author lands book deal with Y&R

Can't get a deal for that novel manuscript? Try ad agencies. Young & Rubicam commissioned Booker award-nominated novelist William Boyd to tell any story he wanted as long as it featured a Land Rover vehicle. Not surprisingly, the commission prompted Boyd to "realize how prominently Land Rover has featured in my life" and write THE VANISHING GAME, a novella published by Land Rover in print and e-version and advertised in display ads and paid posts on Vox, Quartz and NYTimes.com. The story can also be accessed on Tumblr where it's a multi-sensory experience including images, video, animation, sound, music and narration.

The novel-commissioned-by-client isn't unprecedented. In 2001, Bulgari hired novelist Fay Weldon to write any story she wanted, as long as it mentioned the name of the jeweler 12 times. Perhaps because she was a former copywriter (Ogilvy), Weldon exceeded that count, including 34 mentions. That product placement deal, a first in publishing, created quite a kerfuffle, as reported in in the New York Times and Salon. It's not known whether the commission helped Bulgari sell jewelry, but to Weldon's credit, the book still isn't out of print.

Thanks to Shareen Pathak of Digiday for letting us know. 

can writers save publishing?

One of the best panels I attended at SXSW last year was on the future of publishing where I was happy to hear that yes, there is one⎯ if old models give way to new, creative approaches. Recently I've come into contact with three authors taking unconventional approaches to the age-old business of transforming dead trees into handheld content. Interestingly, all concepts involve crowd sourcing, that model antithetical to revered image of lone writer scratching away in a garret.

Crowdsourcing Cover Art. Crowdsourcing content isn't a new concept, actually. The book that's been a bible of sorts for getting into the ad business has been crowdsourced from creatives since the 80s. (Proud to say recent update includes an essay from AdBroad.) The author/curator is Maxine Paetro, who was manager of creative talent at some of the best agencies in New York before she segued into writing bestselling thrillers. But crowdsourcing cover art? For recently edited update now available for pre-order, her publisher offered three design choices , none of which Paetro felt was quite right. So she dreamed up a contest and sent out word to art and design schools, offering a bit of cash and the chance to be published. She received hundreds of Flickr entries from around the world, so many of which were good, she had a hard time deciding which she liked best.

Crowdsourcing an Advance, a Title, an Editorial Board. Strategy Director Bud Caddell recently launched a project on Kickstarter, to develop and publish a book that is an evaluation of how everything in the attention economy actually works, and how to profit by it. The genius of his idea was this: instead of circulating a proposal among agents, waiting for interest, then waiting for an agent to strongarm a publisher into shelling out an advance, Bud approached book writing as if he were setting up a nonprofit: he sent out word to people passionate about the same subject he was and wrote them a proposal, promising them an opportunity to help make a difference. Within a month, he enlisted not only 103 board members (including, full disclosure, myself) but over $18K which allows him, five weeks from the day he put out the book concept, to be travelling around the country doing interviews for it. Further brilliance of writing a book this way? You've got a built-in community of amenable readers, editors and fact-checkers, which relieves friends and loved ones of these onerous duties.

The Dickensian Approach: Blogging Installments Euro RSCG Chicago Chairman/CCO Steffan Postaer, discouraged by the bleak house that publishing is these days, is releasing his third novel a la Dickens whose books were first published serially in magazines. Postaer is blogging a romantic comedy chapter by chapter via blog posts, an approach that gives him the benefit of further dimensionalizing the story world with visuals. He's also staging a contest for cover art. Ironically, the winner will receive what many in publishing are fiercely resisting: an ipad.

Hopefully, many more writers are transforming old world publishing models out there. Aren't they?

guinness record of branded content

In 1951, when corporate off-sites took place in settings more luxe than chain hotel ballrooms, a dispute took place between Sir Hugh Beaver, managing director of Guinness Brewery in Dublin (are all CEO's over there knighted?) and a guest at a shooting party at his estate in County Wexford. The dispute centered on which was the fastest Eurpean game bird. No reference book gave a definitive answer.

The royal director decided to publish a volume of facts, intended to be sold to bartenders who could use it to settle pub arguments. The first Guinness Book of Records was published in August, 1955 with a plastic cover to protect it from beer stains. Despite skepticism from retailers, the volume became an instant hit. It reached bestseller status by Christmas the same year. Over a hundred million copies have been published worldwide in 25 languages. Over 3 million are still sold every year, the best-selling book under copyright of all time.

Times being what they are, listings are also available digitally. A website tells you how to compete for your own. But note that one of the original categories is no longer cited: "Uncontrolled Drinking." Current editor in chief, Craig Glenday, told the New York Times: “We’re not going to encourage that sort of thing today. That’s how people get hurt.”

Hats off to Sir Beaver and his prescient marketing move. But is it truly successful as branded content? Do consumers associate the purveyor of brew with best known arbiter of facts and factoids? I didn't until reminded of association by New York Times article. And Alan Wolk of the Toadstool blog observes that book's popularity is highest with kids too young to (legally) be target for Guinness. Still, selling millions of book objects these days is a feat to be marvelled at.

future of publishing: not books, bookisodes?

