Maybe it’s just me, but blaming the reader for the problems of the corporate publishing industry sounds like blaming the driver for the problems of the Detroit automakers. From The New York Times:

Don’t blame this carnage on the recession or any of the usual suspects, including increased competition for the reader’s time or diminished attention spans. What’s undermining the book industry is not the absence of casual readers but the changing habits of devoted readers.

In other words, it’s all the fault of people like myself, who increasingly use the Internet both to buy books and later, after their value to us is gone, sell them. This is not about Amazon peddling new books at discounted prices, which has been a factor in the book business for a decade, but about the rise of a worldwide network of amateurs who sell books from their homes or, if they’re lazy like me, in partnership with an Internet dealer who does all the work for a chunk of the proceeds.

They get their books from friends, yard sales, recycling centers, their own shelves. castoffs (I just bought a book from a guy whose online handle was Clif Is Emptying His Closet). Some list them for as little as a penny, although most aim for at least a buck. This growing market is achieving an aggregate mass that is starting to prove problematic for publishers, new bookstores and secondhand bookstores.

Seems to me that the secondhand book market is no more a problem for corporate publishers than the secondhard car market is for Detroit. Tangible, durable items will always be resold in a way that bypasses the maker of that item… but so what? That should be taken into consideration as a factor when that item is being produced. If it isn’t, then that’s a problem on the production end.

But the Times, as usual, is worried about the wrong end of the stick:

No industry undermined by its greatest partisans will thrive long. CD sales plunged after music could be downloaded. Newspapers are hurting even as their readership is mushrooming online.

And here we see the Times confusing publishing with books, just as many confused record labels with music. Corporate CD sales may have plunged, but musicians are doing just fine, because they have learned how to harness the new e-savvy consumer… as have smart, independent, noncorporate record labels and music publishing companies that aren’t being dragged down by corporate bloat. If the Internet is helping the secondhand book market thrive, the corporate publishers who don’t want to — or can’t — see how to shift gears to meet the needs of modern readers may go under. But books and authors and nimble new noncorporate publishers will do just fine as they accommodate the needs and desires of 21st-century readers.

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Like other bloated companies built around outmoded, pre-Internet paradigms, the big corporate publishing houses has been hit hard in the ongoing financial crisis. The online magazine Salon today posted a succinct summary of the implosion that narrows the industry’s problems down to this:

Thanks to conglomeration and corporate distribution models, some of publishing’s biggest houses were laid very low by the current stock market collapse. And scary holiday book sales figures compounded the industry’s woes, with recent news of a 20 percent drop in sales in October from last year’s book market. Even worse, Nielsen Book Scan reported a 6.6 percent drop in unit sales during early December. Not even the holiday season could bolster book sales.

…

All these factors have produced an industry slowdown that will affect all writers for years to come.

In fact, this won’t affect “all” writers at all. Corporate publishing has always been about keeping most writers away from print. Not everyone who thinks he can write and wants to be a published author is actually worth reading, of course, but as the explosion of self-publishing and independent boutique publishers like Cosimo has proven, there are plenty of writers who could never get near the traditional corporate publishers whose books are well worth reading and publishing. (J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, for example, were first published by boutique publisher Bloomsbury.)

What does Salon think will be the upshot of the shakeup?

As the corporate monoliths limp into 2009, a number of smaller, more independent houses could thrive during this recession. A few of those presses have structured themselves to avoid long-standing problems that got big publishing into this mess: high advances, long author lists and spiraling costs.

…

Who will survive publishing’s Ice Age? Undoubtedly, the companies that can command developments in the impending digital book revolution. Early next year, Amazon will release the second generation of the popular Kindle, and the Sony e-Reader currently has more than 300,000 users….

Neelan Choksi, Lexcycle’s chief operating officer, agrees that the midlist will suffer in coming years. “There’s going to be less support for smaller writers in the traditional publishing model, in the big buildings in Manhattan,” he explained. “But self-publishing and digital books haven’t been considered. This upheaval will cause many authors to look at the alternatives more seriously.”

