Cassoulet

This sounds like a lot of work, but it's really not that bad. Do your shopping and soak the beans the day before. Start the recipe at least 5 hours before you want the cassoulet on the table, though it will sit for 20 minutes or so after it comes out of the oven.

This recipe serves 6.

For the beans:

2 cups navy or Great Northern beans (soaked for 12 hours, change the water a few times)

bundle together with kitchen string:

a few sprigs of parsley, thyme, and rosemary

1 bay leaf

1 celery stalk, cut in half

1 green end of a leek

1/2 of a medium onion

1 whole clove (press it into the onion half so it doesn't get lost in the beans)

1 medium carrot, peeled and cut in half

1 can whole peeled tomatoes with juice, chopped

2 ounces salt pork (also called fatback), cut into 1/2" cubes

1/2 lb. pork shoulder, cut into 3/4" cubes

1 smoked ham hock

1 T. olive oil

The rest of the ingredients for the cassoulet:

1 garlic clove

2 legs duck confit, remove and save some of the confit fat, remove skin (discard), pull meat from bones

1/2 lb. garlic sausage, cut into 1/2" slices (about 3 sausages)

4 cups very course breadcrumbs or croutons (I cut up stale bread, toss it with olive oil, salt and pepper, dry it out in a low oven for half an hour, then crush into rough breadcrumbs.)

Cook the beans:

• Bundle the parsley, bay leaf, rosemary, thyme, celery, and leek with kitchen string.

• Heat olive oil in large pot. Add salt pork and cook until golden (about 5 minutes). Add the pork shoulder and brown on all sides (about 8 minutes).

• Add the remaining ingredients to the bean pot: the bundled herbs, onion half with whole clove, carrot, tomatoes and their juice, ham hock, and the soaked beans. Add enough cold water to cover by 1 to 2 inches (about 8 cups). Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer until beans are tender but not falling apart (40 to 50 minutes). (I used a pressure cooker to make the beans and it only took 14 minutes.)

Prepare the cassoulet—preheat the oven to 300°:

• When the beans are done, discard the onion, carrot, and herb bundle. Transfer the ham hock to a cutting board and remove the meat when it is cool enough to handle. Dice the meat and return it to the bean pot. (I read another recipe that had you puree the meat with a garlic clove to make a paste, then stir it into the beans.)

• Use the confit duck fat to saute the sausage pieces just until browned on each side. Set aside.

• Rub the cut side of a piece of garlic over inside of a dutch oven. Use a slotted spoon to transfer half of the beans to the dutch oven, spreading it evenly.

• Arrange the sausage and duck confit on top of the beans and cover with the remaining beans. Snug the ingredients and smooth the top.

• Add cooking liquid to almost cover the beans but not quite. Reserve the remaining cooking liquid. Transfer the pot to the oven and cook, uncovered, for 2 hours. Check every 30 minutes and add more cooking liquid as needed to keep the level just below the surface. Do not stir.

• After the cassoulet has cooked for 2 hours, arrange the breadcrumbs over the surface. Cook another 1 to 1 1/2 hours until beans are tender.

Cahors is the recommended wine for cassoulet. Our guests brought a salad and glazed carrots as a side dish. Creme brulee and brandy were the perfect ending to the meal, though no one could move from the dinner table.

It sounds like a lot of work, but it is a winter necessity at least once a year. Believe it or not, this is a fairly quick rendition of the dish—I've made the recipe from the Silver Palate New Basics cookbook and it took two days. This recipe is from an old Martha Stewart Living article I happened upon.

Signing off

Who knew that when I signed up for an Online Marketing class and Magazine Editing I would spend all my time writing. It has been my most challenging term in graduate school and a kick in the pants.

The Online Marketing class is a great addition to the publishing program. Who can doubt that the market is going online in droves, and online is where we must talk to our audience. Learning about all the new and emerging technologies is mind boggling, but once you get your toes wet, it seems slightly less intimidating.

I now believe that the online strategy must be central in any marketing effort. Marty's class has introduced new ways to think about selling books to the public, and we, as students, need to figure out how to apply those ideas to Ooligan Press.

Despite the bad news about GACP and our shaky distribution, I feel optimistic about Ooligan's future. We have two books coming out that could gain a good deal of attention for the press—Oregon at Work and A Heart For Any Fate. The New York Times has requested a review copy of OAW, and Booklist has asked for HAF—both huge accomplishments.

