STAT 101

Nearly 2,000 page views in the first month. Not too shabby. Let’s try to double it in February. Tomorrow: the new ABC selections!

Some Thoughts on ABC

One visitor to the ABC blog has shared his opinions about the endeavor. Generally speaking, I appreciate his careful considerations. And, as he says: “I don’t want to discourage anyone from reading, certainly, and I also don’t particularly want to criticize what seems a well-intentioned if underconceived gesture.”

Here are a few excerpts from his post.

That said, I see a fundamental problem with Scott’s approach: by explicitly arguing against a “scattered” approach to book-buying in favor of the “One Book” model popularized by Oprah’s Book Club and various city libraries, he encourages the already messed-up economics of the trade publishing industry by deliberately seeking to focus sales solely on two books per month, rather than offering his readers a wider sampling of disparate books they might buy. The trade publishing industry is predicated on such bulk purchases; one hyped or high-profile book will cover the unearned advances of many other books—and also based around promoting the blockbuster to the detriment of these other books.

Later:

It seems a shame for a medium such as a blog—isn’t “democratic” the cliché generally invoked in this case?—to replicate trade publishing’s sales model.

No one person or book club can change this publishing model. Andrew’s Book Club attempts to work with it, for better or worse, by drawing attention to two books of stories each month. Most of the chosen books will probably fall into what this blogger calls “high-profile, middle-of-the-road examples—books that will receive plenty of attention regardless of [my] efforts.” To this, may I please remind everyone that three of the four writers given as examples in the initial post are college professors, and one worked in a paper mill for 32 years before going to graduate school. My point? Almost no story writers make their living from writing alone. As such, EVERYONE who writes stories could use a little extra help in promoting his or her books. If “plenty of attention” means one or two prominent book reviews, that’s simply not enough.

As for my two January picks — wow, they’re far from “high-profile,” I’d say. Yes, Lauren Groff has received a lot of attention in her short writing career, but Delicate Edible Birds is just her second book. It sure would be nice if she could have a third book, and a fourth. As for Allison Amend’s book, I’m glad this blogger rightly calls OV Books “a fine small press,” but it’s not like I can find her book at any of the Borders or Barnes & Nobles in Indianapolis, a city of more than a million people. (I tried.) Things That Pass for Love is Allison’s first book, and it took a long time for it to find print, despite her success at placing the individual stories with excellent literary journals. (Update: She’s just sold her novel, however. Congrats!)

My point: I appreciate the thoughtful consideration given to Andrew’s Book Club. I made it clear in the initial post that readers should buy all books that they deem worthy of reading. But by focusing on two picks each month, I can take a few small steps toward helping the future of the short story collection — not as an art form, but the tangible product so many of us love to have next to our beds, reading chairs, and desks.

Three days until the February picks. You will come back, won’t you?

Delightful Samples

At the market the other day, I watched a man sample four types of chicken salad, and we’ve all used a little pink spoon to try a new flavor at Baskin Robbins. (This month’s flavor: Premium Churned Light Raspberry Chip.)

Just in case you’re the kind of reader who likes to take small bites before making a commitment, here are sample stories from the January selections, no pink spoon required:

Allison Amend

Lauren Groff

Only One Week Left in January

I’ll unveil the February picks for Andrew’s Book Club next Sunday. In this final week of January, be sure to pick up one or both of the current selections, Allison Amend’s Things That Pass for Love and Lauren Groff’s Delicate Edible Birds. In the meantime, check out these two authors elsewhere on the Webbernet:

*An interview with Allison Amend about “Stations West,” her story that evolved into a novel
*A podcast interview with Allison from The Bat Segundo Show
*Allison’s advice for writers, featured on the Glimmer Train website

*Amherst College’s interview with alumna Lauren Groff
*Video of Lauren discussing her novel The Monsters of Templeton
*Info about Lauren’s upcoming visit to Wild Iris Books (1/27/09)

Groff’s Collection Now Available

Lauren Groff’s Delicate Edible Birds is now available. Amazon says the title will be released on January 27, but a Borders here in Indianapolis has many copies on the new fiction table. Please ask your bookstore to stock the book.

