Today’s feature store looks at former Penguin Canada CEO and publishing star David Davidar’s Ithaca, a roman à clef about the publishing business. Though our reviewer, Vinutha Mallya found the books to be uneven and less-than-revealing, you can’t fault Davidar for one thing: he is, as the old cliche goes, writing about what he knows.

Writers have often been tempted to write about the book business and the publishing world, with mixed results. We’ve had everything from The Devil Wears Prada to James Michener’s The Novel to murder mysteries (too numerous to recall) all set in the publishing world.

So tell us, what is your favorite look at the book business through a writer’s eyes?

When the poster boy of Indian publishing wrote a novel about the publishing industry, expectations were bound to be high.

“Ithaca is a thrilling account of international publishing,” says the blurb on the front flap of David Davidar’s book, Ithaca (Fourth Estate, 2011). The book’s title invokes the poem of the same name, by renowned Greek poet C.P. Cavafy, which addresses Odysseus during his ten-year journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan War.

In this 274-page tome, the story of Litmus, an indie publishing house in London trying to stay afloat when “sweeping change is taking place in the publishing industry”, is narrated by India-born editor-turned-publisher, Zachariah Thomas.

As the newly appointed publisher of Litmus, it falls upon Zach to discover the next Life of Pi, which could save the company from an impending economic downturn in 2009. After making a success of the Italian author living in Canada, Massimo Seppi – whom Zach has edited, and whose quartet of novels based on magic realism, of angels and of archangels, has sold million copies worldwide – the new publisher is at a loss when Seppi dies. Bereft of a star author and an imminent take-over by Globish, the giant corporation, Zach must “try to mine the Seppi legacy for one last gem.”

What happens next could have been “thrilling” if only the author had persisted in exploring the plot and characters he created, to meet their potential.

Affinities Between Zach and Davidar

The similarities between the lives of Zach and Davidar are hard to miss. Not hesitant to draw from his biographical experiences, Davidar tries to give his readers a glimpse of what lies out there in the world of “global” trade publishing. He should know best. He set up Penguin in India at age 26, in 1985, and made it a successful brand, by publishing luminous authors like Vikram Seth, Dom Moreas, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Romila Thapar, Arundhati Roy, P.Sainath, Suketu Mehta and Shobha De. He became Penguin India’s CEO in 1997. He stayed in that role until late 2003 before taking over as president of Penguin Canada, which he is credited to have brought back to good health.

For professionals and those authors entrenched in the publishing ecosystem, the book would be all too familiar (“nobody edited books anymore, you merely did some cursory tidying up of a text before hurrying through the production process”).

And, for those seeking to understand the much hyped, highly competitive and bewildering world of trade publishing, this is a good introduction. For others who are puzzled by who-gets-published-and-why, there are some provocative insights here (“you don’t get to be a publisher without having to deal with writers who feel under-appreciated”).

Along the way, if Davidar’s Ithaca leaves the reader wondering why she was coursing through ‘Book Publishing for Dummies 1.0’ in the garb of a novel, it was not the author’s intent.

***

Although the book begins with him seeking refuge from his troubles in far-away Thimpu, Bhutan, it quickly moves West. There are vivid descriptions of the glamorous life – of a jet-setting English publisher who travels between London, Toronto, Frankfurt, New York and Sydney, with a stopover in Delhi – the corners and centers of the publishing industry circuit. There is Julia, the ex-wife he can’t let go of; Mandy, the girlfriend who is a model (a short interlude even has Zach shopping for lingerie with her!), a past life of short-lived romances, work meetings over wine, feeble attempts at mending a broken marriage, and the conceit of success – before the downfall. But the other characters of this story enter and exit the novel jerkily. Only three of them even get a chance to have their own point-of-view.

In a hurried summation of the Indian (read English) publishing scene, made via one chapter titled “Delhi,” Davidar indulges in patting his own back. It has Zach recounting how, in India, “trade publishing was more or less non-existent until Penguin India” and how “Vikram [Seth], in a giant leap of faith, decided to entrust the fledgling company with the responsibility of publishing his manuscript [A Suitable Boy]…” Zach concludes, “It obviously wasn’t easy to achieve the sort of standard that had never been achieved in the country before, but to the credit of the author and the publishing company they managed to pull it off and the result is this gorgeous book.”

