Barnes & Nowhere

Numbers are crunchy. They're good for you, too, like broccoli for your brain. For those craving numerical nutrition while watching Barnes & Noble's current shuttering of many of its stores across the country and abroad, there are all kinds of fresh, delicious numbers out for you to digest. Scads of publications are rushing to analyze Barnes & Noble's poor sales performance during the last holiday shopping season. The company's same store sales were down pretty much across the board, and stats for selling Nooks and e-books in the fourth quarter of 2012 were largely unimpressive.

The fallout from those disappointing numbers, and the bad numbers that preceded them earlier in 2012 and in recent years past, isn't hard to see. From the vantage point of the Gazalapalooza nerve center near our nation's capital, we're watching B&N mothball stores in Washington, D.C., and northern Virginia as we type these words. When they're asked to comment on the store closures, mouthpieces for B&N's executive suite in Manhattan quickly cite numbers. They use all kinds of numbers to to explain, justify and soft-pedal B&N's inexorable death march down the well-trodden path beaten by Borders not so long ago. Incidentally, in a tasty karmic twist of fate, it's also the same path that in the last two decades of the 20th century the company forced countless local independent bookstores all over the country to tread as the Riggio brothers expanded B&N into every retail nook and cranny they could find, both via B&N stores and through B&N's acquisition of the (now defunct) mall-based B. Dalton Bookseller chain.

Shall we examine the numbers? Well, Bob Dylan said you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Similarly, you don't need an accountant to see where B&N's heading, and why. All you need is your eyes, and a passing familiarity with certain recently demised icons of American retail.

The "why" is straightforward, and it has been beaten to death in innumerable reports for the past 20 years. The Internet is why. We needn't spend valuable time on that. If you need a refresher, think back to how you and your family, friends and colleagues conducted much, if not most, of your holiday shopping a couple of months ago.

It's more interesting to put aside the numbers for a bit, and think about what you see when you venture into a Barnes & Noble store. For present purposes, forget the ubiquitous coffee shop. Think instead about what else you see.

Whether you realize it or not, you see ghosts. You see the ghosts of retail past. You see the ghost of B&N's imminent future.

Remember all the Blockbuster stores? At its peak, Blockbuster had many thousands of stores. Today they number in mere hundreds, and disappear by the month. Blockbusters were everywhere. Blockbuster tried to keep up with changing times, switching from VHS tapes to DVDs when the market evolved. Nonetheless, like the VHS home rental model that spawned them, Blockbuster is pretty much nowhere now.

You can buy DVDs at Barnes & Noble. They have a section for that.

That's where you'll find Blockbuster's ghost at B&N.

Most folks order physical DVDs online, from Amazon. The ones that don't stream their video entertainment from Netflix.

Remember all the Tower Records stores? At its peak some years prior to its second and final bankruptcy filing in 2006, it wasn't too hard to find a Tower Records store in almost any American city. Tower was everywhere. Tower is nowhere now.

You can buy CDs at Barnes & Noble. They have a section for that.

That's where you'll find Tower's ghost at B&N.

Most folks download their music purchases online, from Apple's iTunes store, or from Amazon. The ones that don't stream music over the Internet from services like Pandora.

Remember e-readers? That should be an easy one to recall even for you whippersnappers. Kindles and Nooks, right? Well, old-school single-purpose Kindles and Nooks inevitably will share the same technological fate as 8-track and cassette tapes. Tablet computers do anything e-readers can do, and do it just as well with a lot more additional functionalities, in a small package. Those single-purpose Kindles and Nooks used to be everywhere. Very soon they'll be consigned to the same nowhere that Polaroid cameras hang out.

You can buy Nooks at Barnes & Noble. They have a big section for that.

The Nooks are in their death throes, though. It won't be long till they're ghosts, too. B&N is no technology wizard, and no Nook will ever be a great tablet or smartphone. Tablets and smartphones will dance on the Nook's grave as surely as digitally downloaded tunes now waltz among the dusty tombstones of 8-track tapes.

What's left? Oh yeah, books. You can buy books at Barnes & Noble. That's the ghost of Borders, not to mention the spectral residue of B&N's own bygone B. Daltons subsidiary and its growing roster of closed and soon-to-be-closed stores.

More than anything else, Barnes & Noble is a haunted house of retail. Strive as it may to stay open and relevant in an Internet world, its struggles will prove for naught. In this Internet era, the book selling world B&N conquered no longer exists, and so too will B&N cease to exist in any iteration like its present one.

That's not to say we're sounding the death knell for physical books. There will always be people who want physical books, people for whom e-books simply won't do. We hear from them every day. And when those people want actual books, they'll order them online, most likely from Amazon for the foreseeable future.