Meanwhile, Allison Amend’s Things That Pass for Love is doing well. Dzanc Books reports that they’ll soon receive more copies to fill orders. (Edit: This applies only to orders straight from Dzanc; obviously, Amazon and other outlets still have copies of the book.)

Less than two weeks until the February selections are revealed. Thank you for your strict adherence to the first two rules of Andrew’s Book Club. Hundreds of visitors have dropped by, the silent majority.

Early Feedback

Thanks to everyone who’s stopped by the blog, and to the ever-growing Facebook group for Andrew’s Book Club. If you have a Fb profile, please join the group. Add me as a friend, while you’re there. I promise I won’t say no.

Also, thanks to everyone who has left a comment. The template of this blog is pretty cool, I think, but it’s not user-friendly for leaving comments — you have to first click the title of the post you wish to comment on. As new posts are added, they publish to the left-most column, and the older posts shift to the right.

A FEW POLITE REQUESTS

1) If you have your own blog or website, please link to Andrew’s Book Club.

2) If you’re an author and have a mailing list, consider giving a shout-out to ABC (catchy, no?). The link is more powerful than the sword.

3) If you are already part of the ABC group on Facebook, please tell five of your friends about the group/blog. If not, please send a brief e-mail to five of your friends who read books, especially story collections.

I’ll post supplemental material about this month’s selections, Allison Amend’s Things That Pass for Love and Lauren Groff’s Delicate Edible Birds, soon.

Big House Pick, January 2009

In January 2009, Hyperion/Voice will publish Delicate Edible Birds, Lauren Groff’s collection of nine short stories of widely different styles and structures.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Lauren Groff was born in 1978 in Cooperstown, New York, and grew up one block from the Baseball Hall of Fame. She graduated from Amherst College and has an MFA in fiction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in a number of journals, including The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, One Story, and Five Points, as well as in the anthologies Best American Short Stories 2007, Pushcart Prize XXXII, and Best New American Voices 2008. She was awarded the Axton Fellowship in Fiction at the University of Louisville, and has had residencies and fellowships at Yaddo and the Vermont Studio Center. Her first novel, The Monsters of Templeton, published in February 2008, was a New York Times and Book Sense bestseller, and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.

ABOUT THE BOOK:
“L. De Bard and Aliette” recreates the medieval tale of Abelard and Heloise in New York during the 1918 flu epidemic; “Lucky Chow Fun” returns to Templeton, the setting of Groff’s first novel, The Monsters of Templeton, for a contemporary account of what happens to outsiders in a small, insular town; the title story, “Delicate Edible Birds,” is the tale of a group of war correspondents, a lone woman among them, who fall prey to a frightening man in the French countryside while fleeing the Nazis.

“The details make the difference in this sophomore effort. They range from specific realities, as when a lonely teen swimmer watches her breath rise in ‘a great silver jellyfish-bubble of air’ before her small town falls apart in ‘Lucky Chow Fun,’ to dreamlike metaphor, as when another young woman feels her depression as ‘this black sack filled with cobras’ in ‘Majorette.’ ‘Lucky Chow Fun,’ which returns to Templeton, the fictionalized Cooperstown, N.Y., of the author’s debut novel, was previously published, as was the vivid ‘L. DeBard and Aliette,’ a retelling of a tragic romance, set in New York during the flu epidemic of 1918. As a collection, the stories are loosely connected by their themes of metamorphosis, as girls grow up, lose their illusions and, often, find unexpected happiness. Images of water and fire run through these tales as well: Aliette, the Heloise substitute, regains her strength after polio via swimming lessons with the handsome L. DeBard, and, in ‘Watershed,’ a diver tells of an elderly couple who end their pain by diving into a waterfall. ‘There is no ending, no neatness in this story,’ the narrator offers. ‘There never really is, where water is concerned.’ The ‘wild, febrile, kind, ambiguous’ nature of the elements may serve to explain the power in these stories, which could have faltered in the hands of a lesser writer.”
—Kirkus Reviews