But as former book editor and industry watcher Tom Engelhardt notes:

[M]ore than 550 years after the first Gutenberg Bible appeared, the printed book, still an unsurpassed technology for delivering information and experience, isn’t leaving the scene soon. It’s always worth remembering that, when those first printed books began to circulate in Western Europe, the previous form, the illuminated, hand-copied manuscript, did not disappear, despite what you might imagine. It lasted at least another century as a high-end collectible, which was largely what it had long been anyway.

Salon and Engelhardt miss the middle ground between books published under the old-fashioned corporate model and electronic-only e-books: print-on-demand, as Cosimo publishes. Digital publishing includes POD, which eliminates the need to print books in advance — requiring a huge investment in both the books as well as the space needed to store them — without eliminating the visceral pleasure of reading a physical book.

We at Cosimo have always thought that POD represented the future of book publishing, and it seems the marketplace is bearing us out.

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It’s 9 days till Christmas, and still plenty of time to order books as gifts. Cosimo’s selection of unusual and hard-to-find classics make excellent — and unexpected — presents for the book lovers on your list… or as a treat for yourself. Today: books for Jane Austen-ophiles.

As interest in 19th-century English literature by women has been reinvigorated by a resurgence in popularity of Austen’s works, readers are rediscovering a writer whose fiction, once widely beloved, fell by the wayside. British novelist Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810-1865) — whose books were sometimes initially credited to, simply, “Mrs. Gaskell” — is now recognized as having created some of the most complex and progressive depictions of women in the literature of the age, and is today justly celebrated for her precocious use of the regional dialect and slang of England’s industrial North.

Cranford, Gaskell’s second novel and recently adapted for TV by the BBC in an acclaimed production starring Judi Dench, was originally serialized from 1851 to 1853 in the periodical Household Words, edited by Gaskell’s friend Charles Dickens. Based upon Gaskell’s own experiences growing up in the small Cheshire town of Knutsford, this is the charming tale of two elderly spinster sisters and their young charge, a thinly disguised version of Gaskell herself. It offers a lovely depiction of village life in the mid 19th century.

Gaskell’s fourth novel, North and South, which also saw an instantly beloved BBC adaptation, draws on Gaskell’s own life as the wife of a progressive preacher in Manchester for its tale of the tumultuous romance between a minister’s daughter and a wealthy mill owner. Another work first serialized, in 1854 and 1855, in Household Words, it highlights the plight of the poor as well as the class divisions of the era, and helped establish the author’s reputation as a champion of the working class.

Newcomers to Gaskell will also love Ruth, first published in 1853, and notable as one of the rare instances in the fiction of the era of a positive portrayal of unwed motherhood and for its thematic condemnation of the social stigma of illegitimacy. The tale of a young woman seduced and abandoned by her lover, then taken in and protected by a kindly minister and his sister, it is remarkably progressive for the period.

This delightful replica volumes are an excellent opportunity for 21st-century fans of British literature to embrace one of its most unjustly forgotten authors.

For the Victorian version of snappy celebrity biography, the two-volume The Queens of Society is a treat any fan of aristocratic lives and modern fabulosity. Authors Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton — actually a pseudonym for one writer, British author Katherine Byerley Thomson (1797-1862) — define a “queen of society” as a woman who, by force of her reputation, good management, abilities, manners, and even her rank and fortune commands a circle of persons of eminence, of fashion, and of celebrity. In this charming collection of biographies, first published in 1861, we meet some of the most marvelous women of their day.

In Volume I we are introduced to: Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough; Madame Roland; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire; Letitia Elizabeth Landon; Madame de Sévigné; Sydney Lady Morgan; and Jane, Duchess of Gordon. In Volume II, we are graced by the literary presences of Madame Récamier; Lady Hervey; Madame de Staël; Mrs. Thrale-Piozzi; Lady Caroline Lamb; Anne Seymour Damer; La Marquise du Deffand; Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu; Mary, Countess of Pembroke; La Marquise de Maintenon.