But, if they're fortunate, they might also have a good local independent bookstore to visit where they can buy those physical books. There are still some independent stores around, battle-scarred though they may be, and after B&N's demise we think might well be more of them. Not that those small shops will have acres of shelves teeming with tens of thousands of books -- the economics of independent book retailing won't permit it. The stores will stock only a few hundred books at a time, likely current and perennial bestsellers. But what economics will permit over the next few years is small bookshops to have Espresso Book Machines, like the one nicknamed "OPUS" at the independent Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C. EBMs, which can print, collate, cover and bind almost any book in (or out of) print in just a few minutes, are relatively new technology, and accordingly large and expensive. So were computers, printers, facsimile machines and cell phones not that long ago. Nevertheless, as recently as last summer there were more than 50 EBMs in libraries, universities and bookstores around the world, with more on the way. Like other new technologies, EBMs will become ever smaller and cheaper as time flies. And when EBMS become sufficiently so, your local independent bookstore will have one ready, willing and able to whip up a high-quality copy of nearly any book that has ever been in existence, at your demand. This is the future of local independent bookshops in a post Barnes & Noble world, and it's a good one.

Barnes & Noble never bothered to mourn the beloved independent community bookstores it vanquished during its remorseless rise to power. Nor will the resurgent independent bookstores waste breath praising B&N when they join with Amazon to bury it next to Borders, in the shadows thrown from the battered stones marking Blockbuster's and Tower Records' unlamented graves.

"Le roi est mort, vive les princes."

~~Lise-Marie Jaillant~~

I Sing the Book Electric

Hold on a sec. Just getting my stuff together before I leave the house.

Let's see... My cell phone. Check. My music player. Check. Where did I leave my still camera? I'm sure I put it right here. Or was it over there? Here it is, next to my video cam. Can't forget my handheld gaming machine, either. Man, I need more pockets.

How often does that little vignette happen at your house? Not a whole lot since about 2007, I'm guessing. All right, maybe 2009 or so with that bit about the video cam. Still, the bottom line is when you shove your smart phone in your pocket, you're also grabbing your music player, your still and video cam, a game console, an untold array of apps and the entire Internet in your pants before you saunter out the door to start your day.

Admittedly, there are professionals, aficionados and die-hards who'll never abandon the latest or favorite iterations of a given purpose-specific technological tool. For one among their number, the new Nikon Coolpix S800c is simply de rigeur, just as Ashton Kutcher says.

But for the ever-growing majority of us, convenience trumps all. Why pay for, attend to, and lug around a handful of devices when we can enjoy all those devices' disparate functionalities in one compact, pretty machine?

The answer is, increasingly we don't. Nor should we. Unless you're making your living as a professional photographer or videographer, the photo and video features on your smart phone serve perfectly well for all your creative visual imagery needs. The music player works great. The apps and the Internet are always at your twitching fingertips. Oh yeah, and it's a phone, too.

One machine that does many things well is what you want. And there's nothing wrong with that. It makes perfect sense. And there's a vast global community of hardware and software engineers, designers and programmers who toil constantly to invent and refine your phone and what it can do for you, giving you opportunities to use that pretty little machine in ways you never knew you wanted to until you knew you could.

So when's the last time you bought a stand-alone camera, regardless of Kutcher's pitches?

Exactly, and that's also the fate of dedicated e-readers, for the same reasons.

Consider the burgeoning popularity of reading books in electronic format. Last December, a study released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project reported that the number of Americans choosing to read e-books escalated from 16% to 23% over the course of 2012. The same study said the number of adults who read printed books declined from 72% to 67% over the identical period.

That's intriguing. But what's more intriguing, particularly for authors and publishers, is this: in 2011, nine out of ten e-books were read on dedicated e-readers, such as Amazon's Kindle or Barnes & Noble's Nook. In 2012, that declined to only three out of four. In other words, in the 24 months from January, 2011 to December, 2012, reading books on dedicated e-readers declined from 90% of the e-book market, to 75%.

Where did the e-book reading migrate to from Kindles and Nooks? You guessed it -- to tablets. This is a trend that will accelerate for a long time before it decelerates.

Amazon sells a whole lot of books, and it wishes to continue doing that, so it recognizes and accepts this trend very clearly. Thus its introduction of the Kindle Fire, which is a sophisticated, multifunctional multimedia tablet device rather than strictly an e-reader. The Fire is designed to compete with iPads, Google Nexuses, Nook HD+, and the like, tablets all.

Remember, the iPad was introduced to the world not even three years ago. Technology research firm IDC predicted that when the 2012 sales numbers are finalized, over 122 million tablets will have been sold worldwide. That's up from 65 million tablets sold in 2011, and barely 17 million in 2010.

How will that affect the dedicated e-reader? Let's go back to our friends at IDC. They estimate 2012 global e-reader shipments declined 28% from 2011, from nearly 28 million e-readers in 2011 to less than 20 million in 2012.

What do these statistics foretell? Lee Rainie over at Pew says, "We haven't reached this point yet, but there are reasonable thoughts that the book experience of the future will be dramatically different than today. It will be multimedia, highly social and maybe even incorporate a wiki experience."

Gazalapalooza agrees. As a matter of fact, we agreed quite some time ago, in a post called "The E-lluminated Manuscript" that we published here in October, 2011. Now would be a great time for you to pop over and read that post, as it ties in directly to this one.

