 Bingo, I'm Jay Fidel, 3 O'Clock Rock here on Think Tech. We're doing Community Matters this afternoon. And we have Roger Jelenick, and he is the founder and progenitor and chief manager. You'll tell us the exact title in a minute of the Hawaii Book and Music Festival Coming Soon. That's what we're calling this discussion, the Hawaii Book and Music Festival Coming Soon. And don't forget, the end is in Ampersand. Take that home to be on the final exam. OK, Roger, welcome. OK, first of all, I'm not the founder. I don't mind being corrected. It's OK. Back in 2004, there were two groups trying to find a festival, one for-profit, one nonprofit, going for the same sponsors. Both of them asked me to program their festival, unbeknownst to each other. The nonprofit won one. Good, good choice. And so I joined the board, and I programmed it pro bono, which meant 24-7 for six months. I know how that works. So I said, no thanks next time. So I tried to find someone to run it, and they were too expensive. So I said, OK, I'll do it for half that. And so I've been running it ever since. So they came for you. They solicited you. Why did they come to you? What did you have to offer them, Roger? I have been Hawaii's only literary agent for the past, since I arrived in 1992, because it's a crazy place to be a literary agent. It really is. But let me ask you exactly, so people know, because not everybody knows, what Keske say a literary agent? A literary agent is either approached or looks for properties to sell to publishers on behalf of authors. Manuscripts. And negotiates the contracts and monitors the publishing. So if I'm writing in my back room, and I have my life work, hopefully it's not too biographical, autobiographical. I know people have done that. It doesn't go very popular. And I like what I've done. I think it's valuable. I call you up, and I say, Roger, would you represent me? And I'll say no, because there's no market. I actually make a living, try to make a living doing that. So I can't afford to take on projects that don't sell. So I can sometimes do editing jobs for people, or I will do a professional reading. But I don't take on projects that I know are not going to sell in the main market. The books you find in bonds are noble. That's my judgment that depends on that. Well, but I am a home of lost causes, I can assure you. I'm sure. Part of the business. Yes. But if I wrote a good book now. And I like it, and my wife likes it, my little puppy dog likes it, and we think that it's really terrific. I don't pay any attention to whether you like it or not. I have to like it. I have to do more than like it. I have to do a lot of research as to whether there are books like it out there, what they've sold. There's a huge amount of information out there available that used to be, who do you know, how do you find out that way. Now you can, there's just endless amounts of information. So you can zero in on what the possibilities are quite rapidly. Yeah. Well, if you know what you're doing. If you know what you're doing, if you've been around doing it. So I'll give you a minute or two. Tell me what you're looking for in a book that you will represent. In nonfiction, it has to be a new subject or a new treatment of a subject or somebody who has extraordinary credentials or great celebrity. It has to be, have some kind of commercial appeal. Though university presses are beginning to take a much larger role. So we sell to university presses. Fiction, it's a voice. Is it an original voice? Am I carried away by it? Do I forget I'm reading? That's kind of judgment. But it's very capricious. No. And I'm not in New York. So I don't have editors who have authors who don't deliver books on time, run out, have a budget problem and come to me and say, I'll publish that if you give me something that will fill that hole. My goshable. So it's a little more difficult. When the Marri writers conference was going here, I used to run the publishing program in the conference. And that was my network. I was going for a long time. About 15 years. Being here, being a literary agent here, it must be very different than being a literary agent in New York City. Very different. Yes. What's the difference? The difference is you don't see that community on a daily basis. If I was in New York, I'd be having lunch every day with a group of editors. I would specialize in a way I cannot specialize here. What does it do for you to have lunch with a bunch of editors? What does it do for you? You create relationships. It's like other businesses. It's about relationships. I can be as logical as I want. But if I don't have a relationship with an editor, it's going to be really difficult to sell. Right. He has to trust you. Yes. He has to trust your judgment. Because it's a fear-based industry. You're as good as your last success. Oh, nice. Yes. I