One additional nugget I managed to recover while fixing broken links was a post on the Barnes & Noble site, written by Daniel Menaker. Who is Daniel Menaker? Well, at the time I knew almost nothing about him, to the point that I described him — hilariously in retrospect — as “another dirt-dishing voice” in the publishing industry. (Saving me somewhat, I also noted that he was a former Editor-in-Chief at Random House and Fiction Editor at The New Yorker.)

Re-reading the B&N post after five years, however, I found myself more curious about Mr. Menaker than about publishing. A quick search led me to a memoir he’d written, titled My Mistake, which was published in 2013. Interestingly, in reading that book I found that the context of Mr. Menaker’s life gave more weight to the views he expressed in the B&N post, as well as those in that book and in other writings I discovered.

Now, it may be that confirmation bias played a part in my reaction because much of what Mr. Menaker had to say jibed with my own conclusions, but I don’t think that’s the case. Not only do I think he would disagree with some of my grousing here on Ditchwalk, but my interest in understanding the publishing industry has decreased so much in the past five years that I now consider such questions moot at best. (For example, five years ago I would have deemed this story important. Today it seems meaningless.)

Still, as an outsider corroboration is useful when you’re assessing any human endeavor, to say nothing of doing so from the relative orbit of, say, Neptune. In reading My Mistake I found a fair bit of corroboration for conclusions I’d previously reached, yet after I finished the book I also decided to see what others had to say as a hedge against my own potential bias. That impetus quickly led to this review in The New York Times, which caused me to stare agape at my screen as I read what seemed to be a bizarro-world take on the same text I’d just digested:

Make no mistake, this is an angry book. Menaker is angry at himself for his character flaws (a flippant one-­upmanship that alienates others), and he is thin-skinned, remembering every slight. As a former executive editor in chief of Random House, he is proud to have nurtured writers who went on to win literary acclaim (the Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout, the National Book Award winner Colum McCann). Menaker is understandably upset over being ousted from that job in 2007, but what seems to truly infuriate him is being shunned by the publisher, Gina Centrello, during a transition period.

I honestly don’t know what that reviewer is talking about. My Mistake is not an angry book, unless your definition of anger includes expressing an opinion. And no, Mr. Menaker is not infuriated about being shunned by anyone — or at least not anyone in the publishing biz. If anything, he’s infuriated by his own serial incapacity to connect with other human beings in his life, though over time — and particularly in the writing and structure of My Mistake — I think he belatedly squares things with his departed father.

Then again, that’s the publishing industry in a nutshell. You can spend a year or two writing a book, yet when it’s reviewed — in this case, by no less than the self-anointed consensus cultural steward of commercial literary criticism — you can still end up being cleaved by a reviewer with an axe to grind, or mischaracterized because of a reviewer’s blind spots or personal acidity. (If you also worked in publishing for a time you might even be the recipient of some score settling.)

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Every moment in time is an intersection. People come and go, events transpire, all in a murky context. Sit though enough moments and you may be able to deduce that the steady stream of ore-laden trucks passing by reveals a distant mine, a factory, or both. Stick around a while longer, and when the stream turns to a trickle you may conclude that the mine is empty, or that demand has dried up.

Paying attention is not rocket science, but it still requires concentrated thought. In a world full of shiny objects and huckster begging for mindshare, paying attention is both difficult and critical. One way to short circuit the requirement is to find people who are good at paying attention and pay attention to them. Brian O’Leary of Magellan Media Partners is one such person.

Here’s a recent example:

If devices truly are important to a business model, the people leading content companies need to embrace the technologies, not just sign off on them.

A shallow understanding presents the real threat: that we’ll keep taking our eyes off the ball to pursue the latest and greatest development.

Pointing at (even championing) shiny objects is not enough. You need to understand how devices intersect with context, demand and consumer need. I don’t have a clue about any of that, but Brian does — which is why I pay attention to him.

Stop by the site and read a few posts and you’ll see what I mean. He’s throwing down some serious clarity about publishing in an environment teeming with shiny objects and deceptive pitch-people who really are trying to make a buck off their ability to distract you.

— Mark Barrett

What do I value most in a web site? Honesty.