The bottom line is that as readers hustle from e-readers to tablets, a significant portion of them will expect, if not demand, that the books they buy to enjoy on those tablets take advantage of more than one of the machine's features. This will be true particularly for younger readers, who've been inundated with multimedia machines since (if not before) they escaped their cradles.

One thing is sure -- these newfangled books will be costly to produce, and so costly as well to purchase. It won't be easy to make an interactive, multimedia e-book on a typical book budget, rather than one usually associated with producing a video game, much less a movie. Talent other than authorial will have to be recruited and paid, and rights to audio, visual, and imagery elements will have to be secured without violating copyrights. But that's not stopping publishers from venturing into this largely undiscovered literary terrain. Penguin says it plans to release about 50 fiction and nonfiction "enhanced e-books" this year. Simon & Schuster has around 60 of them slated for publication in 2013, and Knopf and Random House also have enhanced e-books heading toward a tablet near you before this year's end. Of course, Apple is jumping into the deep end, though its concentration is on enhanced, interactive e-textbooks.

The question is, are these interactive, multimedia tale-telling things "books" in any true sense? They spin stories and impart information, which are the most essential functions of books in their traditional paper iterations. But they also incorporate one or more of music, 2- and 3-D photos, maps, videos, games, puzzles, social media, and wikis. Is it a book, or is it a digital app, or is it a video game? And if it's more than a book, is it really a book at all, or is it something other? If nothing else, the evolution forced on authors and book publishers by readers armed with tablets will twist the definition of the word "book" in ways unforeseen just a few years ago. It may well twist just as profoundly the definition of "author."

And all this enhanced e-book noise may be just a passing fad. Book publishers have stumbled down a path not unlike this one before, when they experimented with multimedia books on CD-ROMS a few years back. To put it charitably, the experiment was not a success. Or, as e-book publisher Open Road Integrated Media's CEO Jane Friedman said recently, "The consumer is not asking for this. It takes it from being a reading experience to something else..."

Still, despite what she says, Friedman's company is dipping its toes into the enhanced e-book market. This spring Open Road is set to release Gift, a novel by Andrea Buchanan for young adults that incorporates original music, graphics, diary entries and a music video by Swedish YouTube superstar FreddeGredde.

All this swirls in my fevered brow as I'm writing the hotly-anticipated sequel to my thriller, Blood of the Moon. For enhanced e-book purposes, am I an author, or a producer? Seemingly the latter. If so, I'm thinking Dave Grohl does the soundtrack. Maybe I can get Steven Spielberg to direct. And a holographic appearance by Marilyn Monroe would surely boost marketing and sales, don't you think?

"Simplicity is the glory of expression."

~~ Walt Whitman ~~

Author Spotlight: Brad Meltzer

It’s easy to miss Brad Meltzer, today’s guest on the Gazalapalooza Author Spotlight. To do so, all that’s required is a simple three-pronged strategy: First, stay out of bookstores and away from online booksellers, for otherwise you’ll surely encounter any number of his nine bestselling thrillers. Be warned — the newest of them, The Fifth Assassin, was released today, so it’s particularly ubiquitous. Of course if you’re successful dodging his fiction work at the stores, you still run the risk of running into his pair of acclaimed nonfiction books, Heroes for My Son, and Heroes for My Daughter. Nonetheless, you might think you can sneak into your bookshop and still exercise Meltzer avoidance by secreting yourself in your bookseller’s graphic novels section, but you’d be out of luck there. Superhero luminaries like Superman, Batman, the Green Arrow, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer have all benefited from Meltzer’s touch. So, no bookstores. Now, go with prong #2 and bypass bestseller lists all over the world, where Meltzer’s novels have staked out lofty territory consistently since the 1998 publication of his first novel, The Tenth Justice. Then implement the third prong: sprint home and get rid of your television. In a vain effort to keep your TV, you may have deluded yourself into believing it’s a Meltzer-free zone. But no, my friend, the TV has to go. You’ll be doing yourself a disservice, though — especially if you’re a fan of compelling mystery and conspiracy theory investigation — because you’ll lose out on being thoroughly entertained by "Brad Meltzer’s Decoded" on the History Channel.

Meltzer is everywhere, and that’s a good thing. For 15 years our guest has worked very hard to entertain, thrill, mystify and educate us, and we think he’s done a spectacular job of it. That’s why we’re pleased Meltzer has carved some time out of his ridiculously busy schedule to visit the Author Spotlight and commemorate with us today’s release of The Fifth Assassin. Notice that it seems all his canoodling with superheroes has rubbed Meltzer the right way, since he appears utterly unflappable in the unforgiving wooden chair, even with harsh klieg light reflecting off his trademark spectacles. Meltzer looks ready to go. We are too, so without further ado, let’s get this edition of the Author Spotlight underway.

Gazala:    In my omnipotence, I've sentenced you to be stranded alone on a desert island for offenses best left unnamed. In my beneficence, I've decided to allow you a limited amount of reading material to make your stay a little less bleak than it would otherwise be. I'll spot you your religious text of preference, and the collected works of William Shakespeare. In addition to those, name the one fiction book, and the one nonfiction book, you'd choose to take with you, and why you choose them.

