When Writers Go Weird: That time Carl Sandburg appeared on a game show...and a book publisher didn't recognize him.

Are writers ever normal? No, otherwise they'd be productive members of society. When Writers Go Weird is when we remember writers acting strange, odd, off, or--yeah--just plain weird. Also known as Tuesday to them.

Today:  That time Carl Sandburg appeared on a game show. And a powerful book publisher was unaware.
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We've covered some truly weird situations with When Writers Go Weird, including guys accidentally killing their wife, another writer faking their own death, and yet another literary visionary trying to stage a military coup. We mean weird when we say weird. So, by those lofty standards, having a world-famous writer appear on a game show is practically amateur hour. The point is, hey, you don't see Jodi Picoult on Jeopardy! much, now do you?

By 1960, the game show What's My Line? was in its tenth year of a 17-year run on CBS and at the height of its popularity. The show's premise was fairly simple. Four B-level celebrity panelists questioned everyday people all in an attempt to guess their occupation. Considering this was the 1950s and '60s, this was about as edgy as television got.

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"Being 82-years old at the time and hard of hearing, Sandburg appears to have a grand old time...chirping yup! and nope! with a bird-like pitch."
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In addition to hum-drum everyday jamokes, each week What's My Line? invited mystery celebrities to appear, where the blindfolded panelists guessed the celebrity's identity through a series of questions, all while the guest masked their voice. And those mystery celebrities were huge by any standard. People like Muhammad Ali, Walt Disney, and Better Davis appeared...as did Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, Paul Newman...Betty White, Elizabeth Taylor, and even Sir Edmund Hillary. The list went on.

This is exactly what three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Sandburg walked into when he appeared on September 11, 1960. Being 82-years old at the time and hard of hearing, Sandburg appears to have a grand old time during his roughly 5-minute segment, chirping yup! and nope! with a bird-like pitch during his failed attempt to thwart people.

(Sandburg's segment doesn't really starts until the 3:08 part of the video, but watch the first three minutes to see how elaborately the panelists introduce one another, all while dressed like MET Gala attendees.)





In the end, panelist Arlene Francis guesses Sandburg out of the blue. None of the panelist's previous questions seemingly whittled down the scope to Sandburg. Yet, somehow--somehow--it appears Francis has psychic visions a carnival swindler would admire, and Carl Sandburg pops in her head. Rii-i-ight.

But wait!

There was one big kicker! (And it's not even Arlene Francis' psychic abilities!) One of the panelists was Bennett Cerf. You're quietly asking yourself right now, "And who the hell is he?" If the name doesn't ring a bell, you might know him by a tiny little publishing company he helped co-found: Random House.

That's right. The co-founder of one of the largest publishing houses ever created was none-too-quick with guessing one of the most famous poets of the 20th century.

Maybe Cerf was more of a Robert Frost fan.

Agatha Christie was kind of a grouch.

Shocking news that a woman who largely only wrote about murder and death was not a lighthearted soul, but letters on display reveal Agatha Christie was generally irked by life.

The letters, which will be on exhibition at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival held in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, show Christie was annoyed by most anything, like over the covers of her books.

According to The Guardian, for her 1947 book The Labours of Hercules, a Pekingese was featured on the cover. Harmless, you might say. Her family found laughs in it, but Christie was furious and wrote her publisher:

"The wrapper design for Hercules has occasioned the most ribald and obscene remarks and suggestions from my family – All I can say is – Try again!!" (sic).

Another time, she complained the cover of another book made the main character look like he was "going to a funeral and dressed accordingly."

In 1967, she apparently found out her latest book was already released without her receiving an advanced copy. She was in a "fury" when she found out the book was already on sale in Helsinki, of all places.

"It’s usually [available] in November and then it comes in very handy for sending to friends at Xmas time – but one can hardly send it as that now? I do think it’s treating your authors disgracefully."

More than anything, Christie was annoyed by aging. As a 59-year old, she wrote to a friend, Bertie Meyer, who was staging a play based on one of her books. "I've had letters now from different fans expressing surprise that I am 'such an old lady'," she wrote, adding about pictures of herself:

"Nobody likes [the photos], possibly, perhaps, because they don’t seem to have been touched up at all? All lines and wrinkles – and dash it all, I'm not 70 – not yet 60."

