Monday, November 30, 2015

Interview With Book Editor Joel Allegretti


Rabbit Ears: TV Poems
NYQ Books

  1. Your book is an anthology of poetry about television. What inspired you to put this together?
The seed was planted in fall 2011. I was reading David Trinidad’s volume of selected poems, Dear Prudence. One of the poems is a list of his favorite episodes of The Patty Duke Show. My favorite sit-com from that time period is The Dick Van Dyke Show. I began making up episodes that never made it to the air and wrote “The Dick Van Dyke Show: The Unaired Episodes” that November. Here’s a sample unaired episode:

“1966. Sally’s boyfriend, Herman Glimscher, confesses to everyone that he and his mother are really husband and wife.”

The following month, I wrote a poem about Bob Crane, he of Hogan’s Heroes and seedy extracurricular activities.

In January 2012, it hit me that I’d never come across an anthology of poetry about a medium that has influenced our tastes, politics, opinions, language, and lifestyles. There are many anthologies of music poems and one (that I know of) comprising poetry about film. I did my due diligence and discovered TV was an untapped theme for a poetry anthology. I sent out the first invitations on the first Wednesday of April 2012. A few submissions arrived that very day. By Friday, I had 20 in my inbox. By time the deadline arrived six months later, I had received several hundred submissions.

The title Rabbit Ears comes courtesy of former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins, who contributed “The Day Lassie Died.”

For the record, David Trinidad is a contributor to Rabbit Ears. Since it’s unlikely I would have thought of it had I not been reading Dear Prudence, I decided I had to have him in the anthology. He contributed “Peyton Place: A Haiku Soap Opera.” He summarizes each episode of the show’s first season as a haiku. The poem reminded me of the Hollywood pitch, where you have only so much time to sell your idea to producers. Haiku struck me at that moment as poetry’s version of the pitch: You have three lines and 17 syllables to make your point and get out.

Incidentally, “The Dick Van Dyke Show: The Unaired Episodes” is my contribution to Rabbit Ears.

I’d like to point out there’s a charitable aspect to Rabbit Ears. Contributor royalties earned on sales will be donated to City Harvest, a New York-based food-rescue organization.

  1. How did you go about determining what to include in your book?
I’m not a passive viewer of TV. Poets by and large today—most of the poets in Rabbit Ears—are educators and scholars. I’m neither. My background is in media relations. My last job was director of media relations for a national not-for-profit organization. I prepared the CEO, his senior executives, and other spokespeople for press interviews. I dealt with Nightly Business Report, 60 Minutes, and producers at local TV stations around the country. I’ve been in TV studios. As a result, I’m attuned to the influence TV wields. I sought to bring that perspective to my editing of Rabbit Ears. I think it shows up particularly in the sections that deal with TV news and television coverage of war.
I had at the outset an amorphous idea of what the anthology would be. There were certain subjects I wanted to cover. I set parameters: Each poet selected would have only one poem in the book, and each subject would be treated once (I wasn’t going to include five poems about Gilligan’s Island, for example); I wanted the anthology to reflect a variety of styles and voices, like TV itself. Aside from that, I was on a journey of exploration.

The submissions sent me in directions I hadn’t expected. Sometimes I’d read a submission, and my reaction would be “I didn’t think of that.” Consequently, even though I’m the editor of Rabbit Ears, I regard the contributors as co-editors. I learned things. I was raised Roman Catholic, but didn’t know there was a patron saint of television until Marjorie Maddox sent me “Clare of Assisi.” I didn’t know Alan Freed had a rock ‘n’ roll TV show until Gerard Malanga sent me “The Big Beat.”

I’m grateful that poets wrote new work or contributed previously unpublished poems. In fact, many of the poems are exclusive to Rabbit Ears.

  1. What aspects of TV do the poems touch upon?
There are 129 poems by 130 poets (one poem, about a married couple who lives The Newlywed Game, is a collaborative effort by two poets). The poems cover the history and early days of TV, the news, sit-coms, soap operas, horror and science fiction, cop shows, iconic TV personalities, children’s programming, game shows, reality TV, and commercials, among other topics.

Each section is referred to as a channel, e.g. “Channel 1: The Beautiful Brand-New Dream Machine,” which deals with television’s early days.

Rabbit Ears contains poems about the Addams Family, Leave It to Beaver, American Idol, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, Rod Serling, the Miss America pageant, Jeopardy!, Farrah Fawcett, TV coverage of the Iraq War, The Brady Bunch, the 1984 Apple Super Bowl commercial, local news, The X-Files, Don Cornelius, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc., etc., etc.