Meltzer:    To Kill a Mockingbird is the novel I'd take. But that's such an obvious answer, even if it's a true one. So I'd take Watchmen by Alan Moore for fiction. For non-fiction, I'd take my family photo album. Suck it. That counts for non-fiction.

Gazala:    Your latest book is an excellent and gripping thriller titled The Fifth Assassin, featuring the return of archivist Beecher White to confront a terrifying presidential assassination conspiracy spanning a century. I've read it. I enjoyed it immensely, and recommend it highly. Shockingly enough, however, from time to time my bare recommendation doesn't always motivate a book's potential reader to become a book's actual reader. Tell us something about The Fifth Assassin, and why its potential reader should make the leap and become its actual reader.

Meltzer:    I spent two years studying presidential death so I could write about a serial killer who's recreating the crimes of all the presidential assassins, from John Wilkes Booth to Lee Harvey Oswald. You'll get to see the secret tunnels below Camp David. And you'll find out where the government really does keep the bullet that killed Abraham Lincoln. 

Gazala:    What are books for?

Meltzer:    Stories aren't what did happen; they're what could happen.

Gazala:    W. Somerset Maugham said, "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." Do you agree, or disagree, and why?

Meltzer:    It's the number one rule of writing: There are no rules.

Gazala:    A mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper is knocking on my front door. Ask yourself a question, and answer it.

Meltzer:    Q: After nine books, is writing still hard? A: The day it's easy is the day I'm done.

Sure, you can try avoiding Meltzer and all his good work. The question is, why would you want to? If you’re an admirer of timely, intelligent and gripping entertainment, you wouldn’t. Resistance to Meltzer’s engaging wiles is not only futile, but an exercise in pointless self-denial for any self-respecting thriller fan. Don’t take our word for it. See for yourself by grabbing a copy of Meltzer's new book, The Fifth Assassin, right now. All you have to do to order your copy from Amazon is click here. You can thank us later, and we know you will.

Author Spotlight: James Grippando Returns

This is a great time to be New York Times bestselling suspense author James Grippando. Today marks the release of his twentieth novel, Blood Money. Blood Money is Grippando’s tenth book in the highly acclaimed series featuring Miami criminal defense attorney Jack Swyteck. You can catch Grippando talking about Blood Money very soon on MSNBC’s "Morning Joe" program. You don’t want to miss that, and after reading Grippando’s interview here, you certainly won’t want to miss reading Blood Money.

This interview marks another career milestone for Grippando. Grippando’s appearance with us today makes him the first our august alumni to appear twice on the Gazalapalooza Author Spotlight. We’ll begrudgingly admit that perhaps Grippando’s return to our Spotlight’s glare doesn’t have quite the cachet of writing 20 successful novels, or hobnobbing with Joe and Mika on MSNBC’s morning show, but we still think it’s pretty cool. We’re confident you’ll think so too, once you indulge yourself with this edition of the Author Spotlight.

Having been here before, Grippando knows his way around. See how he’s already seated on our hard wooden chair, looking unflappable despite the unrelenting blaze of our klieg light array. We’ll see if he’s so serene come the interview’s end, come which Kardashian may to read his innermost thoughts. Intrigued? We don’t blame you. So without further ado, let’s get this Spotlight underway.

Gazala:    What is the most surprising occupational hazard to being a novelist?

Grippando:    Personal safety. I used to think you had to be a megastar like Salman Rushdie or Steven King to worry about such things, but that’s naïve. I want to be accessible to my readers, but there is risk in putting yourself “out there.” The good news is that each time I’ve had a bad experience, I’ve worked it into a book.  My scare with a heckler at a bookstore became a scene in Lying with Strangers. When my identity was stolen (in part because so much info about me is publicly available), I used that experience in Money to Burn. And my most recent book, Blood Money, also grew out of one of these, shall we say, “inconveniences.” In the summer of 2010 I was wondering which way to go with my next work, and my agent called. 

“I want you to talk to Jose Baez,” he said.

There was a hint of excitement in Richard’s voice, and I could tell that he wanted me to be just as excited. I disappointed him. “I feel like I’m supposed to know the name,” I said, “but I don’t.”

“Yes, you do,” said Richard. “He’s Casey Anthony’s lawyer.”

For several years I had considered writing a work of nonfiction. Jeffrey Toobin’s much acclaimed book about the O.J. Simpson trial had, in my mind, set the standard for the flood of books about the most watched trial in the history of American television. Public interest in Casey Anthony rivaled that of Simpson, and I wondered if there was a place on the bookshelves for a Toobin-like work on the Anthony trial. I had several telephone conversations with Mr. Baez over the summer of 2011. It turned out that he was a fan of my work, having read my first Jack Swyteck novel, The Pardon, while he was still in law school. He had yet to watch the Anthony trial from start to finish, and he suggested that we sit down together and watch it, so that he could explain to me what was going on behind the scenes. That meeting never happened. Our discussions ended abruptly with another telephone call from my agent.

