What are you reading? I see this question every day on Facebook, which probably says more about the virtual company I keep than the current state of book worship in the world. Still, it's nice to be asked.
Like many of you, my office is a book-stack skyline labeled--to borrow classifications from our friends at Goodreads--"to-read," "currently-reading" or "read." A snapshot of my "currently-reading" list might be seen as a portrait in miniature of the book trade. I do read for a living, after all. So here's today's snapshot. I realize it's dominated by male authors, but that's what a snapshot is--just a moment in time.
I'm nearing the end of one delightful reading journey in Dodger by Terry Pratchett (HarperCollins), and have just embarked on Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (Viking). Then there's The Richard Burton Diaries, edited by Chris Williams (Yale University Press), which I tend to sip. "I am reading on average about 3 books in two days," he writes in one entry. In another: "I took Liza and Maria to school this morning and then went to the bookshop on the Via Veneto and bought some 20 or 30 paperbacks."
All of my currently-reading titles are intriguing (or I'd just drop'em), but some represent certain changes occurring in our industry. Approaching such books is rewarding and complicated, as I train one eye on the text and another on the context.
For example, Roland Merullo has chosen a small independent press (AJAR Contemporaries, an imprint of Peter Sarno's PFP Publishing) to publish Lunch with Buddha, a sequel to his popular 2007 novel, Breakfast with Buddha. I've been reading an advance copy, and it's a pleasure renewing my acquaintance with Volya Rinpoche, Otto Ringling, et al. 
The connection between Merullo and Sarno goes back to their childhood days in Revere, Mass. For this project, they're teaming up on every aspect of the process, including fundraising through Kickstarter as well as an IPO program (more than a dozen investors will each receive a one-time 10% return on their money once the book sells its 10,000 copies).
"We're determined not merely to do everything the big publishers do, but to do it better and faster and at a lower cost," Merullo said. "Peter and I have been working from breakfast until midnight every day for months now. Our skills complement each other well: Peter's a detail person, and I'm out in space half the time. He knows the world of computers inside and out, and I can barely send an e-mail. He and his small staff are as devoted to this novel as I am, and after 22 years of putting out books with the publishing giants, I find that immensely refreshing."
Author Jon Clinch (Finn, Kings of the Earth) is also striking out on his own for his next novel, The Thief of Auschwitz (Unmediated Ink, January 15). "Artists are combative by nature," I read yesterday morning in the ARC of his book. The same character, Max, also says this: "To save yourself with your own two hands. That's art."
Art and hard work. With an extensive background in advertising, Clinch is prepared for the challenge ahead. He told the Washington Post last month that "everywhere I go these days, I see things that remind me that I’m doing the right thing. Yesterday, I was out for a bike ride here in Vermont, and right up the road, we have the Long Trail Brewery. It occurred to me that I'm kind of like a micro brewer of publishing. Big publishers are good at certain kinds of things that have to do with mass audience and big trends and so on, and it's like big brewing. I'm the little guy who can turn out something that maybe isn't for everybody, and that's okay."
I'm also reading Close Is Fine, a damn good story collection by Eliot Treichel (Ooligan Press). Describing itself as "a general trade publisher rooted in the rich literary tradition of the Pacific Northwest," Ooligan, which is affiliated with Portland State University, is a teaching press "staffed by students pursuing master’s degrees in an apprenticeship program under the guidance of a core faculty of publishing professionals." And, I would add, publishing quality fiction.
"Send the book out, and let it take its chance," Mr. Alf advised Lady Carbury in Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now. Her novel's title was The Wheel of Fortune. While it requires much more than luck to publish a successful book the way we read now, there are also more options available to the players. Picture that.--Robert Gray, contributing editor (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now).