Frankfurt Book Fair Gets a Showcase

Perhaps to highlight the importance of Frankfurt Book Fair to the industry, an account of it is spread over 25 pages in the book. Frankfurt Book Fair is where, as the author cites a cliché, “all publishing folk are busy fucking each other.” Davidar describes how business is transacted in Hall 8 – that secluded exclusive hall, “the place in which the most lucrative deals are struck…where the US and UK publishers are located.” Through his descriptions of this “nerve centre of the Frankfurt Book Fair”, and those of the gated LitAg (agents centre), we realise the metaphorical extent of the term “global” in publishing (the Fair has exhibitors in Halls 1–7 too!). The term “Big Seven,” a label for the large publishing conglomerates (they are the Big Six in reality, but Zach adds Globish to the list) recurs often in the book.

The Frankfurt account is underscored in these words: “Tens of thousands of people working themselves to the bone ostensibly in the service of authors, but when you come right down to it unless you are a VIEW, or Very Important Eminent Writer, the words author and writer are mere abstractions in the context of Frankfurt.”

***

The book begins with Cavafy’s verses (tr. Daniel Mendelsohn) to Odysseus:

As you set out on the road to Ithaca
Hope that the road is a long one,
Filled with adventures, filled with discoveries…

In the final section, after Zach’s downfall, these lines confront us:

Ithaca gave you the beautiful journey;
Without her you wouldn’t have set out on the road…
And if you find her poor, Ithaca didn’t deceive you.
As wise as you will have become, with so much experience,
You will understand, by then, these Ithacas; what they mean.

Cavafy’s Odysseus is expected to understand when he reaches home to Ithaca, that the ultimate value is not what Ithaca has to offer, but the experience he has gained along the way. When Zach (and Davidar) returns to India – home – is he coming back to his metaphorical Ithaca? Or is it an Ithaca that other poets have described – the place to return to before moving on again?

Before Davidar was embroiled in a sexual harassment suit in 2010, it was widely held that he had a shot at becoming the global head of Penguin. After settling that suit, he chose to return to India, and found a changed industry.  We hear it in Zach’s words, “In today’s India anything is possible; what a change…from when I was a child and every ambitious Indian’s eyes were trained on escape to the West.” Davidar’s decision in 2011 to launch Aleph Book Company (along with Rupa Publications) was hailed as a homecoming by a section of the media. The company’s first list of 25 Aleph titles is widely anticipated, and the first, Between Clay and Dust by Musharraf Ali Farooqui is already out.

In the hills of Yercaud in Tamil Nadu (Davidar’s native state), Zach comes home to his family estate, and wonders “about the trajectory of his life, the odd symmetry of it. Would it end here, where it had begun?”

***

In spite of its claims at being an “exhilarating” depiction of publishing, Ithaca is burdened in most parts by its author’s participant observations. So while it provides ample insights into the machinery of publishing – complete with edit meetings, board meetings, business strategy, sales conferences, author contracts and negotiations, mergers and acquisitions, book fairs and literary festivals – the book fails to do justice to the plot. With weak characterization, and an uneven pace, it is lacking in techniques of plotting and POV – failing in the “standard tips” that Zach offers to an aspiring writer at a session in the Sydney Writers’ Festival.

Which is a pity, since Ithaca, Davidar’s third novel, does have the ingredients of a thriller, and in the hands of a better writer could easily have become one.

A frequent contributor to Publishing Perspectives, Vinutha Mallya is an editor with Mapin Publishing.

DISCUSS: What is Your Favorite Novel About Publishing?

“We are very determined not to make them political or partisan, but to make them positive and inspiring and to give kids a fun way to learn about American history.”