“We’re out,” Richard told me.

A New York Post report (July 25, 2011) that Jose Baez had “met with” my agent went viral over the Internet. The backlash was overwhelming. Bloggers posted the agency’s contact information, urging readers to clog phone lines and e-mail boxes with a simple message: “NO WAY JOSE.” Simon & Schuster's Facebook page was hacked based purely on rumors (untrue) that the publisher was to sign a book deal with Anthony. In Oklahoma—twelve hundred miles from the Orlando courthouse—twenty-six year old Sammay Blackwell was run off the road and almost killed by a woman who thought Ms. Blackwell was Casey Anthony. I quickly realized that the book I wanted to write wasn’t a nonfiction account of a trial that was already overexposed. The story—my novel—was in the phenomenon that turns certain law-abiding citizens into vigilantes who will accept nothing but their own sense of “justice.” 

Gazala:    Your latest book is an excellent and gripping thriller titled Blood Money. I know it's a special novel for you in terms of milestones -- your 20th overall, and the 10th in your acclaimed "Jack Swyteck" series. I've read Blood Money, enjoyed it immensely, and recommend it highly. Shockingly enough, however, from time to time my bare recommendation doesn't always motivate a book's potential reader to become a book's actual reader. Tell us something about Blood Money, and why its potential reader should make the leap and become its actual reader.

Grippando:    My goal with each book is to make the new one more entertaining than the last one. By novel number 20 the bar is pretty high, but I think I cleared it with Blood Money. 

Jack represents an attention-hungry cocktail waitress and party girl named Sydney Bennett, who is accused of killing her two-year-old child—a fictional Casey Anthony. She is convicted in the minds of millions of viewers who are riveted to the nonstop television coverage of the trial—but the jury finds her not guilty. In what seems to be a spontaneous act of vigilantism, a college student is attacked and left in a coma. Her only crime is that she looks like the wrong woman, and she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or is there more to it than that? To Jack’s surprise, the victim’s parents beg him to get justice for their daughter, to discover what really happened and why. Jack’s investigation twists and turns in startling ways, ultimately uncovering an evil more threatening than mob violence, and that is lurking just beyond the glare of the media spotlight.

Blood Money is not just a “ripped from the headlines” retelling of the Casey Anthony trial. My story picks up where the “trial of the century” left off, and the real focus is on the dangers of “TV justice” administered by certain sensationalists in the media. As overblown as the hype and hoopla were in the Casey Anthony trial, my inspiration came from the young Oklahoma mother I mentioned earlier, who was run off the road because she looked like Casey Anthony. Sammay Blackwell was able to save herself by pretending to be dead when her attacker got out of her car and came to Sammay’s overturned truck—not to help Sammay, but to finish her off. That blind fixation—a nationwide fascination that, for some, escalates to the point of dangerous or even deadly obsession—is the inspiration for my twentieth novel. 

Gazala:    Have you ever killed off one of your characters only to greatly regret the death later? If so, whose death do you regret, and why?

Grippando:    Sadly, yes. Jack Swyteck first appeared in The Pardon in 1994 as a young and idealistic lawyer who defended death row inmates for a legal aid clinic called “The Freedom Institute.” Neil Goderich, a pony-tailed relic of the hippy generation, was Jack’s mentor. I didn’t write The Pardon with the intent to create a series, but I went back to Jack in 2002 with Beyond Suspicion. Neil was of course part of the cast, and he was an important part of Jack’s life…until Afraid of the Dark (2011). Readers immediately reacted and said I would regret it. Now I feel like James Caan in "Misery," tormented by Kathy Bates and trying to figure out a way to resurrect a character I should never have killed off.  

Gazala:    If you could take credit for writing any one book not your own, which would it be, and why?

Grippando:    Well, since you didn’t exclude the Bible, that’s an obvious choice. Three hundred years at the top of the best seller list with translations into more than a thousand languages would even put me ahead of J.K. Rowling. 

Gazala:    If you had to empower one person unrelated to you by blood or marriage to read your thoughts for a day, who would you choose, and why?

Grippando:    It would have to be someone who is totally self-absorbed, too wrapped up in his or her own thoughts to bother with mine. Pick any Kardashian.

Any Kardashian? Wow. Even though Grippando’s been here before, we did not see that coming. We can’t decide whether that’s a good call, but it’s certainly a gutsy one. Unsurprising, though, since Blood Money is a gutsy book in times like these. Find out for yourself by ordering your copy of Blood Money from Amazon. All you have to do is click here, and soon enough you’ll be enjoying a gripping read. Have fun.

Author Spotlight: Bruce T. Jones

New Orleans does things to people. It swirls the senses of both the folks who live there, and the ones merely passing through. It overwhelms its citizens and wayfarers alike with as many people and places beautiful and light, as wicked and dark. One man long renowned for being fairly good with words said of the city, "The past doesn't pass away so quickly here. You could be dead for a long time." Clearly, New Orleans left a deep impression on Bob Dylan’s psyche.

