- Some long-form posts are in the works. But for now, we revert back to the rushed blogger’s trusted steed: the wacky roan known as the roundup!
- Thanks to a helpful commenter, I have spent a portion of the morning at Married to the Sea, an online comic that relies on clip art. Clip art-based comics represent a great place to observe the associative mind at work.
- I have seen neither Black Watch nor Romantic Poetry. While I’m likewise inclined to quibble with needlessly dogmatic art, I should point out to Messr. Teachout that Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage without experiencing a single battle. Art does not necessarily require first-hand experience to be emotionally true.
- O-oh, here they come / Watch out pub, they’ll chew you up / O-oh, here they come / They’re some cash eaters
- The 2008 World Fantasy Award winners have been announced. Guy Gavriel Kay’s Ysabel took home the novel award. (via Booklist)
- At the Telegraph, Stephen Adams is reporting that a team from Manchester University and the London School of Economics is claiming that novels should be taken just as seriously as fact-based research. While I have always admired Tom Clancy’s ability to explain a complicated subject in layman’s terms, I don’t believe that a novelist is just as qualified as an international policy expert. Yes, a novelist can record visceral sensation, describe details, and steer us into his particular point of view. But this does not mean she is the right person to advise a world leader on matters of great import. There are very good reasons why Obama will likely not be filling up his Cabinet with novelists, although this didn’t stop him from asking Toni Morrison for an endorsement.
- George! Goodnight, very yellow moon?
- Is literary theory too abstruse?
- I am equally suspicious of the claim that Hitchcock only got laid once.
- GraphicNovelReporter.com? Bit of a URL mouthful there, but it’s good to see graphic novels taken more seriously. (via Ready Steady)
- GOP implosion has never been more fun to watch. (via Erin O’Brien)
- Transforming novels into video games. Related: Tom Bissell’s New Yorker piece. (First link via Athitakis)
- Roundup turning into sentence frags. Retreat! Retreat!
Author / Edward Champion
New Guardian Post
The Thomas Nelson affair (not to be confused with The Thomas Crown Affair) sent a considerable tizzy through the Twittersphere last week. I’ve written about the whole mess for The Guardian.
Is the African-American/Prop 8 Exit Poll Connection Viable?
There are lies, damned lies, and exit polls. A purported connection between race and homophobia has recently made the rounds, prompting big think pieces from the likes of the Washington Post. We’ve been told that 7 out of 10 African-Americans who went to the California polls voted yes on Proposition 8 — a measure that passed on Tuesday overruling the California Supreme Court judgment that legalized same-sex marriage.
Even more amazing than this is the way this correlation is getting a free pass. The only way you can bring a demographic into election statistics is through the exit poll. But exit polls have problems. Back in 2006, Mark Blumenthal initiated a helpful series of posts summarizing some of the flaws: where the interviewer is standing in relation to the polling place, how well-trained the interviewer is, the tendency for voters who volunteer to participate upon seeing the interviewer with the clipboard, the inclination for the polls to favor Democrats in presidential election since 1988, and so forth. In 2005, the Washington Post reported that interviewing for the 2004 exit polls was “the most inaccurate of any in the past five presidential elections.” Large numbers of Republicans refused to talk with interviewers, and this, in turn, led to an inflated estimate for John Kerry. But despite these problems, exit poll faith is a bit like stubborn fabric softener sticking to a hard wonk’s argyle sweater. In a longass Rolling Stone article, even Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. believed in the gospel, suggesting that exit polling was the first indicator that the 2004 election had been stolen. Political slickster Dick Morris went further, stating that “exit polls are almost never wrong.”
Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International were the team behind the 2004 polling botch, and this dynamic duo also spearheaded this week’s California exit polling. The hard data is not yet available at the Edison/Mitofsky site. But the Associated Press has reported that 2,240 California voters (of these, 765 were absentees interviewed by landline telephone), interviewed in 30 precincts, represented the total number of people that Edison/Mitofsky interviewed. Which means that some percentage of these voters were African-American. Let’s give Edison/Mitofsky 50%. That leaves us with a mere 1,120 voters.
