In the May issue of The Walrus, Don Gillmor explores the continuing rise of the world’s thriving (or is it throbbing?) center of romance: Harlequin Enterprises, which has shipped more than five and a half billion bodice-rippers during its 60-year tenure.

The piece is a great read, filled with lots of interesting analysis and history—in the 1970s, a new president zeroed in on the romance-novel audience and went to hilarious lengths to get Harlequin novels into women’s hands—and, ultimately, it seems that the company has succeeded because of its adherence to its own tried-and-true formula. Gillmor describes “editorial guidelines for each series that lay out the theme, the profiles of the hero and heroine, the acceptable amount of sex, and the number of words.”

The specs for the Desire series describe the hero as powerful and wealthy, “an alpha male with a sense of arrogance and entitlement. While he may be harsh and direct, he is never physically cruel.” The heroine, on the other hand, is “complex and flawed. She is strong-willed and smart though capable of making terrible mistakes when it comes to matters of the heart.” Other series are described as being “grounded in reality” or “heartwarming” or “what it means to be American,” or focus on “breathtakingly charismatic alpha-heroes who are tamed by spirited independent heroines.”

Gillmor also takes a brave trip to a Harlequin cover audition—the publisher “shoots 120 covers a month,” he writes—to take in an array of firefighters, carefully managed body hair, and Fabio-esque manes. (Check out the Walrus' highly entertaining gallery of Harlequin cover images.)

Source: The Walrus

Images courtesy of The Walrus, a 2009 Utne Independent Press Award nominee for best writing.

At Crumpled Press, a young, independent bookmaking outfit based in Brooklyn, each book is a tactile treasure—custom cut, bone folded, and hand sewn. In a profile for University of Chicago Magazine, Melissa F. Pheterson writes of how the press’s four editors collaborate with each author “to create a book’s artisinal feel...to savor the printed-page aesthetic in an era of digitized technology.”

For each edition, the press hosts binding parties in McIntyre’s loft, with about a dozen crafty friends paid in snacks and conversation. “It’s like quilting,” says founding editor Jordan McIntyre. “It’s a homespun model that people miss.”

Since 2005, Crumpled Press has used this homespun model to publish ten titles, and the business is flourishing, with consumers drawn in by the books’ homemade beauty. While sales were in the low double digits for their first four publications, recent titles like Anthony Grafton’s Codex in Crisis (2008), a treatise on the digitization of books, and Derek McGee’s When I Wished I Was Here: Dispateches from Fallujah (2007) have sold several hundred copies.

“The standard line is that digitization kills books,” says editor Alexander Bick. “I think it’s more accurate to say there’s a symbiosis. The Internet generates most of our sales. We use digital technology like laser printing to produce our books…Our success contradicts the idea that bookmaking no longer makes sense.”

Bloggers and bookstores are often kindred spirits, but many bloggers link to the Amazon page for books they discuss in their posts. IndieBound recently added a book-linking feature that provides a user-friendly alternative: bloggers can link to book information and cover art on IndieBound, and users who follow the link and want to purchase the book can enter their zip code to find it at a local store. 

The bookseller/blogger Bookavore is on a mission to rally her fellow bloggers in support of independent bookstores. "I’d like to encourage as many people as possible to, when using a link that is about a book, link to IndieBound," she writes in a recent post. "I’m not asking anyone to stop linking anywhere, just to start linking to IndieBound as well (although, of course, I won’t stop anybody who decides to exclusively link to IndieBound; in fact, I might kiss them)."

Sources: Bookavore, IndieBound 

Imagine setting up a collective—a business venture, perhaps—tied strictly to majority vote. . . and then two successful decades later, finding yourself consistently in the minority. No harm, no foul, AK Press founder Ramsey Kanaan tells the East Bay Express. In “Beyond Anarchy at PM Press,” Rachel Swan profiles the publisher’s amicable 2007 departure from AK Press and his current project: PM Press, which is armed with “all the attributes that helped AK at its inception: inexhaustible creativity; a staff of idealists willing to volunteer their time; [and] imaginative ways of bringing print to the digital realm.”

Kanaan tells East Bay Express that he's happy to see more of his ideas coming to fruition. " 'It's not that I want to be a dictator," said the publisher, explaining that PM is in fact more collectively minded than AK. It's just easier to run a collective when everyone agrees with you."

Source:  East Bay Express  

Utne Reader librarian Danielle Maestretti shares the highlights (and occasional lowlights) of what’s landing in our library each week in ‘From the Stacks.’ 

Utne’s library is abuzz with a steady flow of 1,300 magazines, newsletters, journals, weeklies, zines, and other lively dispatches from the cultural front that are rarely found at big-box bookstores, or newsstands.

Featured in this week's video:

- Brazil's "Lambe Lambe" tradition, profiled in Creative Review 

- A Virginia Quarterly Review report on depression and suicide rates in Cuba 

- The Punk Rock Fun Time Activity Book from ECW Press 

- Make a Zine by Microcosm Publishing 

- The Terrapin turtles of Chesapeake Quarterly 

When Michael Minelli found out that he was featured in the book Hot Chicks with Douchebags, he didn’t take the insult lying down. According to court documents obtained by the Smoking Gun, the 27-year-old club promoter alleges that statements made about him in the book are “false, harmful and vulgar,” and is he suing the book’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, for libel.

The book, which was derived from the website HotChicksWithDouchebags.com, states that Minelli’s “popped-collar, spikey-haired presence was so far beyond regular douche, so far beyond uberdouche, he could spontaneously create a new element on the periodic tables—Douche Nine.” As a result of the book, Minelli “has been and continues to be the subject of ridicule in that he has been, is now, and continues to be called a Douchebag by friends, acquaintances, coworkers, employers, and strangers alike,” according to the complaint. Now, the onus may be on Minelli’s lawyers to prove that he is not, in fact, a douchebag.