The Kindle may get all the buzz, but Amazon’s infuriating policy (or poor planning, or deliberate attempt to manage hype) of limiting access to it could ultimately backfire.

Joe Wikert has a great post with data (mmm, graphics!) over at Teleread, noting that Google Trends show interest in the Reader is consistently higher than that for the Kindle. Kindle interest spiked when the product was released and when the marketing juggernaut that is Oprah Winfrey talked about it on her show.

Combined with Sony’s plan to demonstrate the Reader to millions of Americans in person — not to mention the headstart it already has in parts of the world where the Kindle isn’t sold — this may mean bad news for the Kindle.

It’s too early to make the call, but I’d hate to see the Kindle become the new Betamax. Amazon, what are you doing?

*Photo of Reader, left, and Kindle from Gizmodo

Mosaic, one of the few magazines dedicated to showcasing black authors and their work, is in serious financial need.

I’ll let Ron Kavanaugh, executive director of Mosaic and the Literary Freedom Project, say it:

This year, Mosaic reached some important milestones. We celebrated our 10th anniversary as a quarterly and, for the fourth year, we presented the Re:Verse Literary Conference. Re:Verse is a day of professional-development literature workshops that seeks to increase the adoption of literature as an education tool and leisure activity.

But with escalating printing costs and the economic downturn Mosaic finds itself in dire straits. Your support will allow Mosaic to remain as one of the few print publications solely dedicated to presenting Black writers of the Diaspora.

I’m calling on all those who have said to me “If there’s anything I can do to help just let me know,” as well as fans of Mosaic to donate at least  $10. It’s what you can do to keep Mosaic a viable source of literary information.

Your gift will help strengthen our ability to present the literary arts to educators, youth, and readers.

If you can help, please do so. I’m going to try to scrounge up some pennies, too.

• OK, really, the trend of fabricated memoirs has to end. Now.
• What women don’t like about science fiction (hint: it starts with being told that we don’t like sci-fi)
• Editorial Ass will have a discussion about Toni Morrison’s A Mercy on New Year’s Day
• Yep, print is still dying (now in…paperback?)
• What authors should and should not seek in representation by an agent

In this week’s New York Times Book Review, Danielle Trussoni reviews A Journal for Jordan, by Times reporter and editor Dana Canedy (black journalist/author combo alert!).

The book is a memoir that draws on letters Canedy’s late fiance, First Sgt. Charles Monroe King, wrote to their infant son, Jordan. King died in Iraq in 2006.

Trussoni raves:

“I could not be at your birth because of the war,” King wrote to Jordan. One cannot help imagining the endless list of events this man will miss in the life of his only son. Canedy understands that one day Jordan will want to know the reasons for his father’s absence. He will want to know why we were in Iraq, what was achieved there and who was responsible for the death of his father. Canedy believes “there will be no easy answers” when that day comes. Perhaps his mother’s important memoir will be the place to start.

I’ve no doubt that this book is beautiful and, as Trussoni says, haunting; Canedy wrote an incredibly touching article about King shortly after his death nearly two years ago.

Want to learn more about Canedy’s book? She’s participated in a podcast and responded to readers’ questions about it. It also seems as though A Journal for Jordan has been optioned for a film.

After the jump, more black authors, this time on the best sellers lists.

(more…)

• Some authors say used bookstores should pay royalties for their sales: http://is.gd/dvFZ #
• @HarlemWriter It’s a discussion that needs to be had. Seen @carleenbrice’s angle on increased exposure?: http://is.gd/dtzv in reply to HarlemWriter #
• @HarlemWriter Gotcha. AFAIC, whatever gets writers the most exposure is good. in reply to HarlemWriter #
• Merry Christmas, all! http://is.gd/drAt Happy holidays, and happy reading! http://is.gd/drB8 #
• @LenaLene I’ve heard similar things about my hair. My dad, in particular, still doesn’t understand. in reply to LenaLene #
• The author L.A. Banks is holding a contest to give away a replica of the sword used by her character Damali Richards: http://is.gd/ddKw #
• NYT: More readers picking up electronic books http://is.gd/dby5 [Will book stores eventually go the way of the wrecka sto'?] #
• Dear publishers: Please take e-books seriously. Think about the demise of video tapes. Thx. http://is.gd/dbgV #
• Check it: @claudia_m recommends fiction about slavery over at @carleenbrice’s spot: http://is.gd/d7qG [I commented w/another recommendation] #
• E-reader is on the way for the iPhone, but it’s got Apple DRM on it: http://is.gd/d3YR #
• “When you get right down to it, the story you’re delivering is always more important than the delivery system you use.” http://is.gd/cZzn #
• @mosaicbooks Thx for posting that. It’s critical for black boys bc of educational metrics, but it’s clearly a male issue in general. in reply to mosaicbooks #
• Also, I missed this Q&A from a few days ago with Colson Whitehead in The New Yorker: http://is.gd/cSm5 #
• Didn’t realize that the last of L.A. Banks’s Vampire Huntress Legend series will be out so soon. Comes out in February. #
• Cracking up at the hilarious The Italian Gourmet-Baby-Food Baron’s Ironically Pregnant Virgin Mistress: http://is.gd/cFyt #

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The industry I work in is so desperate to keep from tanking that some talking heads are floating the idea of one of those auto-industry-style bailouts for it, and the other major wing of publishing, the book publishing industry, is doing just as poorly.

