Perigee Bookmarks

Superstitious Minds

Posted by Jeanette Shaw

 

It’s Thursday – definitely one of the best days of the week. The weekend is almost here, it’s a great TV night (my DVR bounces around between Community, Grey’s Anatomy, The Vampire Diaries, and 30 Rock), and apparently it’s the best day to make important decisions, because you’re more likely to make the right one. (Unless you’re in Germany, in which case Thursday is thought to be the day when all activities are doomed to failure.) 

 

That useful tidbit comes from Black Cats & Four-Leaf Clovers: The Origins of Old Wives’ Tales and Superstitions in Our Everyday Lives. Now, I don’t normally think of myself as an overly superstitious person, but there are definitely some habits I find hard to break, like avoiding walking under a ladder or knocking on wood. Maybe it’s because of that one time I stated proudly that I’d never broken a bone, didn’t tap any nearby trees, and ended up with an ankle fracture a week later. Coincidence? Well, better safe than sorry.

 

Just in case you’re planning your week, here are a few more recommendations:

 

• Don’t collect nuts on a Sunday – you may find yourself in the company of the devil! (It is the luckiest day to get married though.)
• If you’re female, try to avoid having a medical procedure on a Tuesday, which is apparently a high accident risk day.
• Write important letters or ask favors on Wednesday, since the response is more likely to be favorable.

 Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an important decision to make: what to eat for lunch.

 

 

 

 

 

Black Cats & Four-Leaf Clovers

 

A Field Guide to Vampires

Posted by Jeanette Shaw

 

October is right around the corner, and it is absolutely my favorite month. The weather is cooling off (though not fast enough this year!), baking season kicks into gear, and, of course, Halloween approaches. This holiday always makes me want to go re-read my favorite horror stories—The Shining, The Haunting of Hill House, The Tell-Tale Heart. And, of course, this is the time of year to celebrate the supernatural stars du jour—vampires. From Dracula to Twilight, Interview with the Vampire to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood to the awesome CW show The Vampire Diaries (seriously, watch it), vampires are perennial favorites among authors and readers (it’s no surprise five of the six stories I just listed originated as books). People like their vampires different ways—scary, romantic, outsiders, witty, brooding—but with the overwhelming influx of vampire-related books, films, shows, comics, etc. it’s getting a little hard to keep all these different species of bloodsuckers straight.

 

Which leads me to one of the most fun books I’ve worked on at Perigee: Vampire Taxonomy: Identifying and Interacting with the Modern-Day Bloodsucker. Written by the very cool Meredith Woerner of scifi blog io9, this witty guide is a must for pop culture vampire junkies. It covers the gamut of famous vampires, from those listed above to other popular mythologies like Dark Shadows, The Lost Boys, Blade, Vampire Academy, and many more. Using an extremely scientific (read: totally made-up but surprisingly effective) classification system based on careful examination of physical attributes, feeding habits, weaknesses, habitat, and more, vamps are categorized by type: Romantic, Villainous, Tragic, Halfies, Child, etc. Also included are approach and avoidance methods, useful fang diagrams, and infestation maps (you can’t travel down South these days without tripping over a bloodsucker). It’s a really fun read for vampire lovers of all types, and who knows—the information might just save your life one day, should you meet a mysterious stranger in a dark alley.

 

Give it a read, and let me know your favorite pop culture vampires in the comments, or on Twitter @PerigeeBooks. And Happy October!

 

Vampire Taxonomy is available now.

Old School

Posted by Marian Lizzi

 

With Mad Men fever running high around here (thanks in part to our very cool, authorized book Mad Men: The Illustrated World, which pubs next month), and lots of chatter about the demise of “dead-tree editions,” I find myself feeling a bit nostalgic for the old days in the book biz.

 

I wasn’t editing manuscripts back in the 60s (!), but as anyone of roughly my vintage can attest, there’s been a lot of change in the halls of big publishing since, oh, 1990 or so. With the help of Twitter and Facebook (very 2010), I did a little crowdsourcing and came up with the following list. How many of these artifacts do YOU remember?

