To read Norm's review of the book click HERE

Valerie shares her views about the book with Norm in the following interview.

INTERVIEW

Today Bookpleasures is honored to have has its guest, Valerie Kirschenbaum, author of Goodbye Gutenberg.

Valerie Kirschenbaum is a 12-year veteran of New York City public schools and one of the world’s leading experts in the creation of full-color book interiors. She is the first female writer in 500 years to design her own font and the inventor of the new genre of “designer writing.” The book can be viewed online at Goodbyegutenberg.com

Thank you Valerie for accepting our invitation to be interviewed.

Norm: 

Could you tell us something about yourself?  

Valerie:

 I was born and raised in Teaneck, NJ, but I always felt a calling to help others in need, so I decided to be a teacher in the inner city. I’ve been teaching in New York City public high schools for 12 years now. I live in a charming little house in Westchester County. The kids in the affluent suburbs actually have a lot in common with those in the inner city. Both love colorful imagery. Both love video games. But neither demographic seems to like to read.

Norm:

How would you define “designer writing?”

Valerie: 

The term “graphic designer” was coined by a book designer in the 1920s, but it didn’t catch for another ten years. No one walked around in the 1920s saying, “I’m a graphic designer” or applying for “graphic design” jobs. Likewise, the term “designer writer” was coined to signal the emergence of a new kind of professional identity. No one walks around today saying, “I’m a designer writer.” The term didn’t exist until now. But in the next ten years, we will see more and more writers doing their own design and calling themselves “designer writers.” They will regard the design of their books as just as important as the text itself. And in the coming decade, when you browse the shelves at your favorite bookstore, you will see more and more “designer books.” The old style, black and white book, with endless rows of justified Roman serif type, is quickly becoming an anachronism.

Norm: 

Did anyone step up to mentor you when you started writing Goodbye Gutenberg?
 

Valerie:

 I had two very special mentors on whose shoulders I really stood, Christine de Pisan and Leon Battista Alberti. They inspire me and mentor me even though they have been dead for over 500 years. Christine de Pisan because she was a woman struggling in the man’s world of 14th century France. Christine is one of the few writers in history who calligraphed and illuminated her own books. But on a deeper level, she proved that no dream is too big. Through her example, she showed how a woman could converse with eternity without feeling ashamed. She withstood terrible criticisms in her day, and it’s helpful and inspiring to see how she found the inner strength to pursue her true calling with faith, joy, and gentleness.

Alberti has always been a hero of mine. He provided what many scholars regard as the blueprint for the Italian Renaissance. Alberti explored how the sciences of his day could be used to take the arts to a new level. Likewise, I’m exploring how we can use new computer technologies to launch a Renaissance in literature and the arts. What I learned from Alberti is that you can’t have a Renaissance without a blueprint. I also learned from him not to be ashamed of promoting my work as the blueprint for our own Renaissance. We desperately need such a blueprint, and it matters less that I’m one of the first to promote it.  

Norm:

 What motivated you to write Goodbye Gutenberg?

 Valerie:

 I originally got the idea from one of my students. We were reading the works of Chaucer. She raised her hand and asked, “Ms. Kirschenbaum, how come our books are not in color, like they used to be?” At first, I thought it was a dumb question. But as it turns out, the question changed my life. It’s also the single most important question that writers and publishers will ask in the next five years. How come our books are not in color, like they used to be?
 
Norm:

If you were to choose 3 authors whose books you feel could become more attractive to the reading public by implementing your design techniques, which ones would you select and why?

Valerie:

Well, let’s start with the best. Diane Ackerman is one of the most sumptuous prose stylists writing today. A Natural History of the Senses is a gorgeous rhapsody of a book. But trying to get the younger generations to appreciate her work has been no easy task for me. Books have been marginalized. Fewer and fewer people are reading seriously. To be a serious writer today is to experience the crisis of feeling like a sardine in a sea of television programs, video games, music videos, etc. But if A Natural History of the Senses were beautifully designed, its audience would mushroom. It’s ironic that Ackerman has a major section on seeing, yet she writes in black and white.

The next is Zadie Smith, author of White Teeth. I have an open letter to her in the newsroom section of my website. I basically say that she is one of the most talented writers of our generation and that she has achieved the kind of literary and commercial success that many writers only dream about. But none of my friends and colleagues has ever heard of her. And likely none of my students ever will. It is possible today to be a “successful” writer today without really having significant impact on the general culture. But someone with Zadie’s talents can create books of unparalleled beauty and have such an impact.

A third is Chris Widener, motivational speaker and author of The Angel Inside. Few people outside the personal development field have heard of Chris, but he’s definitely someone to watch. It tells the story of a young man in Florence trying to find himself. He meets up with a mentor who explains how Michelangelo took a big slab of marble that nobody wanted and created the David. I wrote Chris a letter telling him how amazing it would be if his book were colorfully designed. That could be a classic.

