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Okay, I think I can safely say that just about every writer would love to have an endorsement by Oprah and here's why:

LITTLE, BROWN to print 650,000 copies of new Oprah selection.

This was announced by PW in big bold letters.

Of course, there was the author of The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen) that decided he didn't quite want all the commercial attention and I suppose it's hard to truly judge how one would feel until one is in that situation BUT, as writers we do want our work to be noticed, especially after we've spent so much time, sweat, tears and sometimes blood creating our written product.

We write because we can't not write and we all strive for success but how we measure that success can vary. Sure, I'd love to have a book that I've written and managed to find a publisher who believed in it, recognized by Oprah; but, I think more than anything else I'd love to write a book, find a supportive publisher and have fans and readers who genuinely connect to my story.

I look forward to that happening in the near future.

In the meantime to everyone one I say "Write On!"

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Another change in the world of ePublishing, and therefore eBook delivery and availability, is bringing ebooks closer to the masses.

Cost is often a reason for the success and/or failure of eBooks. Readers, distribution, readability are only a few of the issues affected by cost. Now an Australian software company is releasing a product that promises to streamline the cost and time of converting pdf to a common ePub standard.

For more details here’s the link:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6696787.html


And Dan Brown’s newest release - The Lost Symbol - is causing a price war among eBook releases as Amazon makes it available for a low price on the Kindle.

For more info go to:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125297229016310315.html?mod=rss_Books


And on the multimedia/marketing front, thriller novelist Clyde Ford has taken the audio/visual book trailer concept to a new level. Here’s the link for more information:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6601539.html?rssid=192


Move over Oprah? Well, maybe not. Bin Laden is now coming out with his own booklist and endorsements. Hummm! It will be interesting to see what affect this has.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/bin-ladens-reading-list-for-americans/?hp


And Google launches a new way to read the news - Fast Flip.

http://mashable.com/2009/09/14/google-fast-flip/

What I believe this is telling us as writers is that more and more consumers of the written word are wanting it faster, more entertaining on a multimedia level, and via more of the technological gadgets that are available. The printed version will always be in demand, but like the US Mail, publishers will have to adapt to a change in the level of demand for the analog version of the written word as digital versions become more prevalent.

We should all stay tuned to the wild and exciting world of publishing and marketing.

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So hey this is barely library related. I was reading library_mofo and saw someone complaining about Oprah. Yes Oprah the lady who seemed to have single-handedly revived reading in some circles. I didn’t understand the problem. Apparently somehow Oprah was telling people to go get a coupon for free chicken at KFC. This was a problem at libraries for some reason. I investigated further.

Turns out, you go Oprah’s site and then to this page and have one day (now only a few hours, maybe not even okay anymore depending when you read this) to print up to four coupons to get a free meal. Actually now that I go there I get message that “Our partner, Coupons, Inc. is experiencing an exceptionally high volume of traffic to the site right now. Please check back soon to get your coupon. Sorry for any inconvenience.” Color me surprised.

That brings me to my next point. This isn’t just a coupon on a page that you can print, this is a coupon system which involves downloading… something … to your computer (mercifully available for Mac/Win, don’t know about Linux, I assume not). Once you have downloaded and installed the something, you can then click the “Print coupon” link which will load the coupon on to a web page as a PDF and allow you to print it with a special barcode. Photocopied coupons are, for some reason, not acceptable at restaurants. I could not get it to easily work with Firefox but it was a breeze with Safari and I assume the Firefox issue was mine alone.

So, people without printers head to the public library to get a coupon for a free meal. You can use a printer at the public library, yay for the library! They can’t do this for any number of reasons up to and including

• They can’t download the application to a library computer because of library policy
• They can’t download the program to the computer because the website is being flakey
• Coupons Inc is down
• They manage to download the application and get to the “print coupon” link only to wait forever and have no idea if their coupon is printing or not
• The “you are limited to four downloads of this coupon” restraint is somehow per computer which means the first four people are lucky, the rest not so much

Yes that’s right, it’s the coupon so popular and so buggy they had to create a FAQ for it. Do people look at this fiasco the way I do, as an well-meaning but ill-conceived program that uses a lot of stupid middleware to prevent fraud that mostly managed to tank itself due to overpopularity and complicated implementation? No, they think the library isn’t the place to go for printing. Or that librarians can’t solve technical problems as easy as printing a coupon from a website, so the next time they have a coupon to print, they’ll go elsewhere. Or that computers are hard.