 

Jiffy Bag dust

Manuscript boxes

Manuscripts that smelled like cigarette smoke

Carrying manuscripts home to read/edit

Photocopying a copy-edited manuscript, including the flags (on Post-its)

Photocopying newspaper reviews

Newspaper reviews

Newspapers

Simultaneous hardcover print runs (for libraries)

Carbon-paper forms (no White-Out allowed)

IBM Selectrics

Telex machines

“Long” lunches

Even “longer” Christmas parties

Slush meetings

Slush author-photo collections (extra points for poses with pets or sportscar)

The Exacto knife and the glue pot

The Dictaphone

Wax machines

Jacket mechanicals (on cardboard with overlays)

Doing research at B&N and/or the library

Books in Print—in print (and the LMP too)

Ordering UK jacket film (right-reading, non-composite, emulsion-side-down)

Staying very late at the office for a phone call if you had to close a deal in Japan

Pink telephone message pads

“The Message Center”

Editing with a colored pencil

Rubber bands on your wrist at the end of the day

Wondering if we should be recycling all that paper

Large ashtrays everywhere
Knit ties

Cable addresses on stationery

Reading SPY magazine for publishing dirt
Performing skits at sales conference

Attending sales conference

 

 

Do you have publishing memories to add? Depress/stump/amuse me by commenting below—or ping me (yes, I just said “ping me”) at Marian.Lizzi@us.penguingroup.com or on Twitter: @marianliz.

Virtual Tour

Posted by Marian Lizzi

 

Like any self-described “idea person,” I have a thing for Ben Franklin. Inventor of everything from bifocals to the glass harmonica (not to mention the first lending library, the first fire department, and the good old Franklin stove), Citizen Ben was not short on ideas, and no slouch about bringing them to fruition.

 

One of the coolest things Franklin did, in my humble citizen-opinion, was to come up with a list of thirteen essential virtues and—wait for it—endeavor to live by them every single day.

 

These days it’s hardly fashionable for a big-city, black-clothes-wearing gal to talk about virtues (we leave that to televangelists and angry crowds carrying misspelled signs). But thanks to Cameron Gunn’s delightful new book Ben & Me, those of us who aren’t even sure that patience is a virtue (particularly when waiting on line for morning coffee) will have a chance to revisit Franklin’s Big Thirteen.

 

Here they are:

 

Temperance

Silence

Order

Resolution

Frugality

Industry

Sincerity

Justice

Moderation

Cleanliness

Tranquility

Chastity

Humility

 

 

After his wife called him a sloth (affectionately, of course), Cameron, a lawyer, dad and history buff, decided to try to live by each of these virtues. The results are funny, sweet, and memorable. The book might even inspire me to take the Franklin Challenge.

 

Or not. I’ll decide after another cup of coffee.

 

Ben & Me is available now.

Mad About TV

Posted by Meg Leder

 

I watch a lot of television. In fact, I’m part of a group that gets together expressly to discuss our favorite shows and guilty pleasures.

 

However, this group isn’t something I talk about with just anyone (until of course, now, in this very public blog entry). Why? Most of us are current or former publishing folk, and there’s something unseemly about being addicted to the mindless pleasures of television when you work with the printed word. It’s more fashionable and appropriate to discuss the latest editorial in The New York Times than the season finale craziness of Vampire Diaries. Our group is well-aware of this, and we make sure to meet clandestinely, far away from our offices, in the dark recesses of a grungy bar, where we wear Battlestar Galactica t-shirts and have heated discussions about Cougar Town (good or not?) and the cry-fest-inducing Friday Night Lights.

 

So, you can imagine my immense pleasure when, this past summer, I was finally able to combine my secret shameful love for TV with my job.

 

This October, Perigee is publishing the first licensed book based on Mad Men, the series created by Matt Weiner. The book—Mad Men: The Illustrated World—is the work of the incredibly talented illustrator and writer Dyna Moe. It was a crash book and involved a lot of hard work for all parties, but the result is worth it: it’s candy-colored and catchy, like one of Don Draper’s ads; Dyna’s writing is beautifully witty and wry, like the best of Roger Sterling’s quips; and I’m as excited about its publication as Peggy Olson on her first day as a copywriter. The book was a hectic, exciting, rushed labor of love from day one, but at this point, my love for it and my awe at Dyna’s creative skills equal my love and awe for the show.

