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June 19
Intrepid author Jim Crace braved plane trouble and hitchiking to reach the last stop on his book tour promoting The Pesthouse. The website Shelf Awareness has the full story here. May 14
Members of Mansfield, Ohio's Tuesday Night Book Club were in for a treat last week when they had a chance to interview Valerie Martin, author of Trespass, by phone. "I could have talked with her for hours," said book club member Jan Schumer. For more on their impressions of the Orange Prize-winning author, click here. May 5
The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin has just announced that it's acquired the archive of British writer Jim Crace, whose novel The Pesthouse we published in 2007. April 28
This week, three of our authors--Ian McEwan, Christian Jungersen and Xiaolu Guo--will be participating in the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature 2008. Please visit the links below to find out more about each event: April 16 Reading Peter Ackroyd's biography of Isaac Newton, Vanity Fair's Christopher Hitchens learned "that the great physicist probably didn't get bonked on the head by an apple--but he did have some pretty funny ideas about sex, gold, and religion." For the full article, click here. April 15 "My second novel, The Ginseng Hunter, was written by hand in a coffee shop in Japan," writes Jeff Talarigo on the music blog Largehearted Boy. To find out which albums inspired his story about a Chinese ginseng hunter and a North Korean woman sold into prostitution, click here. April 10 Sophie Dahl will read from her debut novel, Playing with the Grown-ups, at 7pm tonight at Housing Works Used Book Cafe along with author Colson Whitehead. Bookpage raves Dahl's novel is "quirky and thoughtful...funny and moving.... [The novel] grows beyond charming child's play to a clear-eyed compassion for the world's limitless store of tragic human comedy." February 1
We're thrilled to see John Burnham Schwartz's beautiful new novel The Commoner hit bestseller lists across the country! In addition to cracking The New York Times extended bestseller list, the book has been listed on the Book Sense Bestseller List, the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association Bestsllers List and the Heartland Independent Bestseller List. November 1
In June, Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon launched Out of the Book, a new series of short films about notable authors. The premiere featured bestselling novelist Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach. More than fifty bookstores around the country hosted screenings. "We're thrilled to start with such a widely read, critically acclaimed author as Ian McEwan," said Dave Weich, Out of the Book's creator. "We're setting the bar high." Watch the trailer below, or purchase the full video here. August 7 I can't remember life before the microwave oven, but I do remember my mother telling me about first time she saw one, at a Gas-o-Rama convention in 1960. Introduced as "the oven of the future," the machine baked cupcakes in an unprecedented eight minutes. Though the nifty appliance awed its audience that day, it took another decade or so before the microwave became widespread, and by the time I came into the world, there was nothing unusual about it. But even in the 1980s, technological advances like these were, to some, a shocking revelation. Set in the arctic, Kevin Patterson's breathtaking new novel, Consumption, brings the reader to such a place. "The Inuit," Patterson states in our online author interview, "moved from the most traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle to the Facebook era in about fifteen minutes." In his sweeping novel, he renders three generations and explores the effects of modern convenience, and the deep psychological and physical shifts these so-called comforts have wrought. It is rare to find a book that says so much about our universal state from the narrow perspective of its characters, but Consumption accomplishes just that. Beginning with Victoria, an Inuit girl who spends time in the south overcoming tuberculosis before returning to her nomadic family, the story moves steadily forward, showing how a small community becomes at first reliant on modern industry, and finally consumed by the luxuries they reap. The novel poses the question: how many modern calamities are actually manmade? Is depression part of our human constitution? Is heart disease a biological imperative? And if not, what is the culprit? The experiences the characters undergo along the way are vast and vital: murder, mystery, disease, sex, drugs, rock 'n roll, love, and lust all play a role. This is a beautiful and arresting book, wholly different from anything I've read. The three industry magazines (Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Library Journal) have individually given the novel starred reviews, and I heartily agree! Consumption is a tour-de-force, an absolute must-read. Since finishing it, my microwave does more than heat my dinner--it is also the source of profound consternation. --Ronit Feldman August 6 McClelland & Stewart will be producing a limited edition of Margaret Atwood's new book of poetry, The Door (September 2007), to benefit PEN Canada. Only 150 copies of this lavishly produced and limited hand-numbered book will be produced. A beautiful container box lined with special paper also includes original artwork by Margaret Atwood in a signed and numbered print. This limited boxed book was custom printed in a special edition on Domtar fsc certified paper. The book is quarterbound with Iris bookcloth and decorative brown wrap and