Also, Ooligan Press recently won a grant to produce a guide to sustainable printing from Portland State University. With a new direction towards sustainability in publishing, the press could become a leader in finding greener solutions in printing and distribution. I believe that smaller, less centralized publishers and sustainable production are key to the future of the industry, and Ooligan is moving in the right direction.

I have a lot of faith in the enthusiasm and determination of the students in the program, and I appreciate the wisdom and leadership of the faculty. Whatever twists and turns await the industry and Ooligan Press, the new talent coming out of the publishing program will be able to handle it.

Peering through the shroud

After this week's bad news about the GACP layoffs and Ooligan's uncertain book distribution channels, it is difficult to see past the next few months and the critical launches that are in jeopardy. I think Oregon at Work and A Heart For Any Fate should be the turning point for Ooligan's future as a viable press, but this turn of events is another huge roadblock to our success.

Maybe the layers of middle men and markups is part of the reason the industry is falling apart. It has gotten too bloated and slow and unresponsive to survive. Maybe the industry is going through a necessary shedding of excess that will bottom out, leaving a core ready to be rebuilt by a new generation of publishers.

As Jeffrey Selin of the Writers' Dojo said, there will always be a market for stories—people are consuming more content than ever before. We just don't know what the format will be.

I love Brent's imagined 100mile Law, where a future Congress has limited the production and transport of books to a 100-mile radius. You don't have to look much further than the trend toward buying local, sustainable food to see that the idea could spread to other industries as the world's resources become more expensive and scarce.

I'm rooting for small, independent publishers to take over the industry. Behemoth corporations cannot respond to rapid changes in today's marketplace—there are too many layers. Instead, smaller publishers can focus on regional titles and roll out nationally as word of mouth (online interest) spreads. Books will be printed in smaller quantities, producing less waste.

There's every reason to expect improvements in book production—it's already happening with POD and digital short-run. I don't believe the physical book will ever be replaced by a digital format—humans are collectors and like to be surrounded by their treasure. But I can imagine books being printed with nonpolluting, sustainable materials that eliminate much of the toxins from production. And as the printing industry also becomes more nimble and compact, printing will be done locally instead of being shipped around the world.

In ten years, writers will still be slaving over stories, and people will clamor for them whether they are presented in book form or on the screen. I would like to see a huge network of small publishers delivering those books to the public in a responsible, efficient way. And I hope that great writing will always find its audience. I believe that it will.

All a twitter over social networking

Just when I join the club, it becomes uncool. Apparently, social networking has been deemed a waste of time and a detriment to human relationships. Or so say a number of articles that I came across this week. Has anyone else noticed a surge in commentary on this subject recently?

Something about Twitter seems to really piss people off. The Daily Beast ran two articles deriding the network this past week.

In "Twitter Jumped The Shark This Week," Mark McKinnon argues that the use of social networking has spun out of control. He calls the onslaught of emerging networks a "social media arms race."

McKinnon believes that building huge networks of friends does not improve "meaningful communication." Instead, it robs people of quality time they could be investing in those who are truly important in their lives.

He also speculates that, since members of Congress have jumped on the band wagon—twittering during President Obama's speech this week—its days of being the new, hip thing are over.

His colleague at The Daily Beast, Lee Woodruff, didn't have anything nicer to say in her article, "Let's Stop The Twitter Madness."  She wonders, who has time for this? If you are sending, reading, or replying to Twitter messages, isn't there something else you should be doing?

An article in this week's Economist put the idea of social networking into perspective. Those guys are such smarty pants—they actually applied a scientific theory to the debate.

In a nutshell, they asked the in-house sociologist at Facebook to "crunch some numbers" to determine the average size of member networks and the average number of frequent interactions within a member network.

The numbers supported the Dunbar theory—extrapolated from "the brain sizes and social networks of apes." The human brain can maintain a network of about 150 people (the Facebook study found the average friend network to be 120). But that most keep close interaction with only a handful of people. Again the Facebook numbers agreed—frequent interactions averaged about seven.

I agree with the criticisms of Twitter. In less than two months, I opened an account, checked in regularly, then deemed it ridiculous and closed my account. With Facebook, however, I'm just getting started. I only have 43 friends—far from average.

I may lose my fascination with all the random posts of acquaintances. But at the moment, I'm having fun. It provides endless entertainment when, yes, I should be doing something more productive.