 

Not only does the book mark the first publication of an official Mad Men–licensed book, it also marks the first time I can be openly and legitimately passionate about one of my favorite shows in a professional setting. Martinis for everyone!

 

Mad Men: The Illustrated World will be available October 6.

Making a Mess

Posted by Meg Leder

 

As the editor for the marvelous Keri Smith’s wondrous books, you’d think I’d be comfortable with messes. After all, Wreck This Journal is about destruction as a creative act in and of itself. Keri’s new book, Mess, expressly tells readers “Do not try to make something beautiful.” My publisher has his own tattered copy of Wreck This Journal in his office. Numerous friends have shared their own experiences with the book, and various kids in my life have embraced the tearing, smearing, staining, and losing that Keri encourages.

 

Yet, I’ve never started my own copy of any of Keri’s books. What gives?

 

As an editor, my job is to help make beautiful books. Working with a team of incredibly talented and smart colleagues, I work to ensure the message is compelling, the language is clear, the grammar is correct, and the finished book meets Penguin’s high standards.

 

This mindset drives my personal life as well: bookshelves are organized by subject (and of course, alphabetically by authors’ last names!); my to-do list at work is written neatly on lined paper and I relish checking things off; I keep a record of novels I’ve read and songs I want to download; I organize my thirty-six years of life in a two-room apartment. In other words: lists, order, numbering, rows, precision, economy.

 

So while I love Keri’s books (and love Keri), I haven’t jumped into any of the books myself. “Soon,” I say. “Maybe with the next one!,” I offer. “I’m too busy editing, ha ha!,” etc.

 

But that changed with Mess. A few weeks ago, several colleagues and I got together to film a book trailer. We gathered paint, chalk, markers, sticks, peanut butter, toothpaste, binder clips, and more. And we sat down to make a mess.

 

It was, in a word, awesome. We smashed, scattered, scribbled, and smeared. We came away with chalk and peanut butter under our fingernails, and Sharpies stains on our palms. But dang, it was fun!

 

A few days later, I started messing with my own copy of Mess, ostensibly to share with the Keri Smith community, but really because I had a craving to do it.  

 

As an editor, there’s a value to order and grammatical correctness. But there’s also a value in seeing beyond the margins of my carefully numbered list, in seeing what happens when I make my nervous inner editor step aside. I have Keri to thank for that.

 

The results are messy. But they’re beautiful.

 

-----

Watch the video and join Penguin's Keri Smith community here.

And check out Keri's books below!

Wreck This Journal

 

 

 

 

 

Mess

 

 

 

 

 

This Is Not a Book

 

 

 

 

 

How to Be an Explorer of the World

The Real Meaning of No-Fault Divorce

Posted by Diana Mercer, co-author of Making Divorce Work:  8 Essential Keys to Resolving Conflict and Rebuilding Your Life

 

When I read Beverly Willett’s “My Fight to Stop My Divorce” on The Daily Beast I couldn’t help but feel bad for her.

 

Doesn’t she believe that she deserves to be married to someone who wants to be married to her?  Particularly 8 years after her divorce has been finalized?  Her husband wanted the divorce so badly he went through a contested trial and then moved to another state so he could get a no fault divorce.  So what exactly is Ms. Willett holding onto?

 

I got divorced, too. It was the last thing I wanted, but I also knew that as much as I didn’t want to be divorced, I didn’t want to continue to be married to someone who didn’t want to be married to me.  And now I’m married to someone who loves being married to me, and vice versa.  My former husband is in a successful long term relationship, too. We are friendly, if not friends.  We both deserved better than what we were giving each other.  My former husband saw it first, but in the end he was right. And I knew it.

 

Divorce is like a death. It’s the death of a dream of the life you’d have together, and, in Ms. Willett’s case, a very full life, with children and friends and community.  From her description, it sounds pretty perfect. I get that letting go of this dream is difficult.

 

When we grieve, we go through the 5 stages of grief as described by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in On Death and Dying:  Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.  While it’s not as linear a process as this list implies, it seems to me that Ms. Willett is stuck in denial. Maybe she’s achieved some sort of uneasy acceptance, forced upon her by the reality of the situation, and not a part of her healing at all.

