Booze News: You Can Buy Wine Every Day

Booze News: You Can Buy Wine Every Day

Am I the only one who missed this? Apparently in the last weeks of August, New York finally made it legal for booze to be sold every day of the week? Crazy days!
- posted by Amy @ 9/13/2004 05:29:00 PM

 
The Miseducation of Stacy Sullivan

The Miseducation of Stacy Sullivan

Columbia Journalism tells the story of my friend Stacy Sullivan, who found out the hard way that the book publishing industry isn't what it seems. It's the story of her first book "Be Not Afraid, For You Have Sons in America," and how it's been so difficult to get it published, distributed and publicized. Even the New York Times -- where her story originated as a cover story on the NYT Magazine -- has so far passed on running a review. Here are some key excerpts cut from throughout the beefy CJR story:

Gayle Feldman, who has worked in publishing since 1976 and is currently a contributor to Publishers Weekly, wrote in her report for the National Arts Journalism Program, Best and Worst of Times: The Changing Business of Trade Books, 1975-2002, that “whether publishers like to admit it or not, an author’s telegenicity, promotability, and age enter increasingly into the acquisition equation, particularly for new authors whose careers need to be ‘made.’” Feldman herself, who wrote a family history of cancer, was asked at one of her meetings with potential publishing houses if she would be willing to cry on camera.

...

At a celebratory deal-signing lunch, Sullivan told (editor Diane) Higgins that she was hungry for a lot of editing. Higgins said she hoped this would be the first of many lunches. As it turned out, throughout the next three years, Sullivan would see Higgins only once more (by chance, as she stopped by St. Martin’s to drop off some photographs). For a book like Sullivan’s, not a high-priority acquisition, this was not unusual.

...

There are still many editors who painstakingly pore over many drafts and develop collaborative relationships with their authors. But more and more, editors are busy looking for the next big book and simply ask to see a manuscript when it’s done and then send it off to a copyeditor. Alice Truax can attest to this shift in the status quo. A former editor at The New Yorker, Truax is now one of a growing number of freelance editors whom writers pay out of their own threadbare pockets to get additional editing for their books.

...

By the end of last year, the book was out of her hands and in print, at an initial run of 5,000 copies. By this point, she had long abandoned the illusion that her publisher cared about her book’s fate. “It’s your book,” Sullivan now tells herself. “It’s not your agent’s, your editor’s, or your publisher’s. It’s your baby and you have to nurture it.”

...

In the past there used to be a rule of thumb that a dollar per book printed would be spent on publicity. But this practice has long disappeared. Not only does it cost so much more to support traditional promotion, such as an author’s book tour, which now costs about $1,500 a city, but today, with the advent of the mega-bookstore, there are many more factors involved.

...

In a 2000 report for The Authors Guild, David Kirkpatrick, now a New York Times reporter ... explains (that) chain stores usually take money for such preferred placement. Or, as some like to say, they’ve gone into the real estate business. Here’s how it works: publishers buy what is called advertising co-op space. Chain stores and an increasing number of larger independents are allowed to retain 3 to 5 percent of each year’s net sales for advantageously promoting certain books. ...

...

Independent bookstores have a tradition of promoting the diamond in the rough and igniting the crucial word of mouth that can make a book hot. But since the 1940s these stores have been in decline, and today they account for only 18 percent of retail book sales, according to the American Booksellers Association. Chains, mostly Barnes & Noble and Borders, account for 30 percent. The remaining sales are made on the Internet, through mail-order book clubs, and by mass merchandisers like Wal-Mart.

...

The truth is that the Amazon ranking is based, like most bestseller lists, on how fast a book is selling against other books at any given moment on Amazon’s site (it is updated hourly for the best-selling 10,000 books, daily for the top 100,000, and monthly for the rest).

...

It’s hard to imagine now, but in the 1940s, an average issue of The New York Times Book Review was sixty-four pages long, more than twice today’s length.

- posted by Amy @ 9/13/2004 09:49:00 AM

 
Water Taxi Doubles Rates

Water Taxi Doubles Rates

When I took the water taxi this summer from Red Hook to 42nd Street, I said it wasn't ready for commuters but was kind of a cool way to get to Manhattan. Though it was way more expensive than the subway, and not any faster. But now they've gone and made it worse.

On Friday afternoon, I tried to take the taxi from the Christopher Street pier back out to Red Hook. Turns out that not only was there no service available, but rates had also gone up. While my trip this summer was $5, turns out it's now $5 to go only to the next stop (in that case, World Financial Center.) The gal on the taxi said it was $5 per segment, though the web site says you can get a $10 one-way ticket to wherever you're going.

So that's pretty bad news for those real estate agents who are trying to sell Red Hook (with its lack of transportation) based on the viability of using the water taxi to get to Manhattan.
- posted by Amy @ 9/13/2004 09:13:00 AM

 
MTA Backs Off Subway Camera Ban

MTA Backs Off Subway Camera Ban

The MTA has figured out how dumb its proposed subway camera ban was, the Daily News reports.

"We are looking at a prohibition that will allow the police to make sure individuals are not photographing sensitive areas of the system - but that would still allow tourists and train lovers and people who just find beauty in the system - to photograph it without infringing on their civil liberties," the source said.

- posted by Amy @ 9/13/2004 08:31:00 AM