This system encourages cheating. It complicates what should be a fairly straightforward computer activity for no particularly good reason. What do you suppose happens if you show up at KFC with a photocopied coupon? What happens when you print more than four coupons? Thanks for reminding me that “Coupon fraud is punishable by law.” If I ever get this website to load again, I’m printing 100 coupons and you can take me to jail. The nearest KFC to here is 21 miles anyhow. Boy am I glad I’m not working at the library today.

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As you may remember from this years  BookFinder.com Report the book A Lion Called Christian became an internet sensation this year when Anthony Bourke's , the books author, reunion with his pet lion received millions of hits on Youtube which caused the general masses to seek out the now out of print book A Lion Called Christian. 

The book was the sixth most popular out of print title on BookFInder.com last year and had been out of print since 1972.  After the spike in interest publishers rushed A Lion Called Christian back into print, making a lot of people who didn't want to buy a collectible edition quite happy indeed.

So now you can see Anthony Bourke on Oprah tomorrow to re-tell his 40 year old story.

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As you may remember from this years  BookFinder.com Report the book A Lion Called Christian became an internet sensation this year when Anthony Bourke's , the books author, reunion with his pet lion received millions of hits on Youtube which caused the general masses to seek out the now out of print book A Lion Called Christian. 

The book was the sixth most popular out of print title on BookFInder.com last year and had been out of print since 1972.  After the spike in interest publishers rushed A Lion Called Christian back into print, making a lot of people who didn't want to buy a collectible edition quite happy indeed.

So now you can see Anthony Bourke on Oprah tomorrow to re-tell his 40 year old story.

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In case anyone missed Monday night’s Oprah’s Book Club Webcast for The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, you can see it on her website.

It was a thrilling experience to be a part of the largest book club meeting in the world! Oprah was extremely gracious and inspiring. I had a wonderful time and am proud to have been a part of the book club!

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Kindle, eBooks Discussion in The Horn Book This Month...

Lately I've had Kindle on the brain. First was the Oprah to-do in which Ms. Winfrey declared it to be her favorite new gadget and said it changed her life. Then I started seeing tests for a Kindle version of CWIM. (It's OK but not great at this point. It seems the Kindle's not awesome with books that are not straight text. There are some funky icons and weird caption placement and things like that, but I'm told Kindle users are used to such things. I was surprised how good the images showed up, however.) Getting our Market Books (as well as a host of other F+W Media titles) ready for Kindle and other electronic readers is a hot project around here.

Seeing the CWIM test was actually my first in-person encounter with the Kindle. I can understand it's appeal, but I'm not sure it's a gadget I'll be snapping up any time soon. I'm in love with the printed book. The feel. The smell. The piles in the corner of every room. The 87 boxes of them I have to back every time I move. I don't mind lugging a book in my carry-on luggage. And at $359, I'd rather buy an iPhone or a really awesome pair of boots.

When I opened my November/December issue of The Horn Book which a big section titled "When e- Is for Reading," in which several writers discuss reader-gadgets, I read it with great interest. Here's a bit from Stephen Roxburgh that puts things in perspective:

And, for the moment, let’s not engage in the “death of the book as we know it” debate. Technology is the means to an end, and not necessarily the end of a means. Think about the fact that people still walk, bicycle, ride horses, drive cars, take trains, and fly to get where they are going. When we read, we have a goal in mind. We are going somewhere.

Click here to read the rest of Roxburgh's piece along with the others.

Anybody out there tried the Kindle? Do you like it? And what do you think of CWIM on the Kindle?

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And now for something completely different!

Today I want to talk about architectural rendering a little bit. I have a new commission to do a rendering of a restaurant in Chicago, so thought I'd start a work in progress series of posts about it, and also yak about rendering buildings in general some.

This is the photo I will be turning into a nice illustration:



Its Table fifty-two, and is the creation of Chef Art Smith, who just happens to be Oprah's personal chef.

Rendering buildings is a highly specialized field of art. The range of styles, techniques and applications for illustrating architecture is much too much to try to write about in a blog! What I'll do is show you a little of what I do, take you through the process of rendering this piece, then give you some links to places where you can see other illustrators' work. This will take a few posts, at least, I figure!

First up are a few samples of other buildings I've done. I vary my style quite a bit, as you can see.

Ink and watercolor

Colored pencil
Ink and watercolor

Watercolor

Colored pencil and Photoshop

Sometimes the client will ask for something specific. If not, I let the building "tell me" what style and technique to use.