These days publishers crying poverty thrust myriad duties on writers aside from meeting manuscript deadlines: gathering blurbs, providing jacket photos, hosting book parties, arranging reading tours, (travel expenses unreimbursed), even negotiating shelf space. One intrepid author I know regularly tours NYC bookstores and reshelfs his book, facing out. Now writers are expected to create industrials?

More and more books sold on Amazon are accompanied not only by reviews and reader ratings, but by promotional videos. (Sorry, image isn't linked, click here and scroll down to video.) Chilling glimpse of a future of publishing that sidelines books altogether, publishing manuscripts direct to screen.

hat tip to Corporate Rock

how to get a book deal in 27 days

Sounds like advice from your spam filter, doesn't it?

Be a writer! Move back home with your folks! Write down stuff your dad says! Post it on twitter! Soon book agents will be hounding you and you'll be inundated with offers from publishers!

Yet, it's proved to be the real deal for Justin Halpern who publishes Shit My Dad Says, a "column" on twitter that has been exploded in popularity since his first post on August 3. Why? The content is great dialogue. It's like Justin is repackaging Archie Bunker (remember him?) updated and delivered to a post-millennial audience.

Here's the concept: I'm 28. I live with my 73-year-old dad. He is awesome. I just write down shit that he says. Like:

I didn't live to be 73 years old so I could eat kale. Don't fix me your breakfast and pretend you're fixing mine.

When I used to live in Los Angeles, I used to step in human feces a lot.

My flight lands at 9:30 on Sunday...You want to watch what? What the fuck is mad men? I'm a mad man if you don't pick me the hell up.

Simple. Brilliant. Massively entertaining. Countless tweeters and bloggers have shouted out praise. Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus observed, This Twitter account has more character development than the last few movies I've seen.

On twitter, a quick indication of the quality of your content is a glance at your follow/following ratio. You hope the number of people who follow you is greater than the number of people you follow. Over 225,000 people follow Justin. Justin follows only 1 person. (@LevarBurton) (?) Impressive metric that says yes, quality of creative content still matters.

Now the LA Times reports he's got a book agent and several publishing offers. But it's a family newspaper. In their report, the site is, um, Stuff My Dad Says.

Congratulations to Justin and, of course, to his dad. Who doesn't read the site. He's not on the internet. He does have a cell phone, however. But no voicemail.

Why would i want to check a voicemail on my cell phone? People want to talk to me, call again. If i want to talk to you, I'll answer.

world without books

It's Sunday morning in August and I don't feel like writing. I feel like reading. Something offline. The Times, in its original, crinkly version. Then something bigger. Bookier. Something literary. Which makes me part of a dwindling crowd. According to Amy Stolls, Program Officer at the NEA, fewer than half of American adults now read literature.

Seems books are becoming an endangered species. (Hard to go to a party in NYC these days without a downsized publishing exec ranting about this.) I love my Kindle, sure, but it doesn't replace a book in the hand: the pleasurable heft, the solid page dense with vivid black marks by which you are channelled into an alternate universe--no power source required. (During daylight, anyway.) I use my Kindle to read in transit--on the subway or trains or planes when I am travelling and trying to minimize luggage. I load it with various newspapers from around the world (they update automatically!) and books which if I like them enough, I find myself buying in hardcopy to finish, parallel-reading them the old-fashioned way, because somehow, curling up with a Kindle in bed just doesn't provide the same satisfaction.

But do enough others feel about books as I do, enough to keep the enterprise going?

Sadly, Amy, in a POV from her perch at NEA, doesn't think so:

It's 2025 and you want a book⎯you being a senior who still fondly remembers books and a book being a non-voice-activated, tangible, artfully designed, paper and in-scented collection of human-generated original prose. Tmes are rough. An MP3 of the SparkNotes for "The DaVinci Code" has replaced the Bible in every hotel in America and Harry Potter is a middle-aged couch potato on welfare. You know this about Harry because you put him there in the videogame "Write the Next Harry Potter Sequel." Paper, pens, rubber eraser⎯they no longer exist. The last of the book critics wrote the last book review of a Post-it note from Pynchon while Pynchon was in the other room surfing YouTube.

It's 2025, and in the latest census, 87% of the population claimed "writer" as an occupation. The universal library of all human verbiage shows 1.4 million genres, with 230,000 subcategories labeled "For Dummies."

[You search for a book to read online] and subliminal ads pop up and whisper breathy directives while massaging your neck and temples, all from the sole remaining New York-based, foreign-owned publishing conglomerate in America, which paid the author an advance equal to the national debt. The book, which the author claims is nonfiction, is about an ogre who writes a book. The author's already sold the rights for his next book, "What I Would Have Written Had I Written a Book," which he claims is fiction. You don't care; your neck feels good. You're sure you're going to love it. [Complete premonition in Creative Nonfiction, Issue 31]

While this vision portends interesting briefs for digital agencies in the future, it's sad to contemplate a world without books, which would also be a world without bookstores and libraries, one where stalwart lions on Fifth Avenue might preside over a marble Pinkberry instead.