Turpentine by Spring Warren is a Western set in the 1870s. Edward Turrentine Bayard III (“Turpentine”) is our tragic hero. He’s a coward and thinks himself otherwise. He’s misguided and thinks himself enlightened with manners and fortune. This is a cyclical story. Turpentine’s fortunes rise and fall depending upon his decisions, and unfortunately for Turp, he can be a bit of a twerp.

Although Turpentine is tragic, the novel is not. Spring Warren is a fine storyteller and she paints a Wild West worth visiting.

The story is this: Turpentine is sent on a train west by his doctor. He is to attend a sanatorium and improve the health of his lungs. He ends up in the Wild West skinning buffalo and courting girls. Turpentine, being of better means earlier in life, is an artist. His sketches catch the attention of a Peabody Museum scholar who is studying fossils. Turpentine is invited to the Peabody as an assistant. It seems his life is about to change, and yet this is just one of the many ups soon to be followed by a down.

In some ways Turpentine reminded me of The Englishman’s Boy by Guy Vanderhaeghe. This is a literary Western with a lot going on if you choose to read it that way.

Two pistols up.

A couple of weeks ago I received a lovely email from Don Bailey, who is publishing his third novel, The Good Lie, with Turnstone Press, the same company that published James’ book Up in Ontario.

Don asked if I’d mention his book. I normally don’t feature a book until I’ve had a chance to read it, but there are certain books that come to my attention that I do want to share. In this case, Don Bailey. Why? Because Don Bailey sent me a nice note complementing SoMisguided and its support of Canadian publishing, because his book is edited by Wayne Tefs, who is another author I love (check out his novel Red Rock) and who played hockey with James in Winnipeg and also who edited Up in Ontario, and because Don has created a website for The Good Lie that tells some stories about the story of The Good Lie, and I enjoyed reading the behind-the-scene stories.

All good things, I think.

So I’m going to check out the novel, and if you have a chance to before me, let me know what you think.

Also I heard that Turnstone Press published Todd Babiak’s first novel, which is another reason to support Canadian publishing.

So I’m sorry if I’m light on witty commentary, I’m trying to blast out the door to Malta, but I did not want to leave without mentioning The Good Lie.

Earlier this month I had a chance to speak with Sabine Milz. Sabine is a Postdoctoral Fellow, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and affiliated with the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. She is currently doing research on the current state of the book industries of the prairie provinces: Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. As part of this research project, she’s conducting interviews with people at the front lines of the publishing industry.

With permission from Sabine, here’s our interview:

Sabine Milz (S.M.): As an expert in online marketing and communities and a blogger on the publishing industry in Canada, how would you describe the relations between the former (online marketing and community-building tools) and the latter (Canadian publishers, distributors, writers, booksellers)? One of my interviewees noted that she thinks the publishing industry in Canada, and in North America more generally, has been very slow to figure out how the Internet is going to change people’s habits, both in terms of reading and buying.

Monique Trottier (M.T.): I agree with your other interviewee. The Canadian publishing industry has been rather slow to adopt online marketing strategies. I launched the Raincoast blog in Oct 2005 and the podcast series in November 2005. At the time, Raincoast was the first Canadian publisher to start podcasting. There were very few publishers internationally who were also on board, Penguin UK being by far the most advanced–and the program style that we used as a base for the Raincoast program.

In the last 2 years there have been federal and provincial grants made available to publishers who wish to experiment with digital means. In some cases this has meant online marketing programs and in other cases it’s meant the digitization of their backlist and the search for ways to sell digital copies.

There is definitely an explosion going on in the publishing industry. It’s like everyone has woken up and finally believes that the internet revolution is here.

That relationship between the publishing industry and their adoption of web 2.0 and online tools can be best described as cautious.

What is also of interest is the lack of experimentation at the book retail level. The late 1990s was a period of rapid growth for Amazon.com and the online retail sector in general. In North America, several bookstores launched ecommerce sites:

1996: Librarie Renaud-Bray
1997: Barnes and Noble
1998: Chapters Online, now Chapters.Indigo.ca, and later Follett Higher Education Group
1999: Archambault

In many ways the only retailer that moved forward in adopting web 2.0 strategies is Amazon. Chapters/Indigo is now playing catch up. McNally Robinson has attempted to move in this direction, although there are a lot of things I hate about their new website. Sadly, the publishers are now taking over marketing online, but the online sales support is not there on the retail side.