I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee

I dutifully read all the assigned books in middle and high school—I was a diligent student and always did my homework. But I never read for pleasure. It just didn't occur to me, and it wasn't a tradition in my home.

The summer after my freshman year in college, I decided I wanted to be a well-read person. I wanted to read all the classics. I'm not sure why this idea got into my head, but I was determined to spend the summer becoming literary.

I met with a friend who I considered to be very smart and asked him for suggestions. He named dozens of books off the top of his head and highly recommended The Grapes of Wrath as his all-time favorite. I figured that was as good a place as any to start.

The book was all he'd promised. It was the best book I'd ever read, and I'd done it of my own volition. I was on my way to becoming the bookish type.

I went home to visit my parents later that summer. Over dinner my first night back, I excitedly told them all about the book—the story about the Joad family traveling to California to work in the orchards, the injustice of farm labor, and the sad lives of migrant workers. Had they read it? Could I lend it to them?

My father looked at me, mildly amused. Being a Texas cowboy, he never really knew what to make of his city girl who wanted nothing more than to be smart and sophisticated.

"Well Deary," he had a sweet way of saying that even though he was getting ready to put me in my place. "I don't need to read a book about going to Californ-i-a to pick fruit. I know that story pretty well."

He went on to tell me some family history I hadn't heard—had never asked. His father packed up the family and drove from Oklahoma to California as one of the last waves of dust bowl farmers to head west.

My dad was about three years old when they left. He remembered the orchards and the beautiful central valley. He was old enough to remember the journey back to Oklahoma when his family returned to the farm several years later. My grandparents were one of the lucky few to be able to reclaim their land and start over.

I'll never forget that conversation with my dad. I knew he'd grown up pretty poor, but it was something we didn't discuss as a family. His athletic scholarship to play football got him through college and on to a different life than his parents, including a nice house in Dallas where I grew up.

I'm amazed, looking back, that my first step into reading as an adult had such a profound effect on my view of my family and my upbringing. I would have learned more about my Dad's history eventually,  as I got older and more thoughtful. Instead I read one of the most memorable books of all time, opening my mind to the power of storytelling, and got a jolt of family history.

Not a bad first step.

Which ad solicited the highest response?

These ads appeared next to each other when I asked Google to define "part and parcel" and I followed an idioms link. (Don't ask.)

Here is an excellent example of an AdWords test, though I didn't expect to see them side by side. It certainly makes me wonder which ad receives the higher response.

It also makes me think there is a level of marketing analysis that I'm missing. What do people respond to? What makes them click the link? What turns a click into a purchase?

I suppose in order to answer those questions, I'd have to stay in grad school a while longer. But I am curious about the psychological workings that influence and push consumer behavior.

I would like to think that people are surprising and difficult to predict, even in this day of instant feedback. Am I wrong? Has anyone stumbled upon the secret code to consumer behavior? (I can tell you it is not revealed in the book Groundswell.)

I have succumbed to email marketing

And the worst part is that it was Martha Stewart.

Several years ago, I decided to send flowers to my Mom on Valentine's Day. She always sends me a card, and I always feel guilty because I'm not thoughtful enough to get a card in the mail to her in time. I barely manage to find something for my husband the day of.

In a panic to be a better daughter, I went online to find something I could send and have it to her by the 14th. Martha came to my rescue. Google offered marthastewart.com as a gift option for my search. I ordered some red tulips in a glass vase with three lines typed on a little card wishing my mother Happy Valentine's Day!

Mom loved it. She went on and on about how great it was to have flowers in the house, how long it'd been since she'd been given fresh flowers.

The next year around February 4th, I received an email from Martha. She ever so gently reminded me of my previous purchase and offered some tasteful ideas for this year. It gets me every year. I remember how much Mom loved that first bunch of tulips, and I can't bare to disappoint her.

I'm usually ruthless with the junk button in my Mail application. I've even banned most political emails from my inbox since the election ended. But I was happy to get that email from Martha this year. I can't imagine a Valentine's Day without the gushing thank you phone call from my Mom.

Branding Ooligan Press

In my Magazine Editing class on Thursday, we were fortunate to have an excellent guest speaker, Randy Gragg.

Gragg was the architecture and urban design critic for the Oregonian from 1989 to 2007. He left the paper to become the editor of Portland Spaces. He described his role as editor of the magazine and how he plans to survive in the increasingly difficult world of publishing.