The anthology has some Hollywood glamour, thanks to the TV and film actress Grace Zabriskie, who is the author of a poetry collection from NYQ Books, the press that publishes Rabbit Ears. Grace contributed “The Hole,” about an episode of the HBO series Big Love, on which she starred as Lois Henrickson.
I created a Rabbit Ears TV channel on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5zHzuzL0Jf0gWvKGEdB_jQ/videos.

Forty-one contributors produced recordings of themselves reading their poems. Some made what look like mini-movies.

  1. How can we get more poetry books sold and read?
That gets into the question why do people read? It depends on the individual. I think more people read poetry than is generally acknowledged. Everyone who reads the Bible reads poetry, namely the Psalms and the Song of Solomon. When people read them, they’re not thinking, I’m reading poetry. They’re reading scripture. But they’re also reading poetry. My favorite love poem in English is the King James Song of Solomon.

Many Tolkien fans have probably read his translations of Middle English poetry. My sister is a former CFO; she likes Emily Dickinson. One day a plumber came over to work on my bathroom sink. I was at the computer. He asked me what I did. I said I was a writer. He asked what I wrote. I said predominantly poetry. The plumber then asked me if I liked Ogden Nash.

Poetry occasionally shows up on the bestseller list. The week after Billy Collins appeared on The Colbert Report, his latest volume of selected poems was a New York Times bestseller. If I’m not mistaken, Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf made the bestseller list. And my God, that was Beowulf!

Poetry, in fact, has a huge audience. Granted, it’s a specialized audience, consisting predominantly of poets themselves, but a specialized audience is still an audience. The field has its stars and superstars. The analogy I like to use is music. My favorite style of American music is the blues. Now, everybody knows B.B. King and Muddy Waters, but what about Champion Jack Dupree, Mance Lipscomb, and Jimmy Rogers? If you’re not into the blues, you probably don’t know who those guys are. If you’re a blues fan, you do.

At the risk of sounding self-serving, if a neophyte wants to dip a toe in the poetry sea, I’d recommend checking out Rabbit Ears. It deals with a subject that’s near and dear to people’s hearts: their TV shows. The contributors have published their own collections, so if readers like, say, the poem about The Bachelor or the poem about Twin Peaks, they might think, I want to check out what else this poet has written.

  1. Where do you see book publishing heading?
I’m not in book publishing, but as an author, I’d say print-on-demand technology exerts a profound influence. Once upon a time, you’d have a print run of a given title and either there would be another print run or, if the book didn’t sell out the initial run, the publisher would send the unsold copies to the remainder table and delete the title. Print-on-demand technology benefits both the publisher and author; the publisher isn’t left with an inventory of unsold books, and the author’s title stays in print indefinitely.

Because of POD technology, we’ve seen the proliferation of small presses, which are the lifeblood of poetry publishing. There are now many poetry presses that didn’t exist when my first book came out in 2000.

In addition, POD technology has made self-publishing easier.

  1. Any advice for struggling poets?
Regard yourself as your primary competition. What are you writing now and how does it compare with your past work? Are you still writing the same type of poem? Are you absorbing influences? Are you stretching yourself? Are you demonstrating growth?

When you read poetry in journals, relate it to your own. What are you doing differently? What are you doing that’s similar? What do you want your poetry to be? What do you not want it to be?

As for publishing your own poems in journals and with presses, I’ll pass on something a copyeditor for St. Martin’s Press said to me a long time ago: “You’re published by the people who want to publish you.”

  1. What do you believe is the future of television and its impact on society?
Television won’t be saying goodbye, but it will continue to contend with a behemoth of a competitor: the Internet.
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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015



Do Writers Need Coaches?



When it comes to youth sports there have been strides made so that children are taught good sportsmanship skills as well as the skills to play their chosen sport.  They learn how to play as a team, how to play through adversity or injury, how to be smarter than one’s physical abilities, and how to step up to a challenge with courage.  They have fun and feel like winners, regardless of the score.

Well, it sounds good and at times what plays out on the field matches the above, but the majority of the time kids and parents take their wins and losses seriously.  They want to know they are good at something and that they contributed to a victory. Nothing else will placate them.  They know false praise a mile away.  This is true for boys or girls, no matter what the sport is. At an early age they know the score, so to speak.

