Bloggasm

Simon Owens: As the major publishers become more conservative and the smaller presses begin to expand, do you find yourself reviewing more small press titles?.

Ron Hogan: Well, we don’t really do reviews at Galleycat, because we’re pretty much just interested in the news angles and the industry gossip, and not so much whether the books are any good or not. As a private reader, though, I think it’s fair to say that I’ve become more aware of the smaller presses in general in the last few years, and discovered a number of good books.

Simon Owens: There have been many studies on how Amazon customer reviews affect book sales. Do you have any opinions on the matter?

Sarah Weinman: I’ve seen some of those studies and my natural skeptic always emerges — how were the parameters defined, and can we really quantify the effect customer reviews have? It’s also because Amazon sales don’t really account for that much of the overall sales picture for a particular book, so by extension, the number or the types of reviews that show up may have a negligible effect. I guess ultimately, my answer would be: let’s have more information and more tightly defined controls.

Simon Owens: Do you think that the small press is paving the way for the majors by creating new sub-genres and making them popular?

Ron Hogan: I honestly can’t think of a single “new sub-genre” that the small presses have created, let alone one that’s gone on to the majors. I know a number of small presses that are specializing in certain genres, like mystery and sci-fi, but I don’t see them radicalizing their fields on a literary level to any significant extent.

Simon Owens: How well do you think book/lit blogs promote books? Was the The LitBlog Co-op and their mission to promote little-known titles successful?

Sarah Weinman: Full disclosure: both Ron and I were founding members of the Co-Op (until the Galleycat gig came along) and I think we both still believe in the general idea that the combined efforts of the LBC members may make people more aware of certain books that were otherwise neglected — which might translate into higher sales. But just today I had lunch with a writer friend who says that the rise of the litblog has been a godsend in her ability to find books she loves more frequently, and the quality of her reading has increased dramatically. It’s because litblogs aren’t necessarily out to promote but when someone loves a book, he or she gets evangelical about letting other people know how good it is — I know that’s what I do on my own blog (Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind) and plan to continue doing so.

Simon Owens: More and more we’re seeing an experimental blend of fiction and nonfiction (for example, Eggers’ Staggering Genius). Every year in the forward of the Best American Essays, the current editor mentions the “death of the essay.” Do you agree at all, or is the memoir stronger than ever?

Ron Hogan: Apart from not being convinced that the opposite of the death of the essay is the memoir being stronger than ever, I’d have to say that I don’t find anything particularly experimental about what Dave Eggers was doing in that book. That’s just the sort of transformation of personal experience into comedy gold that writers like Jack Douglas have been working for decades, adding self-reflexitivity doesn’t suddenly make it experimental. If you want to see a real experimental blend of fact and fiction, rent the DVD of Orson Welles’ F FOR FAKE sometime. OK, I know that’s not a novel, in fact it’s not even a book, but if you’ve never seen it before, the first time you watch it will blow your mind. I’m still confused about half the art in the museums of Europe, fifteen years later.

Anyway, if the essay’s so dead, what the heck was Kurt Vonnegut doing all last month? A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY isn’t even that good a book, frankly, and people still ate it up.

Simon Owens: Do you agree that the major publishers are becoming more conservative in their selections and are less willing to take chances?

Sarah Weinman: There’s a huge fear culture in publishing — since no one really knows what books will sell, they have to make educated guesses. But because most publishers operate in some sort of hierarchical framework where those who acquire must get the approval of various higher-ups as well as additional departments, the guesses end up being based on track records, sales of similar books and future projections. Frankly, considering the system they have to work with, I’m amazed any book gets published at all, let alone as many thousands that do.

Simon Owens: What are the five blogs everyone should be reading (besides your own)?

Ron Hogan: 43folders.com, soul-sides.com, smartbitchestrashybooks.com, The Comics Curmudgeon, and Cute Overload

Sarah Weinman: Something Old, Nothing New , About Last Night, Contemporary Nomad, The Dark Side, and The Memory Project

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