 

What I also don’t get from her essay is what exactly she did to save her marriage, except mount a full contested trial in court and beg.  This is in stark contrast to Laura Munson’s journey as set forth in her memoir This is Not the Story You Think It Is:  A Season of Unlikely Happiness.   Ms. Munson’s husband told her he wanted out, too, just like Ms. Willett’s husband.  Ms. Munson enacted her own version of the Serenity Prayer and gave him the space and time to figure out that he really did want to be married to her, saving her marriage in the process. I’m not hearing that from Ms. Willett.

 

After 22 years of practice as a divorce lawyer and mediator, I’ve learned a lot about why marriages fail.

 

Marriages don’t end suddenly. While there may be a cataclysmic event, like an affair, that single event is just the straw that broke the camel’s back. In truth, the marriage started to erode long before this final event.   At some point, one or both partners stopped getting their needs met from the marriage.  They looked to outside sources to get those needs met, however small and however innocent, not understanding the gravity of the long term effects of looking outside, rather than to each other, for satisfaction.  By the time either or both partners realized that they had turned away from each other, the damage was done. Erosion.

 

Both partners have a role in the erosion, but it’s not just one person’s fault. And often it’s nobody’s fault. It just happens. With a divorce rate of over 50%, divorce happens to nice people, not just evildoers and ogres.

 

So the no-fault divorce laws give us an opportunity to do the right thing by each other and to let go of a failed marriage with respect and dignity.  Anyone who tells you it’s too easy to get divorced has never been divorced.  But in making the legal divorce more difficult to obtain, families burn through thousands of unnecessary dollars spent on legal fees and put children through unnecessary turmoil.   It’s time to let go of this “home wreckonomics” approach to divorce and to do things differently. You can get divorced yet still honor and treasure the successful part of your marriage.

 

I hurt for Ms. Willett in knowing how much not letting go cost her, and continues to cost her.

 

 

 

Making Divorce Work

How to Use Silence

Posted by Maria Gagliano

 

Today marks the on-sale date of 27 Powers of Persuasion by Chris St. Hilaire. It’s a handy guide that will help you convince anyone of anything—whether it’s your spouse or a boardroom of executives. As I flip through my desk copy, I’m reminded of how Chris’s advice is applicable in just about any situation. A perfect example is Power #20: Learn How to Use Silence. It’s amazing to realize how such a simple thing can have such an impact; and a little alarming to think of how many times we’ve all been swayed by silence (and not in our favor).

 

Seeing as how it’s also the Tuesday after Labor Day—meaning back to work and back to school for many of us—the timing is perfect for a little advice on how to make the most of our hard work. Here is one of Chris’s twenty-seven powers. Use it with confidence, and be amazed by how far you’ll go.

 

POWER #20: Learn How to Use Silence

 

Excerpted from 27 Powers of Persuasion by Chris St. Hilaire with Lynette Padwa

 

All the great communication experts use silence to persuade. Salespeople, journalists, and politicians are especially good at it. In fact, there’s an excellent chance you have already experienced silence as a sales tool. Ever buy a car at a dealership? The typical scenario is that you’ve selected the car and now you’re seated across the desk from the salesman. He waits. You make an offer, trying to sound as macho and confident as you can. He listens to your offer, shakes his head a little, frowns slightly, and says nothing. The minutes tick by until you finally blurt out something like, “I could maybe go a little bit higher.” It’s the classic negotiator’s ploy: the first one to speak loses. Unless you’re a skilled negotiator yourself, you have little chance of waiting him out, because the silence becomes unbearable. He has just used silence to persuade you to raise your own offer.

 

Reporters use silence to draw information from interview subjects. They’ll smile, nod, go “Mm-hmmm” a lot, and if the other person stops talking, they’ll nod again and say nothing for a few more seconds until the interviewee feels compelled to start talking again. Veteran journalist Bob Dotson has described how he uses silence to get the most memorable quotes: “People nearly always answer questions in three parts. First they tell you what they think you’ve asked. Then, they explain in more detail. If you don’t jump right in with another question, if you let the silence between you build, they figure you don’t yet understand and make an extra effort to explain their thoughts more concisely. Often, they make their point more passionately and precisely the third time.” *

   

When I’m conducting focus groups, I do a version of the same thing. I keep asking, “Why?” in order to get to the core beliefs of the participants, and if people don’t answer, I don’t speak until they do. In a business setting, you can use Dotson’s strategy by asking a question and waiting long enough to hear all three parts of the answer, perhaps nudging the person along with a “Hmmm, ” or “Really?” and then staying quiet.