When you go to a commercial site (Apple, say), you know going in that everything you see and read was massaged by corporate drones to fit a corporate theme aimed at corporate profits. Whether you buy into the theme or not, it’s all a lie. It might even be a fun lie, like Disneyland, but it’s still aimed at your wallet.

This tendency infects almost everything, particularly in the U.S., because we’re a business culture. Whether you’re a top-flight CEO or a sole-proprietor, who people think you are and how they respond to that image will probably determine whether you get to eat or not. (Okay, maybe not so much with the CEO.) It’s not objectively wrong to put your best foot, face, cheek or assets forward — although how you go about doing so may say more about who you are than you intended to reveal.

All of which is preamble to introducing you to Levi Montgomery. Over the past six months, in reading Levi’s blog posts, I haven’t had a single moment where I thought Levi was shading his opinion for later advantage. Granted, that’s easy enough to do if you’re just shooting your mouth off, and there’s no shortage of such people on the web.

But here’s the thing. Levi’s involved. He’s part of Self-Publishing Review, he recently pointed me to and recommended The Self-Publishing Review (which allowed me to find HPRW again), and he’s walking the walk himself as a writer.

I don’t always agree with his reactions and opinions, nor he I’m sure with mine, but the thing is, he meets a critical bar. He rationally explains his opinions, instead of blithely assuming that anybody who doesn’t ‘get it’ is a dweeb. Take his decision to remove his work from Smashwords, including his view that the PDF file-type should be the e-reader standard. I disagree, but then I also know that Levi is interested in retaining more control over the look and feel of his work than I am. (I’m crazy big into transparency as an aspect of craft.)

There just aren’t a lot of people who say what they think and explain what they mean. Levi Montgomery is one of those voices. Add to that the fact that he’s not sitting on the self-publishing sidelines, and you’ll understand why I consider him a must-read.

— Mark Barrett

How Publishing Really Works (HPRW) is a [now-archived site] I’ve found and lost several times, as well as the gateway to several other interesting sites. I’m adding it to the blogroll because I’m tired of spending frustrated hours trying to find my way back.

Run by Jane Smith, HPWR aspires to make the complexities and absurdities of the publishing world a bit less obscure, particularly for people who have an interest in writing themselves. A sister site to HPWR — and here I will beg your keen attention for a moment — is The Self-Publishing Review (TSPR), which should not be, but easily could be, confused with Henry Baum’s Self-Publishing Review. On TSPR Jane reviews self-published works using what I think is very fair and useful criteria:

What’s the catch? I’m an editor, and expect published books to be polished. I’m going to count all the errors I find in spelling, punctuation and grammar and when I reach fifteen I’m going to stop reading. I’ll work my way through up to five pages of boring prose or bad writing before I give up. And I’ll list on this blog every single book I’m sent, including the books I’ve not completed, along with how far I got through each one.

TSPR, like SPR, engages the most important question hanging over (and being lorded over) the self-publishing movement: are self-published writers creating works worth reading? HPRW attempts to pull back the curtain (if not the wool) on the publishing industry, which also helps would-be authors decide how best to approach the self-publishing movement. As to how Jane Smith manages to keep multiple blogs going while also finding time to write, I have no idea — but I am taking notes.

Update: It’s with mixed emotions that I’ve killed my blogroll link to this site, on the heels of [a now defunct] this post by Jane. We can all agree to disagree, but honestly I can’t square Jane’s condescension on her HPRW site while also respecting the work she’s done reviewing self-published authors on her Self-Publishing Review site. If, as she says in a follow-up post —

…while “good enough” can be a little difficult to define, “not good enough” is very easy to spot: almost every single one of the self-published books I’ve been sent for my self publishing review blog has slotted into this category, some far more easily than others (and bear in mind that I’ve got a backlog of book reviews waiting to be scheduled for publication, and most of them didn’t make the grade).

— then I’m hard-pressed to understand why she’s wasting her time. If, as she argues, unpublished writers are unpublished because their writing stinks, why in god’s name is she defying her own logic and reviewing self-published books? Simply to prove her own logic? If that’s the case, what kind of legitimacy can her reviews really have?

Honestly, I liked Jane’s posts on both of her sites. But having this bit of ugliness spew forth feels like a revelation of the worst kind. It colors everything of hers that I’ve read, and make me wonder what other hostile sentiments have been left unsaid.

— Mark Barrett