If you want to read more of Christie's moaning and complaining (so, you know, you feel like a cheery lad by comparison), the festival will be held July 20-23.

First edition of "Alice in Wonderland" to go to auction, still considered sort of ugly.

When Alice in Wonderland was ready to be first published in 1865, the book's contented author, Lewis Carroll, was fairly pleased with its outcome. But the illustrator of Alice, Sir John Tenniel, didn't quite feel the same way though.

Tenniel wasn't just unhappy--he hated how his illustrations looked when they were printed by the machines.

A wonky looking Cheshire Cat meets Alice.

In June of 1865, 2,000 copies of Alice were printed, but the release was held. Fifty copies were sent to Carroll to own and distribute as he wished to friends and loved ones. Once Tenniel saw the drawings though, he turned to Carroll and begged a second chance.

On August 2, 1865, Carroll wrote in his diary, "Finally decided on the reprint of Alice, and that the first 2,000 shall be sold as waste paper." Somewhere, a town dump unknowingly became the richest library in England, if only for a day.

Carroll even bit the financial bullet for his collaborator, taking a £600 hit to do a second printing. In 2016 money, that's the equivalent of Carroll giving his friend nearly a £69,000 do-over.

In the end, the book was reprinted with different drawings and became an international treasure. Carroll's original fifty copies were handed out to various people, and over time the majority were lost. Twenty-three still exist, but only six belong in private hands. One of those six copies goes to auction this month through Christie's for an estimated purchase price of $2-to-$3 million.

With no regrets and no do-overs, hopefully.




photo: Christie's Images Ltd.

Does a computer know your reading habits better than you know them yourself?

Avid reader...of lips.

Who knows better what will become a bestseller? A human being or computer?

Inkitt is a website and publisher that believes computers know best. Kind of like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, except less easily offended and more interested in your penchant for sassy beach reads. Inkitt suspects that by using various algorithms they can track readers' collective behavior patterns, at least when it comes to the behavior of purchasing books.

Writers can publish passages and chapters of their books in the community forums of Inkitt and receive feedback from members. Inkitt then uses a proprietary algorithm to detect the likelihood of the "stickiness" of pieces, as the website's co-founder and CEO Ali Albazaz once described it.

Using this method, and through Tor Books publishing, Inkitt will release the first book using a data-driven focus. Bright Star, a young adult story, will challenge the algorithm next year.

J.K. Rowling shares some rejection letters--after she already was published.

Harry Potter author J,K, Rowling released on Twitter two rejection letters she received from publishing houses--after she had already created the world of Hogwart's and wizardry.

The only catch? She wrote under a pseudonym: Robert Galbraith.

The novel was Rowling's second adult book, The Cuckoo's Calling, which was released in 2013 under the fake name. The letters being made public were in response to a fan's Twitter question if there were any rejection letters Rowling would like to share regarding Harry Potter. Rowling claimed those were in a box in the attic (sure, right), but she had others--the Robert Galbraith letters.

One publishing house, Constable & Robinson, wrote Rowling at the time that the business "could not publish [Cuckoo's Calling] with commercial success." As if being rejected wasn't bad enough, Constable & Robinson tell 'Galbraith' that maybe "a writers' group or writing course may help" with feedback. That's right. Go back to school for a course. That's the equivalent of an intellectual backhand, full of knuckles and dismissiveness.

"I wasn't going to give up until every single publisher turned me down, but I often feared that would happen," Rowling explained.

The joke was on Constable & Robinson and other varying publishing houses, as the book was eventually accepted by Sphere, an imprint of Little, Brown, & Company. Once the world knew it was Rowling and not Galbraith writing the book, it went from the 4,709th bestselling book on Amazon to number one, as well as spawned two sequels.

As for Constable & Robinson, the reason they aren't a super commercial success and J.K. Rowling is is because Constable & Robinson is run by...Constable & Robinson.

Maybe there's a publishing course they can take that might help.

It was fun reading 'To Kill a Mockingbird' in school while we had a chance.

