I can hear the sounds of the Hudson River behind me as I jot down my thoughts in my bright red spiral notebook. I purposely picked red because the color symbolizes passion and power – two emotions I hope to feel as I start putting my thoughts onto paper (and screen). The warm summer air lingers, and there are moments where the wind feels like a faint whisper, gently encouraging me to continue to write.

I look around and breathe in the greenery. The bench is uncomfortable beneath me, but I don’t mind. Joggers pass by with ease; dogs bark and play while their “parents” chat about their most recent adventures.

Lantern has published two books that do well when things in the world are going badly: No Easy Answers and Bird Flu.

The Bird Flu phenomenon is self-explanatory. Every time a flock is culled or the flu transmits to a human, people's interest in the subject tends to grow. And every time there is a school shooting, people want to read about the Columbine killings in No Easy Answers. In the office we talk about this response, and cringe a little. But the reality is that people need this book. They need to understand what can turn angst into murder. When unfathomable events happen, it is natural to want to dissect them, to study them, and to take steps to avoid the disaster happening again. The book doesn't let anyone off easy, instead calling for people to examine their own behavior, and the behavior that they endorse or excuse.

One Political Science professor at Virginia Tech took preventative measures, and 300 students read No Easy Answers in their introductory course. When this sort of non-violence education is made formal (especially in wounded atmospheres like VA Tech), we feel quite good about it. No cringing this time.

Finally, another book that's a kind of antidote. Violence can take other forms—the kind that's meted out upon you when you resist violence and the kind you see every day on television and on dinner plates. That's why Aftershock is an excellent, even necessary, book for those contemplating direct action to stop violence.

When I was young, and so much younger than today, I used to make notes about all the books I read. Mainly that was because I was an English major, and it was kind of required. Now, however, I'm almost sixty-four (that's enough Beatles references, ed.), and I can't remember anything. Which is why I've decided to put my thoughts about each published book I read from now on on-line, so I won't forget. You're welcome to check in if you want, and subscribe and all that malarkey. It's Martin's Random Reviews, and I begin with The Bridge.

Are you an aspiring author who has submitted your work to publishers only to be told "thanks, but no thanks?" Have you ever received some flat (no pun intended) standardized letter that could have been addressed to just about anyone; you know the type where "Sincerely Management" has given you a lousy two sentences, after you've poured your soul page after page into a book that no one seems to want. Why doesn't Joe or Jane Publisher simply write, "pass." Maybe some publishers do, who knows? It's also quite possible that you never get a response at all.

A writer's journey is never easy. Now this may come off as sales-pitchy, but it's the truth: At Lantern Books, we understand the process writers endure in hopes of getting published. We value the relationships that we've built with our authors and those who wish to be published. In fact, Lantern is dedicated to helping writers by offering insights into the publishing industry. For more information, visit Book Publishing and Writing.

Here's an article from Laura Miller in Salon that confirms a few truisms: that publishing has a high percentage of women working in the industry (although it would be interesting to know how many women are at the very top), and that more women read books than men—although the gap narrows when non-fiction is taken into account. But how depressing it is that the one book that Miller cites as being "for men" is a book about wrestling! Plus, the article is remarkably free of actual statistics and facts.

Anyway, as someone who works for a gender-balanced company (although owned by two white guys—one of whom is me!), I guess I'd like to believe that if something is well-written and insightful enough then both sexes should feel it can speak to them. Comment away, either here or at Salon, where the outrage is predictably ad feminam and extreme.

Sometimes someone articulates the principles of free inquiry and freedom of speech with such clarity and honesty that you realize why the first amendment is so important, and why it applies as much to the loathsome Westboro Baptist Church as to Lantern Books. Here is the novelist Philip Pullman speaking at the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford University about his new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. His defense is as good a reason why I'm in the business of publishing as any.

Jason Epstein, in the New York Review of Books, writes this:

"The transition within the book publishing industry from physical inventory stored in a warehouse and trucked to retailers to digital files stored in cyberspace and delivered almost anywhere on earth as quickly and cheaply as e-mail is now underway and irreversible. This historic shift will radically transform worldwide book publishing, the cultures it affects and on which it depends."

Sure, computers are important to publishing, but human overreach and depletion of natural resources will have an even greater influence. People interested in the future of books need to be paying attention, or they will be trampled as people dash for the exits from the temple of industrial growth.

Despite Lantern's recent success, the general trends for publishing may not seem to be healthy. Anyone looking at a printed copy of Publishers Weekly these days will see a painfully thin publication, testimony to the lack of advertising from publishers and others, who simply don't have the money. Here's a very creative yet simple video just released from Dorling-Kindersley (DK) in the U.K. that suggests that the industry's concerns about its future are more a matter of perspective and reconceptualization than apocalypse.

As you may know, over last weekend Will Tuttle's World Peace Diet became the number one bestselling book on Amazon.com. It's the first time Lantern's had a number one bestselling book of its own. Although we've republished bestsellers from other companies (notably The Love-Powered Diet) that were once bestsellers, none was ever number one.

Will asked his supporters, friends, and readers to buy books for themselves and others in a concentrated period of time. In doing so, he understood that Amazon counts its numbers by simultaneity rather than absolute sales, which means that a few people buying copies of the same book at the same time will register higher numbers than many people buying copies of the same book over a longer period of time. Of course, Amazon may have tweaked that algorithm over time more accurately to reflect overall demand, but the results that Will attained suggest that the simultaneous sale is still more important.