A quick jaunt to the California Secretary of State’s website reveals that there are 25,423 precincts in California and that 10.5 million people turned out on Tuesday. In other words, Edison/Mitofsky is making a major claim based on 0.11% (a little more than one-tenth of 1%) of the total precincts, and a sample of voters smaller than a crab louse dancing in a thorny thatch of hair. Is this really large enough? Exit polls have proved somewhat accurate in relation to simple binary choices, but I’m wondering if it all turns to bunk when it comes to correlation. Perhaps a legion of statistics experts can help explain why Edison/Mitofsky can get away with this. Because I’m tempted to view this as a strange offshoot of the Bradley effect.
IPG and Borders in Trouble?
An anonymous source has alerted me to an email indicating that Borders will not be paying book distributor Independent Publishers Group for two months “due to anticipated excessive returns.” IPG has stated that its return rate has been historically low. But this default will cause IPG to lose approximately $2 million in revenue. IPG has issued an email to publishers, asking them if the publishers wish to continue distributing books through Borders or accept a new provision that IPG can only guarantee payment (for Borders) “only for the publishers’ historical printing cost of books that are not paid for, rather than for the whole amount of any unpaid invoices.” Whether this will present a partial repeat of last year’s AMS bankruptcy, with many IPG publishers left in the lurch because of Borders’s decision, remains to be seen.
UPDATE: IPG President Mark Suchomel has left a comment claiming that IPG is “having a record sales year.” I have also been asked by IPG to “retract” this post. I do not intend to do so. I have merely presented information that was also reported by Galleycat this morning, asking the perfectly reasonable question of whether the $2 million shortfall will harm IPG and the publishers. If Mr. Suchomel wishes to be transparent, offering specific figures and data about how IPG is in “great shape financially,” rather than having his publicist email me and deeming me “irresponsible,” then the forum here is open to him. I have also informed the publicist that I would be happy to talk with Suchomel over the phone, and I have sent an email to Suchomel asking for specific evidence to prove his claims. It is also worth noting that IPG has kept its mouth shut when talking to The Bookseller‘s Catherine Neilan.
UPDATE 2: To understand why Suchomel should probably respond with additional details about IPG’s financial security, here is the memo that was sent to publishers from IPG.
Special Alert: Borders Policy
The financial health of Borders does not appear to be improving. They now tell us that they will not be paying us for two months due to anticipated excessive returns. IPG’s returns rate is historically low, so this is a somewhat questionable course of action. They were in a weak condition even before the current financial crisis, and of course no one knows how long or how severe that crisis will prove to be. The immediate reason for our concern is that the companies that insure receivables, who make a living knowing the risks of granting credit, have now refused to cover Borders.
IPG typically carries receivables of approximately two million dollars with Borders. A default of that amount would by no means put IPG out of business, but it would be painful, weaken the short-term health of the company, and would mean we would have to defer some of our plans for future growth.
Distributors need to be especially vigilant about the viability of their customers because, in case of a default, a distributor is out the full value of any unpaid invoice; a publisher, on the other hand, is really only out the printing cost of the lost inventory.
To put some numbers on this concept: a $14.95 paperback should cost about $1.50 a copy to print. But IPG bills Borders $7.48 for that copy (a 50 percent discount). That is a difference of $5.98 or almost four times the printing cost.
Given these considerations, IPG must now ask its client publishers to choose one of two options in regard to future Borders orders for their books. Publishers must either:
- Instruct IPG not to ship their titles to Borders
- Accept the provision that IPG, for Borders business only, will guarantee payment only for the publishers’ historical printing cost of books that are not paid for, rather than for the whole amount of any unpaid invoices
IPG’s competitors in the book distribution business either have always had a provision in their standard agreement that allows them to deduct customers’ defaults from the amounts owed their client publishers; or else they have recently adopted the policy that they will not take any of the credit risk for Borders payments. IPG, at no small cost, has covered the amounts lost when accounts stop paying and our client publishers have received the full amount owed for their titles. Over the years this has been a significant though somewhat low-profile benefit of working with IPG.
