Four books received the coveted Jamey Stegmaier 5-Star Rating in 2009. They are as follows in no particular order:

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (mystery, 608 pages, author is dead)

Why you should read it: This is the best-written mystery I’ve ever read. Hands down. Larsson (and his translator) don’t waste a single word, so the 600+ pages fly by. His characters are well realized through showing, not telling, especially Lisbeth Salander. The mysteries within the book unfurl at exactly the right pace.

Acacia: The War with the Mein by David Anthony Durham (fantasy, 768 pages, author blog here)

Why you should read it: Durham (who I’ve had the good fortune of e-mailing with a little bit) is an incredible author with some of the best world-building skills I’ve ever seen. His work is fantasy, but it doesn’t always feel like fantasy because of the traditions, customs, and religions he incorporates into Acacia. Despite all that supporting material, the book is always moving forward.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (dystopian young adult fiction, pages, author page here)

Why you should read it: This is dystopian young adult fiction at its finest. The book is sheer popcorn entertainment from page one. It will be a hard movie to make because, well, kids kill other kids in this book, but it would be amazing to watch this book unfurl on the big screen.

Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson (short story collection, 240 pages, author blog here)

Why you should read it: Usually when I read short story collections, there is a mix of good stories, bad stories, and mediocre stories. Two of Wilson’s stories don’t hit the mark for me. The rest are brilliant. Two haven’t left my mind since I read the book: one about a grandmother-for-hire service and the other about a group of post-college kids who decide to start digging tunnels in the ground (think Adventureland with shovels). If you love heartbreakingly moving short stories, you must read this book.

Remarkably, the first three books on that list are book ones in trilogies. I read the second book of the Acacia and Hunger Games trilogies in 2009 as well; they’re fantastic, but they suffer from Second Book Syndrome: although they’re riveting, they end up feeling like the second waiting room at the doctor’s office. The one that brings you so close to actually seeing the doctor, but not quite. Those second books will be stronger after the book threes come out.

Kickstarter is a site where you can post a project–usually one in progress–and seek funding from friends, family, and strangers. You set a goal, and if you don’t reach that goal, nobody pays a dime.

The coolest part about Kickstarter is that it allows you to customize ways to thank people for giving to your project. For example, if you’re seeking funding to sail across the country in a hot air balloon, you might offer people who contribute at the $25 level some special photos from the trip. This sets it apart from most other websites–there’s always a cool project on Kickstarter to check out, and people find really cool ways to thank their backers.

I started thinking about Kickstarter as a way to not just fund a project, but also sell variations of a completed project, when I saw Robin Sloan’s Kickstarter entry. Robin, a blogger with a decent audience but no published novels to his name, decided to write a novella in a month and seek funding during that time. I interviewed Robin for a featurette in the innovation book I’m writing, and he explained that the funding wasn’t paying his bills or stuffing his pockets, but rather every penny was going into making the books he sold on Kickstarter as cool as possible. I’m really looking forward to getting my book in the mail, as I’m sure it’s going to different than any other book I’ve read.

That brings me back to Josh’s project. When I was getting excited about Robin’s project, I sent a link over to Josh, who at the time was wrapping up his short-story collection, In Search of Monsters. I encouraged Josh to post on Kickstarter, and so he proposed the project to them, was accepted, and brainstormed some iterations of giving levels.

Check out the result on Kickstarter by clicking this link and then come back to read why I’m so excited about this.

That brings me to today. I’m not only excited because Josh used some of my ideas (the $19 level and the $49 level), but also because Josh has created an incredible platform for spreading the word about his book. I’ll say it right here: This is the coolest way to sell a book experience, ever.

Josh has done two specific things very well:

1. He has created a built-in platform for sharing his work beyond point-of-purchase. The most expensive three levels are there for people to share Josh’s work with other people. Because that’s the whole point for an emerging author: You’re trying to build an audience. Instead of just selling individual books, why not sell book packages like Josh does.
2. He has created a unique story behind the book itself. Check out the last level, the choose-your-own adventure level. That’s just cool. And look at the level I created, the $19 special edition. It includes commentary preceding every short story about how Josh thought of the story and what aspects of the story are “true.” That one is perfect for writers who are curious about the creative process. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the other level I thought of, the $49 level. Have you ever shared a short story collection with a friend but preempted the gift by saying, “Stories 1, 2, and 9 are awesome, but the rest are only so-so”? Not with the $49 level. With that level you get a signed special edition of the book along with 3 “mini” copies of the book that only include your favorite stories. That way you can recommend them with friends without a disclaimer.

Could all of this be done without Kickstarter? Sure. Any author could make a website and feature different giving levels. But Kickstarter shows each potential buyer how many other people are interested in the project–people want to read what other people are reading.

Also, Kickstarter is one of the first uniquely browseable websites I’ve seen in a long time. Most websites I go to once, subscribe to the feed, and then never visit again. But I truly enjoy looking around on Kickstarter to see what types of projects are on there and the types of incentives for buying into those projects. Thus Kickstarter is a great hub for random browsing and discovery.

Even if you have no intention of contributing to Josh’s project, I think what he’s put together here is certainly worth sharing. Send a link to your writer and entrepreneur friends. This is a platform to take quite seriously.

This is the real deal. This is a real book that has a top-five publisher and a cover and an ISBN. It will be published in March 2010. The book falls into the same category as Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling tomes (but with less hair).

Many of the stories we’re writing about in the book are fairly famous examples of innovation with a special spin on them to make them applicable to all those innovators out there today.