For Table 52, I'm thinking I might use a combination of watercolor and pencil. Its a very elegant space, and a tighter, neater style would work best to bring out the character of the building.

I start with a series of photos my art director sends me. He goes out to the location and takes pictures of the sight. I ask him to take shots of the building from different angles, some close up details, the more the better. The main photo I'll be working from is the correct angle, but I can't see the detail in the windows very well because of the tree, I can't see what's in the planter box in front, etc. etc.


So in addition to this photo I have about a half dozen others that show a lot more information.

We talked about the pictures and discussed what was important to show, and what could be removed, and in general how to make it a good illustration.

Here is my first take on the things that need to be removed from the picture:

The parking sign out front HAS to go! I always take out signs like that. Ugly!
Also, the power lines on the left, the crane on the right, and of course the truck and some of the meters and whatnot attached to the side of the building.

We talked about the green canopy tent structure in front. That's a temporary structure put up to shelter people who are waiting to get in, from the weather, which is very civilized (the structure, not the weather). It comes down once the weather warms up. But as much as I'd like to remove it, I don't know what the window and door look like underneath, and don't want to just invent something, or "fake it". Looking at the interior shot of the place on the website tells me some of what the window does, but not the door. And since I'm not there to go look in person, and my art director isn't able to go back and take more pictures, we'll have to just settle with what we have to work with. I will include the "warming hut" in the illustration and make it look as nice as possible (luckily its very tastefully done so it won't be hard!)


Now let me go work on this, and I'll post the next steps as soon as I have something to show!

All images and content herein are © Paula Pertile and may not be used or reproduced without permission.

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I've had this story percolating for a long time. It just hasn't jelled yet. To jump start it, I decided to color one of my sketches. Let's hope this is the start of something good.

I've had a lot of interesting things happen lately. I saw Louise Hay on Oprah, which reminded me to think positively, develop a vision, and to let it go. I don't really believe that "put it out to the universe" thing. I believe, rather, that when you have a vision and think positively, you are more aware of the opportunities that come your way. That being said, "The Universe" is messing with me. One of the many things that have happened in the last week is that I had a passing thought that a gym membership would be a good thing to have in order to build my strength for skiing. It's not in the budget right now, but the day after that thought, a free 30 day trial coupon arrived from my old gym. Spooky. If the universe is listening, I'd like to win the lottery;-)

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 We writers all dream our characters will turn into literary super heroes and earn us a lottery full of money. But do we ever dream they can fight disease and help for a brighter future? Hardly ever.

I have to admit I never even imagined that was possible. How on earth could little Shante' do something like that? I got the surprise of a lifetime last week when I found out that she will contribute in the fight against cancer.

The illustrator of my picture book, Marion Eldridge, used Shante' in her snowflake design this year for Robert's Snow. (http://www.jimmyfund.org/eve/event/roberts-snow/default.html) If you've never heard of Robert's Snow, it's an auction of snowflakes designed by children's illustrators to benefit the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. It was started by illustrator Grace Lin as her husband Robert fought cancer, a battle he lost last month. I actually got teary eyed when I saw Shante' in that snowflake. I hope some wealthy person (are you reading this Oprah?) will fall in love with her, as Marion and I have, and bring in tons of money for cancer research.

You can see the snowflake on Marion's new blog:

http://marion-eldridgenews.blogspot.com/

 

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It seemed impossible to talk about the most recent of Gregory Rogers wordless picture books without talking about the earlier book. Not that the two books can't stand on their own, but they also seem so much a part of one that I'm doing them together.

A Boy in modern England kicks a soccer ball through the window of an abandoned theatre. Once inside to retrieve his ball his attention is diverted by costumes, which he feels compelled to try on. He kicks his ball through the curtain and, going after it, finds himself transported onto the stage in Elizabethan England. The Bard in the wings, furious that his play has been interrupted by this rapscallion, gives chase.

From here out it's a Shakespearean action movie. While hiding out the boy befriends and frees a caged Bear and together they outwit and outrun the Bard, help an imprisoned Baron escape, entertain on a Lady's barge, and in the end go their separate ways. The Bear is set sailing down the Thames in a small punt while the Boy, at the last minute, is transported back through time to the modern day.


Picking up where the previous book left off, Bear is still floating down river, only now he is out of the city and into lush forest. A buzzing bee wakes the slumbering Bear, alerting and leading him to the presence of honey in a nearby tree. Chased by the angry hive Bear discovers a tree with a door in it and, after a cursory knock, barges through to a tunnel in the trunk. Coming out the other side Bear discovers he has been shrunk to the size of nearby mushrooms in a land of fairies.

