The God Particle of Literature

You see this? *

You probably see an asterisk. I see the most potent and powerful typographical symbol of all time. And that includes the interrobang.

The asterisk is no mere glyph. As I explain in a Soapbox piece in the current issue of Publishers Weekly, the asterisk is nothing less than a repository for every book ever written. It is a microdot containing all the volumes ever published. It is the God Particle of literature.

Seriously--no sh*t!

Extreme Embargoing

Publishers with newsworthy books often employ the embargo, a tactic that keeps the book under wraps and away from reviewers, the media, and anyone else in order to preserve its news value. As we saw with Ted Kennedy's True Compass, this is hardly a foolproof technique--the New York Times broke the embargo on the Kennedy memoir almost two weeks before the book's on-sale date. The same has happened with other recent embargoed titles.

Now I've come up with a surefire, 100% guaranteed way to make sure no one will ever break an embargo again. I reveal all in an essay in this week's issue of Publishers Weekly.

And remember: Embargo is not the French word for snails.

Kind Words from Douglas Rushkoff

Got a nice shout-out from Douglas Rushkoff in this week's Publishers Weekly. Doug has a thoughtful essay in there called We'll Be Back, about how the current strife in publishing was probably inevitable and may be creating an environment in which a more sustainable industry model can emerge.

I worked with Doug when his book Get Back in the Box was published in 2005. His new book is called Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back and has been drawing a tremendous amount of attention. Perhaps you caught his excellent performance on The Colbert Report last month. It's a great example of how a guest can prevail in the face of Colbert's often facetious interviewing style, and should be required viewing for any author scheduled to appear on the show.

After Doug saw my appearance on CNN a few months ago, in which David Bach urged me to bounce back from my layoff by becoming an independent publicist, Doug sent me an email that said: "While it's true you could become an independent publicist tomorrow, I think the real question was whether you even want to do that. There's a degree of get-up-and-go that job-hunting requires that I simply find distasteful and nauseating." He added: "Then again, I've never had a job."

I'm starting to see things your way, Doug. Thanks!

Foreword Thinking

I have a piece in the new issue of Publishers Weekly called Preliminaries, inspired by Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing(if you haven't read them, you should).

One of Leonard's rules states: “Avoid prologues. They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword.” Jumping off from there, I try to explain how to tell an introduction from a foreword from a prologue from a preface, and get hopelessly muddled in the attempt.

Another of Leonard's rules states: "Never use the words 'suddenly' or 'all hell broke loose.'" I managed to adhere to this rule.

A third states: "Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip." Not so sure about that one...

Practically Live from BEA

Another Publishers Weekly blog post from BookExpo America, which technically went up yesterday evening. . .

The Welch Way

Serendipity plays a role in any successful publicity campaign. It's the break you didn't see coming that pretty much falls in your lap, and by definition it comes from an unexpected source. This happened for me recently, and the unexpected source behind it was Jack Welch.

I worked with Jack and his wife Suzy a few years ago when their bestselling book Winning was published. (Suzy's been highly visible lately promoting her own book, 10-10-10. Some book flack somewhere is doing a great job.) I always found Jack to be an energizing figure--decisive, of course, and demanding in the best sense. You always came out of a meeting with him more juiced about the project than when you went in.

When that Publishers Weekly essay about my layoff experience ran back in February I forwarded it to Jack's office as an FYI. I didn't really expect a response, but in fact he replied with a lovely note, calling the essay "a beautiful piece over such a difficult situation" and noting that "it is filled with lessons." He thanked me for sharing it and wished me all the best in the days ahead. I figured having Jack's good wishes couldn't be a bad thing, and thought that would be the end of it. But there was more to come.

A couple of weeks later he got in touch again to let me know that he and Suzy alluded to my essay in their regular BusinessWeek column The Welch Way. "Hope this saves a few from the experience you went through," he wrote. It would be nice to think that it did.

Incidentally, the folks over at Publishers Weekly connected the dots between The Welch Way column and my essay in their enewsletter PWDaily. Serendipity played a much smaller role in this break--I shamelessly called it to their attention.

Lay Off

It occurs to me that all of the interesting things that are going to happen to me following my layoff may have already happened. Which would make this a singularly unfortunate time to start blogging about it. However, let's forge ahead and hope for the best.

I was laid off on February 10th, so I'll have to play a little catch-up here. The morning after I was let go, I wrote an essay about the experience and submitted it to the "Soapbox" column of Publishers Weekly, the book industry's trade magazine. I wanted to stay visible, and thought this would be a good way to put my name and status in front of the industry. I had written several humor pieces for PW over the last few years, so fortunately this was an avenue that was available to me.

Publishers Weekly accepted my essay, which was called "Lay Off," and it ran in the February 23rd issue. The response has been very satisfying. I think my favorite comment came from a college professor in Oklahoma, who said, “You don’t know me from Adam, but reading your ‘Soapbox’ piece in PW just now I felt as if I had just heard some bad news from my best friend." Nice.