Wed 30 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Celebrating | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Gavin
Edward Gauvin’s translation of Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s collection A Life on Paper: Stories has received a $1,500 Hemingway Grant from the French government!
Hound in VA
Sun 27 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Vincent McCaffrey | 6 Comments| Posted by: Gavin
Nice way to end the year in Hound: Jay Strafford at Virginia’s Richmond Times-Dispatch does a nice round-up of some recent debut mystery novels and has this (among other nice things, it’s worth reading the review) to say about Vincent McCaffrey’s:
“If you favor a leisurely but still intriguing mystery with amiable characters and a devotion to the printed word, Hound will provide a pleasant diversion. As much about books — and love and knowledge and family — as about murder, Hound is the first in McCaffrey’s projected trilogy, and book lovers will eagerly await Henry’s next outing.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch
ebooks are the answer
Thu 24 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Gavin
in case the shops are closing and you have no Xmas presents. Or nothing to read. Next spring we’ll have an ebook store going but in the meantime, if the special someone (or Aunt Tammie) needs a last minute gift, send her or him an ebook!
(PS If you have no money, send them one of our Creative Commons books—they’ll never know the difference!)
Merry Christmas Eve one and all!
2 (UK) Pretty Monsters
Thu 17 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link, Publishing | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Gavin
Fun news from the UK where Canongate have “teamed up with children’s specialist Walker Books to create a young adult imprint, packaging the Scottish firm’s books for a younger audience.”
Why fun? Next paragraph, please:
“The imprint, Walker Canongate, launches in July, with four titles – Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, Niccolo Ammaniti’s I’m Not Scared, Kelly Link’s Pretty Monsters and Matt Haig’s The Radleys, all of which are books that have been, or will be, published on the Canongate adult list.
“A further unnamed title is due out in the same year. All of the titles will have different jacket designs, and some will be “abridged for the YA market”, or have additional content, such as teaching aids, for schools.”
Which means, we think, that it will come out in 2 editions in the UK with maybe 2 different covers. So, fun!
Here’s a recent review of PM and an interview with Kelly over at The Short Review—where you can also win a copy.
Apparently they didn’t
Thu 17 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., blind consumerism | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Gavin
know what it takes.
Och aye
Tue 15 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Pop, YouTube | 2 Comments| Posted by: Gavin
(via)
Ebook rights
Mon 14 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., ebooks | 3 Comments| Posted by: Gavin
The NYTimes reported yesterday on Random House’s rights grab on their backlist.
We’d like to point out to authors and agents that our royalty rate on ebooks is 50% of the net.
On the somewhat typical $9.95 ebook Small Beer Press receives 50% of the retail, so call it $5. So the author receives $2.50. Not bad. That’s more than the 7.5-10% of retail that we can do on paperbacks and equivalent to 10% of retail on a $25 hardcover.
On the small percentage of ebooks sold directly from our site the math goes like this:
Retail: $9.95
Paypal: $0.59
Net: $9.36
Author receives: $4.68
Just saying.
Random start to the week
Mon 14 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Books, Carol Emshwiller, Interstitial Arts, Vincent McCaffrey | 2 Comments| Posted by: Small Beer Press
Thanks to everyone who blogged and tweeted and got the word out on our sale, it continues apace. The Mike FM radiothon raised $93,700 for Franciscan, which is just amazing. Yay and yay and yay!
And, nice segue, there’s a good review of Interfictions 2 here from King Rat, who, awesomely, donated the cost of the book to Franciscan Hospital for Children. Another review. And David Soyka @ Black Gate.
List-lovers, here’s a good one: io9.com included Carol Emshwiller’s novel The Mount in their 20 Best Science Fiction Books of the Decade. It’s another interesting list (of sf+f) and of course works as a great conversation starter. The Mount received the Philip K. Dick Award and is indeed a
deceptively simple story about humans revolting against a group of alien conquerers who love humanity – as pets they can ride on.
Hound is 20% off at RiverRun and so are all of their Forty Favorite Books of 2009—great list of books; we advise stocking up.
Nancy Pearl always has some good reading recommendations.
Rain Taxi are having their annual auction which is always good for a pressie … or maybe something for yourself.
Kaleidotrope subscriptions are on sale—grab one before Fred changes his mind!
io9 links to the must have squid + owl.
Red Sox, radio, Interfictions 2
Thu 10 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | 1 Comment| Posted by: Gavin
The Red Sox just visited Franciscan but I only saw them leave because I was doing something else—but they visited Ursula and Kelly. Pictures were taken, by them, not us! They’re so young! And, so big! Seemed very nice. Apparently signed baseballs and took pics and made some of the kids (and maybe one or two of the parents) v. happy.