But I’ve enjoyed coaching my seven-year-old daughter in soccer this fall.  Her team not only wins -- and she contributes greatly with stellar defense -- but most importantly, she has a great attitude.  She loves doing this with me.  I feel the same way.

I’ve coached youth sports even before I had kids.  When I was a teenager I coached Little League baseball and my dad managed.  That was a blast and it was best that kids were led by people other than their parents.  But as a dad, I really enjoy coaching my kids in their respective sports.

I started to think about writers and how they need coaches.  Imagine if a writer has someone telling them to try harder, do it this way and not that, and high-fives them for a well-written passage?

Yes, writers, like athletes, whether amateurs or professionals, need others to inspire, mentor, lead, and support them.  Kids running around trying to kick a ball into a net are not the only ones who benefit from the loving advice and help of others.

Many writing don’t want a coach or to have someone tell them they need to do better, try harder, or write differently.  They also don’t want false praise being showered upon them.  They simply want to produce a masterpiece, sequestered from the world, and then to come back to it and hear critical blessings for their work.

But writers could clearly use a boost from others.  It can be lonely being a writer.  We live in our heads and create a whole fantasy world that goes beyond anything anyone else can imagine. How does one coach a writer who lives in another world?

Writers need people to be there for them, like therapists, to give love and laughter, not necessarily to critique or coach their every pen stroke.  Some writers can work well with a coach who scrutinizes their work and hopefully makes it better.  Whatever type of coach you call upon, if you get someone with the love and energy of a dad coaching his little girl on the soccer field you will have done well for yourself.

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015

Sunday, November 29, 2015

2016 Holds Anniversaries Of Value To Writers



2016 represents a year with many anniversaries, as all years do.  Something significant always happened 25, 50 or 100 years ago.  With these anniversaries come books to honor or investigate them.  The news media naturally makes note of historical events or socially moving moments.  It’s always easier to look back and reflect on what was than to have a complete understanding of current events or an accurate prognostication of the future.  

So what does the new year bring us as we look back in time?

75 years ago represents the onset of World War II for the United States.  In 1941 the world shook when Pearl Harbor was destroyed, forcing America into what would be the deadliest global conflict ever.  In that same year the Jeep was invented and it was the last time someone hit .400 (Ted Williams) in baseball, a significant milestone.  Joe DiMaggio hit safely in a record 56 straight games, a feat that still stands today.

A century ago, back in 1916, the first self-serve grocery store opened in our country.  During that year, Rasputin was murdered.

60 years ago was the Suez Canal Crisis, the Hungarian Revolution, and the first appearance of Elvis on television.

A half-century ago, in 1966, Star Trek debuted on TV.  That year also witnessed the launch of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

2016 is an Olympic year and four decades ago were the Montreal Olympics.  America elected a peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter, that same year -- 1976.

Thirty years ago we had two huge disasters, the Russian nuclear power plant meltdown (Chernobyl) and the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger.

In 1996, just 20 years ago, Mad Cow disease struck in Britain and the Unabomber was arrested.

Only a decade ago, in 2006, Pluto was downgraded to being classified as a dwarf planet, and Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was convicted and hung.

Five years ago was the Arab Spring, the killing of Osama bin Laden, and the 9.0 earthquake in Japan that lead to a tsunami and nuclear power plant accident.

If you go back three score and 10 years ago, in 1946, the bikini was launched.  The Nuremberg Trials began that year as well.

In 1936, 80 years ago, the Spanish Civil War began and the Summer Olympics were played in Berlin with Jesse Owens, a black man, winning races in a nation where race was a deadly issue.

1926 saw Robert Goddard fire his first liquid-fueled rocket, a significant event 90 years ago.

Authors should explore what else happened 25, 50, 75, 100, 125, 150 – or more – years ago and see if there’s a historical, cultural, political, financial, scientific, or athletic tie-in to something they write about.  The media loves to write about anniversaries and gladly uses books as sources.

The year 2016 marks some milestones in book publishing as well.  It is the anniversary of the birth or death of successful writers, the publication of a significant book, or the year an author reached a milestone in sales or awards.  Look it up.  Who won a Pulitzer in 1966 for books?  Which book topped the bestseller charts in 1991?  Who was born a famous writer a hundred years ago?  Who died a great writer two centuries ago?

Celebrate 2016 and especially honor history.  It may just be your ticket to generation some publicity for you and your book.

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015

Saturday, November 28, 2015

What Should You Price Your Book At?


