Lecture Circuit

On Wednesday, the Happy Ending Music and Reading Series celebrated its 2-year anniversary of being held at the New York City venue, Joe’s Pub. After reading a short story, author A.M. Homes (pictured) conducted a 5-minute round of speed-dating with some audience members.

Four potential dates volunteered; two men and two women were asked a series of funny questions to determine compatibility. The audience voted by cheering on who they felt should go on a coffee date with Homes. The winner (pictured), was asked whether or not she would make a good stalker. She answered “yes.”

At Happy Ending events, authors are required to do two things. First, they must give a 10-minute reading. Then they must perform a risk on stage–hence Homes’ choice to speed-date.

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Thirty writers and actors joined a marathon reading of the classic holiday tale, A Christmas Carol at New York City’s Housing Works Bookstore Cafe before the holidays. In an article about the event, Bookish compared the reading to a similar reading staged by Charles Dickens in 1867. Editor’s note: We’ve added some commentary from Housing Works Books below.

A trailer for an animated adaptation is embedded above. Here’s more from  Bookish: “Dickens was greeted with eager fans who waited for tickets overnight in the cold, wrapped in blankets and huddled around bonfires to keep warm. The cops were called in for crowd control. On the first night of his New York tour, a sold-out audience of more than 2,000 literary socialites and powerful businessmen gathered in the grand Steinway Hall by Central Park. They cried, laughed, and interrupted with applause during Dickens’ reading.”

According to the article, only about “a half-dozen” of the attendees stayed for the entire 3-hour reading. Literary enthusiasts aren’t what they used to be in the 19th century. Bah, humbug!

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Author and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel (pictured, via) has been running In the Flesh for five years, but the reading series will end tonight.

We caught up with Bussel before her event to find out why she is ending the series. She also shared advice about how to run a better literary reading.

Q: Why are you ending this reading series?
A: It was not an easy decision to end ‘In The Flesh,’ but I realized that I’ve been losing money on it, because I pay for food, photography and videography. I do get a cut of the bar, but that doesn’t cover everything, and then once I decided to end it, I realized just how much time it takes each month to book readers, promote the event, and generally organize it.

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At Book Camp New York on Saturday, this GalleyCat editor gave a short presentation about lessons the publishing world can learn from the indie rock scene: “Love Is a Mixtape: What Publishers, Authors and Journalists Can Learn from Indie Rock and Music Blogs.”

We believe that the publishing world will someday resemble the fractured landscape of rock music. This new world will be filled with nimble publishers and self-published authors, but also feature dramatically reduced profits for many writers.

Drawing on a few key lessons from indie rock musicians and music bloggers, we have tried to reshape GalleyCat to prepare for these momentous changes. Below, we’ve listed the five lessons we learned alongside five pieces of advice from a indie rock band manager.

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On Tuesday night, GalleyCat hobnobbed with socialites, authors and celebrities at the annual Moth Ball at the classy Capitale on the Lower East Side. Moth GrandSLAM winners read one minute stories and Deborah Allen-Carr received the $5,000 MothShop Community Scholarship Award.

We caught up with some of the attendees to get author reading advice. Moth GrandSLAM winner Brad Lawrence had this suggestion: “One of the most valuable things at The Moth is the time-limit. It makes you hone things, there’s never a wasted line. There’s never filler–because you don’t have time for that. It’s very valuable–making every word count.”

Moth Ball host and author Jonathan Ames had some short and sweet advice: “Keep it short–no more than 15 minutes. Pick something funny.”

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Author Yann Martel has a straightforward method for choosing selections for public readings: “it has to work orally.” In an interview with the National Post, the novelist shared author reading advice.

Martel explained: “In other words, people have to be able to get it hearing it and hearing it only once. Description isn’t usually a good choice. Dialogue or a scene with action works best.”

In 2002, Martel won the Man Booker Prize for Life of Pi. The novel will be adapted into a 3-D film by Oscar-winning director, Ang Lee. Lee has cast 17-year-old Suraj Sharma as lead protagonist, Pi Patel.

Book Expo America (BEA) and the annual American Library Association’s convention (ALA) will continue to be held as separate events. The two groups had been discussing creating a combined event in the future.

Publishers Weekly broke the news last week: “[A joint] statement called the discussions ‘a positive experience’ and that ‘doors have been opened for other possible collaborative activities between ALA and the American Booksellers Association, the American Association of Publishers and Reed Exhibitions.’”

BEA 2011 is scheduled for May 23-May 26, 2011 in New York City. The ALA’s annual Conference is scheduled for June 23-28, 2011 in New Orleans, LA.

One author turned his book tour into an endurance test, taking a “zero emissions” bike tour down the West Coast to support his title–securing sponsorship from Flip Video, Cannondale Bikes, and other companies.

Today’s guest on the Morning Media Menu was novelist James Kaelan, explaining how he built his book tour for his debut novel, We’re Getting On.

Press play below to listen.

Here’s an excerpt from the interview: “I had the naive confidence that if the idea was good enough, we could pitch it to the right people and they would support it. I ended up being at least somewhat correct. Cannondale jumped right on it. [My publicist] Jessi Hector from Goldest Egg pitched them and they were like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s a great idea’ and set up a meeting and gave us bikes … You should know InDesign and be able to put together a good pitch deck. More important than the actual aesthetics of the presentation is just have the idea. I talk a lot about adding narrative to narrative–the story that sells your story.”

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The most epic of parking garages is located in the downtown Kansas City area. “The Community Bookshelf” features giant-sized spines of several great books including Joseph Heller‘s Catch-22, Plato‘s Republic, Ray Bradbury‘s Fahrenheit 451, Ralph Ellison‘s Invisible Man, and E.B. White‘s Charlotte’s Web.

According to the official website: “It runs along the south wall of the Central Library’s parking garage on 10th Street between Wyandotte Street and Baltimore Avenue. The book spines, which measure approximately 25 feet by 9 feet, are made of signboard mylar. The shelf showcases 22 titles reflecting a wide variety of reading interests as suggested by Kansas City readers and then selected by The Kansas City Public Library Board of Trustees.”

Answer this: If you had to pick an epic book worthy of a giant manifestation, which one would it be? For this GalleyCat correspondent it would be Mitch Albom‘s Tuesdays with Morrie because it made me cry giant tears.

While building her book tour, one writer decided to add hotel stops to the list of bookstores and book clubs she would visit–complete with hotel-themed promotions.

Today’s guest on the Morning Media Menu was Alix Strauss, author of the novel, Based Upon Availability. She shared tips for connecting with book clubs and explained why she targeted hotels for her book tour.

Strauss explained: “[My] outreach was something that matched the book … For Based Upon Availability (which is about eight women who pass through the doors of the Four Seasons hotel) my thinking was–let’s reach out to the hotels. It’s a great way for me to promote this novel in a venue that matches the theme.”

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