We’re on the radio tomorrow morning, call in and you too can take part in one of the oldest traditions in radio: pay to play!
Thanks to everyone who bought books at the sale or full price! You are awesome. We’ll wait until the end of the year to add up the donation but it should be a couple of hundred dollars.
We’ve run out of Interfictions 2 at the office (awesome!) so those orders have to wait a few days until the 4 more cartons of it we ordered come in.
Magic for Beginners has been included in a Best of the Decade lists from Salon—yay!
Kirkus Reviews is closing. What?!
Publishing is all about the tees. (Not a sic.) Go, Eric!
Nice review of our favorite bibliomystery Hound at Gumshoe.
And that’s the week that was.
Mon 7 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Rotating Cleverness | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Gavin
Sale . . . Sale . . . Sale . . . Sale . . .
Kelly & Gavin on Mike FM & a sale—all for Franciscan
Mon 7 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., radio, sale, Ursula | 31 Comments| Posted by: Gavin
It’s time for our once-every-ten-years end-of-the-decade sale and this year we’re donating a portion of the proceeds to Franciscan Children’s Hospital where our daughter, Ursula, has lived for the past couple of months.
Ursula, who was due on June 16th, was born on February 23rd, 2009, weighing 1 lb, 9 ounces. She stayed in the neonatal ICU at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield in an incubator for the first couple of months while we lived close by at the Ronald McDonald House. In May we expected “to bring Ursula, who [was at that point] currently well over 4 lbs, home in about two weeks.” That didn’t quite work out. After a PDA ligation, laser eye surgery, a g-tube procedure (eating required so much energy she would have had a hard time growing without one), and a tracheostomy to help out her lungs, which have been, and (will continue to be for the next year) the real issue, two months later, on July 21st, we did indeed get her home.
That was a great day—but not a great night. So the next morning we called an ambulance and she went back to Baystate Medical Center. There she went back on a ventilator and after a couple of days was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension. After two weeks in the pediatric ICU, she was transferred to one of the meccas of modern medicine, Children’s Hospital Boston. After two weeks there—where we were able to sleep in Ursula’s futuristic ICU room (think Grey’s Anatomy—in space!)—Ursula was transferred to Franciscan Children’s Hospital in the Brighton area of Boston, ironically next door to the house we lived in 10 years ago. We found an apartment which is a 5-minute walk away, moved in at the end of August, and we’ve been here ever since. (All things continuing as they are, Ursula will come home in spring.)
Life has been hectic, and at times quite difficult, but everyone says being a parent is like that. Ursula is an absolute joy & a delight—and also the reason that we won’t be traveling for a while! Her lung condition, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, means that for the next few years we’ll need to keep her away from people during the flu season, and we’re investing big in Purell. The trach means she can’t speak, but she is fluent in kicking and smiling. She’s nine months old now, but only about five months old “corrected,” referring to her original due date, which is how you are supposed to think of a premature baby, in terms of weight, development, etc. She’s 13 and a half pounds, and by the time she is two or three years old, the damaged areas of her lungs will be small enough in proportion to the areas of healthy lung tissue that she shouldn’t need either supplementary oxygen or her trach. We’re learning a lot about babies, respiratory care, and how awesome nurses, doctors, and respiratory therapists are. At every hospital we’ve been to, we meet cool people because of Ursula.
Franciscan gets a lot of support (the Boston Bruins, big supporters of the place, are going holiday shopping for the kids on Tuesday!—and the Red Sox are coming by this week) but, hey, you know how it is in the health care zone: there’s always more needed. Ursula’s care is topnotch (and we strongly recommend and are eternally grateful to Health New England and Mass Health): from the 24-hour doctor, nurse (how do they stay so nice during the 12-hour—sometimes 16!—shifts dealing with all the poor, sick, cranky babies?!), and respiratory therapists to the speech (Ursula’s favorite person!), physical, and occupational therapists, to the cleaners who keep the unit sparkling, to the cheery people at the cafeteria (mmm!) and the front desk where we traipse by 3 or 4 times a day. And this is just one floor, the third, respiratory (with 24 beds), in one building of seven. They do everything for kids here: one of the playgrounds out in the back is set up for wheelchairs, it is awesome. It’s a huge place and every day hundreds of people come here to work and what they do is help kids.
So here are two things where maybe you can help—there’s a third which involves Holly Black, Kelly, and Cassandra Clare in Boston, but more on that at some later point.
First: radio. Second: sale.