WHERE TO BUY:
Your local independent bookstore
Powell’s [buy new, even if used is available]
Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble

Indie Pick, January 2009

OV Books released Allison Amend’s debut collection, Things That Pass for Love, a few months ago, an excellent pick (if I do say so) for the first selection of Andrew’s Book Club.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Allison Amend, a Chicago native, currently lives in New York City. She attended Stanford University and holds an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her work has received awards from and appeared in One Story, Black Warrior Review, StoryQuarterly, Bellevue Literary Review, the Atlantic Monthly, Prairie Schooner and Other Voices, among other publications. She keeps a semi-regular blog here at WordPress.com.

ABOUT THE BOOK:
“Alison Amend is a gifted storyteller whose view of contemporary life is often wonderfully acute, original, and surprising.”
—Alison Lurie, author of Foreign Affairs

“I love this book. The stories in Amend’s Things That Pass for Love are such good company that I found myself reading more and more slowly so that the collection wouldn’t end. Amend’s voice is so compelling, easeful and polished you feel that the stories almost rise up off the page and tell themselves. And, as we all know, the hardest thing a writer can do is make it look easy.”
—Alison Smith, author of Name All the Animals

“Allison Amend is a gifted storyteller — no, more than gifted. Her writing is powerful enough to create its own kind of weather. Her characters are so real it’s as if you could reach between the pages and shake hands with them. If you want to read good stories, read this book.”
—Hannah Tinti, author of Animal Crackers and The Good Thief, and editor of One Story

WHERE TO BUY:
Your local independent bookstore
The Publisher [PayPal]
Powell’s [buy new, even if used is available]
Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble

Note: The publisher is having a sale on this title; as of this moment, the book is only $8.48 through their website.

About Andrew’s Book Club

Each month, I select two or three short story collections that readers and writers of short stories should support. The idea is simple. We should buy short story collections and support this important art form, especially if we’re writers and ever hope to publish our own books of short stories. But if I buy Antonya Nelson’s new collection and you buy the new Jim Shepard book of stories, our mutual friend Sally buys Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock, and your mom buys Cathy Day’s The Circus in Winter, then the publishing numbers are scattered all over the place.

Move over, Oprah. I’m taking over. You do a fine job. I’m glad you’re back to selecting living writers for your book club. But you haven’t chosen a book of stories, to my knowledge, so I’m asking you to step aside. I’m sure you’re relieved. (Edit: Let it be forever known that in September of 2009, just nine months after the start of this book club, Oprah caved and finally chose a story collection, Uwem Akpan’s Say You’re One of Them.)

Here are the rules.

1) The first rule of Andrew’s Book Club is you should talk about Andrew’s Book Club.

2) The second rule of Andrew’s Book Club is you should talk about Andrew’s Book Club. Spread the word.

3) Each month I will select two short story collections to be released that month, give or take a few weeks. One will be from a NYC publisher, while a second selection will spotlight a book from an indie or university press. I will also occasionally choose a selection from the past — a collection finally finding a paperback release, or one that was somehow overlooked (ABC Rewind). Buy at least one of these books each month. 12 books a year (24 if you buy both selections) is not too much to ask. It would be great if you also supported your local independent bookstore. But you may prefer Borders or Barnes & Noble, or maybe you live in the middle of nowhere and rely upon Amazon or Powell’s. But buy the story collections. If your bookstore doesn’t have the book, order it. Talk to the owner about the book, and about how much you love to read (and buy) story collections. Put your mouth where your money is.

4) Read beyond the Andrew’s Book Club selections. In reality, there are likely dozens of worthwhile books for you to read and support each month. Buy one of my selections in order to bring the power of short story readers together and make our collective voice heard by publishers. Buy the books of your choice to quench your other readerly thirsts.

5) Stop by this blog every so often and post your thoughts.

FTC Disclosure
Andrew’s Book Club does, from time to time, receive free books from publishers and/or authors. Some of these books are chosen for ABC, but not all; some are pretty awful. If you would like to read more about the FTC’s new guidelines for blog endorsements (because you simply don’t have enough to read these days), here’s the link.