Regnery Publishing’s website boasts, “When the Henry Regnery Company first opened its doors in 1947, its mission was to contribute to the rebuilding of Western civilization after World War II, publishing serious works of cultural recovery, including, as it turned out, establishing and sustaining the postwar conservative intellectual movement in America.” Now Regnery has announced an extension of its mission: this summer it will launch its children’s imprint, Little Patriot Press, publishing titles for children aged 5–8 with the goal of “teaching and inspiring children through stories about American history and government.”

It was the success of Callista Gingrich’s children’s book, Sweet Land of Liberty, that gave Marji Ross, president and publisher of Regnery, the confidence to establish a children’s imprint at a time when many other publishers are pulling back from non-fiction titles. “We were working with Newt Gingrich on a book of American exceptionalism,” Ross said. “We were talking with Newt and his wife Callista about what American exceptionalism is and how to feel proud about America. We thought, what if we did a children’s book that would compliment Newt’s adult book — it would be a book that parents and grandparents could give to their children that would showcase everything good about America…And then, just two weeks after its release, Callista’s book was #4 on the bestseller lists for children’s picture books!”

“One of the things we discovered as we were laying the groundwork for Little Patriot is that there are not actually a lot of books in this category — nonfiction picture books for kids of this age — talking about American history and government. The idea is that kids in this age group are not necessarily buying books, these are books that would appeal to parents and grandparents who are interested in American history and government and civics and patriotism and American values. We are very determined not to make them political or partisan, but to make them positive and inspiring and giving kids a fun way to learn about American history.”

Regnery will release seven picture books this year, including a series by Peter and Cheryl Barnes (whose previous titles include President Adams’ Alligator and Other Household Pets) that feature mice explaining important moments of American history. Two titles in the line, Woodrow for President: A Tail of Voting, Campaigns, and Elections and Liberty Lee’s Tail of Independence, will be featured at this June’s BookExpo America. Other titles include a second book from Callista Gingrich, tentatively titled Ellis Discovers the 13 Colonies. “We are very much focused on making these books fun and entertaining and engaging. Our slogan is, ‘A nice way to learn about America.’ A little mouse is our mascot, and each book written by Peter and Cheryl will have a mouse as a narrator.”

Diane Reeves is the managing editor for Little Patriot Press, and Cheryl Barnes is the creative director. Regnery will do e-books for all titles in all platforms, and plans to have its website, littlepatriotpress.com, up before BEA. And as for Little Patriots Press’s future? Ross hopes “to have published half a dozen books a year each year and I would like for those books to be in every school library in America.”

Kids Award Their Favorite Authors

The 93rd annual Children’s Book Week got off to a rousing start with the announcement of the fifth annual Children’s Choice Book Awards in New York City on May 7th.

The awards program is based on Children’s Choices, a joint project of the International Reading Association (IRA) and the Children’s Book Council since 1975. Publishers submit hundreds of titles to be evaluated and voted on by over 10,000 children. Throughout the school year, five review teams located in different regions of the United States work with their local classroom teachers and school librarians to incorporate the books into classroom activities. Children whose classrooms are involved in the project vote and the most popular titles are chosen as finalists. It was reported that more than 900,000 children throughout the country voted this year, more than double last year’s total.

Among the winners:

Kindergarten to Second Grade Book of the Year: Three Hens and a Peacock by Lester L. Laminack, illus. by Henry Cole (Peachtree)

Third to Fourth Grade Book of the Year: Bad Kitty Meets the Baby by Nick Bruel (Roaring Brook/Porter)

Fifth to Sixth Grade Book of the Year: Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt (Clarion)

Teen Book of the Year: Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare (S&S/McElderry)

Author of the Year: Jeff Kinney, for Diary of a Wimpy Kid 6: Cabin Fever (Abrams/Amulet)

Illustrator of the Year: Brian Selznick, for Wonderstruck (Scholastic)

This year’s Impact Award, for contributions to children’s literacy, was given to New York Giants’ defensive end Justin Tuck. He is the co-founder (along with his wife Lauran) of the organization R.U.S.H. for Literacy, which since 2008 has worked to encourage children to Read, Understand, Succeed and Hope, by raising funds to donate books and other reading materials to support children in New York City and Central Alabama. By supporting the communities that have supported them, their website says, the Tucks hope to encourage children to embrace literacy.