Lantern has now received its first order from Amazon, and while big, it's not colossal, which leads me to suspect that Lantern will be receiving further orders from wholesalers such as Ingram and Baker & Taylor, whom Amazon often uses to supplement its demand. All good news, of course: However, that demand for copies will also require careful management on Lantern's behalf. Here's why.

Over the last eighteen months, Amazon has become a more conventional distributor of book titles. It used to be the case that Amazon would only order books for which it had demand, which meant returns of books to publishers were minimal. However, Amazon now attempts to anticipate demand, which means that it can "over-order" books, and, therefore, return a fair proportion of the titles it orders. What we at Lantern don't know is how much of Amazon's initial order consists of actual sales and how much are anticipated sales that may or may not materialize.

Here's an interesting article from a fellow small publisher, which shows (there's a graph, dammit!) that the more your books sell through Amazon, the less money you make as a publisher, until you reach a point whereby it costs you money to sell through the mega-retailer. So, if you really want to help Lantern out, buy through us.

Even more pointedly, here's an article on the future of publishing by the pioneering Jason Epstein. It pretty much maps out what I suggested may happen in my video blog below. I don't think it's alarmist or pie-in-the-sky at all. How quickly any of this will happen, I don't know. But some or even most of it is going to come to pass. How do I know? Because it's already happening.

Declaring e-books to be the future of publishing may be a bit premature.

What are the energy requirements of a paper book? They probably aren't that much. Medieval monks and Gutenberg churned them out, at a much slower rate, long before the industrial revolution.

The energy requirements of an e-book are likely analogous to the energy requirements of computer equipment. Computers are extremely energy-intensive. The electricity to run the computer is fairly minor; about 81% of all the energy used by computers is expended in the process of manufacturing the computer. The typical household computer actually consumes 1.3 times more energy than a refrigerator.

The following quote is from The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, written by George Gissing, more than a century ago. It is quoted by Jay Neugeboren, reviewing in the December 17 edition of The New York Review of Books the latest book by Michael Greenberg. It should provide some nice, luke-warm comfort to rejected writers everywhere.

And why should any man [sic] who writes, even if he writes things immortal, nurse anger at the world's neglect? Who asked him to publish? Who promised him a hearing? Who has broken faith with him? If my shoemaker turn me out an excellent pair of boots, and I, in some mood of cantankerous unreason, throw them back upon his hands, the man has just cause of complaint. But your poem, your novel, who bargained with you for it?

Neugeboren notes that by his count, he had accumulated 576 rejections before he sold his first story, and more than "two thousand rejections on eight unpublished books" before he sold his first novel. So, what's it worth for us? Constant rejection, or just the sliver of the hope of acceptance?

The November 28th Economist has an interesting article about how the market for media is bifurcating into one of blockbusters and niche markets, with the fairly successful book, film, band, or other means of entertainment, falling into obscurity. You can read the whole article here, but these are the words I found most interesting from a publishing perspective:

A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better. An American who read just one book this year was disproportionately likely to have read "The Lost Symbol," by Dan Brown. He almost certainly liked it.

This explains why bestselling books, or blockbuster films, occasionally seem to grow not just more quickly than products which are merely very popular, but also in a wholly different way. As a media product moves from the pool of frequent consumers into the ocean of occasional consumers, the prevailing attitude to it—what Hollywood folk call word of mouth—can become less critical. The hit is carried along by a wave of ill-informed goodwill.

Or, a new take on Green Eggs & Ham, Green Books & Tofu!

This review is part of the Green Books campaign. Today 100 bloggers are reviewing 100 great books printed in an environmentally friendly way. Our goal is to encourage publishers to get greener and readers to take the environment into consideration when purchasing books. This campaign is organized by Eco-Libris, a company working to green up the book industry by promoting the adoption of green practices, balancing out books by planting trees, and supporting green books. A full list of participating blogs and links to their reviews is available on Eco-Libris website.

I have the honor of reviewing the classic book Tofu Cookery, by Louise Hagler.

From our progressive and simpatico friends at Berrett-Koehler publishing house comes a set of 10 Awful Truths that compliments our own Five Rules on how to cope with the world of book publishing, whether you're an author or not.

For those disinclined for whatever reason to click over to Berrett-Koehler's website, here are the ten truths in all their gory glory (plus seven ways you can deal with it):

1. The number of new books being published in the U.S. has exploded. Bowker reports that 560,626 new books were published in the U.S. in 2008, which is more than double the number of new books published five years earlier (2003) in the U.S. These figures include print-on-demand and short-run books, which is where most of the growth has occurred. In addition, 120,947 new books were published in the U.K. in 2008 per Nielson Book. And add tens of thousands more in other English-speaking countries.
2. Book industry sales are declining, despite the explosion of new books. Book sales in the U.S. grew by 3.5% from 2003 to 2008, according to the Association of American Publishers, but that is actually a 13.5% decline when adjusted for the 17% inflation rate over the same period. Bookstore sales peaked in 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and have fallen since then. And sales in 2009 are much worse.
3. Average book sales are shockingly small, and falling fast. Combine the explosion of new books with the declining total sales and you get shrinking sales of each new title. “Here’s the reality of the book industry: in 2004, 950,000 titles out of the 1.2 million tracked by Nielsen Bookscan sold fewer than 99 copies. Another 200,000 sold fewer than 1,000 copies. Only 25,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. The average book in America sells about 500 copies” (Publishers Weekly, July 17, 2006). And average sales have since fallen much more. According to BookScan, which tracks most bookstore, online, and other retail sales of books, only 299 million books were sold in 2008 in the U.S. in all adult nonfiction categories combined. The average U.S. book is now selling less than 250 copies per year and less than 3,000 copies over its lifetime.