Tony Blair's book tour gets underway in Dublin

Well, Americans haven’t proven very adept at disrupting the book tours/victory laps of politicians who supped at the public trough and used the opportunity to ruin the economy in order to enrich themselves while also launching follies that led to the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Witness the lack of support for Code Pink’s courageous attempts to make a citizen’s arrest of Carl Rove during his book tour earlier this year. (See this earlier MobyLives report.)

In the UK and Ireland, however, the pursuit of war criminals is a much more popular enterprise. Witness the floundering book tour there of the man my English friends call George Bush’s poodle, Tony Blair. To emphasize what Blair apparently considers to be one of his proudest achievements, the Good Friday agreement, it was decided to launch the tour for Blair’s A Journey with a first stop in Dublin. It didn’t go well, according to a report by Adrian Butler in the Daily Mirror:

Tony Blair had eggs and shoes hurled at him by protesters as he signed copies of his new memoirs yesterday.

The former Prime Minister was met by 200 demonstrators booing and chanting he had “blood on his hands” over Iraq and Afghanistan as he promoted A Journey in Dublin.

One protester, Donal MacFhearraigh, said: “Blair took the world to war on the basis of lies.”

… As he arrived demonstrators hurled shoes, eggs, plastic bottles and other missiles, although nothing hit him. There were scuffles as some of the crowd tried to force their way towards the store.

Two protesters were arrested and put into a police van. Others, including a wheelchair user, lay in the van’s path and riot police were brought in.

Blair spent about two hours in the Eason’s store before emerging to more shouts, boos and eggs. He was quickly driven away as a police helicopter circled overhead.

That was last Saturday. Blair’s next stop was scheduled for Monday in one of the UK’s biggest, splashiest bookstores: the flagship Waterstone’s store in no less than Piccadilly Circle. That one not only didn’t go well, it didn’t go at all. According to Hélène Mulholland in a Guardian report, Blair …

… cancelled a high-profile signing of his new memoirs in central London amid warnings that he would face a hostile reception from anti-war protesters.

…Blair said he had decided to scrap the London signing because he did not want to subject the public to the “inevitable hassle” the protests would cause or strain police resources.

Okay, bad start, but at least Blair got to bask in the love of invited friends at a “secret” launch party held at the Tate Modern last night — or did he? According to a report by Andrew Grice in the Independent ….

Tony Blair decided to postpone a party to mark the launch of his memoirs in London last night to head off a protest by anti-war campaigners who threatened to disrupt it …

… Campaigners against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had planned to demonstrate outside the Tate Modern and criticised the gallery for allowing the party to be held there.

Lindsey German, the convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, said Mr Blair’s decision was a “big victory” for the anti-war movement. She said: “It shows he is running scared. The people who say we should not protest are denying us the right to persist in asking questions about the war and denying the rights of Iraqis who are still suffering because of Blair’s policies.”

Despite the fact that the tour is a nightmarish disaster, however, the book is nonetheless a smash success sales-wise (critics are lambasting it left and right), making Blair an even wealthier man. As a report in the Telegraph notes, on its first day of release alone, “hugely outsold all other books at Waterstone’s yesterday, becoming the chain’s fastest-selling autobiography ever, and shot to the top of Amazon.co.uk’s best-seller list.”

UK protestors remain undeterred, however. While they wait for Blair to come out of hiding, a protester named Euan Booth (here profiled in the Independent) has created a facebook page urging people to “Subversively move Tony Blair’s memoirs to the crime section in book shops.” As Booth puts it,

Be part of a literary movement. Literally.

Subversively move Tony Blair’s memoirs to the crime section in book shops

Make bookshops think twice about where they categorise our generations greatest war criminal.

There’s no avoiding the ironies present in blogging about a children’s book that’s a book about books in the age of ipad/twitter/facebook/wi-fi/e-mail/e-books/e-this/e-that. But we won’t go crazy unpacking the inherent meanings and contradictions of the following book trailer either. Like it or not, one day soon the current hand-wringing about e-books will be over. The dust will settle. If New York Magazine’s recent observations that we are “unexpectedly in the midst of an indie-bookstore renaissance” are true, we can take solace in knowing the well-published book — the one you can touch, pick up, smell, taste, drop in a tub without electrocuting yourself — will survive. Barnes and Noble and Borders will either die or adapt to become mostly places to buy e-readers, get a good deal on an in-store download, hang out, drink coffee, and maybe — maybe — buy the odd book or two. (Of course, we all know B&N has thrown their hat in the download ring, aggressively selling the Nook in their Apple-store inspired spaces that sacrifice shelf space for books.) The gulf between e-book proponents and antagonists will be crossed, if brutally. And yes, believe it or not, eventually we’ll all be asking ourselves what was the BFD.

