A ‘Super Bowl Moment’ for the Book Industry

Listening to Anjelica Huston read the audiobook version of A Story Lately Told, the haunting first volume of her memoir from Scribner, I wished the world could see this Hollywood survivor tell at least a part of her story in some kind of live presentation.

Anjelica Huston reading from her memoir

Anjelica Huston reading from her memoir

Then I thought (as frankly I do every year), wouldn’t it be great if celebrities who publish memoirs each year could present awards and read from nominated books at a televised event like the National Book Awards?

Call this literary show the Bookies, or something. Spread the cameras out as they do at the Oscars and Tonys so viewers feel tension slithering through the audience. Use a big Broadway theater and also bring in actors currently in New York to present awards, act out dialogue, read excerpts and bring alive history, criticism, poetry and children’s literature to a national audience.

I thought this was just a daydream of mine since I’ve made quite a stink about the present NBA ceremony, an exclusive black-tie dinner at an insanely lavish restaurant (Cipriani Wall Street) in New York. There publishers spend obscene amounts of money to congratulate themselves while across the country independent bookstores (the core of the industry!) are hanging by a thread.

Cipriani Wall Street - interior

Cipriani Wall Street – interior

But it turns out I’m not alone. “Can Book Publishing Have a Super Bowl Moment?” writes Brian Feinblum at BookMarketingBuzzBlog. Considering the Super Bowl, where TV ads sell for $4 million and 75,000 people pay thousands of dollars per ticket, he sighs, “Big game, big money. Can book publishing ever have such a high-priced moment?”

It could if an event like the National Book Awards stops fiddling while the book industry burns and seizes that “big-stage moment, like an Oscars,” Feinblum writes, “or a Hall of Fame, or a theme park, or even a day to celebrate its contribution to society. Bring in corporate sponsors and put some money behind it. You need a televised event, some type of packaged show that gets the media talking about you. Give out awards, lifetime achievements, feature bestselling authors, highlight movie connections, take us behind the scenes of book publishing and hold contests that invite consumer participation.”

Whoa: contests, movie tie-ins? That’s going way too far, young man. I love it.

It’s kind of hilarious that last year the NBAs attempted “an Oscar-style red carpet inside the ballroom to welcome celebrity guests like the former teen-actress-turned-author Molly Ringwald,” according to the New York Times. Well it’s a start, but a naive one — who will see the red carpet, let alone Molly Ringwald, if there are no cameras?

We have to remember that without media coverage, the NBAs sink into oblivion every year. In 2013, for example, nobody outside the banquet room saw a moving and historic moment when Toni Morrison awarded the Literarian Award (for lifetime achievement) to Maya Angelou.

Toni Morrison presenting National Book Award to Maya Angelou

Toni Morrison presenting National Book Award to Maya Angelou

And let’s not allow publishers their usual we-have-no-money excuse. Perhaps the only benefit to corporations ruining (pardon, I mean ruling) the book industry is that connections to the entertainment world are all over the place. It’s worth spending money to hire a professional production company to produce a big celebrity blowout with bankable stars from movies, television and literature, and considering how these things are run, there might even be a profit.

Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou

So stop backstepping, dear Mainstream Publishers: If you don’t assert your dominance in the modern literary world, there’s a guy named Jeff Bezos who’ll push you all aside with a hot-ticket, book-oriented celebrity-filled Super Bowl event of his own, and he’ll finance it with the change in his back pocket.

P.S. Which celebrities 1) are recent authors (say 2012-13) who could draw terrific TV audiences, and 2) are just as recognizable as Molly Ringwald? Here’s a brief list of some great candidates I would have loved to have seen on that 2013 Super Bowl/National Book Award stage:

Billy Crystal

Tina Fey

Christopher Plummer

Madeleine Albright

Rob Lowe

Ellen Degeneres

Anjelica Huston

Patti Smith

Jane Lynch

Anthony Bourdain

Sarah Silverman

Sidney Poitier

Mindy Kaling

Lewis Black

Betty White

Keith Richards

Bill Cosby

Shirley MacLaine

One thought on “A ‘Super Bowl Moment’ for the Book Industry

  1. Laurence Plotin

    I for one am a paper reader. Yes, I admit to owning a Kindle Book Reader, but there is nothing like the heft of a good novel and the smell of printed paper. Only quality newspapers can give you all the details of a news story, and only books feel real, regardless of whether you are reading fiction or nonfiction. The death of the publishing industry and the retail outlets that support the industry would truly indicate the beginning of the end of our “advanced” society. When people stop reading, and the Internet doesn’t count, that becomes the first sad step in the decline of civilization.

    Reply

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