Marriage Without Monogamy, Part Four

My fourth essay in the “Marriage Without Monogamy” series went live on the Tango Magazine website a few days back. And this is interesting: In an especially smart and cunning effort to up my readership stats, the editors have apparently changed the essay’s title from “Marriage Without Monogamy, Part Four” to “Open Relationship Dos and Don’ts: Is it still an open relationship if you’re restricted by a long list of rules?”

And just in case you’re wondering what’s so brilliant about all that, the answer’s simple: Any-damn-thing posted online that contains the term “open relationship” is practically guaranteed instant popularity. Seriously. Actual editors of actual online magazines have said as much. And yet sadly, this entry in the MWM series has not yet been picked up by the Huffington Post, as my first, second, and third pieces were. I suppose it’s still possible that’ll happen sometime this week, especially given the story’s new SEO-friendly title. I’ll post a note here if that happens.   

And speaking of the Huffington Post, I’m putting together my first piece for them today. It’s about the current changing nature of marriage and relationships, which is more or less the same general ground I’ll be covering in all my future HuffPost pieces. Assuming this one goes over well and they ask me back, that is. Wish me luck!

Oh yeah guess what? The lovely and talented sex journalist/educator Tristan Taormino gave me a little shout-out on the website for her new book about creating and sustaining open relationships, “Opening Up” (Cleis Press).

Unbelievable book deals for lucky bloggers

Not even a month before this week’s all Thomas Kohnstamm news, all the time, it seems the blogosphere was exploding with book news of a much more positive sort. I’ve only discovered this recently, but apparently two hugely popular blogs, Stuff White People Like and I Can Has Cheezburger, have both landed book deals with beyond-ridiculous advances. In the print media universe. Get this: On March 20, The New York Observer reported that the “Stuff White People Like” book was sold to Random House for at least $350,000. 

For those of you who don’t work in the media or publishing industries, you’ll simply have to take my word for it: This is an incredibly high advance. And that’s to say nothing of the fact that the book will be based on a blog that is currently less than three months old! Initially, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe this was nothing more than a well-executed media prank. And yet here’s a thoroughly-reported New York Times story about both deals. Here’s an interesting quote from that story:

Blog books are far from a sure thing at the cash register. Gawker.com spawner the book, “The Gawker Guide to Conquering All Media,” which has sold fewer than 1,000 copies since its release in October 2007. A book based on a popular Web site focused on fashion disasters has sold 2,000 copies in its first seven weeks of release, according to Nielsen BookScan.

According to Sara Nelson of Publishers Weekly, Random House will need to sell approximately 75,000 copies of the “Stuff White People Like” book, just to earn back it’s advance. And here’s another interesting point from the story: Media wunderkind Kurt Andersen is apparently involved with the project on some level, and may have been somewhat instrumental in securing the deal in the first place. What was it about the site, you might wonder, that impressed Andersen so much? Ambitious bloggers, take note:

Mr. Andersen said what impressed him about White People’s prospects as a book is that it was already sort of unbloglike. The site is not chockablock with links to other material, but with what amounts to a series of daily essays. “It’s more like a book he’s putting out serially on the Web,” Mr. Andersen said. [New York Times, link]

Middle Eastern entrepreneurs featured in Gulf Life

The current issue of Gulf Life magazine, which is the in-flight magazine of the Bahrain-based Gulf Air, has a fantastic feature-package (complete with photos) about a number of incredibly industrious Middle Eastern entrepreneurs. (Or entrepreneurs with Asian-themed businesses.) Each piece is only a few hundred words long, and the entire package can probably be read in ten or twenty minutes. But if you’ve only got time for a few …

1. Check out ”The one-rupee entrepreneur“, a piece about Mumbai’s many coin-operated public phone businesses. One call costs only two US cents! [Story by Jerry Pinto]   
2. Also read this piece about Shehab Hamad, a culture, fashion, and lifestyle entrepreneur based in Dubai. Hamad runs Dubai’s 9714 multimedia collective, where everyone from musicians to video-artists to poets regularly perform. The article, by the way, was written by former Lonely Planet authors Lara Dunston and Terry Carter. Also check out the website of Five Green, a sleek and modern Dubai boutique owned and operated by Hamad and his sister. 
3. Possibly the most unique free agent in this series, however, is Tobias Moss, the owner of a London taxicab service called Karma Kars. According to the story:

“Its fleet consists of four imported Indian Ambassador cars, each lavishly decorated and boasting interiors that feature flowers, beads and dazzling upholstery.”