But before those growing e-book margins have taken over the majority of space currently occupied by the physical book, there’s no reason not to get a few kicks out of all this change. So, in that spirit, enjoy the following interview with author Lane Smith and a book trailer brought to us by the good folks over at the Wall Street Journal:

With its discounts of as much as 50% and free shipping to anywhere in the world, the Book Depository has been the only large online retailer willing to go toe-to-toe with Amazon.com. What’s more, they’ve managed to remain on friendly terms with publishers while doing so. Now, there’s another reason to visit their site: the Book Depository Live. Yes, it’s a map of the world showing you, in live time, the location of each new purchaser of a book on the site. Warning: it’s addictive.

Eudora Welty talks with Beth Henley about the writing of one of her most famous stories, “A Worn Path” …. That’s the author herself reading the story under the opening credits.

For the second year, The Guardian is hosting the “Not the Booker” prize, a democratic alternative to the the Man Booker Prize. As Sam Jordison wrote in the prize’s preliminary post: “The [Booker] panel are unrepresentative. Who are these people? Who chooses them? Why should, say, James Naughtie be judging this year’s prize? Are they really better judges than you or I?”

On Monday, the polls opened to determine the prize’s shortlist and after an exciting race, a pack of outsider titles had risen to the top: The Cuckoo Boy by Grant Gillespie, Pictures of Lily by Matthew Yorke, Deloume Road by Matthew Hooton, Advice for Strays by Justine Kilkerr, and Melville House’s very own The Canal by Lee Rourke. It seemed like a perfect alternative shortlist to the Booker’s list of heavy hitters such as Emma Donoghue and Peter Carey.

But by Tuesday morning Jordison announced that the vote would be nixed and a recount would be called.  Why? Apparently some of the authors had been asking their friends and fans to vote for their novels! Some of them even “exerting pressure through social networking sites.” The prize, claimed The Guardian, had been “been hijacked by what might be termed minority pressure groups.”

The list of winners now had to face a run-off vote with “a second list of books that seemed to be doing well in a rather less shouty, just registered-to-vote kind of way.”  Apparently a vote for David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (featured on the institutionally endorsed “list two”) had more integrity than a vote for The Cuckoo Boy.

The “minority pressure groups” cried foul.  Justine Kilkerr, author of Advice for Strays, wrote “I, like others, drew the attention of those online who follow me on Twitter to the existence of the competition….I didn’t force anyone to vote. I didn’t pay people to vote…Those who have voted for me are genuine readers who have enjoyed the book.”  Laurence Johns, publisher of indie-press To Hell With Publishing, wrote “You pick a jokey title like ‘not the booker’, you choose a humorous prize like ‘a mug’…and then you get all serious when we rally the troops behind our one and only title? I mean what is a tiny publisher to do?”

Unlike other notable mishandled elections of the 21st century, this story has a happy ending.  The Guardian readers overwhelmingly and vehemently voted to let the first shortlist stand.  (A representative comment: ”List one, please. And for the record, I don’t put my name behind crap.”) Though perhaps we’re just biased election hijackers…

In the end, the Not the Booker will end up being as imperfect a prize as… the Booker itself.  But at least one of Sam Jordison’s original questions will be answered.  Who are these people?  Who picks this prize? They are readers, writers, publishers, twitterers, bloggers, critics, and fans.  They are a microcosm of the literary world, and they’re all jostling to say what is good, fine, and best.  You can meet them in the comments. It’s an awfully interesting read.

MobyLives is now observing the book industry holiday known as August. We will be back in September with a whole new set of awesome super powers. Really. We’re not just going to be goofing off during August. We are going to be working hard for some truly amazing books in release this summer. See below, and do yourself a favor — check just one of them out. Just one. You won’t be sorry. You should also watch our Twitter feed for some give-aways, autographed copies, and other promotions yet to be concocted. We’re also making some other changes in the ole bloggerino that you’re going to like. Jesus, I’m exhausted already. But if you insist on thinking that we’ve gone fishing — well, fine. Check out the video below. For now, we’re outta here.

The cover for Lee Rourke's The Canal

Because new “discoveries” seem to us to be what publishing is all about, we take great pride at Melville House in the fact that some of our discoveries (Tao Lin, Hans Fallada) have really caught on.

Now, it appears our newest discovery — British writer Lee Rourke and his first novel The Canal — is catching fire as well.

And it’s not just us saying so. The Independent says it “has high ambitions and frequently – occasionally dazzlingly – reaches them,” making it “a refreshing, memorable and powerful novel.” GQ — yes, I said GQ — went way over the top, saying,

You have to salute Rourke - he has written a novel about boredom and how it saturates modernity, which is a ballsy thing to do. But The Canal also takes in urban renewal, technology and violence as it questions the manner in which we live our lives in the 21st century…. Authenticity may be in recession, but novels like this help us to recover our sense of it. If you fancy a cerebral summer read then make it The Canal. For a book about urban ennui it’s one hell of a page-turner.

Meanwhile, Rourke is the king of alternative media: 3AM calls it “one of the most achingly thought-provoking and beautiful books I’ve read recently … right-up-to-the-minute and urgent.” Largehearted Boy calls it “powerful” (and runs Rourke’s playlist), and HTML Giant calls it “a strange explosion of a book” (in addition to running an interview with Rourke). And Rourke has won the latest round of the Literary Death March in London, as the Guardian details here.