These reproductions of the 1980 second edition include all of the beautiful original illustrations.

Cosimo book are also available at Amazon.com and other online booksellers. Order through Amazon, and get it in time with FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25 placed through December 17. (See the complete holiday shipping guide at Amazon.)

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At the National Arts Club event on November 20 for Cosimo book Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal, entries were collected for a drawing of a first-edition copy of the book signed by author Danny Schechter.

A winner has now been chosen:

Robert Galinsky, Founder & Principal, New York Reality TV School

Galinsky will also receive a $25.00 email gift certificate for Amazon.

Cosimo congratulates Galinsky on his win.

Read the introduction to Plunder here. (Alert: PDF.)

Plunder is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

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It’s 10 days till Christmas, and still plenty of time to order books as gifts. Cosimo’s selection of unusual and hard-to-find classics make excellent — and unexpected — presents for the book lovers on your list… or as a treat for yourself. Today: books for presidential buffs and readers of American history.

Barack Obama isn’t the first incoming American president to have been a published author before taking the Oval Office. Before he served as the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921, and before he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919, Thomas Woodrow Wilson was a lawyer and an academic: a university professor of history and politics, and president of Princeton University. It was during his tenure at Princeton that he penned the classic five-volume History of the Ameican People. The volumes include:

Vol. I: The Swarming of the English
Wilson sets the stage for the European settlement of North America, as the Elizabethan age of discovery gives way to a new era of commerce and organization. [hardcover] [paperback]

Vol. II: Colonies and Nation
Wilson tells the story of the British settlers in America in the 18th century, from common endeavors in trade and commerce by turns unified and divided the disparate colonies through to the Revolution. [hardcover] [paperback]

Vol. III: The Founding of the Government
Wilson delves into the expansion of the United States in the early 19th century in the western frontiers, and tells the story of the founding and development of the federal government in the first quarter century of its existenc. [hardcover] [paperback]

Vol. IV: Critical Changes and Civil War
Wilson discusses the “Democratic revolution” of the 1820s and 1830s and delves deep into the tumultuous years of the Civil War. [hardcover] [paperback]

Vol. V: Reunion and Nationalization
Wilson brings the story of the nation up to the moment of its 1902 publication. [hardcover] [paperback]

This beautiful replica of the 1902 first edition features all the original halftone illustrations. Students of Wilson and of the ever-changing lens through which history is told and retold will find this an enlightening and illuminating work.

If you’re looking for a stocking stuffer for the American-history buff, look no further than George Washington’s Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior. Before he was an American Founding Father and the new nation’s first president, George Washington was an excruciatingly correct child with a passion for propriety. At the age of 14, he copied out 110 rules for elegant deportment from a work created by Jesuits in the 16th century as a guide for young gentleman of quality, and through these rules, which he took greatly to heart, we can see the beginnings of the man Washington would become taking shape. Though many of the rules deal with matters of etiquette — such as whom should rise for whom in mixed company — many others concern far deeper matters that touch on personal philosophies about judgment, honor, success, and conscience. As a peek into the manners of a bygone age, this is an intriguing work. As a peek into a great man in his formative years, this is an extraordinary one.

(And by the way, though they’re not Cosimo books, Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope, Dreams from My Father, and Change We Can Believe In make great gifts, too!)

Cosimo book are also available at Amazon.com and other online booksellers. Order through Amazon, and get it in time with FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25 placed through December 17. (See the complete holiday shipping guide at Amazon.)

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Small publishers, that is. Everybody loves big books.

Kassia Krozser at the blog Booksquare looks at the publishing industry through the lens of the ongoing financial crisis, and determines that the big corporate publishers have no idea what to do in order to save their businesses, and what they are doing isn’t keeping readers in mind:

At Random House, it was clear that saving the imprints was key. Markus Dohle talked about aligning “existing strengths and publishing affinities” and how this imprint or that will be better, stronger, safer. As if that matters. Who really cares if Crown or Knopf or Ballantine or Bantam Dell survives? I’m serious. Who. Cares.