letterpress endpapers. The signed and numbered edition includes a frameable limited edition blockprint on 100% cotton paper. The blocks were hand cut by Margaret Atwood and editioned at Anstey Bookbinding Inc. on a Vandercook letterpress in an edition limited to 150, signed and numbered in pencil. Price $500 - Box dimensions: 12 1/4" x 15 1/4" - Book dimensions: 5 3/4" x 7" Proceeds will support PEN Canada's vital work on behalf of freedom of expression. Available only from PEN Canada. To pre-order and reserve your copy, or for more information, please contact Caitlin Smith at PEN Canada. Tel: (416) 703 8448, ext. 25 - Email: csmith@pencanada.ca - www.pencanada.ca July 25 Anyone who's ever worked in an office knows that relationships with co-workers can be tricky. These are individuals whom we might not want to spend much time with, and who might not share our beliefs or interests; yet for eight hours a day, we are obligated to share (normally cramped) spaces with them and collaborate on projects. Inevitably, cliques form, gossip flows freely, and feelings of jealousy and mistrust arise. Yet we have to continue to see these people, day in and day out, year after year. Sounds like an ideal place to set a novel, doesn't it? A small office is where Christian Jungersen has set his recently-released novel The Exception. Four women work in a nonprofit in Copenhagen that disseminates information on genocide. But when the women begin to receive anonymous death threats, they slowly suspect that one of their co-workers is the one making the threats. The tension increases, and soon this literary thriller starts to take some nasty and smart twists and turns. This novel crawled under my skin and disturbed me in numerous ways -- yet I was unable to put it down. And it seems that I wasn't the only one -- the New Yorker recently gave it a rave review, which you can read by clicking here. Chrisitan Jungersen has worked in various offices before writing this book, including the Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Copenhagen, where he conceived of the idea. For an interview with Jungersen, please click here. So I hope you enjoy this novel -- you'll never look at your co-workers the same way again after reading it. June 29 I would like to thank all the readers who attended the Ian McEwan film screenings around the country. We have received great feedback from the screenings, and we hope that the film proved to be a nice supplement to the novel On Chesil Beach. I'd like to return to a previous post where I wrote about how a book is acquired here at Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. After we have acquired a novel and hammered out the contract details with the author and literary agent, the next step is the editing process. Since every project is different, there isn't a standard editorial blueprint that we follow; some projects need more editorial guidance, and some need very little. In general, there are two rounds to the editorial process. The first consists of structural and global concerns. Normally, the editor will write a long editorial memo to the author with concerns about the structure of the book, whether certain characters need to be more developed, and other larger issues that aren't on a line-by-line basis. Once the author has produced a revised draft, then the editor normally performs a line-edit, going through the manuscript word-by-word and making editorial comments on the sentence level. The line edit tightens the manuscript, weeds out any narrative inconsistencies, and questions specific words and phrases. This is usually the most time-consuming process for editors, since they have to consider each sentence at length. Of course, the author and the editor will never agree on each point, so often there are long discussion and occasional arguments. The editor tries never to overstep his or her boundary, since it is the author's book in the end. The editorial comments are not demands but suggestions, ones which are open for debate. Personally, it's my favorite part of being an editor because it's exciting to watch an already strong novel become even better. And there's a feeling of satisfaction in helping an author produce the best possible book. Ultimately, editing is not about ego or placing an agenda on the project; it is about two things: the book and the author. Happy reading, and enjoy the Fourth of July. June 14 We couldn't be happier with the response to Ian McEwan's latest book, On Chesil Beach. The novel has garnered incredible reviews and climbed the bestseller lists, and the movie based on the book that is touring bookstores now has fetched substantial crowds. On Chesil Beach is, for me, the perfect read: lyrical, vivid, and heartbreaking, compact enough to be read over one night, yet so profound that it'll linger with you over the following months. For those readers interested in selecting On Chesil Beach for your book club, we have a reader's guide posted on the Nan A. Talese/Doubleday website. Please click here to access it. Following closely on the heels of the recent Jim Crace and Ian McEwan novels is the new novel by Nigerian/British author Helen Oyeyemi, The Opposite House, which will hit the bookshelves on June 19th. Oyeyemi wrote her first novel, The Icarus Girl, at the tender age of eighteen, and based on this novel Oyeyemi was named one of the "25 British authors tipped to be the biggest stars of the first quarter of this century." I want everyone to imagine what he/she was doing at the age of eighteen. I was a freshman at Washington University in St. Louis, living in a dorm room with five roommates and struggling to complete six-page papers on Shakespeare for an Introduction