People of the Book
A Blog about Book Publishing from a Catholic Perspective

The Atlantic magazine has a piece about the advice its distinguished contributors have given to writers over the years. I like John Kenneth Galbraith’s smackdown of “inspiration”:

All writers know that on some golden mornings they are touched by the wand—are on intimate terms with poetry and cosmic truth. I have experienced those moments myself. Their lesson is simple: It’s a total illusion. And the danger in the illusion is that you will wait for those moments. Such is the horror of having to face the typewriter that you will spend all your time waiting.

“Writing is difficult work,” Galbraith concludes.

“I really do believe in angels,” writes novelist Vinita Hampton Wright at the beginning of her new book A Catalogue of Angels. Wright says that no angel has ever been manifested in her presence, but she did once have an awesome vision of a multitude of angels protecting her huband at a time when he needed spiritual assistance. But Wright’s new book is not a collection of contemporary angel stories. What interests her are the ancient stories — what the classic Christian, Jewish, and Islamic texts say about the role of these heavenly hosts in human affairs. Wright is an acclaimed novelist, as we’ve mentioned here. She brings her storyteller’s gifts to these tales. For many believers, angels aren’t quite real. They’re cute and quasi-legendary. They’re tucked safely away in the category of “pious devotion.” Wright urges us to take them seriously. She quotes St. Bernard of Clairvaux: “Let us affectionately love his angels . . . . They are faithful; they are prudent; they are powerful; why do we tremble? Let us only follow them, let us remain close to them.”

Book sales are up slightly in 2006. Other “old media” continue their decline. Chris Anderson has the scorecard:

TV: network TV had its lowest ratings week ever in July.

Music: weekly album sales set a 10-year low in July. For the year, CD album sales are down 4.2%; although digital single downloads (still less than 10% of the business) are up 77% and are nearly making up the difference in revenue terms.

Radio: the music radio listening audience is down 8.5% this year alone, continuing a multi-decade decline.

DVDs: shipments are down 4% so far this year, more than 30 million units behind the same period last year.

Newspapers: circulation, which peaked in 1987, is declining faster than ever and is down another 2.6% so far this year.

Magazines: ad revenues are up 3.7% although the total number of ad pages is flat (they’re charging more per page). Newsstand sales are at an all-time low, while total circulation was down 0.3% last year.

Box Office: is up by 5.8% so far this year (but still down 4.2% from 2004).

On the other hand:

The blogosphere, the world of blogs, is doubling in size every 200 days. It’s 100 times larger than it was 3 years ago.

Viewers are watching 100 million videos a day on YouTube.

MySpace has 75 million users. It’s growing by 240,000 users a day.

A few days ago, just before he left town on vacation, Pope Benedict praised the spiritual virtues of taking some time off. He cited St. Bernard’s warning to Pope Eugene III that excessive activity leads to “suffering of the spirit, turbulence of intelligence, and dispersion of grace.” John Allen asked Cistercian Fr. Luke Anderson if the Pope follows Bernard’s model:

Sure he does. Even though he was a diocesan priest, Benedict has a lot of monastic sympathies. He understands that no activity is valuable unless it’s supported by the supernatural basis of faith. This is tough for any priest, because at the end of a day no one asks, ‘Did you pray today?’ The questions are always, ‘Did you go to the hospital?’ ‘Did you take care of the bills?’ and so on. Benedict understands the importance of contemplation.

Allen, the preeminent Vatican-watcher, comments that “this summer has been strikingly devoid of papal activity.”

From the Catholic Book Publishers Association:

HARDCOVERS
1. Pentateuch: The Saint John’s Bible
Donald Jackson. Liturgical Press

2. Celebration of Discipline, 25th Anniversary Edition
Richard Foster. Harper San Francisco

3. The Rhythm of Life
Matthew Kelly. Beacon Publishing/Fireside

4. The Seven Levels of Intimacy
Matthew Kelly. Beacon Publishing/Fireside

5. Rediscovering Catholicism
Matthew Kelly. Beacon Publishing

6. Catechism of the Catholic Church
Doubleday/Our Sunday Visitor/USCCB Publishing

7. The Holy Longing
Ronald Rolheiser. Doubleday

8. The Book of Courage
Matthew Kelly. Beacon Publishing

9. Introduction to the New Testament
Raymond E. Brown. Doubleday

10. My Life with the Saints
James Martin. Loyola Press

PAPERBACKS
1. Waiting in Joyful Hope 2006: Daily Reflections for Advent and Christmas
Katherine L. Howard. Liturgical Press

2. Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church
USCCB Publishing

3. United States Catholic Catechism for Adults
USCCB Publishing

4. Mere Christianity
C.S. Lewis. Harper San Francisco

5. Catechism of the Catholic Church
Doubleday/Our Sunday Visitor/USCCB Publishing

6. The Screwtape Letters
C.S. Lewis. Harper San Francisco

7. The Great Divorce
C.S. Lewis. Harper San Francisco

8. Handbook for Today’s Catholic
A Redemptorist Pastoral Publication. Liguori Publications

9. In the Name of Jesus
Henri J.M. Nouwen. Crossroad

10. Holy Land USA
Peter Feuerherd. Crossroad

The Tigers beat the White Sox Monday and Tuesday to extend their lead in the AL Central to 7 ½ games, so my son and I went to Comerica Park last night hoping to see Detroit push the slumping Sox into a deeper hole. It didn’t happen. Jermaine Dye hit a three-run homer in the first inning, Joe Crede hit two other dingers, and the Sox hung on to win 7-5. Sox manager Ozzie Guillen (right) was on his best behavior after being thrown out of Tuesday’s game for protesting balls and strikes calls in a profanity-laden Spanglish tirade. Detroit third baseman Brandon Inge started two slick double plays right in front of us. Long reliever Wilfredo Ledezma worked out of a couple of jams with some nifty clutch pitching. Baseball is a beautiful game, even when your team loses. Admittedly, it’s easy to say that when your team has the best record in baseball, and has its main rival on the ropes.

There are no Protestant Flannery O’Connors or Walker Percys among modern American writers, points out Reformed theologian Peter Leithart, not to mention a Protestant James Joyce. The great American novelists of the nineteenth century were lapsed Calvinists touched by Trancendentalism. The Elizabethans and Victorians, like C.S. Lewis, were Protestants with the the Prayer Book, steeped in the medieval and Renaissance Catholic world. The reason for Protestant literary shortcomings: the lack of a sacramental theology:

Symbols separated from reality and reduced, as they are in much Protestant theology, to “mere signs,” cannot do anything, whether in reality or in fiction. They exist as sheer ornament, or, at best, as pointers to some something in some real realm of reality that can do something. But if this is so, then the moment of grace, whether in fiction or reality, never enters this world, into the realm of what-is. Without a sacramental theology, and specifically a theology of sacramental action, Protestant writers cannot do justice to this world or show that this world is the theater of God’s redeeming action.
Hence: Protestants can’t write.

Read the whole thing.

Check out “A Nun’s Life,” a new blog run by my friend and colleague Sister Julie Vieira, IHM. If you’re curious about how nuns live today, Julie is eager to tell you. She quotes Mother Justina Reilly, a nineteenth-century IHM: “Do not think I am sitting here to pass the time away telling you that religious life is poetry. It is the roughest kind of prose.”

She also notices stereotypes about nuns and keeps track of nuns in the media. Plus — she’s a splendid writer.

Fr. Jim Martin writes with his list of the next batch of books for his New York City book group.

The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell
Joan of Arc: In Her Own Words, Willard Trask
Simple Ways to Pray, Emilie Griffin
So Long, See You Tomorrow, William Maxwell
Deus Caritas Est (”God is Love”), Benedict XVI
Becoming Who You Are, James Martin, S.J.
From Union Square to Rome, Dorothy Day
Barabbas, Pär Lagerkvist
Cosmas, or the Love of God, Pierre de Calan

Go here for what Fr. Jim says about running a book group.

HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman says the religion category “is starting to see hard times.” Book Standard doesn’t see what Friedman sees. Religious book sales this year are flat, according to BookScan; 13,145,000 copies of religious books have ben sold this year — a decline of only 0.3 percent. It is true, though, that sales of mega-bestsellers The Purpose-Driven Life and Your Best Life Now are down sharply this year.

To celebrate its 60th anniversary, Penguin UK has chosen the best 100 books: 5 each in 20 categories, including “Best Journeys,” “Best Decadence,” and “Best Heroes.” Some notable selections: Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop in “Best Laughs,” Diamonds Are Forever in “Best Villains,” and The Canterbury Tales in “Best Sex.” You’ll find the list here.

Now I heard the music clear from the outfield, “Nuttin to worry, nuttin to worry, no hitter boy, no hitter boy, never worry, nuttin to worry,” and I stopped worrying right there and then, with 2 down and none on, knowing from then forwards that it was my ball game to win. I had the old confidence, and I never lost it, not then nor any other day. Give me a baseball in my hand and I know where I’m at. Give me a piece of machinery and I may be more or less in the dark. Give me a book and I am lost. Give me a map and I cannot make heads nor tails, nor I could no more learn another language than pitch with my nose. But give me a baseball and I know where I’m at, and I fired down to Fielding twice, 2 blazing fast balls, and then I changed up and throwed him a jughandle curve ball that he went for like a fool and bounced down to Sid. I raced over to cover. Sid waved me away and beat Fielding to the bag in plenty of time.