Please…May I Borrow a Copy of Harry Potter?

It was announced last week that Amazon.com has licensed the right to lend digital versions of all seven volumes in J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series in the USA as part of the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library.

Kindle owners with an Amazon Prime membership (available for an annual fee of $79) can “borrow” any of the Harry Potter titles for free. Amazon Prime members can borrow one title per month with no due dates.

Many were surprised at the move, given the fact that Rowling had only made the series available in e-book form in March of this year and because she’s historically been protective of her work: Rowling not only owns the digital rights to her work, but the only way to read e-book editions of her work had been to buy them through links to Rowling’s own Pottermore website.

Starting on June 19, the books can be borrowed for free from Amazon. Why the change? Charlie Redmayne, CEO of Pottermore, gave one explanation to paidContent: “The way the deal is structured means that any lost sales are more than made up for. Yes, some people will borrow from the Kindle Owners’ Lending library and therefore not buy, but Amazon is paying us a large amount of money for that right, and I believe it’s a commercial deal that makes sense.”

According to Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, “This is the kind of significant investment in the Kindle ecosystem that we’ll continue to make on behalf of Kindle owners.”

The World Mourns

Maurice Sendak, the artist described by The New York Times as the “author of splendid nightmares,” died on May 8, at the age of 83, from complications of a recent stroke.

Few authors can be described as essential: Sendak was one of the few who truly were. Through such classic works as Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, Nutshell Library, Higglety, Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More To Life, and Seven Little Monsters, Sendak not only frightened, entertained and delighted generations of children and their parents, he expanded the idea of what it was possible for children’s books to achieve, blazing a trail for all who dared to follow.

His child characters were allowed to misbehave, to have dreams and nightmares and to explore the deepest realms of their unconscious. Fear and resolving that fear were essential to children’s lives, he believed, years before Bruno Bettleheim wrote in The Uses of Enchantment that fairy tales allow children to come to terms with their fears in symbolic terms.

“From their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions — fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can,” Sendak said when receiving the Caldecott Medal in 1964 for his best-known work, Where the Wild Things Are. “And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming wild things.”

Sendak was the recipient of every major award a children’s book author could receive: the Caldecott, the Hans Christian Anderson, the National Book Award, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, the National Medal of Arts and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Yet he didn’t seen himself as a children’s author, but as an author who was interested in writing about children.

“I like interesting people and kids are really interesting people,” he told the Associated Press last fall. “And if you didn’t paint them in little blue, pink and yellow, it’s even more interesting.”

His final book, My Brother’s Book, a poem written and illustrated by Sendak and inspired by his love for his late brother Jack, will be published in February.

He will be missed.

By Dennis Abrams

“I believe we have a responsibility when we write for young adults to provide something new and brilliant.”

Teacher. Critic. Memoirist. Poet. National Book Award finalist. Author of such acclaimed YA novels as House of Dance, Undercover, You Are My Only and the soon-to-be-published Small Damages, which just received a starred review from PW. Beth Kephart’s entire career has been devoted to writing, to the art of finding the right word, creating the best sentence, and building the paragraphs and structure needed to communicate her vision to her readers. Her earliest books were for an adult audience: memoirs, a genre-blending look at Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River called Flow, a corporate fairy tale, poetry. But it was only when asked by the National Book Awards to chair their literature jury for children’s books in 2001 that she started down the path that led to her true passion.

“I had to read more than 160 books,” Kephart remembers. “Picture books, history books, YA, everything. It gave me this extraordinary opportunity to see what was happening in the field. So when I got up to talk about the winners and the nominees that night, I had a very clear idea of what I thought good literature written for young people was, and what I said caught the attention of some people.” Among those people was Laura Geringer, who at that time had her own imprint, Laura Geringer Books, at HarperTeen.

Kephart and Geringer began a year-long conversation before finally meeting in person. “It was a cloudy day, we had brunch, and she said that she hoped I would write for young adults,” Kephart says. “Her questions took me back to those parts of myself that I had never fully explored on the page — to a somewhat introverted young girl who wrote poems, who ice-skated, who had a teacher who believed in the power of stories. To a girl who was sometimes asked, by the popular boys, for advice and help as they pursued the girls of their dreams. I was never the girl of anyone’s dreams. I took note of that. I wondered why.” Geringer’s response to Kephart? “That sounds like a book to me.”

