I learned two new words this week just by reading Kottke…
Grawlix — that string of typographic symbols that substitute for swearing in cartoons.
Qualia — properties of sensory experiences. “I see red!” or “I see @#$%&? red!”
Nettwerk’s Terry McBride gave a great talk at Book Expo Canada two years ago. This vid (via PaidContent) shows how far his thinking then has got him now. Among the tidbits — seventy percent of their revenue is from digital. Wow.
If you publish in the current affairs category, the question of when to publish is a biggie.
Michelle Shepard published an account of the Omar Khadr case in May called Guantanamo’s Child. Judging by the covers of the major newspapers yesterday, the timing couldn’t have been better. Michelle has tirelessly followed Khadr’s plight. The book is [...]
The TOC blog points to Mindy McAdams’ 10 simple facts about the state of journalism. In the comments I took a stab at the equivalent for book publishing. I am cross-posting here…
It is different this time — just because the Rocket ereader didn’t take off doesn’t mean you can keep your head in the sand
Print [...]
There was a spell there where everything had a biography — the city of London, water, zero.
Then everything mattered and I mean everything. I thought that title meme was dead until today. I saw the review for a new book subtitled Why Men Matter. Really? The trend has been towards the more obvious. Can we [...]
Pamela McClintock over at Variety.com noted “In five of the last seven recessions, box office revenues increased; in three of those, so did attendance.” Admissions are up a whopping 17.3% over June 2007. McCintock speculates it is the poor economy…
“The fact that the box office has held up as well as it has, even in [...]
So you have published your third novel. Oprah hasn’t called, but you are still confident your fourth novel will catch fire. Excited, you pack it off to your agent. Weeks pass and nothing. The market has gone soft. Your publisher isn’t interested. They don’t want to pin the long tail on their pinata. Your agent [...]
I once heard a leftie say Che Guevara turned his back on the man by leaving medicine. The leftie said “Che really wanted to help people instead.” Right. So being a doctor isn’t helping people? This hippie couldn’t see beyond his own bias.
Andrew Keen is similarly lost in the weeds of his own biases. He [...]
Caleb Crain took the text from Moby-Dick and pasted them into Wordle.
The 75 words that appear most often are in the included image.
Over on the NYRB blog they announced their books were available for preview on Google Book Search. A publisher actually sending readers to GBS? That is pretty cool. I thought so. My bud Rob thought so too.
I was excited. I checked through the list. I saw Moravia’s Contempt and Mavis Gallant’s Paris Stories…awesome…both without access.
And [...]