Authors ask me many thing before they publish their books, including questions concerning titles, cover designs, interior formats, paper quality, testimonials, distribution, marketing, and on and on.  One question they tend to fret over is pricing.  Just how much should they sell their book for?

Traditionally published authors usually don’t have a say on the cover pricing of their books, though they may suggest a price to their publisher, but self-published authors certainly have the burden of determining the best price for their book.

Here are at least eight factors you should consider when pricing your book:

1.      Do people really need your book?
If it’s fiction, they don’t NEED it.  They may WANT it, should you create an awareness of and a demand for it, but they don’t have to have it. Fiction needs to keep pricing down.  Nonfiction books on things people really need – how to save a relationship, get a job, be a better parent, make more money, fix a house – can charge a higher price.

2.      What do your competitors charge?
You can undercut them and hope to build up a lot of sales, though you’d earn less per sale than if the price were higher.  You can charge the most and hope people think you’re the best by virtue of being so high-priced (some people believe this).  Or, you can price it competitively and not let it be a deciding factor for you.

3.      What are you hoping to accomplish with the book?
If it’s a loss leader and you want to use it so that people then get turned onto hiring you (if you’re a consultant), price it low.  If your goal is to rise high on bestseller lists, price it low.  If your goal is to reach as many people in hopes they read your book and their lives or views are impacted by it, price it low to average.

4.      What else do you have going for you?
Does the book have a great cover, catchy title, and top-notch testimonials? If it makes a strong presentation, hold firm on a decent price.

5.      How much profit will you make per book?
If you sell it from your site, you keep 100% of the revenue minus your costs. If you sell it though a third-party website or bookstore, you keep 50-70% of the cover price minus expenses.  If you sell it, in bulk, to an organization, you usually have to give a heavy discount.  So depending on these factors, determine a price you can live with.

6.      What are your costs?
People will buy a book based on their perception of value, competing options, and their financial situation, so they don’t give a crap how much you spent to produce the book – only what it will cost them.  Still, if your book costs x to print or create, you need to factor that in, especially if your book has photography in it.

7.      It’ll be discounted!
Your book will be discounted by bookstores, Amazon, and other vendors.  They will use the cover price as a starting point and work off of it.  So don’t worry if the cover price is a little high since few will end up paying full freight.  But some independent stores don’t discount or they can’t afford to reduce it by much, so be aware of that.

8.      Can it be returned?
Are you publishing both paper and digital versions?  For paper, are you going trade paperback, mass market, or hardcover?  Formats dictate difference price points – and costs of production.  Additionally, some retailers buy books from you based on whether they can return them and what, if any shipping costs are connected to the transaction.  You don’t want returns, so be prepared to give a big enough discount to buy your way into a “no-return” policy if possible.

For the most part, if a book is attractively packaged and the reader has a real need or strong desire, he or she will plunk down a few extra bucks to get what they want.  But never underestimate how cheap people can be – and the appeal of low prices.

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015


Friday, November 27, 2015

Trivia For The Toilet



Life should not be lived trivially, but I do take pleasure in consuming facts and trivia. After reading Trivia for the Toilet by Gavin Webster (Fall River Press), I felt more informed about random crap, learning things like this:

On average, a woman utters around 7,000 words in a day while a man uses just over 2,000.

The vocabulary of the average person consists of 5,000 to 6,000 words.

During one’s lifetime, the average human will grow 590 miles of hair.

Men snore at a rate of 1 in 8.  One in 10 men grind their teeth while asleep.

People in Iceland read more books per capita than any other people in the world.

Women blink nearly twice as often as much as men.

In New York City, there are more people of Irish descent than in Dublin, Ireland, more people of Italian descent than in Rome, Italy, and more Jews than in Tel Aviv, Israel.

TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters on only one row of the keyboard.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain, was the first novel to be written on a typewriter.

The smallest book in the Library of Congress is Old King Cole.  It is 1/25 of an inch by 1/25 of an inch. The pages can only be turned with the use of a needle.

The human brain is about 85% water.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our noses and ears never stop growing.

Elephants are the only animals that can’t jump.

Sharks are the only animals that never fall ill.  They’re immune to all known diseases, including cancer.

Humans shed and regrow outer skin cells about every 27 days – the equivalent of almost 1,000 new skins in a lifetime.

More people suffer heart attacks and more cars breakdown on Monday than on any other day of the week, while 50% of all bank robberies take place on Friday.