On her train ride home, the first line of Undercover came to her. The first ten pages of the book were written on the back of a train schedule and quickly emailed to Geringer who, ten minutes later responded, “This is a story. Keep going.” For Kephart, that conversation with Geringer had liberated her, allowing her to tap into and remember things that were important to her, while freeing her from the rules of nonfiction, allowing her to weave together truth and imagination.

There’s been no turning back. “That was my first YA title, Undercover, which was autobiographical. I was starting to work on my blog, starting to interact with my readers. I just fell in love with the range of responses I was receiving and having, so I just continued to write in that vein. I am very committed to writing a certain kind of book: I won’t write down, I trust the intelligence of my readers. I believe we have a responsibility when we write for young adults to provide something new and different.”

At this year’s Publishing Perspectives’ Children’s Book Conference, Kephart will be taking part in the panel discussion “Author, Author! Building a Career, Connecting with Kids, and Standing out from the Crowd.” As someone who has convincingly done all three throughout her nearly 15-year-long career, her insights are certain to be as interesting and thought-provoking as her books.

By Dennis Abrams

“The real art of picture books is taking a sophisticated idea and distilling it down to its purest form.”

A one-time reluctant reader despite growing up in a “literate family,” Peter Brown has gone on to become a New York Times best-selling author and children’s book illustrator. A two-time recipient of the E.B. White Read-Aloud Picture Book Award, for The Curious Garden (2010), and Children Make Terrible Pets (2011), Brown’s goal is simple, “to make books that kids really want to read, to help prevent reluctant readers like myself.”

“I try to make stories that are really fun, but there’s also a bit of a lesson in there, secretly,” Brown admits. “I don’t want to turn kids off, but a story without a lesson is not really a story.” For Brown, it’s connecting with his readers that’s important. “I spend a lot of time thinking about my readers when I’m coming up with a story, and I think I know what my audience needs. I could write the greatest story in the world, but if nobody reads it, does it matter?”

And to make sure that he knows what his audience responds to, Brown does a lot of school visits, “and that’s the best thing I do to reach my audience. Outside of regular book tours, I go to spend entire days at an elementary school to talk in detail about my process, so at the end of the day’s there’s 400 kids out there, and it’s invaluable to see their reactions. I get to observe my readers up close and personal. I get to see what lines make them laugh and where I’m losing their attention. So when I write my next book, I’ve learned my lesson and try to incorporate that.”

Peter Brown

Brown also reaches out to his audience (and their parents) through the group he co-founded with other children’s book authors and illustrators: Book Maker’s Dozen. By offering group shows and workshops for kids, and by showing and selling prints to families at reasonable prices, Book Maker’s Dozen helps kids to see the connection between the person who actually paints the picture and the books they make. “It’s been a way for us to build a sense of community amongst ourselves while using our various skills and fan bases to do group events. We’re trying to cross-promote each others work and expand our reach.”

And as an added bonus, Brown points out that, “It’s a lonely road being an author, you spend a lot of time alone.  There, we’re the center of attention for a couple of hours before returning home to our lonely lifestyle, so it’s as much for ourselves as for anyone else.”

At this year’s Publishing Perspectives Children’s Book Conference, being held May 31 in New York, City, Brown will join fellow Bookmaker’s Dozen member John Rocco, along with Beth Kephart and Raina Telgemeier for a panel discussion entitled, “Author, Author!: Building a Career, Connecting with Kids, and Standing Out from the Crowd.” It’s an event you’re not going to want to miss.

Books published in French in African and Middle Eastern countries have very little international visibility. Publishers struggle to see their books reach France or other Francophone countries in Europe for a universal reason: book distribution is the thorn in everyone’s side.

Now hope has come for these publishers in the form of a dark blue bird and a determined woman.