Publishing has endured plenty of rough patches, but this time, matters seemed truly dire. “There is a tendency in the industry to think that it is always under siege. There’s a certain amount of Sturm und Drang that is part of book publishing,” says Sara Nelson, editor in chief of Publishers Weekly. “I think it feels worse because it’s everywhere now. It feels like the world is coming to an end — and book publishing is just one part of that.”

Thanks to conglomeration and corporate distribution models, some of publishing’s biggest houses were laid very low by the current stock market collapse. And scary holiday book sales figures compounded the industry’s woes, with recent news of a 20 percent drop in sales in October from last year’s book market. Even worse, Nielsen Book Scan reported a 6.6 percent drop in unit sales during early December. Not even the holiday season could bolster book sales.

Somebody’s got to reinvent publishing, and it has to happen faster than it’s happening now. My guess is that the seeds of that reinvention are with the innovative authors who are taking more charge of their own marketing, agents looking to do something different, and readers making it clear what they want.

Do you celebrate Kwanzaa? Because I, um, don’t. Never have. Just can’t get motivated about it (it doesn’t help that I’m disgusted by the fact that its founder was convicted of assaults against women).

Now that I think about it, I actually only know one family that does celebrate it.

But for people who do participate in Kwanzaa festivities and/or want to read more about the celebration (which begins tonight), the books The Complete Kwanzaa by D. Winbush Riley and Celebrate Kwanzaa by Carolyn B. Otto — both of which I’ve flipped through in bookstores — seem to be decent.

Happy Kwanzaa — and happy reading!

Merry Christmas, all!

The following essay, by Charlotte’s Web author E.B. White, has always been my very favorite piece of Christmas writing. It first appeared in The New Yorker‘s “Talk of the Town” section in December 1952.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Merry Christmas! Happy Chanukah! Happy Festivus! Happy Holidays!

From this high midtown hall, undecked with boughs, unfortified with mistletoe, we send forth our tinselled greetings as of old, to friends, to readers, to strangers of many conditions in many places.

Merry Christmas to uncertified accountants, to tellers who have made a mistake in addition, to girls who have made a mistake in judgment, to grounded airline passengers, and to all those who can’t eat clams! We greet with particular warmth people who wake and smell smoke. To captains of river boats on snowy mornings we send an answering toot at this holiday time. Merry Christmas to intellectuals and other despised minorities! Merry Christmas to the musicians of Muzak and men whose shoes don’t fit!

Greetings of the season to unemployed actors and the blacklisted everywhere who suffer for sins uncommitted; a holly thorn in the thumb of compilers of lists! Greetings to wives who can’t find their glasses and to poets who can’t find their rhymes! Merry Christmas to the unloved, the misunderstood, the overweight. Joy to the authors of books whose titles begin with the word “How” (as though they knew!). Greetings to people with a ringing in their ears; greetings to growers of gourds, to shearers of sheep, and to makers of change in the lonely underground booths! Merry Christmas to old men asleep in libraries!

Merry Christmas to people who can’t stay in the same room with a cat! We greet, too, the boarders in boarding houses on 25 December, the duennas in Central Park in fair weather and foul, and young lovers who got nothing in the mail. Merry Christmas to people who plant trees in city streets; merry Christmas to people who save prairie chickens from extinction! Greetings of a purely mechanical sort to machines that think–plus a sprig of artificial holly. Joyous Yule to Cadillac owners whose conduct is unworthy of their car! Merry Christmas to the defeated, the forgotten, the inept; joy to all dandiprats and bunglers!

We send, most particularly and most hopefully, our greetings and our prayers to soldiers and guardsmen on land and sea and in the air–the young men doing the hardest things at the hardest time of life. To all such, Merry Christmas, blessings, and good luck!

We greet the Secretaries-designate, the President-elect; Merry Christmas to our new leaders, peace on earth, good will, and good management! Merry Christmas to couples unhappy in doorways! Merry Christmas to all who think they are in love but aren’t sure! Greetings to people waiting for trains that will take them in the wrong direction, to people doing up a bundle and the string is too short, to children with sleds and no snow! We greet ministers who can’t think of a moral, gagmen who can’t think of a joke. Greetings, too, to the inhabitants of other planets; see you soon!

And last, we greet all skaters on small natural ponds at the edge of woods toward the end of afternoon. Merry Christmas, skaters! Ring, steel! Grow red, sky! Die down, wind! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good morrow!

E.B. White, Dec. 20, 1952

As I’m winding up 2008, I wanted to take some time to look back at the posts around here that receive the most traffic.

It seems that the Top 5 things on this site that interest you most are infertility (twice over), Sally Hemings, Toni Morrison and white readers.

You’re a strange bunch.

The posts you read most this year are, in order of popularity from most to least:

1. Black women and the desire for children, redux
2. Black women and the desire for children
3. How did Thomas Jefferson’s black relatives feel about him?
4. Toni Morrison says she’s “never been better”
5. White people, this one’s for you!
6. May-December relationships in romance novels
7. Are you passionate about Maya Angelou’s work? Why?
8. Review: The Darker Mask, edited by Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers
9. Romance Slam Jam: Celeste O. Norfleet, Lisa G. Riley
10. How President-elect Obama is affecting my reading habits