Harper Lee died last month as a relative mystery in the publishing world, one who gave few interviews during the course of her lifetime and fewer hints as to what she ever wanted. There's little knowledge on Lee's behavior, quirks, life, beliefs, or the wishes for her estate after she died. Even Lee's last will was sealed by a judge in Alabama, keeping the public eye away from the Harper Lee enigma once again.

Now, Lee's estate--through a request made by the estate's lawyer, Tonja Carter--has demanded book publishing house Hachette cease selling its mass-market paperback edition of To Kill a Mockingbird, which is the most popular choice in schools across America. This means the cheapest version of the book, usually sold at $8.99, will no longer exist as of April 25th. Instead, the cheapest edition will now be paperback varieties costing $14.99 and $16.99.

What this means for Lee's estate is the potential for higher royalties from future book sales. What this means is a school likely won't make the book required reading much longer. What this means is a child no longer reads the book.

What this means is greed wins.

Study shows that the publishing industry is dominated by white women.

In a world where the glass ceiling keeps talented and skilled women from earning positions and salaries equal to their male peers, there is one area where the exact opposite phenomenon occurs.

Lee and Low released an extensive study last week detailing a curious fact about the world of books and book publishing.

The entire industry is dominated by women--and not just women, but white women--and not just white women, but college educated white women. A look at the numbers:

--Executive level: 59% women, 86% white
--Editorial level: 84% women, 82% white
--Sales level: 77% women, 83% white
--Publicity and marketing level: 84% women, 77% white
--Book reviewers: 87% women, 89% white

You usually only see such skewed employment numbers in the race and gender of NFL quarterbacks and corrupt Norwegian politicians.

The college educated angle has long been a barrier in the publishing world. As Salon notes, even the most basic of positions has required college degrees. Penguin Random House-NYC has a list of entry-level positions like a sales assistant that require a college degree and experience. It's the publishing equivalent of making sandwiches at Subway, except you can be $100,000 in student loan debt. Sounds appealing!

By comparison, people identifying themselves as black or African-American made up 2% of book publishing executives, 2% of editors, and 1% of book reviewers. In case you're wondering why editors keep getting mentioned as a priority, it's because they're the critical element in what turns into an actual book. They sign off on it.

In other words, when you browse the aisles at your local book store, you're looking at a selection largely chosen by college-educated white women. It's easy to pretend there's no bias to be had, that equality reigns supreme in publishing, but outsiders to the empowered clique disagree. Take 2015's Man Booker winner Marlon James, who pulled no punches when he said, "We writers of color spend way too much time pandering to the white woman."

If there's a literary Molotov cocktail, Marlon James just lobbed it. It's now a matter if the thought ever catches fire.

Romanian prisoners are pumping out scientific books. Or are they?

Potential Romanian criminal mastermind.

Romania--that little European chestnut best known for goat farming and the gymnastic stylings of Nadia Comăneci--has a law that states a prisoner can have 30 days taken off their term if they publish a book of scientific merit. The law came from the Communist era when imprisoned intellectuals were given incentive to do something worthwhile since they were viewed as generally worthless as laborers. See, kids? It pays to study if you think you'll ever turn to a life of crime.

According to a report, prisoners rarely used that incentive. Then, suddenly, after a crackdown on corruption in recent years sent a number of wealthy elites to prison, the number of books published by Romanian prisoners crept up to 90 in 2014. That leaped to 340 books in 2015.

Reports trickled out of the amazing literary feats occurring inside the prison walls. One 212-page book was allegedly written in 7 hours. Another prisoner, an apparent deadbeat, took 12 hours to write a 180-page book. That's faster than I wrote this sentence.

An investigation behind the blossoming book production points to the wealthy prisoners paying professors at various colleges and universities to ghostwrite the texts. "The quality of the work is poor, and some are bluntly copied," one expert told the Associated Press.

Like you, my faith in the Romanian prison system has been shaken to its core.

Variety of 'Game of Thrones' pastry is surprisingly realistic, probably delicious.

You've never really enjoyed a dessert unless it's based on a literary theme and possibly makes you question your mortality.