Isabelle Grémillet, who was head of sales at French publisher Actes Sud for almost ten years, founded l’Oiseau Indigo in 2009 in order to offer a distribution system for these books she felt were too often ignored. The project had been maturing in her mind for a decade, she said, the culmination of her work as an academic and student of African history and culture, her work as a bookseller, an editor of art books and then in sales with Actes Sud, which provided her with a formidable network. As she was mulling over the idea, she serendipitously discovered the existence of the African Books Collective in Oxford (ABC), which is a worldwide marketing and distribution outlet for titles from Africa. Grémillet travelled to the UK to visit ABC directors who explained their model to her, which she then adapted to her needs. L’Oiseau Indigo is based in the southern city of Arles, like Actes Sud, and is funded by regional institutions, the Mediterranean Union, the French Institute and others. It is organized as a non-profit, like ABC, but unlike ABC, which is a collective of publishers, L’Oiseau Indigo has three full time employees (including Grémillet) and represents 20 Francophone publishers from Africa and the Middle East, primarily from Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon and the Ivory Coast although publishers from Mali and Senegal are about to join the network.

Grémillet’s criteria for choosing publishers are: “they must be independent and their catalogue must be coherent. There needs to be a brand that can be recognized.”

“The Francophone world is vast,” added Grémillet, “and many good books are passed by.”

“It’s completely different, for example, to be an African author published in France rather than an African author published by an African publishing house. African writers published in France need to write a certain way in order to be understood. This means that very interesting writers can be easily overlooked.”

From Beirut…

The Beirut-based publisher, Tamyras, is a good example of how L’Oiseau Indigo has filled a much-needed niche. Tania Hadjithomas founded Tamyras in January 2003 and began publishing French and bi-lingual French and Arabic books for children (they now publish in English as well). “We quickly came up against the distribution problem,” said Hadjithomas, “We went to French distributors who told us we were too small and didn’t have a catalogue.”

Hadjithomas began to build her catalogue but was then faced with the economically crippling Israeli attack on Lebanon in 2006. In 2007, with the help of an outside investor, Tamyras got back on its feet and connected with L’Oiseau Indigo.

“When I first met Isabelle [Grémillet] I didn’t think she’d take the whole catalogue but she did. L’Oiseau Indigo orders books, markets, and distributes them and organizes events,” said Hadjithomas, who brought four of her authors to the Paris book fair in March for signings.

L’Oiseau Indigo offers publishers two options: for larger publishers, such as Tamyras, they outsource to the Pollen company for distribution in France and Belgium, and use Servidis for Switzerland. L’Oiseau Indigo takes care of distribution for the smaller houses.

“Canada would be nice but the distance and the price of transportation are problematic,” commented Grémillet.

…to the Ivory Coast

Ivory Coast publisher Dramane Boaré founded Les Classiques Ivoiriens in 2005 with investors from the Ivory Coast and France, but has since bought out the French investors. Boaré’s entire collection is in French, from fiction, to schoolbooks and children’s books — in the Ivory Coast instruction in school is predominantly in French. “In Africa we are distributed in Mali, Senegal, Togo, Benin, Cameroon and Congo. Before we joined with l’Oiseau Indigo we tried to distribute our books in Europe but couldn’t manage; we left books in bookshops but could not follow up. For us having something structured and clear in Europe is a good opportunity. France is important for us, there are lots of people from the Ivory Coast living there and all Francophone countries interest us.”

Besides distributing to bookshops and libraries, Grémillet and her team are extremely active promoting their books wherever they can at book fairs, festivals and trade shows. In early 2012 alone L’Oiseau Indigo had a stand at book fairs in Paris, Geneva, Brussels and Casablanca, with six other events coming up this spring and summer.

Grémillet also works hard at creating what she calls a South-South axis, in other words she brought books from Africa, for example, to the Beirut book fair and tries to create networks among writer and publishers—one of her Lebanese authors and a filmmaker, Ghassan Salhab, grew up in Senegal and this is a link Grémillet feels can be reinforced. L’Oiseau Indigo represents the mythical Librairie des Colonnes in Tangiers, first a bookshop and now also a publisher, which will produce books that are not just by Moroccan authors.

