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Jim Cox Report: April 2004

Dear Publisher Folk, Friends & Family:

In the summer of 1976 I was sitting in a Wednesday night meeting of the Madison Science Fiction Club in a State Street restaurant. The purpose of our weekly get-togethers was to socialize with like minded folk for whom fantasy and science fiction were something more than just another hobby.

Into that night's gathering came a good friend of mine by the name of Hank Luttrell. Hank was a mail order book dealer specializing in comics, mysteries, and science fiction -- and whose ambition was to create his own bookstore (which he subsequently did and it's still in business here in Madison Wisconsin as 20th Century Books).

Hank came in with a copy of an expensive coffee-table sized book called "The Toynbee-Ikeda Dialogue". It was a compilation of correspondences over the years between the late British historian Arnold J. Toynbee and the Japanese philosophy/educator Isadeu Ikeda.

Hank knew that I was a history buff and well versed in the writings of Toynbee. He said to me: "How would you like to have this book for free?". I said to him: "Whose kneecaps do you want me to break?".

It turned out that all I had to do was read the book and then on Saturday go down to a new radio station that had just opened up in Madison a few weeks earlier. It was WORT-FM -- a non-commercial, counter-culture, community supported radio station of the leftish persuasion.

I was to go on a talk show with a fellow named John Ohliger and take 3 minutes to tell him (and his audience) what I thought of the book -- and then I could keep it for myself!

I said to Hank: "Hand me the book and tell me where this radio thing is located."

The following Saturday morning I went down to the ugliest one-story cinder block building I had ever seen. I was introduced to this older gent who was some kind of liberal University of Wisconsin college professor. After John Ohliger made his introductory remarks I commenced to tell him (and his audience) about Toynbee, Ikeda, and this book of theirs.

I was still going strong when John reached over and gently tapped me on the arm and said he had to wrap things up, his 30 minute program was over. While John was signing off I sat there mentally upbraiding myself for the motor-mouth I had been and prepared to apologize profusely for hogging his whole show.

John had a stack of books by his elbow. After we were off the air and before I could launch into my abject grovel -- he pushed that stack of books across the table to me and asked if I could look through these books and come back next week.

Thus my career as a book reviewer was born!

Three months later I was hosting that show (The Madison Review of Books) myself. A couple of months later I had expanded it to one hour (30 minutes was just way to short!); and a few months after that I had added a second one-hour book show that specialized on science fiction (The Sci-Fi & Fantasy Hour with James Andrew Cox -- I think I was born with an ego as big as that program title!).

John Ohliger was a professor in the field of Adult Education and Life Long Learning. He was also an ardent social activist. He had been one of the key people to establish WORT-FM as a commercial free "talk show" radio forum for public issues. He started up The Madison Review Of Books as one of his experiments in adult education. He wanted to see what would happen if you put brand new books in the hands of ordinary folk -- cab drivers, housewives, students, social workers, janitors, etc. -- and then gave them a forum from which they could express their opinions and critiques to the community at large.

Back in the 70s, book reviewing (as it had been for pretty much the previous century) was largely an elitist operation of the New York/East Coast literati. John Ohliger (populist and leftist agitator that he was) wanted to break that stranglehold and see what would happen.

So John Ohliger started up his little radio show, got 15 of the major publishers to send him some books, and sent folks like Hank Luttrell out into the Madison community to recruit folks like me into sharing our views of what we were reading and what was being published.

I, along with a half-dozen others, banded together with John Ohliger and operated that little book review. I hosted the radio show and did most of the grunt work of publisher notification, book solicitation, and assigned reviewer follow-ups.

Then two years later, John Ohliger was working with still another group of citizens who wanted to insure a public access channel in the newly arriving television cable company (if I remember rightly it was Viking Media) that was then wiring up Madison. John talked me into going with him to endless meetings in small non-air-conditioned rooms over that sidewalk egg-frying Wisconsin summer. In the end, we were charted by the City of Madison and contracted with the cable company as the Madison Community Access Center -- Cable Channel 4. The first show we taped was with a heart specialist doctor. The second show we taped was the television version of our little radio book review show.