And so too has New Orleans done on the spirit of today’s Gazalapalooza Author Spotlight guest, author Bruce T. Jones. Jones is here to talk about writing, and share some thoughts about his debut thriller, The Lost Reflection, an uncanny tale set in New Orleans. Not to be outdone by Dylan without a fight, the eminently well-traveled Jones says to New Orleans, "…no city has touched my soul, and called me back like you."

So touched was Jones’s soul that he was compelled to write The Lost Reflection. We know the feeling. New Orleans affects us the same way. That’s one of the reasons why we’re so pleased Jones joins us for this Spotlight. Another is that The Lost Reflection is a chilling, delicious read. And so without further ado, let’s get the Spotlight’s rows of klieg lights fired up and trained squarely on today’s guest.

Gazala:    In my omnipotence, I've sentenced you to be stranded alone on a desert island for offenses best left unnamed. In my beneficence, I've decided to allow you a limited amount of reading material to make your stay a little less bleak than it would otherwise be. I'll spot you your religious text of preference, and the collected works of William Shakespeare. In addition to those, name the one fiction book, and the one nonfiction book, you'd choose to take with you, and why you choose them.

Jones:    So many fictions and only one to choose. The Lord of the Rings would have to be the front runner. It’s long and certainly not the easiest book to read. It takes my dyslexic brain longer to process than most, thus it would last much longer. It is a great tale of defeating insurmountable odds, offering hope to get off this God forsaken island you have dumped me on. And lastly, it allows the wandering mind so many directions to continue the saga of the characters, both past and future.

What do you mean Fifty Shades of Grey isn’t nonfiction? Actually, although it may not be the one of the best written books I have read, Kyle Maynard’s No Excuses is certainly a testimony to one man’s belief that nothing is impossible. Hence, proper mindset can overcome even the biggest obstacles in our paths.

Gazala:    Your new book is an excellent and gripping thriller titled The Lost Reflection, about the Vatican's ancient secret hidden in the Ursuline Convent in New Orleans' French Quarter. I've read it. I enjoyed it immensely, and recommend it highly. Shockingly enough, however, from time to time my bare recommendation doesn't always motivate a book's potential reader to become a book's actual reader. Tell us something about The Lost Reflection, and why its potential reader should make the leap and become its actual reader.

Jones:    The roots of this tale are entrenched in 250 years of New Orleans history. This is a living, breathing legend that can be experienced today upon a visit to the Crescent City. Believe in vampires or not, the mystery of the Ursuline Convent’s third floor is a fascinating tale. Otherwise, the book contains some pretty hot vampires and is pretty darn inexpensive entertainment.

Gazala:    What are books for?

Jones:    Education would be the academically appropriate answer. But for me, it’s the ejector seat from reality. It’s a chance to free one’s mind from the everyday constraints and tribulations which have a tendency to wear the soul down over the long years. It’s sharing in accolades and tragedy, growing emotionally and spiritually with the writer, it’s... education. 

Gazala:    W. Somerset Maugham said, "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." Do you agree, or disagree, and why?

Jones:    What I have learned in this journey, rules may be responsible for the best books never written. There are books, educators, publishers, editors and agents. All have different interpretations of the rules, so many more than three. Unfortunately, society rarely embraces the rule breakers, but when they do, the creation of some astonishing work is witnessed.

Gazala:    A nice gentleman dressed in black with long, sharp fangs seems hungry for my attention. While I see what he wants, ask yourself a question, and answer it.

Jones:    Q: If this guy starts to kill Richard, should I run? A: I probably should hide out in the dumpster until the guy in black leaves, then nab Richard’s Starbucks gold card. If the cops or the coroner finds the card, they’ll probably use it themselves. I could use a free latte about now.

It seems Jones has spent enough time in New Orleans’ steamy swelter to fare well under the Spotlight’s fiery glaze. Interestingly, I never told the man I have a Starbucks gold card, but I do. Eerie. That kind of supernatural vision bodes well for a book about otherworldly thrills in a city where you could be dead for a long, long time. See for yourself — The Lost Reflection is available at book retailers everywhere, but if Amazon's your preference you can get your copy right now by clicking here.

Author Spotlight 2012's Greatest Hits

Gazalapalooza is all about writers and writing. Our Author Spotlight is a very popular recurring feature. That’s understandable, because not only do we have only the most fascinating, erudite and attractive authors visit the Spotlight, but these same literary luminaries shed bright light on the art, craft and business of writing books that people everywhere love to read. We’re fortunate that lots of very gifted authors generously spent some of their valuable time educating and entertaining our blog’s readers. We’re equally blessed that many thousands of Gazalapalooza readers like you from all over the world dropped by to learn and laugh with the 21 authors who graced our pages in 2012.

2013 is mere hours away. Soon we’ll be ringing in the New Year with Author Spotlights shining on Bruce T. Jones, James Grippando (back for seconds!), and Brad Meltzer, all visiting to talk about their respective new thrillers The Lost Reflection, Blood Money, and The Fifth Assassin.

And that’s just in January.

