Things you learn as you prepare for a move

Chaotic-eclectic end to October

I was surprised to discover, as I’m putting the books off shelves and consolidating in piles before the move, that this is the grand total of American fiction that I own:

There are a few other titles in the Not Read pile, and majority of non-fiction that I own has been published by American publishers and written by American authors. But in fiction that I’ve read and kept, this is what remains. Whatever else came in must have been given away.

British fiction and fiction in translation take up most of the fiction space.

ICYMI:

Order out of chaos

…going forward I will be ordering my books thusly:

Read

&

To Be Read

In the READ, division between Fiction and Non-Fiction

In FICTION, division by nationality. Some nonfiction will be so of a certain terroir that it will have to go with fiction from that part of the world. E.g. Moore’s biography of Thatcher and the Campbell Diaries will go with British fiction, not with general non-fiction. Canadian fiction and non-fiction will live together. Noel Coward letters will continue to live among the visual art coffee table books, probably due to its volume. As will Cricket for Dummies, which remains the only sports-related title I own. I still don’t know the rules of baseball, so there may be a Baseball for Dummies in the near future.

In NON-FICTION, it’s all nationalities together, but divided by topic. Opera/classical will have its own sub-section, as will my political theory books from grad school (some of which have been donated, I am pleased to report).

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A melancholy task

I’ve been clipping my own old journalism and discarding the papers and magazines that hosted it. It wasn’t an easy task. So much great design and beautiful photography - discarded.

The earliest publication that I found appeared to be the standalone Books section from the Globe, which used to be edited by Martin Levin. This 2005 issue had my review of a Dubravka Ugresic short story collection (“Look no more for the anti-Alice Munro” I declared) and a fall season column by Bill Richardson. I pinged him on X about it, but he couldn’t remember ever doing it. Then some even older copies of Books in Canada (now defunct; then edited by Olga Stein) turned up.

In the near future, kids will fiddle with their links to assemble portfolios in the same manner and many links will be short-lived.

But will freelancing survive? If you consult the app I use to send invoices out,

likely not? Those who get published will already be working for the publication, or owning it, as in, their own Substack. The freelancing fees have not only plummeted in the last decade, the time to get paid has stretched to a breaking point. Someone I consulted recently who’s working for a huge Canadian daily told me that a two-month wait to get paid is becoming normal for their freelancers. Someone else recently retired from a glossy magazine shared that their owner always insisted they pay their contractors as late as possible just because he thought that was a boss move. A third person who worked for a traffic-oriented publication in the golden age of Traffic Journalism (as per Ben Smith’s book) confirmed my suspicion that sometimes, especially in the case of startup media, there is no liquidity to pay freelancers on time.

The reasons to not pay freelancers in a timely manner (or, in some cases, ever) are multifaceted, as we can see. And they persist. Do permalancer contracts exist any more? When you’re guaranteed a certain amount of work for a period of time? That is the biggest *get* for a freelancer, and these days as rare as a unicorn. The number of times I’ve been told by an editor that they would love to have me write for them, and then 2 out of 20 pitches get accepted, or I never hear back - is considerable.

In better news, this is the engagement that the French magazine Lire received on their FB post about the Goncourt shortlist:

They did boost it as a FB ad, which is how it ended up in my FB timeline (otherwise force-feeding me celebrity nonsense and ads related to my internet searches and messenger conversations) but all the same, it’s a remarkable level of engagement for a post about contemporary fiction, practically unseen in reader engagement with Canadian book coverage.

Just the other night at a house party I’ve met one of the last working Canadian culture critics for the first time and we got talking about Russell Smith’s latest. He’s a fan, so I suggested he write somewhere about it, and he said that there was nowhere (left) to publish such a review. Besides, he said, he posted a couple of paragraphs about it on his Instagram and the reach of his 5000+ follower account is probably greater than any review in a paywalled Canadian media outlet would get.

Since I looked of two minds about it, he added that a piece that he did for a magazine that said magazine posted about on TikTok “went viral”. What was it about, I asked? American polarization and a hypothetical civil war, he said. Oh right, that’s American stuff, of course that would bring in the traffic. Wellll, he said, it’s impossible nowadays to make that distinction. We’re all one viewership. I would like to cling to the idea that different countries and cultures still exist, even online, I said, and then somebody else brought the drinks and the conversation went to other directions.

What he probably meant was, the internet speaks American and so we all do. What I wanted to add was, we still have a choice not to talk about Trump as if he’s a local politician, even if traffic and engagement go where Trump goes.

I took a peek at his Russel post a day later btw and found out that it had something like 60 likes, and two short comments.

As a substitute for literary criticism and a broader conversation about books, that just won’t do.

Depending on when you talk to me, I can be bullish or the opposite of bullish about the new media. A few weeks ago I had more subscriptions to podcasts and Substacks than to legacy media. Then in one bout I unsubscribed from three alt media outlets because they keep doing the same thing again and again. It’s usually their own thing, the thing that got them the initial crowd, and they continue being faithful to — pushing, if you will — that same thing. There was once a lack, and that lack was noticed, nimbly filled with content, and five years later, still, the same corner of content is being supplied. Guests become recurring guests, as the pool narrows and stabilizes. Quirks become habits. (I had high hopes for a book Substack out of a red state, run by a retired editor from a Cleveland daily, but now she mostly writes which books she gave up on, and the crazy goings-on in publishing, and that’s probably where her audience feedback loop placed her.)

New media, all but TikTok, it’s becoming obvious now, do not sell books. People who go on mega podcasts have observed it. Helen Lewis noticed it after her recent book came out. Katie Herzog in the last episode of BaR Pod revealed that her publicity tour - she was in every single major heterodox podcast week after week and received a sprinkle of trad media reviews - resulted in about 1200 books sold. This is a Canadian sales figure, not an American one, and very peculiar. What did sell well, Lewis said in her Substack on the topic, was a live festival event with her and another person, talking about the book, price of a copy included in admission.

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And in the news that will shock absolutely no one,

…the pro-encampment book wins the Toronto Book Award. Did I not guess it would be between Tanya Talaga and Maggie Helwig? It couldn’t have been any other way.

But what am I doing going on about books again, when what I meant to do was write a post on which exactly is

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The Best Toronto Ravine

OK, next time and from the new address.