I still remember that first television production. I hosted. We had one black/white television camera. We had one chair. We also had one guest. I introduced the book review program. Then a huge poster board sign was held by hand directly in front of the camera lens. I jumped up out of the one chair we had. Our guest sat down in it. Then I proceeded to interview him while standing next to the camera. When we were ready to wrap, the poster board sign went back up in front of the camera lens. The guest got up. I sat down. The poster board sign was whipped away. And I said farewell to the viewing audience.

The whole affair was the very definition of amateur -- but we were all thrilled to enter this new medium of public access television and spread the word about books.

That show became "Bookwatch" and ran from 1978 to 2003 with me as its host. Our crew were always volunteers who donated their time for a sheer love of the cause. And the studio quality of our productions would match and occasionally surpass what PBS was doing.

Because of health problems slowing me down I finally had to retire after almost three decades from the television part of our Midwest Book Review operation in January 2003. But the show didn't disappear from the air for another 8 months or so. My producer/director had such a large backlog of old shows that he ran them in our regular Wednesday night time slot on WYOU-TV (which emerged in the early 1980s out of that original MCAC group) until finally the archives were exhausted.

In 1980 my job as a Developmental Disabilities Coordinator (a glorified kind of school social worker) for the Broadhead School District was terminated through lack of funding. Ronald Reagan had been elected president and one of the things he did in collusion with a conservative congress was to gut the money devoted to special education. Another program funding that was gutted had to do with Federal money for public library systems.

As a social worker I saw the writing on the wall for social services spending for the next few years. So I took my 30 hour a week "hobby" as a book reviewer and turned it into a full time profession. John Ohliger and I parted company over that. He was an altruist and a social reformer who felt that his little experiment should remain as band of local Madison community part-timers who were in it for the honor of it all. I wanted to go national, launch a library newsletter, expand out onto the internet, and be able to support myself.

I was primarily responsible for the necessary grunt work (read office work) that kept the wheels turning and the pump priming. Three weeks after I left his little book review operation it collapsed because no one wanted to take over the hard work of writing letters, sending out tear sheets, following-up review assignments, emptying the trash, manning the phone, etc.

It was sort of like the story of Henny Penny who easily found all manner of animal friends to eat her bread -- but none to help her plant it, weed it, harvest the grain, prepare the dough, or even bake the loaf.

Everyone like the idea of free books (you got to keep the book you reviewed) but nobody wanted to do the day-to-day grind that insured there would be free books to hand out for review.

I borrowed $1000 from my father-in-law to buy letterhead stationary, a computer, and some postage -- and never looked back.

Over the years John and I would come across one another. Madison is that kind of community. He was constantly involved in one or another group, issue, cause, or experiment. He hung out with the likes of Noam Chomsky and was always up for this or that demonstration or movement for social justice.

I always acknowledged my debt to John as my mentor and the man who made my subsequent career as a book reviewer and as the Editor-in-Chief of a multi-media book review operation possible.

A couple of weeks ago I was informed by my good and long-time friend Hank Luttrell that John Ohliger had died. He was 77 years old and succumbed to a combination of diabetes complications and a severe bout of the flu.

John was one of a kind. The sort of man that used to be written up in the Reader's Digest as an "Unforgettable Character". He was my friend and I was his -- even after we parted our separate ways and held to differing political and philosophical views. John will always receive his due credit from me for what the Midwest Book Review is all about and what it has achieved over these past 28 years. -- I wish you could have known him.

Now on to some issues and advice for writers and publishers:

1. For you self-published authors who avail yourselves of POD publisher resources to manufacture your books: Be sure to include in your contract the requirement that the POD publisher (e.g., iUniverse, Xlibris, PublishAmerica, Trafford, Infinity, etc.) provide you (as their author client) with a copy of all reviews of your book that they receive from reviewers like me. I have liaisons in most of the major POD houses whose verbal commitment to the Midwest Book Review is that they will notify their author clients whenever we review one of their books. I provide the POD publisher with a copy of the review and a publisher notification letter and in every letter I specially include the line: "Please notify your author client accordingly".