In other words, the sort of taxi you might see on the streets of Delhi or Calcutta. Even better is the fact that Moss, who claims to have traveled to India once a year since 1968, has even more Indian-themed business ideas in mind: “I will write my autobiography,” he says in the article, ”and I would love to open a Karma Kafe in London and a boutique hotel based on Karma Kars, with themed rooms, all different and in mosaic.”

Close-up photos of the various Karma Kars’ exteriors and interiors are available for vieweing on the company’s website, which is where I found the photo above. That’s the interior of Moss’ ‘Monsoon Wedding’ model, by the way; look closely and you’ll see Moss himself peeking through the back window. Other available kabs include the ‘Goa Sunset,’ with red interior; the ‘Ab Fab Kab,’ with gold glitter interior; and the ‘Moon Palace,’ which was specifically designed for weddings with its cream and gold interior. As Moss’ British contemporaries might say, Brilliant! [Story by Kathryn Miller]

Inspiration/Information for free agents

A couple interesting news stories today that should inspire and educate solo-workers and other free agents …

First, from the front page of today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, a decent profile of jazz musician Elliott Levin. At the ripe old age of 54, Levin has now been hustling obscure avant-jazz gigs for over 30 years. Here are two quotes from the story, which was written by the Philly-based freelancer music journalist David R. Adler: 

Philadelphia jazz artists may face a shortage of available bookings, but Levin seems to find every last one. “Man, I really do hustle,” he says, “but that’s what I’ve had to learn to do to survive playing music.”

Guitarist Rick Iannacone, a creative partner of Levin’s for decades, allows that his friend’s openness toward any and all gigs could be perceived as overzealous, even unfocused. “Some would say, ‘Why play with these cats, or with those cats?’ But the thing about Elliott is he has no agenda except to share music.”

[Elliott Levin's Official Website]

* * *

Also, freelancer and Salt Magazine co-founder Catherine Price hands out financial advice and tax tips to the Free Agent Nation. [Salon, click here]

Dan Pink’s Johnny Bunko update

Free Agent Nation author Dan Pink alerted many of his fans yesterday to a number of interesting promotions and tie-ins associated with Johnny Bunko, his recently-published book. Johnny Bunko, if you haven’t heard about this yet, is a business- and career-advice book produced in the style of a Japanese “manga” comic. Pink wrote the story, and a wonderfully talented illustrator by the name of Rob Ten Pas (that’s him, with the ballcap and the goatee) did the artwork.

The story itself aims to share with readers the six great secrets of career success, and after devouring an advance review copy in under an hour, I can attest to the fact that it does the job quite well. If you’ve been exposed to Dan Pink’s work in the past, and you’re now wondering whether or not Johnny Bunko might be worth it’s cover price, I’ll say this: If you consider yourself to be the sort of person who has creative career ambitions, and yet you still can’t seem to figure out how to survive comfortably outside the confines of a corporate 9-to-5 job, you might want to buy the book. (You might also want to buy two or three other creative career guides, starting with Carol Lloyd’s Creating a Life Worth Living, and possibly Barbara Sher’s Wishcraft.)

And for those of you who absolutely can’t get enough Bunko in your lives, check out the Bunko Facebook group, and keep your eyes on the website for information about upcoming contests, and possibly even a Bunko T-shirt. I’ll be wearing mine with pride.     

Lonely Planet author Josh Krist’s Memoirgate response

Just a quick note to alert anyone who has arrived at The Labor Party looking for information about the Lonely Planet/Thomas Kohnstamm scandal that writer Josh Krist, also a Lonely Planet author, has written in with a comment of his own. To read the comment in its entirety, simply scroll down to the very bottom of the post that sits directly below this one, and then click to read the comments. If you’d rather not be bothered with all the scrolling and clicking, however, here’s a synopsis:

Hi Dan, I personally am miffed about the whole thing … I think he lied about lying — in other words, yes, he greased the truth about how carefree and fun-loving his research trips were to make the trips read more Hunter S. Thompson-like. I just read his interview over at World Hum, and to me, it was deception on top of deception … So, I can understand why people feel ripped off. Travelers pay us to be honest, trustworthy, and thorough. Thomas, no matter what the “real” story might be, is apparently none of those things, or, not enough. My dad has a good line: Not only should we avoid impropriety, we should avoid even the appearance of impropriety — because the second often leads to the first.

Josh also links to a wonderful article by Tim Wu about the importance and necessity of guidebooks that was published last April on Slate.

Perhaps not surprisingly, a relatively large number of guidebook writers, some who are affiliated with LP and others who aren’t, have been weighing in on the Kohnstamm Kontroversy via their personal weblogs. I’ve found two so far that should be considered required reading for anyone interested in understanding how this scandal happened in the first place, or for that matter, anyone interested in learning the truth about how the guidebook industry really works. 

