After a short reading from the perspective of a male sex worker, Diana Joseph is introduced and takes the stage. She begins by thanking the editor, Rachel Kramer Bussel, for putting the "Best Sex Writing 2010" anthology together and to be included with such talented writers. She launches into a chapter from her recently released memoir entitled "I'm Sorry You Feel That Way: The Astonishing but True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother, and Friend to Man and Dog." The chapter is called "The Girl Who Only Sometimes Said No."
At first glace, if you were to stumble into the Bedlam Theater's book release party near Minneapolis's West Bank, you would expect the "Best Sex Writing 2010" to be an anthology of erotica. But it isn't. More along the lines of a careful exploration of human sexuality, the anthology balances tastefulness with the hard line of authenticity, a line Joseph is familiar with.
The chapter starts with Joseph flipping through her son's yearbook playing "Guess Which Kids Are Retarded." The crude sport takes a turn when her son names one of his thirteen-year-old classmates a slut. "A slut?" Joseph reads. "She's thirteen years old! How can she be a slut? You don't even know what a slut is. What does that word mean to you, 'slut'? I mean, how are you defining your term? You can't just call a girl a slut and not explain what you mean by it." She continues to chastise him until he reluctantly takes it back, only to rebrand her "a skanky ho bag." Between lectures Joseph reflects on her own life, on adolescence, her sexuality and what exactly leads a girl to be considered the insidious term - a slut.
In addition to being an author, Joseph also teaches English at Minnesota State. Typically dressed in all black, Joseph is a blackboard enthusiast; her lectures filled with student's feedback flying onto the board until her elbows and back have collected so much chalk she more closely resembles a funeral-attending crack addict than an upstanding English professor. And that is why students love her; she is excitable, engaging and down-to-earth. When a student makes a comment she walks right up to them, staring with a gaze so intense it can only be described as disconcerting.
Today, Joseph is leading a discussion on Steve Almond's "Candyfreak" - a memoir that deeply examines Almond's addiction to candy through the landscape of America's candy companies. Throughout his book, Almond meets with small chains of local providers and sympathizes with the loss of their art to the insatiable appetites of Hershey's and Mars.
Joseph also sympathizes with their struggle. Aike to Almond's candy companies, she has recently joined a similar battle between maintaining the integrity of her art and the squeeze of big business.
It is not that her new book is not a hit. If you were to spot a copy of "I'm Sorry You Feel That Way" with its clean white hardcover jacket, emblazoned with coquettish black lettering offset by a speared maraschino cherry, you would think it fit right in beside the novels and memoirs saturating Barnes & Noble's bookshelves. And the text is no different. Richard Ford amicably describes Joseph's "sense of the apt detail" as irresistible. Ayelet Waldman says she is "grateful for every minute (she's) spent in the delightful company of Diana Joseph." If anyone knows good writing it is these authors.
The difficulty lies within a collection of factors, all of which involve the developing array of author responsibilities. In an interview, Joseph mentions a word that seems to be common currency in the world of publications - "the authorpreneur." Representing the increasing similarity of entrepreneur-tactics writers need to succeed, publishing companies have placed more and more outside pressure to provide more than just great writing. A writer must do book tours, Twitter, Facebook, Web sites, YouTube, interviews, get reviewed and even produce a book trailer. If the author and publisher fail, the book fails and the author's reputation is at risk.
And there was plenty of risk when Joseph discovered herself in a crash course of supply-and-demand. Retail giant Amazon had cut her hardcover price by more than half the same week as her paperback release.
"I thought 'how can they be doing that?!'" Joseph said. "My agent said to me, 'Look, there's nothing we can do about this until all these bargain books are gone.'"
So that is exactly what they did-they bought them up. Creating three different Amazon accounts with three different credit cards, Joseph bought nine copies of her own book ands persuaded her friends and family to do the same.
In a matter of days they had purchased all of Amazon's "I'm Sorry You Feel That Way" bargain copies.
With retail giants like Amazon getting more and more savvy about marketing books, the window of time an author has to get their book out there is becoming shorter and shorter, making the demands of the writer that much more intense.
"Each book has only a few weeks to sink or swim and this has been exacerbated by the book trade's increasing efficiency about returning unsold books," said WritersServices.com.
This general or trade publishing leaves little room for diversity and turns books from high art into basic commodity. And with so little time to prove their worth, it is no wonder many books fall through the cracks - a chance authors cannot afford to take.
Joseph confesses her publishing experience has not been a horror story. Her publisher is not totally evil, she is more than satisfied with her agent and says her public relations people have been fantastic. By no means does she fit the archetype of the spurned artist. In fact, she is quite the opposite.
Joseph speaks about her friend and writer Steve Almond, and talks about how he has taken the idea of the authorpreneur even further by self-publishing his book "This Won't Take But a Minute, Honey." Despite the stigma marring self-publication as reserved for those unable to attain a publisher, Joseph seems to hold Almond in high regard for his decision to control the publication of his book himself.
"Someone that goes the self-publishing route needs to be clever," Joseph said, going on to stress the importance of having a knack for public relations and marketing. She recognizes the weight of what Almond is doing in the world of publishing and what it does for the integrity of the author.
In the end, Joseph confesses that the most rewarding part is the writing and that she just tries to be an author and not an entrepreneur.
"All that other stuff needs to come later. You need a book that you can believe in first," Joseph said. "I'm not going to write a book with the intention of becoming a New York Times bestseller, I'm going to write a book I want to write. Otherwise, what's the point?"
Sam Campbell is a Reporter staff writer
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