This guest post was written by David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth, authors of What’s Wrong with My Plant?, and originally appeared on their blog. Kathryn and David are currently touring the West coast to solve plant problems and promote their book.

Spring is here. Friends already lay out their soaker hoses, sow seeds indoors, and move seedlings out into their cold-frames. We’re going to miss all that this year, as we travel to talk about our book, and other topics from the green world. We won’t bemoan the loss too much. Surely an exciting journey lies ahead. David and I love a road trip.

The second event on our book tour is behind us. David and I gave a talk at the Port Townsend, WA public library. This low-key chat with our “homies” in the town where we live was a perfect send-off for the tour.

At the library we talked about how we developed the book –- our book –- from inchoate thoughts about the questions we must ask when someone else asks us, “What’s Wrong With My Plant?” A very common question, by the way.

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Would a sedum by any other name be so cute? Timber Press includes tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of plant names in our books every year. Plant names are constantly changing, being challenged, and being debunked; yet there is no real final authority on plant names like a Supreme Court. Plant names either survive or fade based on how convincing the argument of their sponsor when a plant is published (as for botanical names) or chosen by the breeder or selector (as for horticultural names). There are codes to govern how the names are published and promulgated but this only cuts down on the confusion a little bit. (I won’t even get into patent or trademark names, which would make you completely nuts.) If you’re convinced that California fuchsias are really from genus Zauschneria, you really can’t be called incorrect even though most people now accept inclusion in the genus Epilobium. As long as your name was published validly once, even if that were 100 years ago, you can’t really be wrong, although you can certainly look a little foolish and old fashioned.

This is all a way of saying that perfection is impossible, but we try our best. Our readers might enjoy one rabbit hole we chased down concerning the correct name of Sedum burrito, which is mentioned in Debra Lee Baldwin’s wonderful Succulent Container Gardens. Debra appealed to succulents-expert Fred Dortort, who also happens to be the author of an upcoming encyclopedia. If you’re not a plant geek, you can stop reading here, but if you’re like us, you’ll find his account gripping and edge-of-the-seat reading:

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There are certain things we do for every new book. Sending out review copies to sales people and the media is one of these. But every so often we really want a book to make a splash and try to do something unique.

Tom Fischer is very special to us. He is our editor-in-chief, our resident foodie who eats at least once from every new food cart, and—as of today—one of our spring authors. His newest book, The Gardener’s Color Palette, releases today. And we obviously had to do something special for it.

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This blog post was contributed by Dave DeWitt, author of The Complete Chile Pepper Book.

On November 20, Paul Bosland and I hosted a multimedia presentation and book signing for our latest Timber Press book, The Complete Chile Pepper Book, at Zuhl Library at New Mexico State University.  Since Paul is a Regent’s Professor there and a recent winner of Governor Richardson’s Public Service Award, and I’m an associate professor on the adjunct faculty and chair of the governing board of the nearby New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum in Las Cruces, we expected good attendance and were not disappointed.  The event drew 75 chilehead fans, we sold all of the 50 books that the library had available, and the profits went to the library’s drive to raise their collection to 2 million volumes by the end of 2010.  I have endowed the library over a five year period to build the Dave DeWitt-Chile Pepper Institute Archive, which is a multimedia collection of all my donated papers, clippings, manuscripts, my 37 books on chiles, hundreds of related books from my library, plus photographs and multimedia materials.  After that, my continued endowment will launch Chilepedia.org, an enormous Wiki devoted to my favorite subject.

For the presentation, we showed clips from Heat Up Your Life, the 3-part, 2 hour and 40 minute documentary I co-produced, wrote, and hosted with NMSU’s University Communications department.  I don’t like to do boring bookstore signings, so events like this are much more conducive to selling books, as we proved.  More events such as this one are in the future and one is planned at the Rio Grande Botanical Gardens in Albuquerque next year and the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show in March, 2010.

Last week I traveled to the Bay Area to attend the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association’s annual regional show.

This year it took place in Oakland. And surprise, surprise — I loved it! (It’s a well known fact around the office that I adore traveling for work. I don’t know why, but I really do). In fact, I fell in love with the entire area. I rode the BART, walked around downtown Berkeley, went shopping on College Avenue, had hot chocolate in San Francisco, and…

But, back to the show. Each regional area has a related association of independent booksellers—there is PNBA in the Pacific Northwest, SIBA in the south, NEIBA in New England, etc. Each associations hosts an annual Fall trade show. It’s a chance for publishers, bookstores, authors, distributors, and the rest of the people involved in publishing to come together to learn about — and hopefully sell — new Fall titles. I was there to help our regional sales reps — the inimitable Craig McCroskey and John Majeska of Book Travelers West.

So what did I actually do? I talked to booksellers, explained our new titles, searched out new event venues, and grabbed the catalogs of several other publishers. I also had the chance to host a dinner at Oliveto, an amazing restaurant in the Rockridge section of Oakland. I enjoyed pasta, wine, and great conversation with Saxon Holt, the photographer of The American Meadow Garden, Keeyla Meadows, the author of Fearless Color Gardens, Stephanie Deignan, the events coordinator at Copperfield’s Books, Ann Leyhe, the owner of Mrs. Dalloway’s, and Margot Sheffner, the book buyer for Flora Grubb Gardens and advertising manager for Pacific Horticulture.