The first is Zora O’Neill’s Roving Gastronome blog. Zora writes for Moon Handbooks, Rough Guides and Lonely Planet. This is the post of hers you’ll want to read first. It’s titled The Thomas Kohnstamm Affair: A Long Rant on What It’s Really Like to Be a Guidebook Author.

Next, read Lara Dunston’s Decoding Lonely Planet’s explanation. Dunston’s post, while amusing and fairly spot-on, is also rather snarky in tone. It’s therefore worth bearing in mind that after contributing to more than 25 books for Lonely Planet with her husband Terry Carter, the couple have both chosen to end their association with the company. Lara and Terry are both extremely prolific travel writers, and today they maintain the Grantourismo travel blog.

BREAKING NEWS: Lonely Planet’s official response to Memoirgate, aka the Thomas Kohnstamm scandal

As a Lonely Planet guidebook author myself, I’ve had the opportunity this week to read the opinions of many of the company’s highest-ranking employees (including its CEO, Judy Slatyer) in regards to the recent Memoirgate scandal perpetuated by travel writer Thomas Kohnstamm. (The company maintains a private Yahoo Groups forum, accessible only by current LP guidebook writers and current LP employees/staffers. Kohnstamm’s Memoirgate mess, as I like to call it, has been raising quite a ruckus on the forum for a little under two weeks now.)

And for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, a brief explanation: A former LP author and Rough Guides editor has just had a tell-all memoir published [see image at right]. I haven’t yet had a chance to read the book, although it apparently details the supposed “dark underbelly” of the guidebook industry. In the book, which covers the period of time Kohnstamm spent in Brazil while researching the sixth edition of LP’s guide to that country, he claims to have traded Ecstacy as a way of supplementing his very meager pay; he claims also to have written a positive review of a restaurant where he had sex with a waitress, after-hours and on the top of a dining table.

There’s more: Sometime yesterday or today, Kohnstamm admitted during an interview that he didn’t actually visit Columbia while working on Lonely Planet’s Columbia guide. Here’s his quote, which I took from the Times Online (UK): “They didn’t pay me enough to go to Columbia. I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating — an intern in the Columbian Consulate.”

But here’s the thing: Kohnstamm was never contracted to go to Columbia. That’s because on very rare occasions, Lonely Planet does contract its writers to do “desk jobs”. And in those instances, all the work is done without the writer ever traveling to the country in question. Also of note is that in this particular instance, Kohnstamm was only contracted to update the book’s introductory matter. As Kohnstamm says in a World Hum interview posted today:

“Lonely Planet didn’t expect me to go to Columbia. They knew full well that I wasn’t going. My advance on the work was less than the cost of a flight down to Columbia, so there was no question as to whether I’d be going to Columbia. I was asked to work on the history, culture, environment, food and drink sections.”  

He wasn’t writing about entertainment options or the current tourism infrastructure. And he certainly wasn’t reviewing restaurants, bars or hotels. In other words, Kohnstamm effectively stretched the truth in such a way as to make it appear that he had done something horribly wrong: researching and writing his Columbia content from a futon in San Francisco. But that wasn’t really the case at all, because he knew full well when he took the job that it was, in fact, just a desk job. 

So why in the world, you might be wondering, would a professional writer do such a thing? To me, it’s obvious: The guy embellished a few details here, and he exagerrated a few details there, because he wanted his memoir to sell.

I’ve never met Kohnstamm in person, but a few months ago, when I first learned of his book deal, I exchanged a few back-and-forth emails with him about the nature of the publishing business. I even asked if he would share his agent’s contact information with me, which he kindly did. He seemed intelligent, ambitious and hard-working – just like every other guidebook author I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. I’m sure he’s also media savvy, and is probably well-versed in the machinations of the PR industry. And although his career as a guidebook writer is certainly over, I suspect he’ll have many other options in the weeks and months ahead, if only because his Memoirgate scandal has now been covered in literally every major media outlet in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand. Personally, I’m very curious to see what he’s ultimately going to do with all of this attention, especially considering that so much of the attention was — according to Kohnstamm himself – unwanted.

I’m not going to waste any space by posting links to stories about Memoirgate here, because as is often the case with the mainstream media, most of the news reports filed today all had the same information, more or less. If you’re interested, just do a Google search.

One Memoirgate piece you absolutely should read, however, is the Q&A interview between Kohnstamm and Frank Bures that was posted to World Hum today. And I suppose since I referrenced it in this post’s title, I’ll also link to Lonely Planet’s official response to Memoirgate, which is posted on the company’s website and available for all the world to see. [Comments on this post will be very much appreciated, by the way.]