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

What Writers Should Be Thankful For


Happy Thanksgiving Day, Writers

We each should be thankful for what we have, and that includes our memories, experiences, and the people in our lives.  We live different lives so we may not be thankful for the same exact things, but certainly we can identify big and small things and people to be thankful for.  People mistake being thankful for settling or compromising, as if the moment you acknowledge satisfaction with what you have you’ll no longer want to pursue anything else.  It’s okay to pause and reflect on your life and to like what you see and to realize you don’t want to lose what you have.  

You may, under closer examination, determine you have little to be thankful for, but you may be too harsh, too judgmental, or unaware of the value of what’s in your life.  However, such an honest reflection of your life will no doubt uncover some things you want to change, improve, start, or stop, but resolutions will come soon enough for the New Year.  

So before you toss aside parts of who you are, stand up and be thankful for your life.

In particular, as a writer, think about what you have to be thankful for.  I’m not talking about your relationships, family, job, health, wealth, or anything else.  Just think about being a writer. You should be thankful for:

1.      Nurturing and developing your talent.

2.      Giving the gift of your words to others.

3.      Getting paid to dream, to explore ideas, and to share opinions.

4.      Being in a position to impact and influence the lives of others.

5.      Having the ability to change your mental landscape with the stroke of a pen or computer key.

6.      Being in a position to craft new worlds.

7.      Finding and accepting your path in life through the written word.

8.      Having the intelligence, courage, confidence, and experience or training to produce the quality and quantity of writing that you are capable of.

9.      Trying to understand the world – and then translating it for other people to read.

10.  Independent bookstores, libraries, schools, and all of the wonderful places where our books and words can be read for years beyond our lifetimes.

I am thankful for life, and that life is tied into my writing life.  I don’t know that I’d be alive –or living fully – if I was not able to write.  I need an outlet for expressing who I am, what I witness, and what I imagine, question, or challenge.

The world looks better when filtered through my writings and your writings.  May we all have a blessed Thanksgiving Day and realize we have a lot to be thankful for.  And if you truly feel you can do better, rewrite the life you are living.  Life is what it is, but as a writer you can mold it into what you want it to be.  You create the life you lie and it begins with the books that you choose to write.

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketing

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Romancing The Touch Of Books


A woman next to me on the train coming into the city was engulfed in her book.  It was a brand new hardcover copy of women’s rights champion Gloria Steinem’s latest book, My Life on the Road.  The woman looked to be old enough to have lived through the late 60’s and 70’s, a time when the movement for women’s rights had massive, popular appeal.

I was happy to see someone reading a book.  Four people to my left filled their commute reading newspapers and a phone.  Others around me did the same, many on a device of choice.  I couldn’t help but notice the woman was reading a freshly minted copy and not one from the library.  I love to see people still want to get books as soon as they come out and to buy the hardcover version vs. lesser expensive formats.

Book publishing is an interesting experiment.  All kinds of people prefer all kinds of formats.  Some only live by paper while others swear only by digital.  Some like to listen to a book while others choose not to read a single book all year.

People will read what others recommend to them, from reviews to friends to book clubs, while other readers ignore the recommendations of others and pursue books of their choice.

Many times, people discover or stumble upon a book, rather than seeking out a specific title.  Readers want to be surprised.

Some readers need to – or prefer to – shop for used books or get them for free at the public library.  There are millions of books out there, so for many it doesn’t matter when a book was published – it’s new to them!

But that new book smell, like the scent of a beautiful woman, the first day of spring, a new car, or Mom’s home cooking is just something that can’t be duplicated elsewhere.  I love opening a book as its first owner and reader.

I also like finding old books that reflect a world that no longer is.  The tattered covers and a musty smell to the book’s pages put the reader in a mindset that welcomes the past as if it were unfolding right now.

I went shopping the other day for a piece of furniture for my dining room and while walking through floors and floors of flowing showrooms, I came across a number of beautiful wooden bookcases, some of which cost thousands of dollars.  I wasn’t looking for one, but the bookcase has a way of seducing you.  These bookcases were empty, waiting to be filled with a lifetime of knowledge, just as readers wait for the next book to consume.  The bookcases – and the books that will fill them – will come in all sizes, shapes, ages, genres, and price points.  

The book is art, it’s furniture, it’s functional, and it’s purposeful.  Whatever way you like to consume your book, enjoy it and share it.  Let it touch you, from your heart, mind, and soul to your five senses.  

I love you, books!

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015