So good news for you! HarperCollins is releasing a cookbook next month based on Game of Thrones, with the title of--wait for it, wait...for...it--Game of Scones. And it's as lovely and horrifying all the same.

Case in point, here's the montage for a sweet delight called 'Oberyn's Smashing Surprise':

But on a lighter note, there are these: Bran Muffins.

Get it? Get it? Ehhh.

Hodor!



photos: Orion Books/HarperCollins, via Time

Twenty academic books that changed the world--at least according to the U.K.

In advance of Academic Book Week next month, a panel of librarians, booksellers, and publishers in the U.K. have whittled down a list of two hundred academic books to twenty, creating a list they claim are the tomes that changed the world. Now, they want the general public to vote which book is the singularly most influential book that stands heads and shoulders above the rest.

Two works of the twenty are fiction: George Orwell's 1984, and the complete works of Shakespeare. (I gather they couldn't pick just one.)

The remaining eighteen books are all nonfiction, with a heavy leaning toward writers from Europe, and especially the United Kingdom. Indeed, only two writers are Americans by birth (Rachel Carson and Germaine Greer), and two were born elsewhere and moved to the United States at a later point in life (Albert Einstein and Thomas Paine).

Poor France only has one writer on the list: Simone de Beauvoir

I know I'm shocked--stunned, really--that a bunch of British experts find no use for anything French.

The complete list:

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft

Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

Orientalism by Edward Said

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

The Complete Works by William Shakespeare

The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer

The Making of the English Working Class by EP Thompson

The Meaning of Relativity by Albert Einstein

The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

The Republic by Plato

The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

The Uses of Literacy by Richard Hoggart

The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

Ways of Seeing by John Berger



Don't kid yourself. No one from Asia, Africa, or South America ever wrote anything that changed the world. Everyone in the U.K. knows this.

Don't call it a comeback: Paper books are holding off e-books.

LL Cool J famously rapped "Don't call it a comeback!" Granted he was talking about his rapping career, which wasn't that stellar before except for some middling songs that sporadically landed mid-chart once in awhile. But critics thought his career was over by the late 1980s, and yet "Mama Said Knock You Out" arrived in 1991, and proved tides can change.

This is all a gasbaggery way of connecting to a story in the New York Times that says the demise of paper books was greatly overstated, and the sales of eReaders and e-books have stalled.

According to the Times, digital books accounted for 20% of sales last year, the same amount as it did five years ago, and sales for the first five months of 2015 are down 10%.

Meanwhile, independent bookstores have 1,712 member stores in 2,227 locations, which is up from 1,410 member stores in 1,660 locations from five years ago.

And the dominant publishing houses? Well, they're building onto their houses, their warehouses specifically, vastly expanding in order to stock their book supplies. Hachette added 218,000 square feet to its warehouse, Simon & Schuster 200,000 square feet, and Penguin Random House 365,000 square feet.

So were paper books ever really on death's door? As industry experts and LL Cool J say, don't call it a comeback.

Horton hears a new book: New Dr. Seuss book to be released 24-years after his death.

Theodore Geisel--better known as Dr. Seuss--died 24-years ago, but that hasn't stopped his production.

The Cat in the Hat author and illustrator worked on multiple projects right up until his death, but that means multiple projects remained unpublished--and largely undiscovered--until now.

What Pet Should I Get? will be published on July 28, 2015, a project found in a box of sketches and text that Geisel completed before his death but remained largely unnoticed by his widow until 2013. The book features two characters previously seen in Dr. Seuss's earlier book, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. Likewise, at least two other brand new Dr. Seuss books will be released by publisher Random House from the same found sketches and text.

It's kind of like Dr. Seuss is Tupac with these posthumous releases. And I think we all know Dr. Seuss and Tupac were connected down deep.

Does Harper Lee really want to publish a sequel to 'To Kill a Mockingbird'? Some people doubt it.

Continuing the theme of old age being sigh-inducingly depresing...

Nearly two weeks after Harper Lee's publisher announced that the quiet, reclusive author was releasing a sequel to her famous,--and only--book, To Kill a Mockingbird, some experts have started questioning whether or not she truly wanted the sequel ever to be found, never mind released.