know. One has been on a retreat for a long time. It's right now, I think, in a pretty healthy state because the competition from other media is phenomenal. So the level of writing now is extraordinary. And you have to be there. I get people who write thrillers about some apocalyptic scenario. And I ask the author, have you watched TV lately? Have you seen a thriller on TV lately? In half an hour, they deliver on the most extraordinary adventure and climax. Can you do that in your book? The answer usually is no. It takes a very special talent. Yes. But you've got to compete with that. Yes, absolutely. What about online books? Amazon is so easy. It's a matter of just the technology of getting the book in front of you. I was in Portugal. I was in Portugal last year. And I saw something on Portuguese TV that I wanted to read that. And I took out my cell phone and bingo! I had the book in like one second I had the book. That's different. Here's the problem. Amazon has a superb service called Create Space. A lot of writers here use it. But yes, they produce a fairly decent looking book. Then what? How do you get anyone to find you? Because the thing about Amazon is that every page looks as professional as the last one. Every book looks as appealing as the next one. But if nobody knows, J. Fidel has written a book. Told about promotion. There is no way. That's what you promote. I don't know. That's a question that changes all the time. And the major publishers, even with successful writers, are now making the authors do most of the promotion. I tell my clients, you will know more about how to publish your book than the publisher will. And it's hard work. It's hard work. It's very hard work. Well, let's go back to the Book and Music Festival. So it started out with you and Books, and trying to bring Books that had some connection to Hawaii, an author perhaps? Well, when I started out, Hawaii had the most vigorous regional publishing scene in the country because of our isolation and because of the tourist industry. And that got knocked for a total loop by the big recession and by the digital revolution in publishing. So now, and we lost 17 border stores in one day in 2011. So there's no place to expose Books. So the festival has taken on a really serious important role in giving exposure to authors that they don't get anywhere else. Yeah. You know, now that you say that, I used to spend so much time at borders, especially borders, just ruminating, just knocking. It's not Amazon. It's not the same. No, it's not. No. To take the book off the shelf, to look at it, flip the pages, it was like, you could spend your whole afternoon doing that. Until the beginning, you realize that a book is an extremely efficient way of delivering a story. You could reread, you could go back and forth, you could end up with it. And so for a while, independent bookstores were losing ground, in fact, a lot of them just went bankrupt. They're coming back. Not only that, but the younger demographic, which you would assume doesn't read that much, are actually crowding into bookstores again, into the independent bookstore. It's not the big reason for that. I think there's an overdosed on digital, I think, but a great thought. I'm waiting for that. It's a good thing. Yeah. And as I said, it's a really efficient way of delivering a story, a very pleasurable way. So how do you play that out at the Book and Music Festival? We program books that have been published in the last year. So I have a kind of like a really made program in a sense. We have, we specialize particularly in Hawaiian culture. We've done that from the beginning. And it just happens that with the immersion programs in schools, you now have a steady stream of kids who go through school, through UH, and some of them become scholars and actually get to publish their MAs and PhDs, not only at UH Press, but a handful of other houses. So they produce books, and their professional books are not that readable for you and me, but I surround them with panels with people who are articulate. And the panel helps. Yeah. And then there's something else has happened, which is the rediscovery of Hawaiian language newspapers and other Hawaiian language sources, which has completely transformed Hawaiian studies and the perception of the culture. Yeah. Oh, this sounds better and better. So it's on May 6th and 7th, and it's in that big grassy area behind City Hall there. Civic grounds. Civic grounds. And there's parking in the city parking lot. Yeah. It's admission is free. The parking is free. The parking is right there. Yeah. And you have a huge, let me, let me reach over, you have a huge, let me just flash this. We have 12 sides. 