Novelists are an adventurous breed. So are their readers.

For readers, all that is left after the decline, fall, and selling-off of Borders bookstores down to the fixtures, is grief. And memories of what a bookstore can mean to our quality of life. So many of my favorite weekend moments were spent in the stacks at my local Borders. Knowledgeable sales staff, friendly fellow explorers on the path to enlightenment picking through towering shelves of books, looking for one book, discovering dozens of others that informed new directions in their journey.

Sales of e-books surpassed sales of physical books earlier this year. This isn’t a trend. We all know that our relationship to the written word is evolving. Schoolchildren totally get it; why carry a heavy backpack of textbooks when they can carry all the texts they will ever need in a featherlight tablet?  So what is the value of ink on paper? Sentimentalism?  For some, perhaps. For many, it is something deeper, much like the preference for live theater over cinema, or cinema over television, or television over netcast. For some, it is a physical connection, a tactile interaction with the process of reading. Like peeling back the layers of clues in a good mystery.

So what is to become of the book loyalist? Where is s/he to go? There is Amazon, of course. And Abe’s, Powell’s, Tattered Cover, Book Barn, B&N and others. Those are distant purveyors. The wandering weekend explorer has fewer options.

Karen Hayes and Ann Patchett open Parnassus Books. Photo: Josh Anderson, New York Times

Now, in an interesting new reaction to digital media and the vanishing bookstore experience, we have the novelist opening a book store, a bricks and mortar emporium of the printed word. Whether Ann Patchett’s new Parnassus Books in Nashville is the start of a new stage of publishing and distribution, or a quaint exhibit on the timeline of literature’s evolution is to be seen. I hope it is the opening sentence in a powerful and engaging new story.

Related link

Julie Bosman | NYT:  Novelist Fights the Tide by Opening a Bookstore

Some first novels arrive from nowhere and become milestones in their genres, touchstones to understanding the world through specific stories. Anthony Hyde’s first novel, THE RED FOX (1986), is such a book.

When journalist Robert Thorne’s ex-fiancee, May Brightman, asks him to locate her missing father, Thorne is wary. Years ago, May broke their engagement and cut Thorne adrift. Since then, he’s moved on. Despite himself, reluctantly, he agrees to search for Harry. Soon, he discovers that Harry wasn’t your ordinary fiance’s father. His background is as dark, conflicted and dangerous as any in contemporary fiction. Others are after Harry, too. Thorne is savvy. He knows that he is in over his head, and yet he follows the trail of clues anyway.

Evocative of time, place, character and motivation, THE RED FOX provides a strong sense of presence in a world dominated by Cold War espionage. Hyde’s deft literary hand displays the discipline and attitude of the journalist. His voice is often energetic, sometimes self-deprecating, always erudite. A remarkable achievement for a first novel.

Another Time

Hyde published this novel just after John Le Carre’s THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL swept the market and advanced Le Carre’s already iconic standing as a master novelist. Robert Ludlum’s BOURNE SUPREMACY also came to bookstores that year. The average life was overshadowed by superpower tensions and yet change was in the wind. Whether for the better or the worse remained to be seen. Terror came from just two polarized political systems and their overwhelming national firepower. An entirely different world environment from the more complicated, fragmented terror we know today.

The story of THE RED FOX grows from diverse and intense emotions – anger, hurt, betrayal – and is delivered with a constancy that derives from a deeply embedded moral compass. It is visual and tactile and was a feast for readers of the late 1980′s who were navigating the changeable cultural seas between the pre- and post-Internet revolutions. Written in the pre-Internet time period, it is satisfying to re-experience the journalist’s life pre-Google and pre-smartphone, to be reminded of the discipline and skills required to ferret out disparate bits of information, connect the dots and develop understanding at a comparatively reflective pace. And yet, events move on apace and we are pulled from page to page, setting to sinister setting.

The Red Fox

Winner: General Fiction

2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Winner
Congratulations to Patricia McArdle, winner of the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award in General Fiction for her novel, Farishta. Read an extended excerpt, and check out the experts’ reviews.

Winner: Young Adult Fiction

2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Winner

Congratulations to Amy Ackley, winner of the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award in Young Adult Fiction for her novel, Sign Language. Read an extended excerpt, and check out the experts’ reviews.

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2009 ABNA Winner: Bill Warrington’s Last Chance by Jack King

2008 ABNA Winner: Fresh Kills by Bill Loehfelm

The finalists in Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) contest are:

• General Fiction (3)
  • Jennifer Handford:  FORTUNE COOKIES
  • Patricia McArdle:  FARISHTA
  • Johnny Shaw: DOVE SEASON
• Young Adult Fiction (3)
  • Amy Ackley: SIGN LANGUAGE
  • Alex Airdale:  SERVICE OF THE CROWN
  • Alison Stewart:  DAYS LIKE THIS

These six authors and their work have been selected from 10,000 unpublished works first entered in the contest in early February.

Two grand prize winners will be announced in Seattle on June 14, 2010.  One winner in each category – General Fiction and Young Adult Fiction – will receive a publishing contract with Penguin, including a $15,000 advance.

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2009 ABNA Winner:  Bill Warrington’s Last Chance by Jack King

2008 ABNA Winner:  Fresh Kills by Bill Loehfelm

Literary Entrepreneurs

Self-publishing is leveling what has been a uneven field of competition for authors, for readers, and for book sellers.  Writers still write books on spec, but now they can manage rights, take responsibility for when and how their work is published, participate more fully as equal partners in their work’s publication, connect more directly with readers, and be better literary citizens.