Mark Harris
The Southpaw

Many authors are starting blogs in order to sell their books, often with their publishers’ encouragement. Will this work? Marketing maven M.J. Rose has doubts. “Blogs don’t sell books when that is their intent,” she says. “Readers are savvy. They see the difference between a blog and a flog.”

Blogs can work for authors when they have a broader purpose, she says. “They sell books as a by-product when we engage the reader and the reader gets to know us. Eventually, in time, over months, we build a relationship.” If authors want to blog, they should write about their field as reporters and commentators and build up a reader base. Then they can write about their book “without it appearing to be a hard sell.”

Did you know that:

• 81% of the population feels they have a book inside them.
• 6 million manuscripts are making the rounds.
• Out of every 10,000 children’s books written, 3 get published.
• 59% of the customers plan to purchase a specific book when entering a bookstore.

These are a few of the hundreds of book statistics compiled by publishing consultant Dan Poynter and published on his website here. It’s a great resource.

Mike Leach, one of the best-known figures in Catholic publishing, will retire this month as publisher of Orbis Books. Robert Ellsberg, long-time editorial director, has been named publisher, and Leach will become publisher emeritus and editor-at-large. Leach was publisher of Crossroad/Continuum before coming to Orbis in 1999, and been president of both the Catholic Book Publishers Association and the ecumenical Religion Publishers Group. He has written and edited several successful books, including I Like Being Catholic, A Maryknoll Book of Prayer, and The People’s Catechism.

Blogger Seth Godin has 19 pieces of advice for fellow authors. Godin, whose blog is ranked 55th most popular on Technorati, says that the most important is #2: “The best time to start promoting your book is three years before it comes out. Three years to build a reputation, build a permission asset, build a blog, build a following, build credibility and build the connections you’ll need later.”

#4: Understand that a non-fiction book is a souvenir, just a vessel for the ideas themselves. You don’t want the ideas to get stuck in the book… you want them to spread. Which means that you shouldn’t hoard the idea! The more you give away, the better you will do.

#11: Blurbs are overrated.

#12: Blog mentions, on the other hand, matter a lot.

A reader comments about the Long Tail:

HITS STILL COUNT BUT…

My interpretation of the “long tail” argument was not that hits don’t count any more or less than before. It’s just that with the “audience range” of the internet, there’s a demand for the “long tail” of any market’s contents. This demand would be negligible in a bricks-and-mortar store relying on physical traffic in even the larger cities - but spread over a billion customers, there’s enough demand to sustain one or more decent-sized businesses. . . .

I suspect the power of Amazon, and what got it where it is today, is their ability to deliver that tail of contents. I recall dealing with the erratic “order process” of small bookstores at the mercy of uncaring suppliers. I recall the days when the only way to find a book was “books in print” or searching the bigger libraries. Amazon HAS opened a new and different market.

Good points. Read the whole comment here. Catholic publishers’ books are down on the long tail. Long tail marketing and long tail thinking are good for us.

Our book group gathered on a steamy Monday evening last week to discuss Ron Hansen’s novel Mariette in Ecstasy. It’s a brilliant novel, written in a lovely style, that raises the most serious questions.

The story takes place in 1906 in the strict, orderly upstate New York convent of the Sisters of the Crucifixion. Mariette Baptiste drops into the community like a hand grenade. The novice is 18 years old and beautiful. Her spirituality is intense, mysterious. She has visions of Christ. She hears his voice. She falls into trance-like ecstasies, sometimes while doing humble chores. Finally the stigmata appear. Wounds suddenly emerge on her hands and feet, oozing blood, and then suddenly disappear. All this throws the convent into turmoil. Some of the nuns love Mariette. They see in her the kind of nun they had always wanted to be, and they feel that God has blessed the community with extraordinary signs. Others loathe her. They accuse her of making up the accounts of the visions, and of cutting herself to create the stigmata. “I have no idea why God would be doing this to us,” the exasperated prioress cries. Even if Mariette’s ecstasies and wounds are authentic, what’s their purpose?

Why God does the things he does is one of the mysteries novel examines. Hansen’s story also probes the enigma of spiritual experience. God is certainly present in Mariette’s ecstasies. But they are also clearly influenced by her unhappy childhood, tempestuous adolescent emotions, and awakening sexuality. Those examining Mariette’s case cannot sort out the divine from the human. But can any of us do this, even for ourselves? When we hear God, can we be sure we are not listening to ourselves? Why is God so often silent? The prioress hazards a guess: “God gives us just enough to seek Him, and never enough to fully find Him. To do more would inhibit our freedom, and our freedom is very dear to God.”

