David*Macinnis*Gill.com

My fel­low boot­cam­per, lit­er­ary agent Nadia Cormier, has come up with a great idea for using blogs to dicuss books openly. Here’s what she says:

Our The­ory (again):

Our the­ory is that read­ers do have some power – how much, we’re not sure – but we like to think that if read­ers get really jazzed about a book and “spread the word” that amaz­ing things can hap­pen for a book. Since this is old news, we are also propos­ing that instead of read­ing reviews via mag­a­zines or sim­ply through ama­zon – that blogs are the “review cul­ture” of the future and that if you respect someone’s writ­ing via a blog, you might also respect someone’s opin­ion of a book they read. What we hope to prove is that with enough peo­ple cre­at­ing buzz via their blogs (either pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive – we don’t care, we believe that all books will have some of both) a book’s sales will shoot up. If this proves to be true, we will ascer­tain that not only should authors have blogs (in which to share impor­tant infor­ma­tion with read­ers and other writ­ers) but that all read­ers should blog about books they are cur­rently read­ing – either enjoy­ing or oth­er­wise – in order to pro­mote books and the indus­try as a whole. Bah on the peo­ple who say, “Nobody is read­ing any­more.” Bah! Bah! I say.
The Procedure:

1. I picked a book. Our “cri­te­ria” was that — first and fore­most — it wasn’t con­nected in any­way to our agency. Our other cri­te­ria was that it was a book that was poised as a break out novel, but didn’t quite make it — that we could do a Q&A with the author and the edi­tor (per­haps even the agent involved) and that while it was a book that I would heartily rec­om­mend (so you aren’t going to waste cash on buy­ing it) it was a book that didn’t receive a spot on the best seller lists. Other, smaller cri­te­ria was that it had to be pub­lished recently enough that it was avail­able in book­stores but long enough that it was no longer receiv­ing “pub­lisher” assis­tance on marketing.

The book I picked was:

TEACH ME by R.A. Nel­son
ISBN: 1595140840

I’ll talk more (as the week goes by) about why I picked this book in par­tic­u­lar — but suf­fice it to say that I enjoyed it. I rec­om­mend it. I felt it got a bum wrap being com­pared to other, more “sen­sa­tional” books that came out at a sim­i­lar time — and instead of being used as an exam­ple of dif­fer­ence — it was trounced as being exactly like “all those bad books that par­ents of teenagers should watch out for.” First of all, that absolutely smacks of “ban­ning” books, sec­ond of all, I have NOTHING against bad reviews. I have Noth­ing against say­ing a book was bad (you’re totally enti­tled to your opin­ion) but to do so with­out actu­ally READING the book is not only annoy­ing but it is reck­less in the extreme. Don’t ruin books for mil­lions because of your igno­rance. And that’s how I feel about that.

That said, there are so many dif­fer­ent feel­ings about TEACH ME. I think this would be a fun book to delve into. I mean, it’s not the kind of book you feel wishy-washy about. It’s got a very sen­si­tive sub­ject mat­ter (about a girl who has an affair with her teacher), it’s got some good writ­ing (which we can also argue about), and … well, let’s just say that we’ll find tons to talk about. I’m inter­ested in hear­ing YOUR opin­ions about this book. It’ll teach me some­thing. No pun intended. Sort of.

2. To have an edu­cated dis­cus­sion about a book, we need to have read the book. So — I’m ask­ing you to go and buy it. It’s on Ama­zon. It’s in your local stores, so when you’re doing your Christ­mas shop­ping (and I KNOW your totally snog­ging the B&N on your way) stop and pick up a copy and read it. Then come back and post a com­ment here. I want LOTS of com­ments. I want A VIVID DISCUSSION. I want to see FUR FLY! (heh.. sorry). Today is the 13th. If you plan on join­ing in (and i hope you do) please buy it by the 20th of December.

3. Not only a topic about what makes a book “wor­thy” or a “break out novel” — this is also an exper­i­ment to see what blog­gers can do. So I need your help. I need you to help SPREAD THE WORD. Cut & Paste this info (or link to it) from your own blog — post it to your writer’s groups. Spread the word and get other peo­ple involved. Link them back here to :: www.livejournal.com/~agentobscura :: — Once you do, send me an email at blog[at]firebrandliterary[dot]com — with your name & your URL and where you first heard about this exper­i­ment.… and to thank you for help­ing I’ll send you a cool but­ton for your blog that says you’ve par­tic­i­pated and I’ll also add you to my list of “par­tic­pants” that I’ll post at the end of the exper­i­ment… so every­one can see their fel­low par­tic­pants and can go visit one another’s sites. For any­one who receives a lot of men­tions in the “Where I first heard about this exper­i­ment” — I’ll send you a spe­cial par­tic­i­pant but­ton to post on your web­site or blog. Because then you’ll be spe­cial ::wink::.

4. Come back HERE and lets rant and rave about the book.