to World Literature course. Writing a novel was something that never seemed to cross my mind, nor the minds of many of my fellow classmates. But Helen Oyeyemi was not a typical eighteen-year-old. She wrote her debut novel in secret, when she should have been doing her homework. The Icarus Girl became not only a critical and popular success in both the US and the UK, but also sold to twenty countries world-wide. She then wrote her second novel when she should have been studying for her final exams, and it seems poised for a similar success. The Opposite House explores the thin wall between myth and reality through the alternating tales of two young women and their search for the truth about faith and identity. The novel is, despite the author's youth, a mature work, and a sign that Oyeyemi will be a major writer of her generation. So be sure to seek out a copy of The Opposite House. For readers interested in more information about Helen Oyeyemi, the British newspaper The Independent did a great profile of her recently. Happy reading! June 8 Ian McEwan's new novel On Chesil Beach hit the bookshelves this week, and I want to urge you once again to catch one of the screenings at a nearby bookstore for the short film based on the book. The entire list is below, but as always, email me with questions. In other news, we are very proud to announce that Karen Connelly's book The Lizard Cage has just won the prestigious Orange Prize for New Writers. This is a great honor and a worthy recognition of her fantastic novel. I would like to return to a topic that I touched on in a previous post: the necessity of a literary agent. A literary agent becomes of singular importance once we decide that we want to pursue a manuscript that an agent has submitted to Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. The first thing we do is garner in-house support for the manuscript by soliciting reads from individuals in various branches: marketing, publicity, editorial, etc. Then we inform the literary agent of our enthusiasm. If more than one publishing house expresses enthusiasm for a manuscript, then the agent conducts an auction, where the various publishing houses phone in their bids for the manuscript. The winner of the auction is not necessarily the publishing house that offers the highest bid; it's usually the house that the agent and author feel would be the best fit for the book. They consider the editor and what sort of works that the house or imprint specializes in. It can be a long and complicated process, so an experienced literary agent is mandatory to steer the process to completion. Once the agent and author settle on a publishing house, then the contracts must be drawn up. Here, again, agents are important, because they will have to negotiate which world territories will be granted to the publishing house and which will be kept by the author, and how to split up the numerous subsidiary rights: audio rights, serial rights, etc. There's a lot of give-and-take with the contract process, but it's always exciting because it's the first step toward converting the manuscript into a finished book. Then the editorial fun really begins! So I hope that I've explained why a literary agent is integral for a writer. For all of you aspiring writers who hope to have your books appear on the Nan A. Talese/Doubleday list, please secure a literary agent first, and then you'll be one step closer to realizing your dream. May 23 For the release of the much-anticipated new book by bestselling author Ian McEwan, the Nan A. Talese/Doubleday imprint has teamed up with Powell's Books and created a truly groundbreaking way to market the novel On Chesil Beach. We've created a short film based on the novel that will tour to over 50 bookstores nationwide from June 13th - 19th. The film was shot in both England and the United States, and contains an interview with Ian McEwan in London, on-location footage from Chesil beach, an original soundtrack, and commentary from peers and critics, including our very own Nan Talese. At the bookstores where the film will be screened, there will be local authors and critics to introduce it and talk about the novels of Ian McEwan. You can see a trailer of the movie at www.outofthebookfilms.com, or by clicking here. Below is a listing of the bookstores where the film for On Chesil Beach will be screened. This is a tentative list, as we expect to add more stores and cities soon. The bookstores are arranged alphabetically by bookstore in the left column, and by state in the right column. Please check back again, or feel free to email me at lepplin@randomhouse.com if you have any questions. May 11 The on-line community at Nan A. Talese/Doubleday continues to expand, and I'm happy to announce that Off the Shelf is now a participating member in the experimental Doubleday/Broadway Books Blog at mikeynyc.com. In addition to reading my posts every Friday on this blog, you will also be able to access interactive flip-books for all of our major releases, a list of author events, and descriptions of our books. Be sure to check out the site this week for a flip-book of Jim Crace's The Pesthouse as well as the hilarious inside story behind his psuedo-book Useless America. The site will be updated several times per week, so be sure to visit often. You can either go to www.mikeynyc.com or just click here. One of the most frequently asked questions that I receive is: How do you select the manuscripts that the imprint will publish? The answer is very simple. As you'll recall from one of my previous posts, we only review manuscripts that have been submitted to us through a literary agent. Once the agent makes his/her pitch and sends us