S.M.: In the overview of your BPAA [Book Publishers Association of Alberta] Conference talk, it says, “Online marketing is more than electronic press releases and creating a website. It’s about engagement and conversation.” With the signal to noise ration very high on the Internet and the existence of an overwhelming multitude of blogs and zines dedicated to literature, how can publishers and writers still create this engagement and conversation?

M.T.: Signal to noise is really high. In order to succeed publishers need to focus on campaigns that are engaging and relevant to their target audience. I argue that online marketing is not about one-off promotions or press releases but rather need to be part of a comprehensive business strategy. An electronic press release is only good if it drives people to a webpage specific to that press release. That webpage has to then continue the conversational thread of the press release. There need to be calls to action that are clear, a memorable marketing message that is also “branded” or used in print materials at the store level, in magazine and newspaper ads, etc. The web is another sales channel, but it does not act independent of publishers’ other marketing activities.

In order to stand out, publishers’ online marketing campaigns need to be about finding their target audience or their online community and participating in that community according to the rules of that community. They have to use a conversation voice, not a spammy marketing voice. They need to participate in the community, they can’t come and go only when they have a marketing message.

It’s about investing time in their online community, the same way that publishers sponsor literary events or do community out reach in person.

S.M.: What can a personal blog or participating in blogs do for a publisher/writer?

M.T.: It can increase awareness of the publisher or writer. Blogs are networked communities. They represent a return to “marketplace”. Marketplaces used to be physical places where people gathered. It was a social square, a marketplace, it was about shared voices, shared news and gossip, shared interests. At some point it became “marketing”. A thing that happens to people. You are marketed to. It’s against your will, it’s about consumption. It’s one-way communication–a company tells the masses what to buy or think about a product or service. The online revolution is a return to marketplace. On the web, people gather in networked communities to talk about shared interests, to share news. It’s voluntary. It’s a conversation. We are creating our own ads, reviews, videos. We have publishing tools. We are loudly voicing our opinions. And we are saying to companies, “you can be a part of this conversation or not, but if you choose not, the conversation is going to go on with out you.” [This is David Weinberger, http://cluetrain.com ]

S.M.: Is online marketing about targeting special interest groups/readers rather than general audiences/readers?

M.T.: Chris Anderson talks about this in The Long Tail. Yes, we are moving away from targeting mass audiences and putting our focus on bestsellers. Although we are going to use a mass media tool (the internet) to connect to targeted groups, to sell niche titles.

S.M.: Several of the people I have interviewed so far predict that the future of traditional literary publishing will lie in the publication of affordable print book artifacts, of beautiful print books designed as artifacts. What is your sense of the future of traditional publishing?

M.T.: The form of the product is going to be dictated by the desired use. For example, I have a PDA and I like to hike. I don’t want to take a guide book with me. Paper is heavy. I want to load everything into my PDA, which also has a GPS.

I am an editor. I will never buy a physical copy of The Chicago Manual of Style because the online version has everything and it is searchable. I don’t read Chicago, I use the index of the physical book and then look up a particular section. The online version mimics my behaviour. I need to search and browse. This experience is much better online.

I am a fiction lover. I want to read in bed, curled in awkward positions. I do not want to hold an ebook reader, PDA or laptop. In the bath, I definitely do not want an electronic device.

But I sometimes need to read a novel for a class. It’s not a book I would seek out or care to own otherwise. I want a digital copy that I can read on a screen and make notes about.

Publishers have to stop focusing on the format and start focusing on how to provide all formats, how to meet their audiences’ needs, and how to build into their contracts with authors the ability to provide these various formats.

It used to be that publishing a hard cover was a luxury. It was something special to be published in hard cover. It make become that publishing a physical book is a luxury. That all books are published electronically and that we publish a physical book when the market demands it.