Now 88-years old, Lee has lived in an Alabaman nursing home in recent years after suffering a stroke in 2007. According to a story on Gawker, Lee's lawyer, Tonja Carter, once claimed that the novelist sometimes wasn't of sound mind when it came to signing documents.

Fast forward to 2014, and Carter apparently finds Lee's Mockingbird sequel in a pile of the author's papers. Go Set a Watchmen is set in the 1950s (Mockingbird took place during the 1930's Great Depression) and includes many of the same characters that appear in Mockingbird. But does Lee want it released? Carter claims she does.

Now tongues are wagging that Lee is being forced to publish a book she wanted hidden. The New York Times claims that the gossips in Monroeville, AL, swear Lee is not of sound mind and can't recognize old friends. But, as Florida State English professor Diane Roberts tells the AFP news wire, "There's just no way to judge it without talking to her [...] And no one's going to talk to her because even when she was in her best health, she was very private."

Publisher HarperCollins quotes Lee as saying she's "humbled and amazed" at the upcoming book release, while her lawyer, Carter, goes on the defensive in quotes to The New York Times, "[Lee] is a very strong, independent, and wise woman who should be enjoying the discovery of her long lost novel," Carter says. "Instead, she is having to defend her own credibility and decision-making."

But even Lee's former Methodist pastor, Rev. Thomas Butts has his doubts, telling the Times, "It is sort of strange it had not been found before."

When even a man of the cloth is raising an eyebrow in suspicion, something seems amiss.




Photo: HarperCollins

Publishing companies are embracing the idea of cubicles.

The leather couch. The Oriental rug. The little nook beside a recessed window, with stack of the great classics lining the wall.

Those are the offices of yesteryear in today's modern publishing house. At least for some.

According to the New York Times, gone are the days of 'Mad Men' styled window offices with plush accoutrements while some noble editor slaves away at the next great American novel. Today's publishing houses are adopting cubicles, mainly as a way to save money (Manhattan rent prices are steep after all), and publishing giant Hachette claims it's all for the best as a means to cut costs.

Hachette debated how deep to go with the cubicle look. According to the Times, "[Editor] Mr. Pietsch considered various permutations, including giving offices to only the 70 or so vice presidents, or the 12 members of the executive management board"--before deciding against it.

In case you're wondering how a major company hemorrhaging money can save money, they can limit their vice presidents to fewer than 70.





photo: Sasha Maslov, New York Times

Boston Globe columnist asks: Why do writers hate Amazon?

Because it's a giant conglomerate with financial interests to slowly monopolize the publishing industry, with the reach and wherewithal to smush a small, up-and-coming writer hoping for fairness like a mosquito under the thumb of Jeff Bezos at a cocktail party in the Hamptons.

Or, you know, you can read an opinion column in this week's Boston Globe with a headline asking about the strained relationship between writers and Amazon, one that also avoids really explaining anything. "Of course I love bookstores. But it behooves me to love Amazon, too," says the piece's author, Alex Beam. (Beam has a newly published book. So, you know.)

Cover all your bases, Beam. You don't want to irk Bezos.

Your Tumblr could win you a lucrative book publishing contract!!!

No, not really, but it's fun to live in a world of make believe. Mr. Roger's taught us all that.

Chronicle Books, based out of San Francisco, has announced that they're searching for a new book based on someone's Tumblr account.

They've published book versions of blogs before (they emphasize Fuck! i'm in my twenties and Dads are the Original Hipsters as two blogs-begat-books that are "hilarious"--which is cute, because Fuck! stopped being funny about twenty years ago), and are on the hunt for the newest wannabe Awkward Family Photos they can turn into a money making coffee table book.

Martin Rouse at Melville House mentions that last year's Chronicle search ended up in a book deal.

Moreover, last year’s winner actually did get that coveted publishing deal. Paul Laudiero’s Sh*t Rough Drafts (based on his tumblr of the same name) will be published on April 15th, and is available for pre-order on Amazon—clear evidence that he has #madeit and is #livinglarge.

You know what else is clear evidence?

