Month / June 2006

by Edward Champion

Pissing Off Indies: The New “Business” Decision

Author Barry Eisler posts several emails (and several responses) from an exchange with an independent bookseller who was a bit dismayed that neighboring chain bookstores not only jumped a retail release date for Eisler’s latest, but let Eisler sign stock. Eisler sees nothing wrong with signing stock at multiple stores, chain or indie, and while some have quibbled over the bookseller’s “tactlessness,” I think some of the tactlessness can also be applied to Eisler.

Asking an independent for directions to Barnes & Noble, as G reports, strikes me as a particularly inconsiderate move, akin to tap dancing on a bier at a funeral. It is, after all, the indie booksellers who are offering the kind of passion (some would say economic foolhardiness) and word of mouth that gets people excited about books.

To ostracize an indie bookstore on the way up might propel you into the big leagues, but if that reign of glory ends, rest assured that those who run indie bookstores have long memories. (In fact, about six months ago, a clerk at a local bookstore told me about the shabby treatment that a certain high-profile author gave her at a reading from six years ago. Because of this, she, along with the other clerks, have gone out of their way to discourage people from buying this author’s books and have not given any of the books any preferential table placement. This is what happens when you treat clerks rudely.)

It seems to me that any author doing promotion or signing stock should be particularly sensitive to indie bookstore temperaments. How difficult is it really to listen, pay attention and be considerate to those who are actively selling and promoting your books? Particularly when the majority of author events occur in indie bookstores, not big box outlets.

[RELATED: Lee Goldberg has more thoughts.]

by Edward Champion

Technology: A Tool, Not A Human Facsimile

This GUI interface is intriguing, but I can’t see how it can possibly replace the tactile feel and natural sensory interface of touching, arranging and shuffling piles of paper. That so much energy has gone into developing a project which reproduces this sensation instead of encapsulating it is irksome and perhaps counterintuitive. It is mimesis, rather than transmutation. And while there are positive things which can be said about recreating human environments and experiences in a computer (e.g., it may permit us to understand instinctive impulses from a binary perspective, which could in turn shift paradigms), why don’t software developers and engineers understand that certain human nuances might be better studied or effected through basic human contact?

This reminds me of a game I often play with friends with Blackberries. When out in the real world, if the friend has a Blackberry and I have a cell phone, I then name a piece of information to extract. It could be a general piece of knowledge (Who popularized the Second Law of Thermodynamics?). It could be something as simple as finding out when the next showing of a movie starts. Each person must then ferret out a piece of information: the friend through Google, me through natural telephone conduits. Certain pieces of information are better extracted through the phone (such as when a restaurant is open). Other pieces of information, such as objective facts and data, are better extracted through the Google connection.

What the results here suggest is that, as dazzling as the Internet and technological conduits can be, there are still basic human impulses and communication patterns which can never be entirely reproduced or advanced through machines. (At least not yet.) Of course, where human contact ends and technological contact begins is a subjective question entirely up to the individual. But technology is a tool: an adjunct to the human experience, not a substitute.

(via The Old Hag)

by Edward Champion

Chuck Klosterman is a Coward

Williamette Week Online: “The thing that I want to find out is who’s doing the entry for butter. There’s an entry for butter! What would motivate someone to do that? There’s an entry for waffles; I cannot fathom what that person’s motive is. And it’s good—it’s got the history of waffles!”

The motive, Mr. Klosterman, is that inquisitive people are actually interested in the minutiae of our world. The purpose, Mr. Klosterman, is because understanding how such things like waffles and butter came into being provides larger insights into human innovation and invention. (Watch James Burke’s Connections, if you don’t get this. I’m recommending a television program for you instead of a book, because literacy seems to elude you.)

Incidentally, I have requested an interview with Chuck Klosterman. This is the second time I have tried to talk with him as he’s come through my town on a book tour. And while the Scribner people have been very kind and they are busting their humps off, all interview requests, apparently, have to be cleared through Klosterman. Klosterman refuses to respond to my emails, which leads me to believe, all of his assertions of manhood and “working out” to the contrary, that he is too cowardly to talk with an interviewer who won’t kiss his ass.

So I hereby call out Chuck Klosterman publicly on my blog. I know you’re coming through San Francisco next week, Chuck. If you’re truly a man, you’ll sit down and talk with me and answer my questions. Or do you really think you’re better than John Updike, Erica Jong, Sarah Waters, T.C. Boyle, William T. Vollmann, Octavia Butler, Norman Solomon, and Dave Barry?