12 venues. One side. One side. One side. But, I mean, there's an enormous number of panels and books and authors and music. Yeah. An enormous. We have 12 venues. Last year we only had seven. You know, it's a bit, because we've got a much better funding this year. The venue is a place where you can sit and listen or watch. Yes. Yes. You know, it's specifically themed or there's some obvious connection between what's being done. Just some examples. Okay. Well, I was just talking about the Hawaiian culture one. That's actually become one of our most popular venues. We do other venues that are simply authors presenting new books, whether it's fiction or nonfiction. We have some themed pavilions. We have a new one, a food and cookbook pavilion, that the Pilly group, Chef Yamaguchi, has put together. Mm-hmm. The old ice skating star. Yeah. You know, this is the chef. Oh, okay. Okay. That Yamaguchi. Okay. Yes. And that's really interesting because we haven't gone the food and wine festival upscale route. We've gone really what people actually eat at home and what a lot of these new restaurants farm to tableware. So do you have food there? Yeah. Cooking there. Yes. We have food there and demos. Even demos for kids. And tasting. And tasting, yes. Oh, that's terrific. So that's brand new. That's going to work very well. This is one that's supported by AARP. They came to us saying, we'd love to do something. And I noticed that their CEO has a new book called Disrupt Aging. So I said casually, why don't you invite the CEO here and they said, oh, good idea. They did. And now they're terrified because they have to perform extraordinarily well. But that's joking apart. We put together seven panels, including one with you and me in it. Yes, I'm looking for, we're the one on aging, yeah? Disruptive aging, is it? We're the one on how we change careers at a later time and do something else, productive. Let me tell you, it's not so easy. And we have another one on wellness that's supported by HMSA, which is seven hot-button issues. So for instance, we have a terrific panel on mindful healing with a South Korean monk, Hyman Sumen, whose last book sold 3 million copies in South Korea. And he's together with an extraordinary doctor who was trained at Harvard, is now Mass Gen, who has a very strange power, which is synesthesia. He feels his patient's pain, literally. And he's written a memoir of what it was like to grow up with this. Oh, and be able to hear him talk about that. For instance, in his introduction, he describes the first time as a resident that he had to attend a dying patient. And he actually felt he was dying. And he had to really will himself back to his life. So interesting and relevant to the death with dignity that was just failed in the house. Let's take a short break, Roger Jelenick, and he is not the founder, but a very early contributor and still active 24 by 7 for the Hawaii Book and Music Festival, coming soon on May 6th and 7th behind City Hall. We'll be right back. We'll talk some more about how this works, why you should go down there, who's going down there, and what you will learn and how your life will change by going down there. We'll be right back. I'm Carol Mon Lee, and I want to welcome you to our newest series called Education Matters, where we will explore education-related topics that touch everyone, not just formal programs in K-12 and higher education, but also broader issues and information that affect our community. Aloha. This is Kaley Akeena with the Weekly Ehana Kako. Next work together program on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network Mondays at 2 o'clock PM. Movers and shakers and great ideas. Join us. We'll see you then. Aloha. Hi. I'm Cheryl Crozier-Garcia. I'm the host of Working Together on Think Tech Hawaii. It's a program where we discuss the impact of change on workers, employers, and the economy. So join us every other Tuesday from 4 o'clock to 4.30, we're live in the studio on Working Together in Think Tech Hawaii. Take care. See you soon. Bye. We're back. We're live with Roger Gellner. He is putting on the Hawaii Book and Music Festival coming on May 6th and 7th behind City Hall with 12 venues, right? 12 venues. 12 venues. There's 100,000 people coming around. 140 separate events. 