-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
For many authors, writing a novel and getting published is the easy part; the challenge comes in building awareness among readers in a world over-crowded with new books. Savvy authors know that the publicity department of their publisher can only do so much, and such authors look for ways to reach out directly to their readers. One novelist, John Shors, has spoken to about 2,000 book clubs in the past three years!
Dear
Reader,
In 2004, the hardcover version of my debut novel, Beneath a Marble Sky,
was released. I was blessed because, over the next year, Beneath a Marble Sky
did quite well--garnering wonderful reviews, winning a national award, and
attracting significant interest from Hollywood. Due to all of these events, I
was able to quit my day job and become a fulltime novelist.
I was grateful to readers for their support, and decided that I wanted to do
something to support readers in return. So, when Penguin released the paperback
version of
Beneath a Marble Sky in 2006, I decided to add a letter to the
back of the book that invited book clubs to invite me to their evenings (all
they needed was a speakerphone). I included my email address.
'Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, 'and go on till you come to the end: then stop.' (from Alice and Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll)
Remember when summer stretched out endlessly before you, and kind people fixed you snacks while you sprawled on the floor in impossibly limber positions reading to your heart's content? Well I do, and even though I haven't taken a real summer vacation in my entire adult life, I still compile my reading list as if I'm heading off for a month-long sprawl in the Hamptons. With 23 books on my
"shortlist" for this already-waning summer, even if I got on the Jitney right now I'd never finish them by Labor Day. Woe is me, woe to all of us readers who still race into a bookstore with the breathless hope of school children on holiday. Because I remember what it feels like to turn the last page under the same setting sun that rose that morning, and nothing can replace the feeling of being completely immersed in a story from beginning to end.
For the last few years, when the vacation and holiday seasons come around and
the news stories start to dry up, I've looked back in time to previous centuries
to find something newsworthy. Today, please join me on a whistle stop tour
400 years back in time to the year 1609 ....
The Renaissance is in full swing. While Galileo demonstrates his first
telescope to Venetian lawmakers and Cornelius Drebbel invents the thermostat,
Johannes Kepler is busy publishing his first two laws of planetary motion.
Meanwhile Henry Hudson is off adventuring, becoming the first European to see
Delaware Bay and the Hudson River. Not far away, seven ships arrive at the
Jamestown colony reporting the sad demise of their flagship, the Sea Venture,
wrecked off the coast of the uninhabited island of Bermuda. The
survivors, including writer William Strachey, eventually reach Virginia ten
months later in two small ships they built while marooned on the island.
Strachey's account of the wreck is believed to be the inspiration for
Shakespeare's The Tempest (1610-11).
As I look back over my long history as a reader, memories flood in regarding specific books and book-related events. A few stand out:
An endless supply of quotes exist telling us we should do what we love in life. Though many are cliché, I found myself rooting around for just the right one after hearing Alexander McCall Smith read from his latest book,
Tea Time for the Traditionally Built. Having read most of the books in his No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, I was eager to see and hear in person the man who brought me the much adored Precious Ramotswe. As I entered the Borders bookstore in Ann Arbor, it was evident that I was not alone.
Since I probably haven't had the pleasure of listening to someone read to me since kindergarten carpet time, it was with happy nostalgia that I sat cross-legged and elbow to elbow on the bookstore floor, listening to the cadenced voice of Mr. McCall Smith. Bewitched by his lilt and laughter, he quickly transformed the packed room of overwrought adults into a sea of sunny, eager faces as he read his favorite passages from Tea Time.
There was a time when the hunt for a rare book, or even just an out of print book, was a major undertaking - you could either travel the country scouring multiple used bookstores yourself or pay a commission to a book dealer who would put feelers out through
his local network and, if necessary, to the wider world of book dealers through a classified ad in a trade magazine. However, with the advent of the internet and search engines such as AddAll, most of us have been able to cut out the middle-man and, with a few clicks of the mouse, track down that old childhood favorite without ever leaving the house.
But there is at least one area of book collecting that still benefits from the hands on touch - where the thrill of the chase is discovering the hidden secret of an apparently run of the mill book - and that is the search for fore-edge paintings.
To create a fore-edge painting, the pages of a book are fanned out and held in a vice. A painting is then applied usually with water color. When the paint is dry the book is released from the clamp so the book is flat again, and the edges of the book are then either gilted or marbled to completely hide any evidence of
the painting from casual eyes. I was introduced to fore-edge painting while visiting a friend's father on New York's Upper East Side a few months back where, even though the book's secret was known to me, I still felt a sense of discovery in fanning the pages to find the hidden painting.