And that’s not the only contest Rourke is performing strongly in:  the book is tracking so hot in the UK that Amazon.co.uk has featured Rourke in its “Rising Stars” program. They offer a free read of the first chapter, an interview with Rourke, and more, and place it alongside four other debut novels. From there it’s a simple affair: The book that ends up with the most positive reader reviews goes on to be considered for Debut of the Year.

Exciting stuff. It’s not often readers can so influence a writer’s beginning like this, nor have a chance to be heard over the din usually underway for books touted by the usual sources in the echo chamber. Want to help make a career? Go here and tell Amazon what you think of The Canal. And watch our Twitter feed — we’ll be giving out signed copies throughout August.

The other amazing book we’re doing this summer is T Cooper’s The Beaufort Diaries, about a polar bear fleeing the melting arctic for Los Angeles, where he befriends Leonardo DiCaprio. You think I’m making this up? The word has been amazing: The “surrealistic satire,” as noted by the Los Angeles Times, is “singular and breathtaking,” says noted by the Austin Chronicle, which also called the book “original, humane, and deeply funny.” And — wait. You didn’t see the video? The one with David Duchovny doing the voice-over? Check it out, below. It tells you all you need to know, except that the book is even better than the video.

Amazon's new Kindle has better margins than the company does

“There must be something in the water at Amazon.com, given its commitment to price-cutting whatever the short-term pain,” remarks Martin Peers in a Wall Street Journal report. He explains that “The retailer’s decision to introduce a new, cheaper Kindle, just weeks after slashing the price of the existing version of the device, confirms that once again Amazon is taking the long view in trying to boost its share of a market—this time, e-books.” But it could also explain why the company continues to post lower-than-expected numbers, making Wall Street still wary.

As Peers also notes, “At $139, the new device is about a third the price of the original Kindle and nearly half what the second iteration was selling for just five weeks ago.” However, “That doesn’t mean the Kindle will become ‘mass market,’ as Amazon suggests; an occasional book reader is arguably no more likely to pay $139 for an e-reader than $259 ….”

What’s more, as he continues, there’s the fact that “Amazon also faces intensifying competition. Foremost is Apple. Its iPad, while pricier, offers far more functions than simply e-reading, and some may find it more user-friendly than the Kindle. Through June of this year, 3.3 million iPads had been sold.”

There’s also the Barnes & Noble Nook, which, says a New York Times report, is about to undergo a massive promotion campaign. According to Julie Bosman,

the chain will begin an aggressive promotion of its Nook e-readers by building 1,000-square-foot boutiques in all of its stores, with sample Nooks, demonstration tables, video screens and employees who will give customers advice and operating instructions.

By devoting more floor space to promoting the Nook, Barnes & Noble is playing up what it calls a crucial advantage over Amazon in the e-reader war: its 720 bricks-and-mortar stores, where customers can test out the device before they commit to buying it.

And the coming price war, says Peers in the WSJ, might “damp investors’ appetites for companies. Amazon may be following the only path open to it, but it still risks scaring those who don’t trust the company’s commitment to the bottom line.”

Meanwhile, one player says it’s staying out of the price war: “Sony won’t sacrifice the quality and design we’re bringing book lovers to lay claim to the cheapest eReader,” says the company’s  “vice president of digital reading,” Phil Lubell, according to a Forbes report.

Nonetheless, most are predicted the $99 ereader is just a question of time.

Amazon head Jeff Bezos, meanwhile, in a USA Today report, says, “I predict we [Kindle] will surpass paperback sales sometime in the next nine to 12 months. Sometime after that, we’ll surpass the combination of paperback and hardcover.”

And I predict that he won’t show any proof whatsoever of that. And that everyone will believe him and print it as fact nonetheless.

What Andrew Wylie looks like after he hears a Stuart Applebaum quote

Andrew “The Jackal” Wylie must be back from vacation — according to a Financial Times report he’s issued a new threat: “a broad expansion of his digital publishing business to include up to 2,000 titles if traditional publishers refuse to improve digital royalties.”

According to the FT, Wylie says he’s “failed to reach a satisfactory compromise after nine months of discussions with all large publishing houses.”  Now, he says, “If we do not reach an accord, Odyssey will grow. It will not publish 20 books, it will publish 2,000 and have outside investors and make itself available to other agents.”

But he’s only doing it for holistic reasons, he says: “I am only trying to make a point in order to underscore the importance of getting the right terms with a view to uniting the two [print and digital] revenue streams.”

But it doesn’t look as if the big houses are taking the bait: The FT says other publishers such as Penguin have told it “that Mr Wylie has limited bargaining power because rights to e-book publication have been written into authors’ contracts since the mid-1990s.”

Nor did Random House — which seems to be a particular target of Wylie, in that his Oddysey Editions is launching with mostly Random House authors — appear to be shaking in its books: “Our position is unchanged. Random House will not do new business deals with a literary agency which sets themselves up as a direct competitor of ours with our titles,” said company spokesman Stuart Applebaum.