No really, who cares if these groups are retaining editorial independence while combining strengths? Is that really going to change the business dynamic, or is it just focusing on the wrong problem?

Imprints are just boxes on an org chart. To most of the buying public, they mean nothing. To some of your acquisitions editors, they mean nothing. To the bottom line, they mean nothing. You can have a hit book from any possible label, to borrow from another business’s lingo. It ain’t the logo on the spine, it’s that magic combination of book and audience and right time/right place.

If the corporate publishers are setting themselves up for a fall, whom does Krozser thing will fill their void?

This is where I believe we are going to see an incredible rise of independents, publishers who get that small is beautiful, that there is profitability and then there’s profitability. You can’t meet debt obligations if you don’t bring in big numbers. There is an inherent clash of cultures in big publishing. It can be balanced, but I worry that a business that focuses on maintaining labels doesn’t really see this.

…

Focusing on imprints is focusing on the wrong problem. For each big publisher (and some small), it’s important to understand today’s market and tomorrow’s. Those that really get the importance of balancing these sometimes conflicting needs will emerge strong and successful — on terms that make sense to that publisher — those that don’t, won’t.

Cosimo, of course, is just that kind of small-is-beautiful publisher, one that understands the strange new world the book industry has entered in the 21st century (and we understood it before the current economic crisis broke). From the cutting-edge print-on-demand technology we use to ensure that warehouses full of books — which come with up-front printing and well as storage costs — don’t weigh on our bottom line and that books can get to readers as soon as they want them, to our use of the Internet to bring books to the attention of readers who are on the cutting edge, too, Cosimo is primed to flourish even during the ongoing crisis in ways that the big corporate publishers haven’t even begun to consider.

Yeah, we’re tooting our own horn a little here. But we’ve got reason to be proud. We love books, and we’re dedicated to making sure that readers who love them aren’t left wanting.

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It’s not exactly My Pet Goat, but it appears that our president-elect is something of a reader. Barack Obama has been spotted at least twice by the mainstream press with a book in hand. The industry newsletter Shelf Awareness alerted us to this image:

in which the incoming President is seen carrying a copy of Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer by Fred Kaplan. And the British newspaper the Telegraph spotted him encumbered thusly:

The Telegraph says the book is Derek Walcott’s Collected Poems, 1948-1984.

And The New York Times wonders whether Obama is the “new Oprah” when it comes to promoting books: whenever Obama cites a book, book lovers — and publishers — go nuts, as when Obama mentioned, in passing and without specifying its title, a book about Franklin Delano Roosevelt that he was reading. The Times quotes Adam Cohen, author of the forthcoming Nothing to Fear: FDR’s Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America, as saying:

When people write history, they do not think that it will have any impact on world events. So the idea that we now have a president-elect who is reading multiple books of history and is reading them to shape how he will approach his presidency, I think is inspiring to historians everywhere and augurs well for his presidency. If those who forget history are condemned to repeat it, President Obama seems to really be trying to learn the lessons of history and any historian, whether he reads their book or not, should be very pleased by that.

The Associated Press recently wrote about how excited writers are to see a man of letters — Obama is a bestselling author, after all, as well as a reader — ascend to the Oval Office:

Writers welcome Obama as a peer, a thinker, a man of words — his own words.

“When I was watching Obama’s acceptance speech (Tuesday night), I was convinced that he had written it himself, and therefore that he was saying things that he actually believed and had considered,” says Jane Smiley, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “A Thousand Acres” and other fiction.

“I find that more convincing in a politician than the usual thing of speaking the words of a raft of hack speechwriters. If he were to lie to us, he would really be betraying his deepest self.”

The AP quotes author and former Hillary Clinton supporter Rick Moody to explain Obama’s appeal to those of a literary bent:

I think the larger issue is cultural. There’s a trickle down from the top in the way art exists inside and outside of the culture as a whole. Here in the USA, you could feel in the Bush years how little regard there was for it. People who disliked art, literature, dance, fine arts, they had a lot of cover for this antipathy. There’s reason to believe that we are in for a much better period.