Hashtags need to go away. #ThanksTwitter #Stopwritinglikethis #GAAAAAAAH #Mygrandmasaysi'mspecialbecauseiknowhowtousepunctuation





Photo and h/t: TheWeek

NaNoWriMo results: 42,008 people completed a novel.

Which means roughly 42,000 rejection notices from publishing houses are about to be mailed.

The Los Angeles Times reports that approximately 13% of the more than 310,000 participating in National Novel Writing Month crossed the finish line, which equates to writing 50,000 words of a novel during the month of November.

Not all completed novels written during NaNoWriMo are doomed to rejection. Noted books like Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants and Erin Morgenster's The Night Circus both originated during previous NaNoWriMos.

So, hey, let's hang out hats on that.

Texas school board battles over evolution versus creationism in biology textbooks--again.

Good news for everyone worried that logic was coming to Texas education!

A committee of Texas volunteer textbook reviewers (because this is how Texas works) looked over proposed science textbooks submitted for use throughout the school system and found what they allege are twenty factual errors. The most egregious textbook in question comes from Pearson Education, one of America's largest publishers, who--crazy as this sounds--has highly educated experts in their field write those textbooks, not a parent with some free time and a red pen in hand.

The volunteers brought forth this matter to the Texas Board of Education, which was in the process of making final decisions on science textbooks. The alleged errors range from how long it took the Earth to cool and issues regarding climate change, to natural selection with how species evolve.

Reviewers claim facts regarding climate change haven't been settled concretely enough by scientific research, while natural selection is suspect because "selection operates as a selective but not a creative force." It's kind of like how the United States sometimes wishes it was more creative in selecting Texas as a state all those years ago.

The Board directed three of its members to select a trio of experts to further analyze the textbook and return with their opinion on the facts for January's Board meeting.

Morrissey's 'Autobiography' is a classic.

Morrissey is like a poor man's John Lennon, if John Lennon had a froggier voice and better hair. He was the lead singer of The Smiths, a British band hugely popular in their homeland, but D.O.A. in America outside of indie band aficionados and practitioners of crying in the bathroom.

Morrissey's fan base is intense and obsessive, enough that Morrissey can pull some strings with the production of his autobiography, entitled--appropriately enough--Autobiography. Pull what strings, you say? Like having his book published through Penguin Books' Classics imprint, heretofore only known for releasing books known to humanity for generations. Also known as classics.

Penguin created the division nearly 70-years ago when they first published Homer's The Odyssey. In the decades since, every book by Penguin's Classics imprint has been the stuff you read in high school and college, the stuff that win awards and places on book shelves, the stuff by the likes of Francis Bacon, Jane Austen, John Steinbeck... Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mary Wollstonecraft...Julius Caesar, Ovid, and Charles Darwin.

And now, because he demanded, it's also the stuff of Morrissey.

The publisher of the Dalkey Archive Press is looking to hire.

Good news if you always wanted to recreate The Devil Wears Prada in the workplace environment, but only had a Wal-Mart budget.

The Dalkey Archive Press recently posted an advertisement for new job hires as it transitions its European base to London. John O'Brien, the director of Dalkey Archive, is very specific what he wants in new employees. Oh, and did I mention the following is for an unpaid job?

Any of the following will be grounds for immediate dismissal during the probationary period: coming in late or leaving early without prior permission; being unavailable at night or on the weekends; failing to meet any goals; giving unsolicited advice about how to run things; taking personal phone calls during work hours; gossiping; misusing company property, including surfing the internet while at work; submission of poorly written materials; creating an atmosphere of complaint or argument; failing to respond to emails in a timely way; not showing an interest in other aspects of publishing beyond editorial; making repeated mistakes; violating company policies. DO NOT APPLY if you have a work history containing any of the above.

Sounds like a charming work environment! And unpaid, too! What other lovely tidbits do you have, Mr. O'Brien, before I sign on?

[D]o not have any other commitments (personal or professional) that will interfere with their work at the Press (family obligations, writing, involvement with other organizations, degrees to be finished, holidays to be taken, weddings to attend in Rio, etc.)…

No vacation? Never see my family? Hopefully that elderly, dying relative won't keel off any time soon. Dying is so selfish, what--with their funerals and whatnot. Take a hint, grandma!