We think that the best course for IPG’s client publishers is to accept the option of still shipping to Borders. Borders has been paying IPG, they are reported to have cash on hand and access to credit in the future, and the last thing anyone wants is to have only one giant chain in the retail book market. Borders may prosper, and even in the worst case, given IPG’s uniquely flexible policy, the value of your inventory would be preserved.
On the other hand, booksellers and wholesalers in trouble sometimes resort to tactics that can damage publishers. Sometimes they return books that are selling well and then reorder the same titles. This allows them to start the payment meter over again, but of course it means more damaged copies. Sometimes they order far more copies than they need for the purpose of having more stock in their warehouse to comfort their secured creditors. Sometimes they have no reasonable expectation that they can stay in business, but order books just in case some miracle arrives to save them. We will not allow your titles to become pawns in any such games.
We do not see evidence of this sort of behavior to date at Borders, but we have, for some weeks now, scrutinized every one of their purchase orders, in some cases reducing them to reasonable amounts. Their performance has been erratic. We will continue this vigilance in regard to the titles of publishers who wish IPG to continue to ship them.
Please inform IPG in writing or by e-mailing Vice President of Operations Mark Noble, of your choice by Monday, November 10. Until we are informed of your decision, we will assume that you do not want us to ship your books to Borders. This policy will stay in affect only while there are serious concerns about Borders viability, and we will keep you apprised of any new developments.
If you would like to discuss these issues further, please contact Curt Matthews, x210.
UPDATE 3: Mark Suchomel has responded to my queries via email. He hasn’t provided me with any specific information about IPG’s financials and has asked me to take IPG’s current fiscal health based on a statement of good faith, but his answer does provide some insight into the Borders situation.
Thanks for giving me a chance to clarify. Our record sales year is a fact. We have shipped more and billed more than we ever have. I’m not sure how I can give you tangible evidence and I would hope that you would consider a statement by the president of the company as a reliable source. We are a private company and don’t release financials like a public company is required to do, but since we have very little debt, which should be eliminated by the end of the year, and strong sales in several markets, and compared to what we read and hear about other businesses in the industry, we consider this to be great shape. Estimated book sales may be dropping, but as our sales are increasing we are obviously gaining market share.
We are not out $2 million dollars as you seem to imply. That is the amount Borders typically owes us. IF something happens to Borders and IF we were to keep shipping them at that level, we could possibly be out that much if something were to suddenly happen. You can bet that every major supplier to Borders is looking at their exposure and trying to reduce it, or at least they are making sure it is something they can work through if the account fails. We don’t think they’re going to close their doors in the next few weeks but we are certainly going to make sure they don’t owe us such a large amount until we see signs that they have turned things around.
Everyone who relies on retail sales is anticipating a tough holiday season. In the shape we are in now and with a careful eye on Borders and other struggling accounts we will be one of the companies in the industry to come out of it in reasonable shape. You implied a comparison to the AMS debacle
at the end of 2006 which endangered the business of many of their PGW clients. This is not a responsible comparison. There is no issue as to the health of our company. The issue is the health of Borders. Among other things publishers rely on us to keep them safe from potential disaster. In
this way they are in better command of their risk and can decide if one course of action is better than another. Your speculation that we could be in trouble has no basis in fact. We’re not even close to being in trouble but we are also going to make sure we don’t get there.Did you know that another large distributor also made this change a couple of weeks ago but won’t even cover the printing and binding costs of their publishers if something were to happen? I’m not sure why that wasn’t covered. Distributors have a unique role and responsibility in the industry
in that we collect revenue on behalf of our clients. Our clients need to know that we’re being very responsible. Rather than cut off an account or at the least reduce the amount of credit we are willing to extend them, we feel it is a reasonable move to let our publishers decide if they want to shoulder some of that risk in order to keep the sales moving through at the current rate. Most of them are willing to and are very appreciative of the way we have handled this.