140 events at 12, over two days. And you can eat there. Yes. You can park there too. You can sleep there. It's something I want to emphasize your mind there is what it is. Some people go to sleep under the trees. Okay. You know, I participated, you must remember, I participated in an energy panel. That's right. It was a very pleasant experience to be walking around there and talking to people there. So who's coming? Well, we have a major venue is the Mission Memorial Auditorium. It holds 350. It's air-conditioned. That's the inside auditorium. Interesting people don't like going indoors unless there's something very special there. Because everything is happening outdoors. And festival means outdoors in Hawaii. So we take great care to have pretty special things going on there. So we kick off with Patrick McCullochane and Connie Hale. Connie Hale has written a book about him. He's the Bay Area avant-garde kumahula who comes here every two years to do a couple of performances at the Hawaii Theater. And this time there's a book about him. So he'll do talk story and demo with his dancers in the Mission Auditorium. That's at 10 o'clock. So much variety, diversity, and all kinds from left to right. I mean, you have grown and diversified this program so that there's something for everybody. This leads to an interesting question, if not a challenge. How do I pick where I want to go? There are so many things to see, which is 140, is it? How do I pick where I want to go? Because I want to spend time with the good ones. I want to immerse myself in the good ones. How do I get to the good ones? Well, remember, they're not all J Fiddles with a mass curiosity about everything. So that solves part of the problem. So if you're interested in Hawaiian culture, you're likely to go to the Hawaiian culture. If you're interested in music or hula, you're going to go to that. If you're interested in literature, you're going to go to those. But there are people who are torn because it's all 12 venues competing at the same time, which I tell the presenters, you're competing with 12 other venues, so make it a good show. We insist that every presentation, they go by the hour, that 15 to 20 minutes has to be dedicated to Q&A. So we make it as interactive as possible. That's very good. It wakes people up. You can get to our website, Hawaii Book and Music Festival, not Ampersand, A&D. Oh, OK. Ampersand is a hard to put. They're by www.ampersand.com, and you will see the hour by hour of what's available, as well as bios of all the presenters, as well as a map, as well as a schedule. Oh, the map is good. You have a downloadable schedule as well. So I can do research and figure out where I want to go, and I can make my choices in advance. Here's a piece from the website now. So I figure out where I want to go. I spend the time. Should I wait the whole panel out, or should I move along, say, in the middle of it? It's entirely up to you. We don't chain you to the chair. But we find, in practice, very few people move around once they've made a decision. They don't move around much. Good question, Roger. Should I prepare for this? I mean, this is a mind expander, right? I'm there to learn things I would never have known. I'm there to meet people, hear people talk about things I haven't heard before. Do I have to prepare? Should I prepare? Should I study? It depends on your personality, really. Do you study before you go to Barnes & Noble? No, I study at Barnes & Noble. There you are. So that's one answer. If you want to get the most out of a novel, let's say, Callie Hart Hemings has a novel. And she'll do a reading, and she'll talk story about why she wrote this particular book. It's nice to meet her. It was a very interesting book. And you can read her, and they all do signings afterwards at Barnes & Noble, all that local publisher. But you probably get more out of it if you read the book ahead of time. A lot of people come and have read the book. They get it signed after they've read the book. So there are books for sale. When an author is likely, you permit this. The author would bring the book, and I would ask for an autograph and get one. Yes. All the presenters who have new books have a place to sell the books, either Barnes & Noble or their local publisher. Or if they're independent publishers, if they've self-published, there's a venue for that as well. What about kids? Is this something for kids? Huge amount. Almost 25, 30% of the program is for kids. What grade were they aged? From toddlers to you and me. What are they there for? The cakey stage has 28, they go by half an hour. They have 28 entertainers, music, where Mr. Steve was a national host for PBS Kids, who is a Pied Piper. He performs six times. He comes from Connecticut every year. And people line up for him. And Jeff Geer, our friend Jeff Geer, he can entertain. This year we have a whole venue dedicated to professional storytellers. Not necessarily for kids, it's for adults actually, maybe adults only. But these are professional storytellers. And I've put in three plays into that venue as well. One comes from UH, it's a Japanese kyojin, it's a satire called Derailed, you wonder what that's about. And then there's another play from the actors group, which is about Muslim issues. Muslim in America is called Disgraced. And then there's an improv Hawaii play, which is an improv long form play. We don't know what that's about. We won't know until you get there. This is a real festival. Yes. You go there and your eyes are wide open and all this. You know, if I go on the