   

As a political consultant, I frequently coach my clients on when not to respond to a reporter’s questions. Politicians love to talk, so this is a crucial survival skill they need to develop. “They can’t print it out of context if you never say it in the first place,” I tell them. Tolerating a reporter’s silence also helps the politician figure out how good a journalist he or she is dealing with, because the best reporters can wait out anyone, no matter how rich, famous, or powerful.

   

Experienced politicians are also skilled at using silence. Thanks to YouTube, you can watch them in action. Observe the way Bill Clinton pauses and ponders his reply in order to make a reporter feel as if he has just asked an unexpected, thought-provoking question. (Do you really think there are many questions Clinton doesn’t anticipate?) You can use the same technique when making a presentation to a group. If you know what the objections are likely to be and have already developed answers for them, the strategy is simple. Listen to the objection, wait a few beats, ponder it, and then say, “So you’re saying that if we do X, Y could be the result. Good point.” Wait another beat or two. “What if we handled it like this?” You have recognized the person’s reality, boosted his or her ego, and dealt with the objection.

   

Silence is useful in other ways too. If someone is dominating a discussion, let the person finish a sentence, then wait a few moments before you respond. It puts you back in control. (No matter how you feel about the people in the room, always let them finish their sentences. If you cut them off, it will seem as if you don’t care about what they have to say or haven’t been listening. Since the ultimate goal is to soothe egos and unify the room, you don’t want to insult anyone.)

   

Once you’re aware of the power of silence, you will see how often it can be used to your advantage. If someone attacks you or your idea, simply let the person’s words hang in the air for a few moments before you respond. Silence always feels longer to the person who is speaking, so that person will already be squirming a little by the time you talk. If you’re making a sales call, rather than bombarding the customer with every detail, leave plenty of spaces for the customer to fill in with a comment or question. That’s what gets the customer invested in the process. Finally, being comfortable with silence signals that you’re comfortable with yourself. Whether you’re walking down a hall with a colleague or flying across the country with him, he will be calmed and reassured by comfortable silence. It’s a lot easier to live with than nonstop chatter.

   

The other side of understanding silence is knowing how to interpret it. Every so often I’ll wrap up a presentation and the only sound will be the hum of the air conditioner. I’ll say, “Judging by the silence, I must have covered this topic brilliantly,” which usually gets a laugh. The natural tendency is to panic and assume that your audience hasn’t understood the presentation or hasn’t liked it, or that you have somehow failed. That’s not how you want to feel when you’re trying to persuade a group. Where does the truth lie? It could be that they didn’t understand you, that they don’t agree with you, or that you actually did cover it brilliantly. Don’t assume that the silence is a bad sign and don’t take it personally.

   

It seems to be a human inclination to confuse silence with intelligence or wisdom. I learned that the hard way. Silence is such a powerful force that I once hired a man who was relatively mute during his job interview. He conversed a little bit, he looked presentable, and he smiled and nodded knowingly to all my comments, so I assumed he was intelligent. I found out later he was nodding because he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.

   

I’ve thought about that interview many times, because if anyone should have been alert to the possibilities of silence, it was me. Yet because of my ego—he nodded and smiled and generally boosted mine—I forgot to actually listen to him. The experience reminded me that whenever I’m not sure what to say, I should probably keep quiet. People will assume I’m intelligent unless I prove them wrong.

 

_____

*Bob Dotson, “Better Writing at the Speed of Spot News, ” www.rtnda.org.

 

 

27 Powers of Persuasion

Get Smart About Your Money: A Conversation with Dan Solin

Posted by Anita Thompson, Editorial Director, Costco Publishing

Reprinted from The Costco Connection, with permission

 

From the volatility of the stock market to the low returns on savings accounts, how to handle one’s money is a common challenge these days. We turned to Costco member and New York Times bestselling author Daniel R. Solin, senior vice president of Index Funds Advisors (www.ifa.com), author and financial columnist with the Huffington Post and AOL, for his take.