The Boy appears, this time as a helpful sprite, offering to introduce him to his king. Once at the palace the Bard takes them to the court where he accuses them of some sort of treason. Imprisoned they find themselves in the same cell as the King and Queen (the Baron and the Lady from the previous book) and make a plan to escape. More chasing, some swordplay, and in the end the Bard is arrested for his misdeeds. Bear receives heroic honors from the King and Queen and is led back to his boat by the Boy where he is free to continue floating on.

Expertly paced, both books have true cinematic arcs to their storytelling that make them a joy to follow. That Rogers is using the same cast of main characters to tell these stories make them more like a repertory group putting on their latest production, which is hardly accidental. More only criticism happens in the first book where there is a clunky transition between the two worlds -- almost as if Rogers was unsure the reader would understand what was happening -- that he doesn't use in the second book, which I was happy to see. I think children can make a lot of solid connections in well "explained" pictures and Rogers has what it takes to make those connections visually smooth.

In the introduction to the first book Rogers admits that everything clicked for him the moment he discovered that Shakespeare's plays began at 4 in the afternoon, suggesting a late afternoon reverie. In the the more recent book he speaks to his love of Elizabethan costumes and that love is clear in both books.

In thinking about these books, and in similar books like Polo -- books with panels of action and no dialog, sequential stories -- I'm thinking we may need to consider coming up with a new term if not a new genre. It doesn't seem right to call them graphic novels when they're meant for the picture book crowd, no matter how appropriate the name may be. And to call them picture books seems to imply they aren't different from the traditional word-and-illustration books we understand to be the picture book. One thing is certain, they are a far cry from comic books and a far cry from the uncomplicated pre-reader picture and board books.

I guess if Rogers is keen on continuing with his company of players, the next ought to figure the Baron as the main character with the others in support, then the Bard in the last book. After that I guess we're on our own, which is sad in advance of the fact that there's no proof any further books are even being considered. And while I'm speculating, it would be nice to not only see a day with four books in print but of a single bound edition containing all-in-one.

I think if the world of book publishing is hoping to build a solid graphic novel base then they need to start weening their audience early on. More like this, please.

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by Barbara Lehman
Houghton Mifflin 2007

What a disappointment.

A bored, lonely boy attempts to amuse himself one rainy day when he discovers a key under the furniture. Trying all the locked places he can think of he eventually finds its mate is a trunk that contains a ladder that leads underground. Following the underground tunnel he emerges on an island containing a lighthouse and a group of children and sunshine. They play together, eat together, and let the boy take a turn lighting the beacon. At the end of the day he takes his leave and returns to his dull home life.

At night he can't shake the image of the day's events and the next morning he ventures back into the tunnel only to be met by the children from the island who dared to venture to visit him. They return to his home and in the end happily play in his room.

There is a very weird class thing going on here that makes me uncomfortable. The boy is shown eating alone at one point in front of a formally set table, servants at the ready, dressed in a tie and a little boy suit. He may be the classic boy trapped in the tower of luxury but in the end he doesn't escape, he merely invites he new (and always shoeless) playmates into his home. That the boy is white and the playmates are represented by minorities doesn't help.

The question is, if the tunnel has always been there, if these children have always had a way to escape the island, why didn't they find the boy first? Could these be the children of the servants? When you get a wordless picture book you get to make the story up yourself, but you must use the clues available to you. So what is it Lehman wants us to read into all this?

Where Lehman previously gave us the parallel universe of The Red Book it all it's wordless glory, and the Museum Trip gave is a magical daydream, Rainstorm gives us a rather dull tale of privileged boredom and no mystery or fantasy whatsoever.

I'm not just hard on the book in comparison to Lehman's other books; it's difficult to not set this up alongside recent wordless picture books that are more clever (Adventures of Polo) or more detailed in their fantasy (most David Weisner books, especially Flotsom). Fantasy and escape don't need concrete explanations, but the questions they raise should invite equally fanciful interpretation. There isn't a lot to hang onto here, much less interpret, beyond the little dot of a moon in the night sky that actually belongs to the beacon and is as easily missed as it can be ignored.

It also isn't a question of the fantasy, the pacing of the book feels labored and pointless. Easily a third of the pictures could be removed and the story would retain its integrity. But a book with one third fewer illustrations would be very thin, and the story's shortcomings would be readily apparent.

The exercise feels as distant, closed off and cold, sheltered and empty

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