Mostly they do -- but some will inevitably not give it proper priority, so be sure to include that obligation into your contracts with them. Mostly you will be offered "boiler plate" contracts that say the same thing to every author regardless of their book or marketing plans. So you will have to create that amended paragraph for them. It's not hard to do and can be very simple. I give you this as an example:

(POD Publisher Name Here) agrees to provide (Your Name Here) with copies of all reviews, review notices, and reviewer correspondences received by (POD Publisher Name Here) with respect to (The Title Of Your Book Here).

The reason for you wanting a copy of every review the POD publisher ever gets on your book is the same reason for getting a copy of any review from anywhere else:

You invested capital in the form of the review books and the postage to send it out.

You can utilize positive reviews in your marketing and promotional activities.

You can apply damage control (if necessary) with respect to any negative reviews.

You can track the impact on sales of POD published review copies.

2. Snail-mail addresses are a "must" for small presses and self-published authors.

Once again for the April reviews I had to reject a couple because the reviews submitted by my reviewers had no snail-mail address contact information -- and I couldn't find that address info when I tried to do a websearch for it.

A couple of reviews actually made it through the review process and are part of our April publications (somehow they just got by me -- probably because during that last week of May I am proverbially swamped with editorial duties in putting together our four library newsletters (print) and our five on-line book review magazines. So here we are at the point where I'm sending out tear sheets and publisher notification letters to the snail-mail addresses of everyone who's book was reviewed in any of our publications. And sure enough -- there were two perfectly fine reviews whose publishers will never know we did them -- because they didn't have snail mail addresses that I could find on-line or off!

If, as a self-published author, you don't want to use your home address that's just fine. Get yourself a post office box or use the snail mail address of your distributor. But for pity's sake, give the reviewer someplace to send you a copy of their review! And be sure to include a snail-mail address on your website!!! If not, you have short-changed yourself on getting the most from your capital investment bound up in that review copy that you sent out -- and have no one to blame but yourself.

3. I often conclude with "Unsolicited Testimonials" from authors and publishers who sent a word of thanks for our efforts in their behalf. None of these testimonials are as sincere as the ones from folks who also include some postage stamps "for the cause"!

Here are our most recent Postage Stamp Thank You's:

Linda Marettus - Lincoln, CA
Cole Montana - American Mortgage Elinators
William Buchanan - Bay Laurel Press
Lois Hjelmstad - Mulberry Hill Press
Sherri Erickson - Attainment Company, Inc.
J. M. Seymour - DynaMinds Publishing

Like "The Jim Cox Report", all of our online book review magazines are free and can be subscribed to directly or accessed on our website. Even individual book review columns (The Cookbook Shelf; The Metaphysical Studies Shelf"; "The Audiobook Shelf", etc.) can be subscribed to separately. Just send me an email and a note on what you'd like to be signed up for.

And remember -- Reviewers like feedback every bit as much as authors and publishers!

Although our bylaws prohibit accepting money from authors or publishers (in order to avoid any conflict of interest issues), we did amend them to allow authors and publishers who wanted to make a gesture of support for what we try to do here at the Midwest Book Review in behalf of the small press community to be able to donate postage stamps "for the cause". So if you'd like to send some stamps, feel free (but not obligated!).

That's about all for now. Until next time!

Jim Cox
Midwest Book Review
278 Orchard Drive, Oregon, WI 53575
http://www.midwestbookreview.com


James A. Cox
Editor-in-Chief
Midwest Book Review
278 Orchard Drive
Oregon, WI 53575-1129
phone: 1-608-835-7937
e-mail: mbr@execpc.com
e-mail: mwbookrevw@aol.com
http://www.midwestbookreview.com


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