1) Radio: This Friday, December 11th, from 7 AM – 7 PM, Boston radio station 93.7 Mike-FM is doing a fundraiser for Franciscan. The idea is fantastic—and totally open to manipulation(!):
Operators will be standing by LIVE at 866-931-MIKE on Friday, December 11th from 7AM to 7PM to take song requests and donations. While any and all donations are warmly welcomed, remember that the bigger the donation the better chance you have of hearing your song exactly when you want!! Donations can also be made here.
About the Benefit:
The Mike-FM Request for Help to benefit the Franciscan Hospital for Children is a day long, celebrity hosted radio-thon pay-for-play which helps to raise money and awareness for the Hospital. Over the course of the 12 hours, Mike-FM will play any song you want to hear… for a price.
Celebrities will be paired with parents and from 9 AM – 10 AM Kelly Tuthill (celebrity news anchor from NewsCenter 5) will be on with Kelly Link and Gavin Grant (parents of the delightful Ursula).
Please call 866-931-MIKE and request good songs!
2) Sale: we’ve been trying to work out an interesting sale and we think we’ve come up with a nice and easy one:
All our books are on sale—and $1 from every book (or ebook, zine, subscription, etc.) goes to Franciscan.
And, if you order items at full price, we will donate the difference between the full price and the sale price to Franciscan!
All our preorder titles are on sale, too! (They’re marked “Remainder” until we get it fixed.)
Paperbacks are less than $10—many quite a bit less!—and hardcovers are up to 40% off. Or, of course, more.
Media mail shipping within the US/Canada is included in the price (a note on mailing dates) and can be upgraded to Priority Mail.
Go wild! Feel free to do all your holiday shopping here! And please do spread the word, thank you.
A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2011
Sun 6 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Forthcoming, Preorders | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Gavin
August 2010
The perfect supplement to any writer’s life, this new edition of A Working Writer’s Daily Planner is even better than before, packed with more of the information writers need to organize their work schedules, track upcoming deadlines, and learn about grant opportunities, contests, and workshop programs. For 2011 we turned to those who know best what writers want—writers themselves—and asked them what resources they’d find most useful. The result is a unique and indispensable tool that makes it easy for writers to keep track of the practical, business end of writing, leaving more time for them to actually spend writing.
If you’re a writer, you’ll immediately see the advantage of gathering so much information into one spiral-bound compendium: application deadlines are built right into the calendar, along with spotlights on writing markets and helpful online resources. You’ll also find information on writing conferences, advice on formatting manuscripts, suggested readings, and the dos and don’ts of submitting your work to journals, magazines, and literary agents. If there’s a writer in your life, this calendar will make the perfect gift.
And because every professional writer needs distractions, we’ll sneak in peculiar tales of the writing life, plenty of inspiring art and photos, writing prompts, and, as always, a few surprises too.
A Life on Paper: Stories
Sun 6 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Forthcoming, Preorders | 2 Comments| Posted by: Gavin
May 25, 2010
The celebrated career of Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud is well known to readers of French literature. This comprehensive collection—the first to be translated into English—introduces a distinct and dynamic voice to the Anglophone world. In many ways, Châteaureynaud is France’s own Kurt Vonnegut, and his stories are as familiar as they are fantastic.
A Life on Paper presents characters who struggle to communicate across the boundaries of the living and the dead, the past and the present, the real and the more-than-real. A young husband struggles with self-doubt and an ungainly set of angel wings in “Icarus Saved from the Skies,” even as his wife encourages him to embrace his transformation. In the title story, a father’s obsession with his daughter leads him to keep her life captured in 93,284 unchanging photographs. While Châteaureynaud’s stories examine the diffidence and cruelty we are sometimes capable of, they also highlight the humanity in the strangest of us and our deep appreciation for the mysterious.
Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud is the author of eight novels and almost one hundred short stories, and he is a recipient of the prestigious Prix Renaudot and the Prix Goncourt de la nouvelle. His work has been translated into twelve languages.
Edward Gauvin has published Châteaureynaud’s work in AGNI Online, Conjunctions, Harvard Review, Words Without Borders, The Café Irreal, and The Brooklyn Rail. The recipient of a residency from the Banff International Literary Translation Centre, he translates graphic novels for Tokyopop, First Second Books, and Archaia Studios Press.
Meeks
Sun 6 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Forthcoming, Preorders | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Gavin
July 20, 2010
No woman will have Ben without a proper bachelor’s suit . . . and the tailor refuses to make him one. Back from war with a nameless enemy, he’s just discovered that his mother is dead and that his family home has been reassigned by the state. As if that isn’t enough, he must now find a wife, or he’ll be made a civil servant and given a permanent spot in one of the city’s oppressive factories.