Chris and Zadie are my age. But I’ve received dozens of emails from writers of all ages telling me they will try to do their next book in color. My ultimate dream is to help as many writers as I can.

Norm:

I notice that you have received a wide variety of criticism on Amazon.com. Do you find criticism helpful and why?

Valerie:

 The reviews are surprisingly, almost shockingly, positive. I’m amazed at how little serious criticism there has been, considering that I’m introducing something new. Usually with an innovation like this you can expect a lot of severe criticism, sometimes vitriolic. People naturally resist change until they realize the benefits of the new idea or product. But the world of books is in such a state of marginalization and even desperation that a new approach is badly needed. Even the ones who were critical acknowledged the merits of the overall vision, and had issues mainly with the execution. At the end of the book I quoted Alberti, who said that new things are never perfect. That’s how I feel about Goodbye Gutenberg. Perfection will come later, as writers and publishers really digest these ideas.

The critics would benefit by digging themselves out of a few traps, though. They need to understand that the title of the book is “Goodbye Gutenberg.” This means that the gist of my message is that we are saying goodbye to the old style book, whether print or electronic. It does not mean that all books of the future will look like mine. I’m putting forth this book as a showcase of what is now possible. But everyone has his or her own individual design aesthetic. I like full-page bleeds, expressive typography, energetic colors, and emotional depth. I freely acknowledge that there are a thousand other possible design aesthetics. I dream of a generation of designer writers far more talented than me – a Botticelli of the Book, a Perugino of the Page, a Raphael of the Written Word.

If the critics are serious, they should stand up and be counted and publicly state, in clear terms, that they simply do not believe this Renaissance is going to happen. They should state for the record that in ten years books would look as they have always looked and be published in the old black and white style, whether print or electronic. Because when the Renaissance happens, the first thing they’re going to do is deny that they ever denied it. It will make a fascinating lesson in the path that an innovation has to take before being absorbed by the mainstream.

Norm:

 What was the most challenging aspect of writing Goodbye Gutenberg and why?

 Valerie:

 There were really two major challenging aspects. The first was technical. I wanted to push these new technologies to the absolute breaking point. The final book required over 300 gigabytes of storage space, 4 gigabytes of RAM and a dual processor G5 running on Mac OS10. This book was technically impossible to do on a single computer even two or three years ago. But I still had trouble doing all I wanted to do. The state of the art equipment is far from perfect, and many nights I wanted to pull my hair out. The second challenging aspect was more spiritual. The hardest thing for me has been to face up to the fact that I’ve done something innovative, that people will resist and criticize it at first, and that I have to market and promote it myself in the beginning. I’ve devoted my life to helping kids in the inner city, but somehow in my early thirties a new voice was born within me. It’s exhilarating and it’s terrifying.

Norm: 

How do you intend to go about marketing your book?

 Valerie:

 We had a very successful pilot fundraiser for a local art museum, so I’m always looking for schools, churches and museums that want to use Goodbye Gutenberg to raise money. I’m pursuing many different avenues at once – bookstores, book clubs, direct email, traditional media, library sales, museum and art sales, and of course, the education market, since I’m an educator.

Norm: 

What is your future plans pertaining to designer writing, and how do you intend to promote your ideas?

Valerie:

 Ideas don’t belong to anyone in particular. They can’t be copyrighted or trademarked. “Designer writing” belongs to everyone. Things will move very slowly at first. As designer writing builds steam, it won’t always be obvious that steam is building. But there will be a point – it’s hard to say exactly when, maybe next year, maybe in five years – when the steam bursts and you see articles in mainstream publications about how excited writers are about taking control of the visual appearance of their work. This is a remarkable shift, a phenomenon that, with a few exceptions, we haven’t seen since the invention of the printing press. Most writers already write their books on a computer, but their use is limited mostly to basic writing and editing. Within the next ten years, they will use their computers to design their books and explore visual dimensions of their ideas and imaginations never before explored.

 Graphic novels are booming, but they are just the tip of the iceberg. There are limits to how many adults will ever read a comic book. But now, with our new design technologies, book interiors can go in a number of exciting new directions that appeal to adults with a wide variety of tastes. It’s really exciting to be alive at the dawn of designer writing and to witness this extraordinary flowering of designer books for adults - designer novels, designer memoirs, designer histories, designer biographies, designer books of all sorts. What’s even more exciting is to watch it now, before it really blossoms, before writers and publishers in the mainstream begin to marvel at our good fortune. No generation of writers has ever had such a pot of gold. It’s only a matter of time until the floodgates are opened. And remember: you read it here first, in an interview with Norm Goldman!

Thanks you once again Valerie and we wish you the best of luck in all of your future endeavors.