A pretty incredible mix of people.

Each year there are questions about the viability and role of the regional shows. Fewer orders are placed each year and many publishers wonder if they are necessary. I don’t know if the shows as they are now are a good model, but I do know the very real value of the face-to-face time with booksellers and authors. No amount of email, promotions, or publicity can replace regular old human interaction.

And, if they canceled the regional shows, how could I convince Timber Press to send me to the south next year?

P.S. If you live in Berkeley or are just visiting, go to Mrs. Dalloway’s. I’ve never seen a bookstore with such an amazing selection of gardening books — they literally have a WALL dedicated to them (please ignore the awful photography).

It is a very interesting time to be in publishing, for both good reasons and bad. On the one hand, there is much talk about how the publishing industry is in trouble (with a capital T, which rhymes with P, which… oh, sorry.) Revenues are down, people are not reading any more, etc., etc. On the other hand, it is also a time of transition and exploration into new ways of communicating, which can be pretty exciting. Publishers are experimenting with new media, with new ways of promoting their books, and even with whole new ways of reading a book. It’s hard not to be fascinated by the ever-changing methods that publishers and booksellers are using to stay in business — there are some really fabulous ideas out there!

Recently, we colored a bit outside our lines by putting together our first ever “trailers“. We worked with five authors to come up with stories they wanted to tell about their books, and we incorporated the stories, the book images, and a little bit of author footage into an attractive video, which we then posted on our YouTube account. Voila! We now have videos that we can send to all corners of the globe! (Well, it was a little more complicated than that, but that’s all behind-the-scenes stuff — pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.)

John Greenlee provided us with an impassioned argument for sustainable meadows over traditional lawns:

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As the Timber Press Web and IT Manager, I’m probably one of the nerdier people in the office.

Well, I should probably qualify that, given that from my desk I can see coworkers who are probably thinking right now about graphic novels and/or Star Wars (don’t worry, office-mates, I will keep your identities safe from the Internet … for now). To say nothing of the discussions I’ve had with members of the editorial department on the finer points of grammar.

Fine, I’m one of many nerdy people in this office. But I’m the only one I know of to have taken an interest in a particular old book I found one day while perusing the extensive backlist in our library. That book is Computer Graphics in Biology, and this is the story of my adventure with that book.

No, wait, don’t stop reading yet!

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There are few things in life to which I am willing to attach the phrase, “It will change your life!” Hence the reason that I will never make a living selling cars. Or shoes. Or face cream. But … I cannot say the same about books. They are life-changing.

A book can change the course of the future. A book can cause a society to see things differently, get riled up, burn things. For example, here is a small list of books that have been banned by certain societies:

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll was banned in China for the portrayal of animals acting as humans, Animal Farm by George Orwell was banned for political reasons.

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner was banned in Kentucky for language and for being anti-Christian.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger was banned in the US and Australia.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck was banned in many parts of the US, especially California, because it made the residents of the region look bad.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov was banned for obscenity in France, the UK, Argentina, New Zealand, and South Africa.

Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler was banned because of anti-Nazi laws and for being extremist.

Because books are so wonderful, important, and controversial, I feel 100% great telling everyone about the Sylvia Beach Hotel. I had the immense pleasure of staying there with my sister a few weekends ago, and it was perfect.

Located on a lovely ridge overlooking Nye Beach, Oregon, the Sylvia Beach Hotel is made for people who want to relax on a soft couch on Friday night, drinking mulled wine in lovely silence with a favorite book. There are no TVs or radios or phones or internet access. Instead, there is an enormous library/lounge filled with blankets and pillows and couches and journals for guests to write in. Each room is decorated in honor of a famous author: Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, J.R.R. Tolkien, Dr. Seuss, and many more.

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Should Timber Publish a Book on Biodynamic Gardening?

This was the question of our publications board today, and I don’t think I’ve ever sat in a more contentious meeting!

For the uninitiated, biodynamic gardening can be considered the progenitor of all organic gardening. Begun right at the height of the industrial revolution by theologian Rudolf Steiner, biodynamics were clearly ahead of their time. (Steiner also founded the Waldorf Schools that are sprinkled around in high-income neighborhoods.) His essential belief was that any farm should be self-sufficient — no sending away to Monsanto for GMO seeds, no fertilizers other than compost you make yourself. In an era before we knew about carbon-free offsets and lowering environmental inputs, Rudolf Steiner had it all figured out. And he would have voted for Al Gore, too.

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Timber Press has been in interested in books on dramatic plant colors since we published (in North America) Deni Bown’s Alba in 1989. (That book was inspired by the fad for white gardens in the 1980’s based on Vita Sackville-West’s famous white-flower garden. Alas, it may be some time before white gardens return to general popularity. We hope to commission a new edition if they do.) Our next was Book of Blue Flowers, which we published in 2000, making much of the fact that blue is the rarest hue in nature. This book is still in print in paperback.

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