the manuscript, we read it and decide if it would be right for the imprint. We concentrate primarily on literary fiction, histories, and narrative nonfiction, so normally we don't consider things like thrillers, romances, or pop culture books, though there have been a few notable exceptions. If it seems like the manuscript would be a good fit for our imprint, the most important thing we determine is, of course, whether we like it, and whether we think it's well written and intriguing enough to publish. The process is subjective, and we sometimes have arguments about the submissions. But it's personally my favorite part of the job. There's nothing more exciting than being introduced to a new voice. I'll talk more later about what happens after we decide to pursue a project. This is when a literary agent becomes important, and I'll stress again: if you're thinking of publishing a manuscript, please try to find a literary agent before you find an editor. You'll have much more success that way. Until next time, happy reading! May 3 It's been a great week here at Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. We just found out that Karen Connelly's novel The Lizard Cage was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers. As you'll recall from my post last week, Xiaolu Guo's novel The Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers made the shortlist for the Orange Prize. Also, two of our authors -- Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan -- have made the shortlist for the Man Booker Intenational Prize. This prize, which can be won by an author of any nationality, recognizes lifetime achievement in fiction. It's one of the most prestigious of all literary awards, and we're honored to have two of our authors nominated. We also had two amazing novels hit the shelves over the past week: Jim Crace's The Pesthouse and Yasmina Khadra's The Sirens of Baghdad. You won't want to miss these powerful novels. Finally, I had a great time at the PEN International Festival of Literature last week. If you weren't able to attend, you can read about what I saw here. April 17 For all of our readers who live in the New York City area, please be sure to check out next week's PEN World Voices Festival: A New York Festival of International Literature. (Click here for the complete schedule, along with the list of participants.) The festival is jam-packed with some of the most prestigious contemporary authors, including Salman Rushdie, Paul Auster, Steve Martin, and Marilynne Robinson, among others. Included in this group are five Nan A. Talese/Doubleday authors: Tinling Choong, Yasmina Khadra, Laura Restrepo, Jose Luis Peixoto, and Michael Wallner. It'd be great to see some of our loyal readers at these events. Please email me (lepplin@randomhouse.com) if you need information about the festival. In other news, we were delighted to see that Michael Wallner's debut novel, April in Paris, debuted at number seven on the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller list during its first week on-sale. This is a short yet powerful novel about a German interpreter in occupied Paris during World War II who decides to dress up as a French citizen at night and mix in with the crowds. He falls in love with a young Parisian woman who, he finds out later, is part of the French resistance. Be sure to look for the novel at your local bookstore. Finally, we just found out today that Xiaolu Guo's debut novel, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, was short-listed for the prestigious Orange Prize. The novel won't hit the bookshelves until September, but we can already sense that it's going to be one of our biggest titles of the year. Next week I'll be acting as a guest-blogger at the PEN World Voices Festival. I'll be sure to include a link to my posts so that those of you who can't make it can get a sense of what was discussed. Until then, happy reading! April 11 There are many aspects of the Nan A. Talese/Doubleday website that remain largely hidden to our visitors. I'm thinking mainly of the author interviews, essays, and discussion questions that we post for our recently released books. Such aspects are great not only for bookclubs but also for individual readers who are interested in learning more about our authors' backgrounds and how they came to write their books. For example, click here to access the webpage for Tinling Choong's book FireWife. In the left margin, we've included plenty of links for readers to access, including an interview with Tinling Choong, an excerpt from the book, discussion questions, and her publicity schedule so that you can see whether she'll be doing a reading near you. In the future, we'll do our best to include such features for all of our titles. And I'll let everyone know when we've added something new to the Nan A. Talese site. So be sure to check back frequently for updates. Until then, happy reading. April 3 The past several months have been busy here at Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. Since the New Year, we've published one excellent work of narrative nonfiction (Oil on the Brain) and six novels, all of which come from international authors: The Fabric of Night by Christoph Peters, FireWife by Tinling Choong, The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly, Delirium by Laura Restrepo, April in Paris by Michael Wallner, and Lies by Enrique de Heriz. I am particularly proud of our list of international fiction, most of which are works in translation. We're all aware here that translations compromise an abysmally low portion of the literary marketplace; by most estimates, only 5 percent of all books published in the United States