Mariette is sent away from the convent, and she settles nearby, remaining single. The novel ends with a letter that she sends to one of the sisters 30 years after her departure. Our group lingered over the last paragraph, the last words of the novel:

And Christ still sends me roses. We try to be formed and held and kept by him, but instead he offers us freedom. And now when I try to know his will, his kindness floods me, his great love overwhelms me, and I hear him whisper, Surprise me.

Toward the end of Stephen Adly Guirgis’ play The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Jesus speaks to the audience:

“Right now, I’m in Fallujah. I am in Darfur. I am on Sixty-Third and Park having dinner with Ellen Barkin and Ron Perelman . . . Right now I’m on Lafayette and Astor waiting to hit you up for change so I can get high. I’m taking a walk through the Rose Garden with George Bush. I’m helping Donald Rumsfeld get a good night’s sleep. . . I was in that cave with Osama, and on that plane with Mohammed Atta . . . And what I want you to know is that your work has barely begun. And what I want you to trust is the efficacy of divine love if practiced consciously. And what I need you to believe is that if you hate who I love, you do not know me at all. And make no mistake, “Who I Love” is every last one. I am every last one. People ask of me: Where are you? Where are you? . . . Verily I ask of you to ask yourself: Where are you? Where are you?”

Lee Gomes of the Wall Street Journal isn’t buying the Long Tail argument. Big hits still drive Hollywood and the music business. He thinks they drive sales at Amazon too. Though the company doesn’t talk about book sales, Gomes talks to ex-insiders who say the back catalog doesn’t contribute very much to sales. A New York publisher tells him that there’s no difference between book sales online and in bricks and mortar stores. Should companies expand inventories? Very carefully, especially for non digital products. But, “prudence might be difficult these days, considering the current popularity of Web utopian fantasies about the way sales of niche products can rival those of hits.” Read the whole thing here.

Amy Welborn at Open Book reminds us that today is the anniversary of Flannery O’Connor’s death in 1964. She is the greatest of Catholic authors. Amy’s post contains links to several good online O’Connor resources, including an excellent article Amy herself wrote several years ago. A quote:

For Flannery O’Connor, faith means essentially seeing the world as it is, which means through the Creator’s eyes. So lack of faith is a kind of blindness, and what brings on the refusal to embrace God’s vision — faith — is nothing but pride.

O’Connor’s characters are all afflicted by pride. . . .The pride is so fierce, the blindness so dark, it takes an extreme event to shatter it, and here is the purpose of the violence. The violence that O’Connor’s characters experience, either as victims or as participants, shocks them into seeing that they are no better than the rest of the world, that they are poor, that they are in need of redemption.

Most people think that the labels “liberal” and “conservative” are not especially useful in Catholic discourse. They import political baggage into theological discussion. They’re not accurate and they hinder understanding. But most people also think these labels point toward a tension in the Church that’s real. How to describe it?

Writing on the dotCommonweal blog, J. Peter Nixon suggests that the differerence boils down to what words you emphasize in the question, “Is the Gospel being heard?” One tendency stresses the last word: Is the Gospel being heard? “Are we surrounding the message of Jesus with so many human traditions and prohibitions that it is no longer intelligible in the culture in which we live?”

The other tendency emphasizes “Gospel”: Is the Gospel being heard? “Is the faith that is being preached the faith of the Apostles?”

Nixon says that the tension between the two began with the argument between Paul and James over the authority of the Jewish Law over Gentile Christians, and is likely to be with the Church until the end of time.

As both a community and as individuals, we need to be skilled in asking both questions. Those whose instincts lead them to intone “Fidelity! Fidelty! Fidelty!” need to ask Paul’s question about whether certain beliefs and practices are as inextricably linked to the Gospel as they believe. Those sympathetic to the “Pauline” question might do well to ask whether they are presenting the fullness of Christ or a pallid imitation that merely reflects culture rather than challenging it.

“I would take it as a compliment if you argue the selections in this book,” writes Richard Leonard, the Jesuit author of Movies that Matter. Julie at the “Happy Catholic” blog pays Fr. Leonard great compliments. First, she drops 21 of Fr. Leonard’s 50 movies because, she says, they’ve been “done to death” as religious classics. (These include “The Mission,” “The Apostle,” and “A Man for All Seasons.”) Then she adds 21 selections of her own, ranging from the “Spiderman” and “X-Man” blockbusters, to Japanese anime and semi-obscure foreign and independent films. Finally, she invites comments from the readers. There are 51 of them. They argue over whether “Memento” and “Blade Runner” can be considered Christian films, among other things. Read it all here.

Fr. Leonard left out many of my favorites too: “L.A. Confidential,” “A Trip to Bountiful,” “In the Bedroom,” “Shall We Dance” (Japanese version). . . . I’d better stop. Thanks to Fr. Leonard for starting the conversation and for his fine selections. It’s a stimulating, useful book.