S.M.: What are the key transmutations or changes the book — and especially the poetry and fiction book — as object has gone through as a result of new technological developments? Who, do you think, is at the front lines of this process of transmutation or change?

M.T.: Technology has changed every aspect of the publishing industry. We’ve gone in 20 years from printing plates to digital printing, from handselling and paper forms to exchanging bibliographic data in the supply chain using isbns and standard data formats. We have FedEx tracking numbers, standardized subject codes, credit cards, databases.

I’m not really sure what you’re asking here, but, taking stab, the entire process for creating the physical product has changed, and all of those changes are what has prepared us for the digital distribution of content.

S.M.: I want to put forth for your feedback another idea regarding the future of traditional publishing: Considering the way technological developments have changed the recreational habits of people, could publishers gain from redefining themselves in non-books-related terms, that is, as cultural producers who take an intellectual creation and turn it into a cultural artifact (which may not necessarily take a traditional book form but, for instance, a podcast or an e-book with multimedia links or a video), which is then distributed to its logical public? Do publishers of the future need to define themselves not by the cultural product, i.e., as book publishers, but by the process of delivering intellectual creation to an audience?

M.T.: I don’t believe in the death of the book. I think when and if it happens, it will happen because we have run out of trees and the means to make paper. Think about the history of the technology we call paper. It’s a rather useful piece of technology. Book publishers can define and redefine themselves until they are silly. What does it matter, who does it matter to? We understand the role of the publisher is to act as a filter, a gatekeeper. The publisher is a subject-matter expert. One who understands publishable works, quality writing, writing that should be made available to the public. That role is still a valuable role. In that signal to noise ratio, which we talked about, this is a fantastic role to play. The discerning voice of the publisher, one who makes works available to other. In this mode, anyone can act as publisher. I can self-publish. My role is still the same. To take some thing that I see as having value and making it available to others who will perceive its value and be willing to acquire it–in whatever form makes sense for their intended use.

Publisher has a different connotation than Content Producer.

S.M.: This questions has been inspired by my hearing and discussing a definition Karl Siegler gave to an interviewee. Siegler said that a publisher is someone “who takes an intellectual property, turns it into a cultural artifact, which is then distributed to a logical public.” I think that this may tie in with your above statement that “Publishers have to stop focusing on the format and start focusing on how to provide all formats, how to meet their audiences’ needs,” in the sense that it is about the “delivery platform” (term the interviewee used) as multiple platform. Publishing then seems to become more of a multimedia activity, an activity that breaks down traditional media separation in its attempt to meet the needs of diverse audiences.

M.T.: Yes, I agree with Karl.

S.M.: Do you see a danger in publishers/writers/artists using web space aggregated, organized, and dominated by an oligopoly of 21st century information-technology giants: iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, eBay, Yahoo, Google, MySpace? Using and thus supporting these oligopolic structures, doesn’t literary activity and artistic activity more generally contribute towards the centralization and potential regulation of knowledge distribution and artistic activity?

M.T.: No, I do not see a danger.

These oligopolic structures do not exist without us. The sites you list above represent our shift in attitude towards the web. We are always connected, always on. Those sites only succeed because of the network of people participating in those communities.

If you want to view the global community (the world wide web) as an evil empire than your other choice is obscurity.

Not a danger, but yes, it means we need to rethink things like copyright, control, ownership, distribution and commerce.

End of Interview

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So comments? Follow up? Where are the publishers in the crowd? How do you see your role changing?

UPDATE: When I posted about this the widget would take you to the HarperCollins book detail page. From that page there was a link to BookBrowse. Those links no longer appear on the website. I’m not sure why. So the coolest feature ever appears to be disabled 🙁

Craig Miller of LibreDigital is here presenting on online marketing technology and he is showing an example of a widget that they’ve created for publishers who are storing their digital assets with LibreDigital.

And, LibreDigital is super cool. If I could use this type of widget for all the books I review, I would be a very happy reader and reviewer.

Why because I can tell you how good the book is, but it’s my subjective opinion. It would be great if I could give you a link to look inside yourself.

I am salivating, this is so cool.

Publishers–please start thinking about how to empower me as a fan of your stuff. This is one way to do it.