sixth, you think it'll draw me in to stay on the seventh? I mean, did I plan two days here? It's really interesting. We do an onsite survey and more and more people stay longer and more and more people go both days. There's one wonderful venue that we've had right from the beginning, which is the Bank of Hawaii provides a book swap. You can bring five gently used books and exchange them for five new ones. And they buy a lot of new books for it. No cost. Even Steven. Even Steven. No cost. And there's even a cookbook swap. Three local cookbooks for three local cookbooks. That's very, that's what a bargain that is. And then friends of the library are there selling books very cheaply. State library has become a major partner for us now. They have a big presence there this year. They need to get out too. But it strikes me that despite all the cultural stuff and the panel stuff and the music stuff and the food stuff, you're really after trying to make people understand about the written word and books and literacy and expanding your mind. That would be the core, wouldn't it? Yes, but it's very Hawaii-focused. And that's a double-edged sword because it can become provincial. It's the result of the fact that New York publishers do not send authors here. The standard model for a book festival is big-time authors promoting their books sent by publishers free to the festival, whether it's in Texas or Portland or New York or wherever. They don't do that here. No market. Small market. Too expensive. Or the airfare. Too expensive. And also they're no bookstores now to show the books to sell books. But you are bringing them here anyway. Somehow. How do you get them to come? We pay them. Good of you. But we need that. We need to have them here. We need to have their fresh thinking. We need to touch them and see them. That's what I said. It's a double-edged sword. I'm trying to increase the number of authors we bring in every year. So for instance, this year we have a guy who's written the best book on U.S.-China history, the history of the U.S. and China. We have Joanne Jenkins. We've already mentioned. She's the one with AARP. She's the national CEO of AARP. We have three wonderful novelists who have gotten rave reviews across the country just for fun and for interest. We have this doctor I mentioned, the one with the synaesthesia and other things, you know. I want to meet him. Let's see who else. Let me feel my pain. I'll ask him. What is my pain today? He'll tell me. Because I'm mind-reading. Body-reading. He will. So I guess, you know, what comes to me is this. ThinkTech should be there. We want to be there. I hope you'll let us come with cameras and direct us to, you know, good panels would be mostly interested in panels, but also authors. We actually have a videographer and also a still photographer. If you'd like to be our videographer, I'd be delighted to work with you. We'll talk. Yeah. Yeah. Because I mean, we consider this right in the channel for us. This is the kind of thing we want to bring to people. They don't get a big chance to do it. This is only once a year you do this festival. And we'd like to have it on film so that they can see it maybe at other times, but on YouTube and pieces. So there's a lot of pieces. We even have a grant for a videographer and we'll contribute that to ThinkTech. You know, he's on tape now. We're getting this, we're documenting what he used to say, but I also, you know, I also want to go there and talk to the people. I want to, you know, help you expose it. I think it's very important. It's a perfect location. My earlier experience. You'll get a lot of people there who will be good for your show down the line. Yeah. That was my next point. I'd like to get some of them down if they're here. Will they be here for a while? I mean, will we have trouble bringing them in? For the ones who are coming from the mainland, we'll only be here three days for the most part. The monk, I told you about, he's here for nine days. So you might have him. We'll have somebody. But he's phenomenal. Yeah. I'd like to do that with you. Very articulate. But let me think through who else. But you really, you really want to get them on the site. We'll find a room for you to work in so there's no ambient sound. Yeah, that's important to us. So Roger, we have one minute left and that's camera one over there. Can you tell the people of Oahu and for that matter the state of Hawaii why they should, you know, come down on May 6th and 7th? It's more fun than any other festival. It takes a literary agent to put things so succinctly. Roger's been wonderful talking to you. I really enjoy. I enjoy whatever we speak, but I certainly enjoy today. Great. Thank you so much. Roger Jelenik, the operator, the manager of Hawaii Book and Music Festival, coming soon, May 6th and 7th, behind City Hall. Be there, okay?