Book Publishing is Becoming Self-publishing

The Internet has made every individual a potential publisher. And technology is making every idea, story, and work of art marketable. Even the business side of the transaction is returning to a one-to-one exchange.

JA Konrath has six books in print and thirteen e-books available from Amazon. He has projected that he will earn up to $100,000 this year on sales of his e-books alone. Each sale is initiated by an interested reader who decides to download one of his novels to their Kindle, iPad, PC, Mac, iPhone, iTouch, Droid, or any other of an expanding universe of personal e-reading options. Amazon’s online Kindle Store (or Apple’s iBook and others) completes the transaction within seconds. No shipping. No waiting. From JA Konrath directly to Ima Reader wherever she is on the planet.

After iPad

There are thirty-nine e-readers on the market. Considering the quantum leap forward in quality of the user experience, it is tempting to rephrase that device snapshot to something more like: the Apple iPad and thirty-eight others.

The iPad provides an excellent, even transformational e-reading experience. It feels good cradled in your hands, on your lap or propped up against your thighs for those middle of the night reads. It has a high resolution color screen that is easy on eyes, especially aging eyes. It responds instantly, enthusiastically to any impulse. Turning the page is almost as satisfying as leafing pages in that 600-page Dickens anthology you’ve had since Lit 101. And you can look up words in the dictionary without getting up to go find it. Plug in some ear buds and you can even listen to the voice of your choice read your book to you.

The iPad will dash the ambitions of many early e-readers and the field will inevitably narrow to a select few devices. Sony and other quality device manufacturers will accept iPad’s challenge and up their game. All for the better. Whatever makes the author’s work available in a high integrity transaction, on an enjoyable-to-use device, and to more people is good.

Opportunity is Calling

When in your lifetime did obstacles to getting your work published actually diminish in number? If you have a good book, some appealing cover art, a compelling description and the ambition to grow your audience, now would be a good time to get out there and share your work.

Related:

The Rise of Self Publishing (NYT  26 April 2010)

Which e-readers will the iPad crush? (CNET, 1 April 2010)

Ken Auletta offers a short course on the agency business model and the ever-evolving history of publishing.  This article also includes a situational analysis about the stakes for authors, publishers, bookstores, and device makers in the current competition between the printed page and the panel of pixels known as the e-Reader (Kindle, iPad, Nook and others coming online). The writer, journalist and media critic at The New Yorker has been a keen observer of media trends.  His Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way put the failing big three television network model in stark context for us in 1991. Now, he has once again captured a dynamic period in media history on the page.

His recent article, Publish or Perish Can the iPad topple the Kindle, and save the book business? (The New Yorker, 30 April 2010), is similarly timely and incisive. A ‘must read’ for authors, agents, publishers and readers.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/04/26/100426fa_fact_auletta

First prize in the 3rd Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) Contest for previously unpublished works is a publishing contract with Penguin and a $15,000 cash advance. 

Almost any opportunity to get your work before interested readers, share a good story, gather some feedback, and connect with other writing professionals is good. ABNA is such an opportunity, yet its modest profile ensures that many writers will miss this chance to break through.  The contest’s low profile is surprising – ABNA’s sponsors are three of publishing’s leaders: Amazon, Penguin Group (USA), and Publishers Weekly. 

Here’s how the contest works: 

During the submission time window, ABNA accepts up 5,000 submissions in each of two categories: General Fiction and Young Adult. They specify ‘up to 5,000′ because ABNA closes submissions upon receiving 5,000 or after two weeks, whichever comes first. 

Initial Round: Amazon editors read 300-word pitches and select 1,000 from each category. 

Quarter-Finals: Expert Amazon reviewers read 3,000-5,000 word excerpts from entries and select 250 from each category. 

Semi-Finals: Publishers Weekly reviewers read and rate complete manuscripts, and select 50 from each category. 

Finals: Penguin editors evaluate the final 50 manuscripts in General Fiction, the final 50 in Young Adult, and select three finalists in each category. 

Amazon customer voting: Amazon customers have seven days to vote for their favorites in each category. 

Grand Prize Winners will be announced in Seattle on June 14, 2010.  Each will receive a publishing contract with Penguin, which includes a $15,000 advance. 

For every writer but the winner, the benefit is feedback.  Novel writing can be a solitary enterprise and feedback about work-in-progress can become the difference between good and great writing. 

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UPDATES

25 Feb 2010:  Initial Round – Pitches  

• General Fiction (1,000)
• Young Adult Fiction (1,000)

23 Mar 2010:   Quarter-Finals 

• General Fiction (250)
• Young Adult Fiction (250)

27 Apr 2010: Semi-Finals 

• General Fiction (50)
• Young Adult Fiction (50)

• General Fiction (3)
  • Jennifer Handford:  FORTUNE COOKIES
  • Patricia McArdle:  FARISHTA 
  • Johnny Shaw:  DOVE SEASON
•  Young Adult Fiction (3) 
  • Amy Ackley: SIGN LANGUAGE
  • Alex Airdale:  SERVICE OF THE CROWN
  • Alison Stewart:  DAYS LIKE THIS

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2009 ABNA Winner: Bill Warrington's Last Chance by Jack King

2009 ABNA Winner:  Bill Warrington’s Last Chance by Jack King 

2008 ABNA Winner:  Fresh Kills by Bill Loehfelm 

Do you Kindle? Nicholson Baker does. Check out A New Page - Can the Kindle really improve on the book? here in the August 3 edition of The New Yorker.

UPDATE (27 Aug 09):  Blog in which Nicholson Baker takes questions about the Kindle.