As he spoke about the ways he is trying to broaden the readership and advertising base of his magazine, he called himself a born brander. He is always considering how he can strengthen the public's relationship to Portland Spaces' brand.

Some of his ideas include an informal speakers series and design tours. The idea is to create enough confidence in Portland Spaces that people will show up when the magazine hosts an event. This idea—wrapping an identity around more than just the publication—is important for Ooligan Press.

The program is in the early stages of putting together a spring Open House. The details are still being ironed out, but I think it is a great idea to have an annual event to showcase the press.

It may take a few years to get established, but the Open House could become an important event in Portland , maybe even regional, publishing. Current students and graduates of the program could offer a pitch table—a big success at Wordstock last year, sample edits, and marketing help for new authors to name a few. And the event would provide the opportunity to showcase graduate portfolios.

I think we'd all agree that Ooligan Press needs to be better known in the community and that our fundraising efforts depend on it. We need to produce great books, but we also need to invest in our brand.

You can reach me at...

I've always had at least two email addresses—work and personal. Since I left my job last year I lost the work address but gained two new ones. I currently have a Comcast account, PSU, and Gmail.

I've had the Comcast account since 2002 (before that it was an AT&T account). It is my general use address where I receive the bulk of business and personal email. When I started graduate school I gained the mandatory PSU account. I use it for school related communication, though much of my school email comes to the Comcast account.

I only recently opened the Gmail account for the Online Marketing class. I've mostly used it to set up Blogger, Twitter, and Facebook accounts. All the sudden, I'm seeing lots of activity here.

Since I use a Mac, keeping up with my email accounts is really easy—even on my phone. The mail application has a simple set-up for multiple accounts—I have the preferences set to check all three every ten minutes. I love the discreet red bubble and soft sound that indicate a new message has come in. I usually check email right away when I see the bubble, but it's pretty easy to ignore if I'm in the middle of something.

When I went to work for the printing company oh so many years ago (1996), I set up the company's first email account. Back then, all artwork that went to press had to be couriered on a disk to a service bureau, then the film was returned again by courier. Once I got on email, I was able to send artwork as an attachment, cutting the courier costs in half. It was a revelation.

Well that was enough of a stroll down memory lane, but I honestly cannot remember what life was like without email. It is especially important to me because I'm not a phone person. I rarely answer the phone, but I respond to email without fail.

A little perspective on book production

Oregon at Work, a forthcoming release from Ooligan Press, is due to the printer tomorrow. As the designer, I've been scrambling to tie up the loose ends and get the interior and cover ready to meet the launch date.

I got the index back from the indexer, but it was too long for the pages I'd allotted. I had trouble finding the final, final back cover copy. I can't get the spine size from the printer. We still don't have the Library of Congress catalog information for the copyright page. 

I'm not sure if you're feeling my pain yet, but I'm trying.  There are many details to iron out even for the most straight-forward (not to be confused with foreword!) print production.

I took a break to write a blog and happened upon this video. I'm going to stop complaining now. All it takes is a little perspective.

This is a great video series on the Barnes and Noble website called Cover Story. It features interviews with various artists in the book trade. While I watched this video, my worries over Oregon at Work felt very small indeed. Can you imagine the mind-boggling production issues these fellas face?

I couldn't help but laugh when Robert Sabuda says, "When I was a boy, I had lots of pop-up books . . . So I taught myself how to make pop-ups." Oh really? It sounds so simple.

I hope you all enjoy the video.

Ooligan Press released new title

Do Angels Cry? Tales of the War

by Matko Marušić

This collection of short stories offers an intimate view of the 1991 war in Croatia. Each story presents a different perspective of struggle and devotion to country during a time of war. A father talks his son out of building a bomb. An older man struggles to contribute in some way to the war effort. A doctor and his hospital are liberated at the end of the war. A couple and their young daughter are finally allowed to return to their hometown of Split.

Marušić captures the essence war—not the war fought on the battlefield, but the struggles at home, in the small-town streets, and in the daily lives of citizens. His spare language and vivid images illuminate the war not found in history books.

Do Angles Cry? is a new release by Ooligan Press, the student-run trade press at Portland State University. For more information about all the titles available from Ooligan, visit www.ooliganpress.pdx.edu

ISBN: 978-932010-23-7

5½˝ x 8½˝, softcover
160 pages
$14.95

For more information: ooliganmarketing@pdx.edu

About the Author

Matko Marušić was born in Split, Croatia, in 1946. Matko Marušić’s other writings include a novel, a collection of short stories for children, and two additional collections of short stories for adults. Do Angels Cry? Tales of the War was originally published in Croatia and Great Britain in 1996. A preface, written by Dr. Stanimir Vuk-Pavlovic, has been added for the American edition.

