SEPTEMBER 21, 2017 // 3
SCRATCHPAD
Book titles and misleading marketing
You would be wrong.
As Toutonghi and re-
viewers pointed out, “Dog
Gone” is really the family’s
story. It’s about the owner
(Toutonghi’s mother-in-law)
who transcended her trau-
matic background to raise
healthy children and create
a stable family of her own
— and who, when their dog,
“Gonker,” disappeared, went
to superhuman lengths to fi nd
him.
So why the misleading,
albeit mildly clever, title? (In-
cidentally, I was reminded of
1995’s big lie known as “Far
from Home: The Adventures
of Yellow Dog,” a movie kids
went to see thinking it was
about a lost dog only to dis-
cover it’s actually about a lost
boy and his parents — who,
by the way, have a yellow
dog.)
Toutonghi — an Oregon
author who teaches at Lewis
& Clark College — explained
at a recent book reading in
Manzanita that, if he’d had
his way, the book would have
been named “True North.”
“I didn’t think this (book)
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
COAST WEEKEND EDITOR
ERICK BENGEL
By ERICK BENGEL
FOR COAST WEEKEND
W
hen you read the
title “Dog Gone:
A Lost Pet’s
Extraordinary Journey and
the Family Who Brought Him
Home,” what do you imagine
this book is about?
You probably assumed
it’s mostly about a dog. Or
perhaps you thought the
author, Pauls Toutonghi, took
a fanciful tour of the canine
mindscape à la “Homeward
Bound.”
coast
weekend
arts & entertainment
4
COASTAL LIFE
Enjoy a brew-tiful
weekend beer fest
Pacific Northwest Brew Cup marks 16th year
9
10
’STACKSTOCK MUSIC FEST
Concert is a passion project
The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy headlines show
21
Spirited wit
with words
PHOTO BY PATR ICK WEBB
THE ARTS
Gallery makes an impression
Take a tour of printmaking techniques
FURTHER ENJOYMENT
MUSIC CALENDAR .....................5
SEE + DO ........................... 12, 13
CROSSWORD ........................... 20
CW MARKETPLACE ................ 18
GRAB BAG ................................ 23
CONTRIBUTORS
JANAE EASLON
DON FRADES
RYAN HUME
R.J. MARX
NANCY McCARTHY
BARBARA LLOYD McMICHAEL
ANDREW TONRY
PATRICK WEBB
To advertise in Coast Weekend,
call 503-325-3211 or contact
your local sales representative.
© 2017 COAST WEEKEND
New items for publication
consideration must be
submitted by 10 a.m.
Tuesday, one week and two
days before publication.
FEATURE
‘Blithe Spirit’ opens at
the Coaster Theatre
CALENDAR COORDINATOR
REBECCA HERREN
Find it all online!
CoastWeekend.com
features full calendar listings,
keyword search and easy
sharing on social media.
TO SUBMIT AN ITEM
Phone: 503.325.3211 Ext. 217
or 800.781.3211
Fax: 503.325.6573
E-mail: editor@coastweekend.com
Address: P.O.Box 210 •
949 Exchange St. Astoria,
OR 97103
Coast Weekend is published every
Thursday by the EO Media Group,
all rights reserved. No part of this
publication can be reproduced
without consent of the publisher.
Coast Weekend appears weekly
in The Daily Astorian and the
Chinook Observer.
was about Gonker,” he said.
“And I actually think that
that’s part of why I don’t like
the title very much, because
I felt like that was sort of a
miscasting of it.”
But he didn’t have his
way; Penguin Random House
had theirs.
This misalignment
between substance and sales
strategy is pretty common.
Molly Gloss, author of “Fall-
ing from Horses,” said during
this year’s Get Lit at the
Beach panel in Cannon Beach
that she wanted to name her
novel “Rough Cut.” Book-
sellers, however, wanted to tie
it to her previous book “The
Hearts of Horses.”
Authors, it turns out, don’t
have nearly as much creative
control over presentation
minutia, like titles, as readers
might think.
Having named it, Toutong-
hi’s publishers heavily mar-
keted “Dog Gone” as a pet
book, to be shelved in Barnes
& Noble’s pet section.
“They wanted to sell the
book a certain way, and I
don’t know that it was the
best way to sell it,” Tou-
tonghi said. “That was my
feeling.”
The complex infrastruc-
ture of book sales is largely
invisible to the public — and
to writers, he noted.
“That ends up really,
in a lot of invisible ways,
controlling the market, and
controlling the books that we
access as readers, and con-
trolling the books that writers
get to publish,” Toutonghi said.
Amazon, for example, bent
on moving as many units as
possible, often dictates covers,
titles, “or even, arguably,
deeper,” Toutonghi said.
All the more reason, he
advised, to buy your books
from your local bookseller. CW