Meanwhile, Meeks, a foreigner who lives in the park and imagines he’s a member of the police, is hunted by the overzealous Brothers of Mercy. Meeks’s survival depends on his peculiar friendship with a police captain—but will that be enough to prevent his execution at the annual Independence Day celebration?
A dark satire rendered with all the slapstick humor of a Buster Keaton film, Julia Holmes’s debut novel evokes the strange charm of a Haruki Murakami novel in a dystopic setting reminiscent of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Meeks portrays a world at once hilarious and disquieting, in which frustrated revolutionaries and hopeful youths suffer alongside the lost and the condemned, just for a chance at the permanent bliss of marriage and a slice of sugar-frosted Independence Day cake.
Early Reader Reaction:
“Meeks is a feat of desolating literary spellcraft, irresistible for its bleak hilarity and the sere brilliance of Julia Holmes’s prose.”
—Wells Tower (author of Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned)
“Oh bachelors, poor bachelors, pining for their pale suits—these needy men, so poignant in their search for wives, will break your heart in twain. Splendid and limping, hilarious and painful, a quiet perfection in its idiosyncrasy, the powerful alternate reality of Meeks is also an unforgettable truth. You’ll never see marriage the same way again.”
—Lydia Millet (author of How the Dead Dream and Oh Pure and Radiant Heart)
“The life of a bachelor is always hard, but in Meeks it’s truly desperate: if you don’t have the right suit then it’s either the Brothers of Mercy or the factories. Julia Holmes’ lucid prose tightens the noose of this curious world around your readerly neck before you even know what’s hit you. An invisible enemy, a pageant, a fashion system whose signification would stymie Roland Barthes, and a society that demands everyone rush quickly to fill their odd social slot, makes Meeks a unique (and uniquely imaginative) nightmare and a severely engrossing read.”
—Brian Evenson (author of Fugue State and The Open Curtain)
“Pity the young gentleman set loose in this world of cruel tailors, perpetual war, large-scale civic pastry and the untold rivalries of the Bachelor House! With her uncommonly assured first novel, Julia Holmes channels the surreal paranoia of Poe and the dark-comic melodrama of a lost Guy Maddin script. The strangest, most compelling debut you’ll read this year.”
—Mark Binelli (author of Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die!)
Mailing dates for Xmas, etc.
Fri 4 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., holidays, post office, shipping, usps | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Gavin
Just looked at the last mailing dates before Christmas/your holiday of choice on the post office site. Not entirely sure what some of these mean and I don’t see Media Mail but if you are ordering from us and want it to arrive pre-Dec. 25th here are the dates.
Media Mail (7-10 days, 2 days in Massachusetts) is included in all our prices (except special sales…) and Priority Mail is here.
| Domestic Mail Class/Product | Cut Off Date |
|---|---|
| First Class Mail | Dec-21 |
| Priority Mail | Dec-21 |
| Express Mail* | Dec-23 |
| Parcel Post | Dec-16 |
| DBMC Drop Ship | Dec-19 |
| DDU Drop Ship | Dec-23 |
| International Mail** | |
| Express Mail Military APO/FPO** |
International Mail
| International Mail Addressed To | Global Express Guaranteed® (GXG)4*** | Express Mail® International (EMS)5* | Priority Mail® International (PMI)6* | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Africa | Dec-18 | Dec-12 | Dec-4 | |
| Asia/Pacific Rim | Dec-18 | Dec-17 | Dec-11 | |
| Australia/New Zealand | Dec-18 | Dec-17 | Dec-11 | |
| Canada | Dec-22 | Dec-18 | Dec-14 | |
| Caribbean | Dec-21 | Dec-17 | Dec-14 | |
| Central & South America | Dec-21 | Dec-12 | Dec-4 | |
| Mexico | Dec-22 | Dec-17 | Dec-11 | |
| Europe | Dec-21 | Dec-17 | Dec-14 | |
| Middle East | Dec-18 | Dec-17 | Dec-14 |
Futurama calendar writers …
Thu 3 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Futurama, John Crowley | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Gavin
… send us an email and we will send you some books! Even thought the calendar is on the wall next to the fridge (mmm, beer) I just turned the page over today from November to December and discovered that we missed John Crowley’s birthday on December 1st— Darn! Happy Birthday, John!
And, last week, one of the things they recommended was to read Kelly’s story “Louise’s Ghost.” Who are these people? They are awesome and we want to send them some books!
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