This book is about the facet of the human price of the war…Yet, this book tells the simple truth of the ordinary people caught in extraordinarily desperate situations when choices are few and all are bad. They are the response to the statement, “What is not worth dying for, is not worth living for.”
— Dr. Stanimir Vuk-Pavlovic, Hematology/Oncology and Preventative Medicine, Mayo Clinic

Can you trust online reviews?

Paying attention to online consumer reviews pays. According to a survey by Neilson Online, eighty-one percent of online shoppers read reviews while shopping during the holiday season this year.

Even for consumers who did their shopping at local retailers, web sites play an important role in their purchase decision. Fifty-five percent of survey respondents said they researched products online before going to a store to buy.

The top factors in evaluating customer reviews were:

The product has multiple ratings or reviews—63%

The rating or review comes from an established source—14%

But can online reviews be trusted? I found plenty of stories about pay for play practices.

An interesting story surfaced this month about paying for ratings and reviews on Amazon. An employee of Belkin used Amazon's Mechanical Turk site to offer $.65 as payment per favorable review of its router that had received poor ratings from consumers. The ploy was discovered and reported, and the company issued an apology within forty-eight hours.

I think the story about Belkin's bogus customer reviews is instructive. It points out how important online reviews are to a product's success—that a high-level employee would resort to such an unethical practice to counter the negative reviews being posted by real customers.

The story also points out the level playing field that is possible on the web. Belkin's pay for play scheme was discovered by a blogger, and the story spread through the wires quickly. Not only were the reviews pulled by Amazon and an apology issued by Belkin, but the story's popularity serves to punish the company's behavior far beyond a bad review.

I am hopeful that companies will heed this cautionary tale. There are other ways to deal with customer reviews than trying to rig the system. Foremost, they need to set up areas on their own sites to get public feedback—a space to respond to customers. If online marketers can turn around a dissatisfied customer, they will save more than a single purchase. They will earn the respect of every person that customer tells—online or otherwise.

Thinking small

In today's technological society, no company can go without a website. Publishers have no choice as to whether or not they post a site, but how they build and target their online identity is a reasonable debate.

It only makes sense that a company in the business of book publishing would want to use its website to make sales. The site is there for consumers to find and explore, and I can't think of a single reason not to include a shopping cart for purchasing.

A publisher's website is also a great place to highlight and push certain titles. Most of the sites I explored had added content about the authors—video interviews, tour dates. Why rely solely on bookstores and Amazon to present your product?

This said, I think a targeted approach is wise. Why try to reach every potential customer with a single, watered down, chaotic website when all large publishers use their imprints to target a smaller subset of their audience?

I think the best approach is for huge publishers to keep the corporate identity low-key and try to steer customers to the right imprint where they are more likely to find the books they'll want to read.

Imprints should reflect a united and cohesive collection. It is a basic tenet of marketing to know your customer and give them what they want. So why not create an online presence to reflect the target of your imprint? Make a club. Let your readers feel part of something—no different than being part of an online social network.

McSweeney's and Tin House both do a great job of this. They embrace their brand. Larger publishers should do the same and put more effort into branding their imprints and creating networks around them.

I have no idea if consumers will seek out publisher's websites to purchase books. If given the incentive—lower pricing, peer reviews and recommendations, convenience, and availability—they should. Publishers make a product and should be able to control the avenues of sales to some extent. But at the moment, it looks like Amazon will continue to keep a tight grip on the business of selling books.

A sneak preview

I don't want to reveal too much before the book reports in class, but I've been thinking about something I read in Groundswell the other night. The authors divide participation in social networks into six categories: creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, and inactives.

Creators create content—they write articles, blog, maintain a web site, upload video or audio. 

Critics comment and respond to content. They write reviews, post comments on blogs, or contribute to forums.

Collectors help to organize the web by saving URLs on bookmarking services (like del.icio.us), voting for sites (Digg), or using RSS feeds. (I don't really understand this category yet.)

Joiners maintain a profile on a social network site. The authors put this group at 25% of the adult online population, but the number is growing rapidly. In an article in the Oregonian, Peter Ames Carlin wrote that the number of Facebook members, age 30+, grew 200% in 2008.