Will the next four-to-eight years be better for book lovers? We’ll see…

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For Immediate Release: November 19, 2008
Contact: Author Relations Manager
info@cosimobooks.com
ph. 212-989-3616

THE BAILOUT IS NOT WORKING: BUT DO THE “EXPERTS” KNOW?
Investigative Journalist Danny Schechter questions the government’s & media’s reliance on “experts” who didn’t foresee this crisis

Danny Schechter, Emmy-Award investigative journalist, film producer and author, has been one of the earliest pundits warning about the current crisis. In his 2006 film IN DEBT WE TRUST Schechter exposed the role Wall Street played in promoting deceptive and dodgy subprime lending. In his just released book Plunder: Investigating our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal (Cosimo Books, September, 2008) he documents the causes, from Wall Street greed to the failure of government and the media.

Schechter’s criticism of the government and the media, who seek and present analysis only from the same “experts” who didn’t foresee this crisis, is shared by others.

Economist James Galbraith, son of the leading expert on the Great Crash of 1929, the late John Kenneth Galbraith, states that only around 10 among thousands of professional economists warned of the dangers of a credit collapse and market meltdown. “It is a real blot on our profession,” he says.

According to financial journalist Dean Starkman, monitoring business reporting for the Columbia Journalism Review, the press was no better. He states:

“The business press did not really recognize and understand what they were up against, how dramatic the world had changed, how the lending industry had changed. That’s the thing you’ve documented. How out of control Wall Street had become.”

As the economic recession deepens, and as the public clamors for information and much needed solutions, it becomes even more important to get true analysis and fresh insights. Danny Schechter offers such a perspective and will be speaking on Thursday, November 20 at New York’s National Arts Club on why we keep relying on “experts” who have missed almost every turn of this crisis, including why the current bailout is not working.

Schechter and his book Plunder have received wide praise since its publication:

“Danny Schechter has been one of the few to incisively track the issue that Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, called “a 50-state Katrina.” Schechter has done so with (…) the perfectly timed release of “Plunder”
The Buffalo News

“Plunder is (..) a consumer book, a warning about how the debt crisis and the federal bailout will affect working individuals, (not just) Wall Street executives.”
Celebrateauthors.com

” Schechter has done in Plunder what countless media outlets and watchdogs agencies have failed to do. His work offers an exciting guide to how “it” broke, where “it” broke and why”.
Max Fraad Wolff, economist at the New School in New York

========================

About the Author
DANNY SCHECHTER is uniquely qualified to tell this story. Schechter, a.k.a., “The News Dissector” spent decades as a truth teller in the media with leading media companies, and as an independent filmmaker with award-winning independent company Globalvision. A graduate of Cornell and the London School of Economics, Schechter was a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard, and a multiple Emmy Award winner at ABC News , where he was among the first to cover the S&L crisis. In 2006 his film IN DEBT WE TRUST was the first to expose Wall Street’s connection to subprime loans, predicting the economic crisis that his book Plunder investigates. He has written on the economic crisis for Nieman Reports, The Nation, The Huffington Post, and other websites including Mediachannel.org, the media issues network he edits. Schechter has also appeared on multiple radio and TV outlets in the US, from NPR’s On Point to Tavis Smiley, and internationally. Danny Schechter is available for speaking engagements in public for a, colleges and in the media.

About Cosimo Books
Cosimo Books, based in New York, is an imprint of Cosimo, Inc., a specialty publisher of books and publications that inspire, inform and engage readers. Cosimo’s mission is to offer unique books to niche audiences around the world.

Always available at online bookstores. Visit cosimobooks.com
BE INSPIRED, BE INFORMED

Plunder is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

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What better way to spend a chilly Halloween night than curled up with a good, spooky book? Like Cosimo’s new collection, Loren Coleman Presents, beautiful new editions of cryptozoology classics with brand-new introductions by Coleman, one of the most respected names in the field.