But what we’re also looking for are small stories of innovation that no one’s ever heard. That’s where you come in. Do you have a story of innovation–whether it be something you did or are doing, something your company has done, something a friend or family member did or is doing, or something you heard about elsewhere? I’m looking for complete stories, innovations carried out in full, not million dollar ideas that you never acted on.

The scale, type, and date of the innovation can be literally anything (although, scale will impact your chances of the story being published. The more people your innovation affects, the better your chances. It’s great that you thought of an innovative way to brush your teeth, but that’s not going to make the cut). Bonus points if the innovation happened during–or because of–tough times.

Also, keep in mind that an innovation is not just an invention. Innovations include inventions, but they also include any thing or action that improves upon its predecessor.

This is an opportunity for you to share a story to thousands of people who would never have otherwise heard of it. I want to uncover untold tales of innovation, tales of the common man, firsthand accounts of ingenuity, inspiration, follow-through, and success (or failure. As long as those other components are there, stories of eventual failure are interesting too).

The rules:

1. By sharing your story with me, you give me permission to retell it the book.
2. By sharing your story with me, I offer absolutely no guarantee that it will appear in the book. I hope to include several, but I make no guarantees.
3. I must receive your submission by this Friday, October 23, at 9:00 pm CST. (If you send in a story after that, I’ll still read it, but due to our deadline you have a greatly diminished chance of your story being included after that point.)
4. If the story isn’t about an innovation of your own, your name will be credited in the back of the book, not the body text. If you pass on this blog entry to a friend and they end up submitting a story, you will be credited for your referral if your friend tells me your name.

To submit your story, I need you to e-mail the following information with subject line “[Your Name]‘s Innovation Story] to jamey.stegmaier AT gmail.com (do not post it in the comments section below):

1. Your name as you’d like it to appear in the book
2. What is the innovation?
3. Tell me about the process of thinking of the innovation, making it a reality, and growing the number of people it affects.
4. Was the innovation created because of tough times? How so?
5. Some way for me to verify the validity of your story (the e-mail of a personal reference or a link to the story if you’ve already told it on your blog or read about it online).

Thanks for your help–I’m excited to hear what you have to share!

That’s right. A tiny video screen embedded into a page of the magazine. It’s even rechargeable so you can watch the ad again if you want.

Very cool.

For quite a while now, I’ve been thinking about e-books as the future of reading. You can do so much more with e-books than you can a regular book. For example, when e-ink technology improves, you could embed a video within the pages of your novel if you thought it would be better than a description of a scene. (Note that I don’t think many books would be improved by a video. That’s what makes books…books.)

However, with this Americhip ad technology, you could have your cake (the smell and feel of a real book in your hands) and eat it too (video technology). Embed the video screen into the front cover. Whenever the reader reaches a video scene, they flip to the front, skip to the scene, and watch it before continuing.

I’m still wrapping my mind around how a book that encompasses multiple formats like this could be used. There was a book that came out earlier this summer called The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet that incorporates drawings and maps that are necessary to the plot onto nearly every page. The author noted in an inteview that he started off writing the book in a word processing program like normal, but he kept reaching places where he wanted to show the reader exactly what something looked like, not describe it and leave it to the reader’s imagination. But it’s not a kid’s book–this is a real adult novel.

And why shouldn’t an adult novel have drawings or video or a soundtrack that plays when you reach certain points? The answer I know some publishers might say is that it’s more expensive to print a book like that. Spivet retails for $18.45 on Amazon, and I don’t think it did as well as the publisher hoped. But it’s also a different size than the standard hardcover.

I think of my unfinished Frank Lloyd Wright novel when I think about these things. I’m not sure if video would add much to the concept, with the exception of video tours of some of the Wright buildings I mention in the book. But I would certainly like to include some of the blueprints I describe in the book, as well as some of Wright’s sketches. They’re not bonus material. They’re essential to the plot.

I have another project that could really use the videos, but it may be better in blog format. I’ve hinted about it before, and I’ll talk more about it soon.

After reading about this EW video ad, I’m 100% sure we’ll see a book come out within the year with the same technology embedded in it. And it’ll be a big deal, and the book will sell well, if not for the sheer novelty of it (kind of like 3D is some recent movies). Then we’ll see some copycats, and finally we’ll see a book emerge that uses the technology fully to its potential. Will it be my book? Will it be your book? We’ll see.

Tunneling to the Center of the Earth,

By that I mean that it’s very, very good. I haven’t been able to put it down the last few days.

Wilson is one of those authors who can seemingly effortlessly weave a tale without the use of fancy language or extra words. He barely even uses dialogue, and rarely a metaphor or simile (and when he does, it’s perfect, i.e., when a character worries about the side effects of hair-loss medication, he muses, “My head could cave in like a rotten jack-o’-lantern”).

Most of the stories have heartbreaking elements, but I was uplifted simply because I was given the chance to read them. Many of the concepts in the book have elements of humor to them, and I laughed out loud once. (Spoiler: In the titular story, a character avoids real life after college by digging tunnels under his town. When he accidentally breaks through the cinder-block walls of a neighbor’s basement, startling some kids, he says, “Sorry, I must have the wrong house”).

Of the eleven stories in the collection, only two miss the mark. The other nine are brilliant. My top four:

1. “Tunneling to the Center of the Earth” (as said about, three college grads avoid real life by digging. Like the new movie Adventureland, but with shovels)
2. “Grand Stand-In” (love and deception in a rent-a-grandmother service)
3. “Mortal Kombat” (two high-school nerds, in the absence of other young love, explore their blossoming sexuality with each other)
4. “Go, Fight, Win” (standard story: pretty girl moves to new town, becomes cheerleader at high school, spends free time making model cars, falls for a 12-year-old)

Tunneling is on sale on Amazon for $10.97.