Spectators look but don't participate.

Inactives have internet access but do not participate.

The point the authors make is how important it is to know who you're marketing to and how the different groups interact.

In terms of trying to reach these online "personalities," I have a few questions that I hope the book will answer:

Do people's online activities predict their purchasing behavior? A person is probably a creator only in a particular field or area of interest and participates at a lower level in other areas. But I also image that they tend to be early adapters—always the first to buy new gadgets or try new technologies. We already know early adapters are crucial to product launches and influence public opinion, but how hard (and expensive) is it to influence the influencers?

As online marketers, is it effective to reach these groups in their playground? Are marketing and advertising efforts on the web seen as nothing more than an intrusion and received with skepticism and mistrust?

Are these categories just another way to describe personality types? Or do people behave differently from their personality type online? 

With the online world changing so rapidly, is it even feasible to keep track of all this? I can imagine someone moving quickly from a spectator to a critic to a creator as they become more comfortable with the technology. How do you focus on a moving target? Millions of moving targets?

I'm not sure where I fall on the spectrum of the social networking population. Since I'm blogging twice a week, I'd have to put myself into the creator category at the moment. But my blogging activity will probably end right about mid-March. I guess I'm a joiner, but I feel more like a spectator. I've been a member of LinkedIn for years but never did more than fill out my profile. And recently, I joined Twitter and Facebook, but I don't know that I'll keep those accounts active for long. I don't feel compelled to share much, but I will admit to wasting a fair amount of time seeing who's out there. 

Curious if anyone out there feels like slapping a category on for size. I have my suspicions.

Harder than stuffing a genie back in the bottle

Friend or foe, good or bad, dangerous or beneficial? I feel pretty ambivalent about Amazon's market dominance, so I wrote out a list of pros and cons. I was surprised to find the pros outnumbered the cons by a significant number.

Readers certainly benefit, right? I can't think of anything wrong with cheaper, widely available books. The site helps people network through reviews and recommendations to find more books they might be interested in—I always find myself following recommendation threads to books I probably never would have found in a bookstore.

I would think authors benefit from Amazon as well. Books are available for sale for much longer online than on bookstore shelves, extending the life of most titles. It'd be nice to see an end to the incredibly short sales cycle of traditional publishing.

I can't think of a single drawback to the rise in prominence of print-on-demand. I love the idea that anyone who wants to publish a book can do it at a reasonable cost and make all their friends and relatives buy a copy. I don't really see how anyone gets hurt (other than said friends and relatives). On the other hand, it pains me to think of all the publishing mistakes—any number of miscalculations that can befall a new title—gathering dust in warehouses an destined for the recycling heap. I am very hopeful that print-on-demand will curtail the huge amount of waste in the printing business. Some books are meant to find their audience one digital print at a time.

Amazon must benefit publishers at least a little. Their titles gain the largest possible distribution. They make some money from online sales even after Amazon takes its cut. As mentioned before, books live longer in cyberspace, allowing for a longer sales cycle and providing an opportunity for a belated rise in popularity due to some random twist of fate.

My con list was short, but it included a problem that might outweigh all the pros—bookstores are dying. I read an article in yesterday's Oregonian about a successful attempt to shore up the cash-strapped Broadway Books by promising a burrito to anyone who bought $50 worth of books over the holidays. Really?! In this case, the owner's son and his Twitter savvy saved the day, but for how long? I have no idea what bookstores can do to change their odds for survival. Record stores and video rental outlets haven't gone extinct yet despite predictions of certain doom, but it doesn't look like a viable business model for any of these media outlets.

We are lucky here in Portland—we have Powells. We probably take for granted that we can walk to the greatest new and used bookstore in the states, while the rest of the nation has Borders and B&N as their best option for book buying. If given that choice, I'd shop online, too.

A First Impression of Book Trailers

I read an article on Publishers Weekly's site that asked publicists their opinion of book trailers. Reviews were mixed at best. Since I am very new to this promotional device, I decided to check it out. I chose a publisher (Penguin) and watched the current trailers they have posted. From this tiny survey of seven, here are my observations:

• When Hollywood is criticized year after year for destroying great literature with crappy adaptations, do you think it's wise to cast the characters of your book, making an indelible mental picture for your readers, and to try to capture 300 pages in three minutes? It seems like a good way to doom the book sales right from the start.