As we prepare to bid adieu to 2012, we decided to say farewell by assembling a "greatest hits" compilation of sorts. (Admittedly, it’s a highly subjective assemblage, but it’s our name on the virtual door so we get to do what we want. That’s one of the benefits of being boss blogger.) Accordingly, we’ve culled from our Author Spotlight interviews some nugget of truth, fiction, wisdom, or inanity from each authorial soul intrepid enough to venture into the Spotlight’s white hot heat in 2012.

Without further ado, please join us as we ring out the old year and welcome in the new with the Gazalapalooza Author Spotlight Redux, 2012 Edition. Enjoy.

Salma Abdelnour: "After wondering for years if I had the guts to follow that fantasy and see where it would lead, I finally did it."

David Baldacci: "Be afraid with every project that you can't bring the magic again. Fear is a great antidote to complacency and formula."

Steve Berry: "What is known, is suspect."

Catherine Coulter: "So, yeah, it's a block, but it's not caused by angst or stress or any sort of psychological malaise -- I think it's all because of a bad plot."

Richard Doetsch: "I disagree. No rules. Rules constrict creativity. If I listened to the rules I wouldn’t have started my novel, The 13th Hour, at the last chapter and written it backwards."

Dan Fesperman: "Apologies for looking like such a tatterdemalion in my current state of labefactation, but you scrofulous laggards were certainly a bit dilatory in arriving."

John Gilstrap: "Plus, if my copy of Moby Dick is the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, I’ll have toilet paper for my first 672 days on the island.  (Oooh, I’m going to be in trouble for that one.)"

James Grippando: "The only people who can be totally honest with each other are lovers or strangers. Everyone else is just negotiating."

Malcolm Holt: "It's hard trying to watch a DVD in the bath."

Alan Orloff: "I’ve lived in the D.C. area most of my life, so I know something about the sordid stories associated with those walking the corridors of power."

Kira Peikoff: "For me, books are my drug of choice — my regular and much-needed dose of enlightenment, entertainment, wonder, and inspiration."

Matthew Reilly: "So far as I know, the only rule is this: write what you love to read yourself."

Matt Richtel: "You imagine you won the lottery, or that the beautiful woman/man across the aisle in the bookstore flirted with you, or that you saved the airplane from terrorists on 9/11."

James Rollins: "Whatever problem you struggle with during your writing day (dialog, opening a scene, etc.), you’ll discover a great example on how to address that in the book you read that night."

Kieran Shields: "Side effects of this novel may include sleeplessness, temporary confusion, and feelings of delusional well-being.  If you experience criminal detection lasting more than 4 hours, seek immediate professional assistance."

J. Gregory Smith: "…I came up with a sort of superhypnosis combined with a mysterious concoction that allows access to the deepest reaches of a subject's subconscious. Now we're talking power."

Simon Tolkien: "…I don’t think that starting at page one and seeing what happens can ever be a recipe for success. Writing good novels requires great organizational skills, particularly if the writer intends to keep his reader absorbed in the unfolding story."

Tim Wendel: "Well, you start with the rules. Those are your flickering lights as you move into the darkness when you begin any new book."

Stephen White: "Obviously, if someone doesn’t get around to reading the ending of this fine series, you won’t be able to tell me all the ways I screwed it up. Why would anyone pass up that chance?"

David Wong: "That's a deeply personal question, and you quite frankly have no business asking it. This interview is over."

Stuart Woods: "I have a fevered imagination and a rich fantasy life, which helps with the sex scenes. That’s all you need."

Wow. It’s difficult to pick a favorite, isn’t it? Trust us, it’s not nearly so easy as you might assume.

We extend our many and sincere thanks to all of our Spotlight Authors. Remember to support our authors. Read their Spotlights. Then go read their books. All of them are available all sorts of places, including Amazon.

Last, but immeasurably far from least, we also thank all of you, Gazalaplaooza’s readers, for spending some of your precious time with us this year. We wish all of you and yours a very happy, peaceful and bountiful 2013. Be good to each other. And keep reading.

 "Who said nights were for sleep?"

~~Marilyn Monroe~~

United Authors

Legacy book publishers are in trouble the same way their record company cousins were when the latter were blindsided by the digitization and subsequent revolution of Internet-based commercial distribution of musical entertainment. In that environment, it's no mystery why Tower Records and its ilk have all but disappeared from shopping centers.

How many record stores have you visited during the holiday shopping season? Could you have found a stand-alone record store even if you wanted to? Nonetheless many of you will gift recorded music to grateful music-lovers, as probably as not via iTunes gift cards and the like. Then your happy recipients will hop on the web and download digital music to their computers, cell phones and iPods. Those musical acquisitions are unencumbered by plastic or cardboard casing, and your downloaders won’t care a bit. They want the music. The physical trappings that used to encase the tunes simply aren’t relevant.