are translations. In contrast, translations often make up more than 50 percent of the literary market in many European countries. Why are there so few translations published within the United States? I don't think I could provide a satisfactory answer to that question. But I do hope that in today's globalized world, readers will turn more and more to international fiction. We're doing our part here at Nan A. Talese/Doubleday to raise the percentage of translations and international authors in the literary marketplace. And our future publishing lists promise more of the same: in the summer, we will publish new novels by authors such Yasmina Khadra, Helen Oyeyemi, Jim Crace, Kevin Patterson, Christian Jungersen, and Ian McEwan. That's right -- Ian McEwan's latest novel On Chesil Beach will be available in June, and trust me, you won't want to miss it. March 20 It's been nearly a month since my last post, but I have a good excuse: I just returned from a two-week trip to Egypt. I saw some amazing ruins and read through most of The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz. Mafouz is a master storyteller, and there's a great edition published by Everyman's Library that includes all three volumes, in case anyone is interested. There's one thing that I wish every person who visits our website would do: Sign up for the Nan A. Talese/Doubleday newsletter. We send out the newsletter four times each year, and it is the best way to keep up with what we're publishing. Plus -- and here's the best part -- at the end of each newsletter I ask a question about one of our books, and the first ten people to email me with the correct answer receive a free signed copy of that book. In the last newsletter, I gave away signed copies of Thomas Cahill's Mysteries of the Middle Ages; last year I sent out signed copies of Keith Donohue's The Stolen Child. It's a great way to receive free signed books, and I can promise that the questions I ask will not be all that difficult to answer, especially for dedicated book-lovers. How can you sign up for the newsletter? It's easy: just click here and enter in your email address. Until next time, happy reading! February 26 The number one question that I am asked here is: Luke, how can I get my manuscript published? More specifically: How can I get my manuscript published at Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. Well, there's a short answer and a long answer. Short answer: Find a literary agent and then have him/her submit your manuscript to us. Long answer: All major publishing houses now require that submissions come from literary agents. Gone are the days when writers could send their works-in-progress directly to the publishing house for review. Editors, unfortunately, don't have time to thumb through all those submissions, so unsolicited manuscripts nearly always are returned unread to the aspiring writers. Literary agents, on the other hand, consider everything that arrives in their offices, and will give you the best shot at getting your manuscript published. Literary agents act as liasons between writers and publishers, and they will know the best house and editor for your work. And since literary agents have professional relationships with book editors, a book editor will carefully and enthusiastically read over each submission from an established agent. Finding a literary agent truly is the most important step in getting your manuscript published. I highly recommend that aspiring writers focus their energy on querying agents about their manuscripts instead of querying editors. You'll have a much greater chance at success that way. How can you find a literary agent? Search around for names and agencies either at the library or on the internet. The best place to look is in the book Writer's Market, which is updated each year. You could also try the website www.writersdigest.com. I hope that this post provides an answer to this frequently-asked question. I'll be back soon with more updates from Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. February 20 Welcome to the Nan A. Talese/Doubleday blog! This is a new feature that will allow me to list all the happenings and behind-the-scenes workings of our imprint. I plan to update this link several times each month, so please do come back frequently. First of all, I should introduce myself: I'm Luke Epplin, the Associate Editor here at Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. I've been here for less than two years and, in addition to my editorial duties, I'm also responsible for all on-line activities, including maintaining the Nan A. Talese website. I'll be your guide on this publishing blog. As for the rest of us--we're a small division within the larger Doubleday group comprised of only four people: Nan Talese, the publisher and head of the division; Lorna Owen, an editor who's been at the imprint for six years; myself; and Ronit Feldman, the editorial assistant. We publish around 15 to 20 books each year, and are always on the lookout for the best literary fiction and nonfiction being written today. On this blog I will let readers know how we operate: what we do on a day-to-day basis, how we select the works that we publish, how the editorial process works, how we transform a manuscript into a finished book, and how we get our books into the marketplace. Also, I'd like to address any questions that our readers might have. If you have a question that you'd like for me to answer on this blog, please send me an email at lepplin@randomhouse.com. I can't promise that I'll be able to answer every question, but I'll do my best. Until next time, happy reading!
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