RIP John Leonard
If the reviews are read, it is by those who seek a confirmation, either of their own gut reaction to a new sit-com or of a suspicion that you are a jerk. You can no more review TV according to agreed-upon criteria than you can review politics or sports or old girl friends — or compile a mobile history of the infinite. The lout on the next barstool also considers himself an expert; “Seen in this matter,” says Borges, “all our acts are just, bt they are also indifferent. There are no moral or intellectual merits.” Less attention was paid in March of 1972 to Senator John Pastore’s hearings on the impact of televised violence than was paid to spring-training baseball.
However, the consolations made up for the desperations. (A) You are being paid to watch television, which means that you don’t have to apologize what all your friends do secretly and feel guilty about. (B) It is something you can actually do with your children, instead of reading Babar aloud for the 157th time or running a staple through your thumb. And (C) being powerless is liberating. You can say what you want about the play and the actors; it won’t close, and they won’t be fired, on your account. Since television is about everything, you can review everything. Attention may not be paid, but hostilities will be projected, and you’ll be the healthier for the projecting of them, even if your society is not. As Borges put it, “We took out our heavy revolvers (all of a sudden there were revolvers in the dream) and joyfully killed the Gods.”
— John Leonard, This Pen for Hire (1973)
John Leonard is dead. He was 69. Aside from serving as editor of the New York Times Book Review (back when it actually meant something) during its glory years between 1971 and 1975, Leonard contributed a monthly books column for Harper’s and served as television critic for New York Magazine.
Leonard was one of the last old-school greats, and one of the people I looked to in developing my own critical voice. (When I was commissioned to write a books column for the decommissioned 02138, John Leonard was one of my key models.) He wrote honestly and passionately about literature, was not afraid to take prisoners, was inclusive of genre and translated titles. When I plunged into his pre-NYTBR work for the first time some years ago (namely through the above-referenced quote), I was stunned to see how wonderfully feral and sensible he was. I’m convinced that if Leonard had started writing a decade ago, he probably would have been a litblogger. In the last two decades, Leonard had calmed down a bit, refraining from some of his take-no-prisoners pieces. As he explained at a BEA panel a few years ago, if he didn’t like a book, he wouldn’t write about it. He wanted to continue the conversation.
I had the good fortune of meeting Leonard just before this panel. Only an hour before, my bald pate had collided with a STOP sign, prompting considerable blood and a trip to Duane Reade. With a gargantuan bandage on my head, I looked something like an escaped mental patient. Leonard didn’t bat an eye. I thanked him for his years at the NYTBR, which I had read on microfilm as an undergrad. Leonard then told me that he read my site daily, and liked the work I was doing. When I asked him if he saw any comparisons between the ongoing print-digital debate and his early career as a journalist, he beamed up, “Oh yeah! This is nothing new. They said the same thing about the alt-weeklies, and look where they are today.” In an interview with Meghan O’Rourke, Leonard said, “Reviewing has all become performance art; it’s all become posturing. It’s going to have to be the lit blogs that save us. At least they have passion.”
It’s difficult to imagine a literary world without John Leonard. He was the rarest of critics: a sharp, populist-minded essayist with an open mind writing beautifully without fear.
More Tributes: Scott McLemee, Sarah Weinman, Emily Gordon, Hillary Frey, Jason Boog, and Mark Lotto.
See Also: Studs Terkel on John Leonard, Leonard archive at New York, Leonard archive at New York Review of Books, Leonard archive at The Nation, Leonard’s introduction to Paradise Lost, Leonard’s early championing of Toni Morrison, Leonard on Lethem, and Bill Moyers interview.
Also: A must-read autobiographical account of Leonard fighting for journalistic ethics as editor of the New York Times Book Review.