For music appreciation purposes, an iPod by any other name is still just an "e-listener," filled with "e-songs." The massively successful market penetration of e-listeners and e-songs worldwide demonstrates beyond doubt that music entertainment consumers care primarily about efficiently and conveniently acquiring the music they want at reasonable prices. Forcing customers to trudge to a store and overpay for a piece of plastic laden with music they don’t want just to buy one or two songs they do has been extinct for years now. But the record companies remain largely clueless about how to adjust their business, profit, and talent-acquisition models accordingly.

The ongoing death spiral of the old record company business model is instructive as traditional book publishers and sellers ceaselessly bemoan their now equally traditional dwindling book sales. The record companies’ woes were predicated on the companies' mistaken belief their business was selling physical recordings. It wasn't. They’re in the business of selling a form of popular entertainment — recorded music. At the end of the day, consumers wanted the music, not the vinyl or tape or plastic by which the companies attempted (successfully, for a long time) to restrict its availability and control its pricing.

The same self-inflicted myopia clouds current legacy book publishers' vision. They cling to the notion that they're in the business of selling paper, and the overwhelming majority of their business model is structured accordingly despite indisputable evidence (whither Borders?) they're wrong. A paper book is nothing other than a technology by which a form of popular entertainment — stories told in printed words — is sold to consumers. It’s also a technology whose days of market dominance are well behind it.

The current renaissance (which it most certainly is — see Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, et al.) of book self-publishing, underway via the digitization and Internet delivery of e-stories directly to readers, rattles legacy publishers into scrambling to purchase stakes in self-publishing firms flush with e-book expertise. One example is British legacy publisher Penguin’s purchase last summer of the American self-publishing company Author Solutions. Penguin bought Author Solutions less than a year after Book Country, Penguin’s own timid stutter-step into self-publishing, launched to less than magnificent results.

The legacy publishers’ objectives in doing deals like Penguin’s for Author Solutions are twofold. Primarily, they hope to exert some measure of control over the new business model that threatens them. A distant second is to use the self-publishing outfits as a kind of minor league farm system to scout authorial talent deemed sufficiently "worthy" of traditional book publishing contracts. The legacy publishers will fail, because self-published authors of varying degrees of success achieved on their own terms won’t be eager to sacrifice their independence, and vastly higher potential earnings, on the crumbling altar of a clearly dying business model.

Think about it. No one gets excited because Random House or Harper Collins has a new thriller coming out. It’s the author and her story that matters to you, not the publisher. I bet most of you couldn’t name the publisher of the latest novel you enjoyed. I’ll win that bet at least 99 times out of a hundred, for the simple reason you don’t care who the publisher is. It doesn’t matter. It’s not why you bought the book.

Internationally best-selling thriller author Barry Eisler realized just that when he rejected a two-book contract offered him by legacy publisher St. Martin’s Press. That deal included a $500,000.00 advance. Eisler turned down the contract because he wanted to claw back from traditional publishing some measure of independence and control in his career, as well as the opportunity to foster a more intimate relationship with his readers than traditional publishing afforded him. Also, Eisler ran the numbers. Electronically publishing his novels and stories on his own he stood to net a lot more money, more quickly, than what any legacy publisher could pitch to him under the outmoded constraints of traditional book publishing. So Eisler mostly e-publishes now. If he wants to grant one of his e-books corporeal existence, he arranges with Amazon publishing arm Thomas & Mercer to make available physical copies of his work via the Internet.

It's interesting to ponder what might happen if some successful e-book authors like Eisler chose to band together and form their own enterprise to foster, market, and sell digitized books outside the legacy publishers' clutches. There's precedent in entertainment annals for that too — about a century ago popular Hollywood stars Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and a handful of others founded an independent film studio called United Artists. They wanted to free themselves from the oppressions of the so-called studio system of commercial American movie-making. Almost a century before the opportunities afforded by a cheap, ubiquitous and commercially-accepted Internet offering Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon Instant Video entertainment for in-home 84" flat screens, Chaplin and his colleagues succeeded, in small ways for a short while. Imagine the same effort undertaken by similarly situated movie people now, much less a few years from today.

Now imagine a new digital book publishing operation established along the same lines as United Artists, by a similar caliber of Internet-savvy literary talents for the same reasons. Thanks to current technologies and growing customer acceptance of e-books, such a company would be freed entirely from devoting costly resources to making, storing and delivering physical books, not to mention the arcane financial accounting that necessarily intertwines with all of that. Middlemen siphoning off time, space and money between author and reader would be rendered superfluous. Instead, this company would spend its time and efforts strictly on discovering and promoting authors and their work. The imprimatur of a group of popular and well-respected "e-authors" like Eisler and J.A. Konrath on e-books released by such a company would provide meaningful value to authors and readers alike. It would help talented but relatively unknown authors who otherwise might get lost in the Internet’s raucous e-publishing noise gain readers’ notice. It would help readers find new e-stories to buy and read that come with a seal of approval from established authors whose writing they already know and enjoy. One avenue of book publishing's imminent future may very well lie there, unfettered by paper, brick and mortar, delivery trucks, predacious agents, and bewildered legacy publishers.

Maybe they'll call it United Authors.

 "The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power."

~~Mary Pickford~~