Solin’s national bestsellers, The Smartest Investment Book You’ll Ever Read and The Smartest 401(k) Book You’ll Ever Read are available in trade paperback at Costco warehouses, as is The Smartest Retirement Book You’ll Ever Read, also available at Costco.com.

 

The Costco Connection: You stress the importance of asset allocation as key to maximizing one’s investments. What is asset allocation, and how do you determine what’s best for your situation?

Daniel R. Solin: Asset allocation is the division of your portfolio between stocks, bonds and cash. It’s critical for investors to have the correct asset allocation in their portfolios. It’s far more important than stock picking and market timing, yet investors spend much more time on these less important factors.

 

Fortunately, determining the right asset allocation is not difficult. There are many asset allocation questionnaires on the Internet. I have one on my website www.smartestinvestmentbook.com.

 

 

CC: You write that an immediate annuity is a good retirement vehicle. Could you explain what that is and why it’s a good choice?

DS: If you ask most retirees what they fear most, it’s running out of money. That’s where immediate annuities come in. With an immediate annuity, you give an insurer a lump sum. It gives you a monthly, quarterly or yearly payment for the rest of your life, or for the rest of your life and your spouse’s life, or for a specified length of time (like your expected lifespan plus a stated number of years).

 

You can also purchase a fixed or an inflation-indexed immediate annuity. Of course, you pay for the inflation protection. Your periodic payments will be as much as 30 percent lower than the ones you would receive for a fixed annuity that is not inflation indexed.

 

A prudent approach to immediate annuities might be to compute your monthly expenses, deduct income from all sources and purchase an immediate annuity to cover the difference.  

 

The industry leaders in low-cost immediate annuities are Vanguard and TIAA-CREF.

 

 

CC: What is a common mistake people make in their estate planning, besides not having a will?

DS: There are many mistakes people make in their estate planning. Here are the most common ones:

• Not taking advantage of trusts to avoid or minimize probate

• Not naming a beneficiary for retirement accounts (or not having the beneficiary designation current)

• Not creating payable-on-death accounts, or transfer-on-death registrations, which would automatically transfer ownership of cash or securities accounts to one’s heirs

• Not having a prenuptial agreement in place, particularly for second marriages or marriages that occurred later in life

 

 

CC: You have a chapter in one of your books which basically states, “Don’t trust the government.” What do you advise instead?

DS: Most investors don’t understand the awesome power of the government and how it can affect their retirement nest eggs. For example, it’s perfectly legal for the government to pass retroactive tax legislation going back as far as 10 years! Low-hanging fruit for this kind of taxation are 401(k) plans and IRAs.

 

Investors should be aware of the possibility that the tax rules for these (and other) investments could change dramatically. It might be prudent not to put all of your investment eggs in any one retirement basket. Instead, spread out your investments among 401(k) plans, traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs (if you qualify) and after-tax accounts.

 

CC: We’re in a season of turmoil economically. What’s ahead, and how should people prepare? What do you see on the financial horizon?

DS:We need to fundamentally change the way investors invest and even think about investing. There is no investment guru who has the ability to predict what will happen to the markets, to the economy or to the price of any individual stock.

 

Markets are random and efficient. What drives stock prices is tomorrow’s news, and no one knows what that news will be. Want proof? British Petroleum started the year with its stock priced at $60 per share. It’s now hovering around $30. Obviously, the decline was caused by the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. No one could have predicted that catastrophe.

 

You need to tune out short-term noise and focus on long-term data. If you have less than five years before you will need 20 percent or more of your invested funds, you should have no exposure to the stock market. If you have a time horizon of five to 12 years, you should take an asset allocation questionnaire and determine an asset allocation appropriate for you. It will range from a high of 100 percent stocks to a low of 15 percent stocks. Be sure your funds are invested in a globally diversified portfolio of stock and high-quality bond index funds.

 

Lastly, ignore the daily financial news. Just sit tight and benefit from the long-term returns you earn by participating in the capital markets.

 

 

Copyright 2010 The Costco Connection

 

 

The Smartest 401(k) Book You'll Ever Read

 

 

 

 

 

The Smartest Investment Book You'll Ever Read

 

 

 

 

 

The Smartest Retirement Book You'll Ever Read