• Even a seasoned performer like Lewis Black looked embarrassed to be shilling his book in a trailer.

• I watched two trailers that were staged like a 60 Minutes segment—an interview with the author combined with an atmospheric montage. One (for In The Woods by Tana French) came across like a Match.com advertisement with glamour shots of the author in various stages of quiet contemplation. The other (Ann B. Ross, author of the Miss Julia series) was more successful, with the author describing her writing process and inspiration for her stories. I was charmed by her southern drawl and dignified demeanor—until the trailer staged a reenactment of her in a restaurant getting a story idea from a nearby table.

• Two of the trailers took a silent picture approach. Still photos interspersed with subtitles and ambient background music—it works so well in the film industry, it's sure to be a big hit.

• Of the seven, the trailer for Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander was worth the four minutes. The video mixes still images of biblical artwork with archival clips as the author's voice-over introduces his memoir about growing up an Orthodox Jew. The script is funny and engaging, and the imagery fits perfectly. It doesn't hurt that the author's voice and delivery sound exactly like David Sedaris.

My conclusion, based on a survey of seven, is that there are many ways to go wrong with a book trailer. Is it worth the risk of alienating potential readers by casting a book's characters with bad actors or producing a piece that comes across like an infomercial? This brief bit of research has made me all the more impressed with Chris Huff's smart trailer for Ooligan's title 42.

So, are there any other praise-worthy trailers out there?

Finding your audience

Having to venture into the world of publisher's websites, I felt assaulted by all the flash. I started with publishers that immediately came to mind—Macmillan, Putnam (Penguin), HarperCollins, Simon and Schuster, and Random House. The homepages for these sites had book covers blazing across the page, videos, pop-up menus, and all sorts of bling and virtual bombast. There is something for everyone, which makes perfect sense for publishers with countless imprints and titles in every conceivable category. Of the large publishing sites I visited, I found Macmillan the least offensive if only because nothing was moving and it was well organized. I especially liked the banner at the top where you could scroll book by book through the featured titles.

Next, I searched for smaller publishers. I tend to buy books about cooking, gardening, design, and computer software, so I compared a few sites with a similar focus. I started with Peachpit Press and O'Reilly. Since I use a Mac and work with graphics software, I expected to prefer Peachpit and my expectations were met. I think O'Reilly's site does a good job targeting their audience of sophisticated computer users, but Peachpit incorporates a sleeker design and has a stronger aesthetic appeal—important for Mac users, though the yellow is, uh, wrong.

Many of the cookbooks in my collection are published by imprints of one of the large publishing houses; however, I found plenty to love at Chronicle Books, W. W. Norton, and Ten Speed Press. The three sites are very different. Chronicle offers books on art/design, food, pop culture, and lifestyle, and their site's colorful and eye-catching design reflects their editorial focus. Ten Speed is also colorful and energetic, but it feels jumbled, chaotic, and unprofessional. I found Ten Speed titles through the Culinate Magazine website, and it was a much more appealing display of their cookbook titles. The Norton site is about as anti-flash as you can get. The browse recent books page is all text, with a laundry list of author/title divided into categories. It's either a fly-in-the-face rejection of current web marketing, or they don't have a penny to spend on a web designer.

I couldn't end my website survey without a look at McSweeney's. The site hits the perfect pitch by combining a personal, laid-back approach with a dose of humor.  They know how to speak to their audience and make you want to join their club. And with their sale prices and combo subscription offers, I found it difficult to resist their persuasive powers. Of the websites I visited, I found McSweeney's did the best job at understanding and speaking to their audience.

Oregon at Work book cover

I am designing the Ooligan Press title Oregon at Work: 1859–2009. I'm almost finished with the interior which means that I must revisit the cover design before we go to press. The top image is the original cover (full jacket design) that was approved by the Executive Committee with some reservations. Suggestions were made to look for one or two photos that would  improve the diversity, include a broad range of industry, and expand the timeline represented on the cover.

I'm afraid I only managed two of the three requests. I replaced the miners on the back with the welder (I found a good spot in the interior for the miners). It gives me a modern photo, but it also gives me an action shot. I replaced the three guys on horseback with the timber photo. I love the photo, but it is difficult to tell what the guys on horseback do for work. I think the timber photo is impressive, but I will miss those horses. I hear animals on the cover really help to sell a book.

I would appreciate any feedback you might have about the changes. The press date is looming large, but there's still a little time left.