L’Oiseau Indigo takes full advantage of the city of Arles, which has positioned itself as a small publishing centre and is active in terms of arts festivals and exchanges. The international college of literary translators is also based in Arles and Grémillet coordinates residencies and workshops with the college. She is currently organizing a festival scheduled for 2013 called Paroles Indigo, to celebrate linguistic diversity and languages as a link to creation.

Although each year, in order to keep going, Grémillet has to renew her grant applications, “this makes us live within reality and the constraints make us more mature. We are convinced that what we’re doing is important.”

DISCUSS: How Well Does French Literature Play Abroad?

Earlier this month Manuel Carcassonne, director general of French publisher Grasset, spent a week in the United States meeting with publishers, editors, and book critics to get a better sense of how French books and literature are received by readers and media. One of the outstanding questions is why such a limited number of French books are translated into English. Is it because of the lack of interest? Is it because of the quality of the books? Or is it because of pre-existing clichés about French literature: that’s little more than auto fiction and/or quasi-philosophical treatises about the human condition.

That’s not to say that there aren’t serious and very worthy works of French literature that are translated in English – it’s more to say the readers are having a hard time finding them. Much of this has to do with the modest print runs of a small, dedicated crew of publishers who bring them to market.

In an interview with Publishing Perspectives (see above) Carcassonne noted that a book like Irène Némirovsky’s Suite française was a French novel and was very popular. Why couldn’t that success be easily replicated? I pointed out that for many, the book wasn’t identified as explicitly French, but rather as a World War II novel. And this is a genre that always sells.

So tell us, how well does French literature play abroad? Is it hemmed in by preconceived notions? Is there an untapped market for works of history, politics, biography, romance and other genres? (Yes, we know people are interested in French self-help.) If that’s the case, what books do you think would work in the English-language market?

As I’ve noted several times before one of my favorite publications is Monocle, the UK-based magazine of arts, culture, politics, and news. Last year the publication expanded into several new media, including television and a 24-hour news and music channel. Among their newest programs is The Review, a weekly hour-long radio program which covers arts and culture around the globe.

Barcelona's MUTT bookshop was featured last week.

A regular feature of the program is to have their reporters pop into local bookstores around the world to record booksellers discussing the works that are most popular in their particular shop. The most recent show visited Eterna Cadencia bookstore in Buenos Aires, where the bookseller recommended Ricardo Piglia, Juan Martini and Hernán Ronsino (both from the Eterna Cadencia’s own publishing house); the MUTT Bookstore in Barcelona, where the book Quantum Light by David Benjamin Sherry (published by Damiani/Salon 94) is a bestseller; and Tunis, librarie Al Kitab, where the title Degage, about the Tunisia revolution is popular with locals and tourists alike, and the bookseller interviewed is a fan or Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion.

Recent shows have also stopped in Helsinki, Paris, London, Tokyo and New York, among many other destinations. Check it out, it’s well worth your time.

As the premier “international” literary festival in the United States, PEN World Voices has an obligation to be, well, international. But, as Chad W. Post points out in today’s feature editorial, the festival is going about it’s mission half-heartedly, trying to hedge its bets with the inclusion of big name US authors speaking in glitzy venues — just the sort of thing New Yorkers have the good fortune to be exposed to each day of the year.

I myself have never felt compelled to make a special trip to New York for the festival. Why? I can’t pinpoint one reason — but Chad lays out several that sound right to me: it’s pricey to make the trip, many of the events take place midweek (when I’m working), cost $15 or more per event (pricey) that are spread all over town (inconvenient, adding to the expense) and, for the most part, feature writers that are readily available (especially the Americans).

He also offers several recommendations to improve the event, including making it genuinely international, finding a central hub, shortening it to three days, and more. All fine proposals.

Unfortunately, he also points out that few people, other than those at PEN seem committed to seeing the festival change and improve — since so few people seem to feel a stake in its outcome. Assuming you’re a regular reader of this publication, you probably have a stake in all this. So tell us, how would you change PEN World Voices to improve it?

Let us know what you think in the comments.