’ve been thinking really hard about them in the last six months is that there is no such thing as “the blogosphere”. (Also interesting, if unsurprising, is that the first person who said “the blogosphere” meant it as a joke.) Instead, there are many blogospheres in separate orbits, all oblivious to the other bodies sharing the same outer space. This fact is not entirely understood in the mainstream media, however, which also has the impression “blogger” and “political blogger” are synonymous terms. They also publish stories with shocking headlines such as “Canada’s political bloggers are predominantly male”. (Do note: so are Canada’s political everythings.)
Anyway, I have spun out of my own orbit. The point of this post is that I need help. Even the book blogosphere is broken down into many, many sub-spheres– reviewers, fetishists, librarians, collectors, scholars, writers, illustrators, designers, etc. etc. etc. What are the spheres you like to read? Who is writing the best online reviews these days? What are your favourite book blogs? Please share your favourites (and all links are welcome, though an emphasis on Canadian sites would be most helpful to me). Thank you.
April 14, 2011
On platforms, professionalism, and the "it's just a hobby" excuse
Joan Didion. Not a hobbyist.
Recently, one inflammatory online post led to another, and I found myself reading a comment from a blogger-ish sort who defended his lack of professionalism by claiming that it wasn’t required of him. And he’s right. But then there’s bloggers and there’s bloggers, and if we’d like the enterprise to have any legitimacy (and yes I would, please. Here’s why), then we have to hold ourselves accountable to high standards. Or, more importantly, when we slip up, we should not use excuses like, “I’m not being paid for this. It’s just a hobby.”
Which is not to say that blogging should not be fun. Blogging should always be fun, basically because we’re not getting paid for this and it’s just a hobby. When blogging becomes obligatory, it’s time to stop. But fun does not negate your responsibility to provide material that is thoughtful, original, well-written, and interesting. I suppose that if your blog is very much your own personal project, then these things matter less, but the minute you attract enough attention to work with professionals, then you owe it to them.
If, for example, you are interviewing a writer on your blog, you are responsible for having read her book. (That journalists very often don’t bother to read the books of those they interview does not make this okay.) If you have no interest in reading her book, then don’t have her on your blog. Because that writer (who probably doesn’t earn much more than a blogger to do what she does, and that pay must stretch even thinner to cover the amount of time she spends blathering on about her book on your tiresome blog) is appearing in a professional capacity, and your lack of professionalism will be a waste of her time. Sure, you are offering her a chance to promote her work, but your contact with her offers you legitimacy. Um, and your professional behaviour offers further legitimacy for bloggers everywhere.
Of course, if you’re a blogger and everybody wants a piece of you, and you’re not getting anything out of the arrangement except “legitimacy,” then we’ve got a problem. Because blogging is just a hobby and you’re not being paid for it, you should ensure that you’re getting something out of everything you do, particularly if someone else is making money off your efforts (however indirectly). Write about topics you’re engaged with, read books you’re interested in, write posts to learn and answer your own questions, and ask authors questions whose answers you’re really curious to know. (Also aim to make these questions that author may never have been asked before. Which is no easy feat.) Say no to what isn’t interesting, to any authors whose book you wouldn’t bother reading, to anything that start to feel like an obligation.
Ensure that a professional appearing on your blog represents an opportunity for both of you: for her, the chance to promote her work, and for you, a wonderful read and fascinating conversation.
