Sales of SLOW TRAIN Are Noteworthy!

While US sales have been few, A Slow Train To Budapest has truly begun to "break out" in the UK.  November figures weighed in at 832; December, at an even 1,000; January, at another 615.

These results certainly defy current trends in marketing strategy.  I have done absolutely nothing to promote the work, and it has garnered only five reviews (four 5-stars, but one 2-star).  Nevertheless, this little gem is selling.

I hope to edit and reconstruct more from my mother's manuscript in near future, and I shall definitely plan to upload a Part 2 if at all possible!

The Value (?) of Book Reviews

            The New York Times ran another interesting “Bookends” column on 3 February, as James Parker and Anna Holmes squared off on the question:  “Is Book Reviewing a Public Service or an Art?”  The text may be accessed here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/books/review/is-book-reviewing-a-public-service-or-an-art.html?ref=books&_r=0.

            Sadly (and with all due respect to the highly-credentialed contributors), neither writer addressed some very real problems:  the democratization of culture, the emergence of Everyman as critic, and the millions of “reviews” bought and paid for (if not otherwise published by family and friends).  Amazon is particularly noteworthy in this regard.  With a proper marketing/promo campaign, an author may easily drum up hundreds of 5-star reviews.

            This is easier than it may sound.  Those who release titles through Kindle Direct Publishing can run numerous “promotionals” during the year.  At these times, they give their titles away – literally; they may actually release it for free.  This, in turn, creates the “verified purchase” that lends credibility to the family, friends, and paid “reviewers” who will of course give it five stars!

            I thought both Parker and Holmes made excellent points, and their essays are well worth reading.  However, I should have been happier had they addressed this issue. 

Could e-Books Overtake Printed Books by 2018?

Some of us may find this difficult to imagine, but here is the news as it appeared in print:

<< In the United States and Britain, sales of e-books represent between a quarter and a third of the consumer book market and, by 2018, will edge out printed and audio books as the most lucrative segment, according to projections by the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. >>

The full article, “In Europe, Slower Growth for e-Books,” appeared in the New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/arts/international/in-europe-slower-growth-for-e-books.html?_r=0  

Written by Mrs. Bach: Probably “Pure Rubbish”!

In 2011, no less esteemed a firm than HarperCollins published Written by Mrs. Bach, a book that presented the view of Martin Jarvis, a professor at Australia’s Charles Darwin University.  Mr. Jarvis maintained that Anna Magdalena Bach, not Johann Sebastian Bach, who composed the Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello.  His bizarre conjecture has since been produced as a documentary film!

Needless to say, any number of experts have raised serious questions about both the research and the conclusions reached.  Indeed, cellist Steven Isserlis was outspoken:  “Anna Magdalena Bach did not write the Bach suites, any more than Anne Hathaway wrote Shakespeare’s plays, George Henry Lewes wrote George Eliot’s novels, or Freddie Starr ate his friend’s hamster.”  The Isserlis piece appears in The Guardian (29 Oct. 2014):  http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2014/oct/29/why-bach-wife-cannot-take-credit-for-his-cello-masterwork.

What bothers me is that such an apparently ill-founded hypothesis has made its way into print and subsequently to film.  How?  Are today’s publishers so desperately thirsty for what might once have been deemed a National Enquirer scoop that they must jump over such a wild hypothesis?

An Exception to the Rule?

Rachel Donadio recently wrote an article about Elena Ferrante (cf. The New York Review of Books 1 December 2014).  This piece is of interest because it ran contrary to so much of the prevailing trend in publishing.

These days writers are often encouraged to spend more time marketing themselves than they spend writing.  Many editors are more concerned with a prospective author’s “platform” (i.e., Internet presence – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) and marketing plan than whether he/she can actually write.  Without “followers,” one is effectively assumed dead-on-arrival.

By contrast, “Ferrante is a pseudonym, has no public presence, has never been seen, gives her a strange place in Italy, a country obsessed with image, where if you aren’t on television, you barely exist.”  Wow! 

The feature is available at:  http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/dec/18/italys-great-mysterious-storyteller/.

A Potentially Alarming Study

Caitlin Dewey's article, "Why You Might Want to Ditch Your E-reader and Go Back to Printed Books," published in the Washington Post on August 21st, cited a recent study on reading comprehension.  Although the results were certainly far from conclusive, evidence suggests that those turning the pages of "real" books understood the plot line considerably better than those reading the identical text on Kindle.  

The article did not provide actual numbers (which would certainly have helped!), and the sample was alarmingly small (only fifty people, total, with twenty-five each for the printed volume and the Kindle).  Still, the outcome is disturbing, and further study appears warranted.  

The text appears at http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/08/21/why-you-might-want-to-ditch-your-e-reader-and-go-back-to-printed-books/ .