The latest book in the series is The Book of Werewolves, the 1865 work by Sabine Baring-Gould. One of the many chilling episodes he details are a 1521 case heard by a French Inquisitor-General of two men — Pierre Bourgot and Michel Verdung– were accused of witchcraft and cannibalism. Among the horrific crimes allegedly committed by them:

On another occasion they fell upon a little girl of four years old, and ate her up, with the exception of one arm. Michel thought the flesh most delicious.

Another girl was strangled by them, and her blood lapped up. Of a third they ate merely a portion of the stomach. One evening at dusk, Pierre leaped over a garden wall, and came upon a little maiden of nine years old, engaged upon the weeding of the garden beds. She fell on her knees and entreated Pierre to spare her; but he snapped the neck, and left her a corpse, lying among her flowers. On this occasion he does not seem to have been in his wolf’s shape. He fell upon a goat which he found in the field of Pierre Lerugen, and bit it in the throat, but he killed it with a knife.

Michel was transformed in his clothes into a wolf, but Pierre was obliged to strip, and the metamorphosis could not take place with him unless he were stark naked.

He was unable to account for the manner in which the hair vanished when he recovered his natural condition.

Other recent books in the series include Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life, the hard-to-find 1961 work by Ivan T. Sanderson; The Great Sea Serpent, the classic 1892 survey by A. C. Oudemans; and The Romance of Natural History, the 1860 bestseller by Philip Henry Gosse.

Armchair monster hunters will also enjoy Thunderbirds: America’s Living Legends of Giant Birds, the 2004 book by Mark A. Hall, with an introduction by Coleman, a publication of Cosimo partner Paraview.

Coleman’s own books as author delve into the world of bizarre creatures: Mothman and Other Curious Encounters, also from Paraview; Mysterious America: The Ultimate Guide to the Nation’s Weirdest Wonders, Strangest Spots, and Creepiest Creatures, available in a new edition from Paraview Pocket Books; and Bigfoot!: The True Story of Apes in America, also from Paraview Pocket Books.

These and other Cosimo books are always available at Amazon.com and other online booksellers.

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It’s all too easy to panic in the current economic environment, and it’s particularly important not to give in to that impulse, especially when you know that the stock market runs on fear, not logic. Some sound advice on keeping your cool from motivational advisor Chellie Campbell, excerpted from her book The Wealthy Spirit, and also appearing in her newsletter, “The Wealthy Spirit,” which you can sign up for at Chellie Campbell’s Financial Stress Reduction:

Relaxxxx. Breathe. Stay centered. Stay focused on what you want and not what you don’t want. This is the Law of Attraction and the hardest time to remember it is when you most need to remember it. This too shall pass, and the good times will come again. You only lose if you panic. Hold on!

…

Chellie’s List of 6 Actions to Help You Be Rich and Happy:
• Double up on your affirmations. When you think positive, you look positive, and people are drawn to those who are happy and successful even during stressful situations. Here are a few of my favorites: 

“I am a successful money manager and always make smart financial decisions.”
“I invest wisely and well and all my investments pay me handsome rewards.”
“I am a winner. I win often and I win big!”

• Network! Support your fellow business owners and buy their goods and services. And then there will be people who can buy from you, too. Money has to circulate to keep an economy thriving. What goes around, comes around.

• When stock prices are low, it’s a buying opportunity.

• When real estate prices are low, it’s a buying opportunity.

• Buy low and sell high – remember? Most people don’t, though. They buy when prices are high because they’re afraid they’ll be priced out of the market, then they sell when prices are low because they’re afraid they’re going to lose their investment. Don’t make fear-based decisions – make smart investment decisions.

• Invest in learning and growing. Take a class, get a coach, get support. Get solid professional advice from people you trust who have been through the up-and-down cycles in the economy before. Then follow it.

For more advice, see The Wealthy Spirit.

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