Entrekin

Completing the MBA homework I needed those laddering interviews for made me think a lot about attention. How we get it and to whom we give it, and why. Every once in a while, I’ll make disparaging comments about some author or other–usually Stephenie Meyer or Sarah Palin. Lately, James Franco.

I make those remarks, of course, because I’m jealous. It’s the frustration of a still-emerging writer scared shitless of never making it, for whatever ‘it’ means. The fear of a newb that all the fancy education and writing learning and multiple novels will never get the attention I’ve always thought they deserve.

And of course they don’t. Because nothing really deserves attention. Attention has to be earned.

Which, I think, is where a lot of the frustration with Meyer and Palin and Franco comes in. As a writer, I don’t get the fascination, the quality people find, but maybe I’m approaching it with the wrong idea. Do Meyer’s and Palin’s readers go to those women’s books seeking depth of thought and lucidity of prose?

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Yesterday, I talked about how I thought a bookstore like Barnes & Noble might survive. How the retail model seems busted to some extent.

I fear my solutions to the problem seemed vague. I thought I’d fix that.

I think we need to remember that books are not stories, and vice versa. That reading is as much about the experience as the object being sold, and as such, retail publishing must change to meet new needs of the market.

The market needs a few things, based on what is changing. The biggest change is the proliferation of digital in an almost completely analog environment, but that provides both challenges and opportunities.

As I see it, what the market really needs is simple:

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Big publishing news: Barnes & Noble, as a corporate entity, has put itself up for sale. It’s probably not big news to anyone watching the publishing industry in general, lately. B&N’s nook has a more aesthetically pleasing form factor than the Kindle, but its interface–which runs a version of Google’s Android–is clunky at best, its input system awkward, its overall experience lacking.

The only other experience it offers, unfortunately, is coffee, really.

No, seriously, consider a Barnes & Noble. Or a Borders, for that matter. With so many new books published at such an incredible rate, do you really think that’s where they make their coin?

I live in Manhattan, basically. There are a bunch of Barnes & Noble stores. Why do I go to them?

For the bargain-priced hardcovers (which are mostly remainders, and which I’m pretty sure B&N makes no money on), for the free wifi, and for the author events.

Other than that, I’ll find someplace else. If I want to buy a book, I either go to Amazon’s Marketplace or the Strand.

The reason Barnes & Noble is floundering is because the business model of selling books is starting to make less sense as more retailers find new ways of doing it. iTunes is now the nation’s leading retailer for music, purchases from which, by extension, must be digital.

One wonders if we’re on our way there now.

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First, a big thanks to anyone who filled out a survey. It helped me out a great deal, both in terms of my class and in terms of my plans.

Second, if you haven’t by now watched the teaser video for Meets Girl in the previous post, go ahead and do so now.

I tweeted a picture of the cover, and then posted this video. A lot of questions came up, most of which boiled down to “All right, it’s pretty, and I’m excited, now how do I get the damned thing, Will? You’re killin’ me, Smalls!”

The answer is simple:

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The life of a writer, despite what you may have heard, is not exactly glamorous (though some writers look way better living one than others), and it’s often full of hustling and scrambling to reach certain goals, not the least of which is getting paid. Several months ago, while seeking freelance opportunities to supplement the meager income of being an adjunct professor at a small college, I found an opportunity to write online for a growing website I will leave nameless, both for purposes of professionalism and discussion but also because it’s not actually relevant to my purposes.

The ad I saw looked interesting and sought a writer interested in a monthly column. So I dropped a note to the supplied e-mail and, when I got a positive response, checked out the site, which was actually pretty awesome. I looked over some of the articles and pitched to the editor an idea I’d been kicking around for a few months (and still am).

The editor was encouraging and liked my style but thought the topic to specific and narrow, too relevant to writers and not relevant enough to their readers.

Ah, the dichotomy.

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When I took that USC Business of the Business course, our final project was a business plan. It included all the sections necessary for reasons of profession and information: executive summary, financials, market survey et al..

I’m not going to pretend I can make that interesting.

It was the first business plan I ever conceived, and I tried hard but had difficulty with the course overall, which translated to difficulty with the final project. I knew how to query; I got requests for partials and polite rejections all the time. I’m reasonably good at pitching when I’m not so nervous my heart flutters. When it came time to name competition, I had trouble; I’m a writer, and don’t tend to think in terms of competition. Are Meyer and Brown competition? Part of me hopes so, because I’m about a thousand times better than either, but sometimes the market seems not to care about quality.

That’s a digression.

Part of what was hard for me was thinking of my writing so specifically as a product. Comparing my books to others. For me, it doesn’t; I write them because nobody else did and I wanted to read them.

That’s not what a business plan wants to hear.

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During my final semester at USC, I took a course called “The Business of the Business” with Paula Brancato. Paula is, I think, mainly a writer/producer/entrepreneur. She had an MBA from Harvard Business School, and she’s a small, attractive woman with a quick bob and big, dark eyes. She’s both insightful and incisive.

When I took that course, it was small; by the end of the semester, I think there were only a few students still in it. Part of it was, I think, that the course had been structurally changed; rather than meeting once per week, on a weeknight, like most other courses in the MPW program, we had to truncate the schedule so that we met one Friday evening and all of one Saturday one weekend per month. Paula traveled back and forth to attend.

To back up just a bit, one of the main reasons I chose USC among scores of MFA programs I considered was that it wasn’t an MFA. While it offered fiction workshops for beginning and advanced writers alike, it also offered courses that concerned themselves with publishing as a business endeavor. Each workshop I took, at least to start, not only got us to produce two solid short stories during a brief summer semester but also required us to research markets and write query letters and submit letter and story to editors for publication. I’m sure a lot of my colleagues got their first sales that way.

I didn’t. My first sale was directly to readers.

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A few weeks ago, big news around publishing was that The New Yorker had come up with a Twenty under Forty list, which was ostensibly meant to increase commenting by increasing controver–er. I mean, it was supposed to tip the New Yorker’s top hat at a small group of writers the illustrious, uber-prestigious publication deemed worth mentioning as either writers to watch or writers who were having some effect on literature. I can’t find the list, but I located some commentary on it on their website.

It’s full of the usual names of the young-ish literati. Jonathan Safran Foer, of course, as well as his wife, Nicole Krauss. Gary Shteyngart and Joshua Ferris. Lots of others.

Not really an interesting list. The mag might as well have said “Here’s a random list of forty young writers whose short stories we’ve published over the last decade, or whose books we’ve breathlessly reviewed. Now allow us to pat ourselves on the back for honoring the new literati.”

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I know, I know: I said I was going to return to consistent form, managed several posts, and then disappeared for months. I mean, I’ve been on Twitter and writing monthly for The Nervous Breakdown, but haven’t really been here since early February, looks like.

Lots of stuff going on these past several months. Early on, much of my attention was focused on my mom, who was sick.

One day I’ll write about all that.

Today is not that day.

Today I want to write about turning 32.

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