Publishing
Human Nature
by Levi Asher on Thursday, November 5, 2009 10:42 pm
Some of my literary/blogger friends have taken to tweeting their literary links. Not me -- I'm holding out for the blog format, just like McSweeney's is holding out for newspapers. Here's another roundup involving great writers and other finds ...
1. Nature magazine goes way back.
2. Orhan Pamuk's real-life Museum of Innocence.
3. The many facets of Roberto Bolano.
4. The many quirks of William Golding, who originally wanted Simon the Christ symbol to actually witness the arrival of God in his great Lord of the Flies.
5. PopMatters interviews Nicholson Baker.
6. Gregory Maguire, whose Wicked novel is much better than the Broadway musical created from it, joins in on an open publishing experiment.
7. Holocaust victim Horst Rosenthal had the idea for Maus before Art Spiegelman.
8. Jessa Crispin tells it like it is.
9. I had no idea that Stanley Kubrick got "Daisy" from a real singing computer.
10. In my opinion Nick Cave sang the best "Stagger Lee".
11. Bill Ectric presents an excerpt from Tamper.
12. Probably inspired by Clarence Clemens's enjoyable and funny new book Big Man, Bruce Springsteen may write an autobiography. All the newspapers are blubbering about the size of his advance, but why shouldn't he get $10 million? He's that good, and I would love to read this book.
Les Mouches
by Levi Asher on Monday, October 26, 2009 10:56 pmBeat Generation, Being A Writer, Comedy, Comix, Economics, Events, Existential, Internet Culture, News, Poetry, Psychology, Publishing, Summer Of Love, Visual Art
1. A creepy publicity stunt involving flies carrying little paper advertisements at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Doesn't this make you feel bad for the flies?
2. San Francisco Beat/hippie poet Lenore Kandel has died at the age of 77. Here's an appreciation of her work by John Yates.
3. Carl Jung's awesome visual side.
4. A detailed financial biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald. (And why not? Money was certainly among his major themes).
5. East Village poetry legend and perennial Presidential candidate Sparrow and LitKicks poet Mickey Z. are creating a poetry anthology together and they say:
Calling all feminists, wizards, Queer theorists, ex-Black Panthers, Christians, Green activists, avant-gardists, Kabbalists, vegans, Hawaiian nationalists, kickboxers, Punks, Hip Hop evangelists, New New Leftists, pink-haired emo warriors, organic gardeners -- submit your work for "The Big Book of Revolutionary Poetry," edited by Sparrow and Mickey Z. Send up to 3 poems to: sparrow44@juno.com or info@mickeyz.net
Go for it, I say.
6. Guernica Magazing is turning 5! Jonathan Ames, Howard Zinn, Katie Halper, Mia Farrow and David Byrne will be joining the party this Wednesday, October 28. Wish I could make it (but I can't).
7. The eternal philosophical battle over the real-life ethics of German intellectual Martin Heidegger goes on. Personally, I don't agonize over Heidegger's Nazi past, because I never thought much of his work. You can find the same message -- the utter immediacy of existence -- in Nietzsche or Kierkegaard or Sartre, and with a lot more finesse and humor.
8. Building a brain inside a supercomputer. And here I am just trying to get Drupal to work.
9. I recently posted about Fall 2009 books I'm looking forward to; little did I know that Orhan Pamuk and Kurt Vonnegut books were coming out too ...
10. Jeff Kinney's Wimpy Kid is rocking the cash registers. My stepdaughter reads these books and I think they're hilarious.
11. I love this, from McSweeneys: YouTube Comment, of e. e. cummings?.
12. HTMLGiant on Glimmer Train: "Winning one of their ubiquitous contests is like winning $2 on a $2 scratch ticket or a free small soda during McDonald’s Monopoly promotion." They also admit that Glitter Train was once "a decent, if not rather traditional literary magazine". I used to read them, but I don't read print literary journals much at all anymore.
13. If you've been reading my memoir, some of these events will be familiar: A History of the Internet from 1969 to Today.
14. Speaking of bygone times, one-time high-rolling community website GeoCities is shutting down. Caryn is sad about this, and xkcd posted a tribute.
WORKING FOR CANDICE CARPENTER
by Levi Asher on Thursday, August 6, 2009 11:31 am
(This is chapter 26 of my ongoing memoir of the Internet industry.)
The day I began working at iVillage was the first day I ever found myself truly excited to meet the president of a company I worked for. But there has never been, and probably never will be again, a CEO like Candice Carpenter.
This wiry and fierce woman was one of the most controversial figures in the Internet industry in the early months of 1999. Her company's IPO was widely expected to succeed, despite the fact that many industry commentators considered her a bewitching fake. It was true that she could thrill a crowd (I had become inspired to join iVillage myself after hearing her speak), and she was obviously thrilling Wall Street as well, even though iVillage was the epitome of a money-losing, big-spending dot-com, with a highly uncertain financial future.
To those who wanted more substance in their dot-coms -- more e-commerce revenue, more advertising dollars, fewer press releases, fewer TV commercials -- iVillage represented the worst of hype-crazed Silicon Alley. I guess that's why I thought Candice Carpenter was so cool.
She would take the criticism and spit it back in their faces. On talk shows and newspaper or magazine interviews, Candice Carpenter would insist that iVillage had a great business model and true staying power (despite the current lack of revenue), and I never heard her back down or hedge this bet. She always spoke with style and verve, often while wearing skin-tight leather dresses, pink jungle-print mini-skirts or other truly strange outfits, and was known to say outrageously philosophical things about the true meaning of work, about why people are afraid to compete, about the business world as a character-building exercise. Most of the things she said made sense to me.
On Value and Price
by Levi Asher on Monday, July 27, 2009 11:46 am
1. I'm glad to hear the New York Times will probably not put its core news content behind a payment wall after all. Instead, they're test-marketing some extraneous "gold" and "silver" plans that I hope New York Times loyalists will pay up for, though the author of the article linked above is skeptical that such loyalists exist.
But the comments to my previous posts on this topic indicate that the Times does have its loyal enthusiasts. Meanwhile, one of these posts is apparently causing John Williams to wear out his neck muscles shaking his head in disagreement. He quotes novelist Katharine Weber's response to me, as follows:
But Levi. Could you have reasonably refused to read the NYT twenty years ago if you had to buy it at a newsstand or pay for home delivery instead of just having free copies handed to you on the street or dropped in your driveway? ... Much has changed, yes. But has the economic rule which used to be as certain as the laws of gravity, the rule of paying for things of value, really begun to vanish? How is this not a zero sum game?
Williams calls Weber's comment "succinct and totally sensible", and says:
I'm still waiting for a substantive response to this line of thinking. There have been plenty of cultural developments that I love in the past 10 years: Netflix, iTunes, The Wire. One way or another, I pay for all of them.
I can't turn down a direct challenge, so I'll try to offer a substantive response to the idea that we must pay for things of value. However, I find the idea almost too childish to entertain. First of all, just as we can name things of value that we pay for, we can also easily name things of value that we don't pay for. The Office. Music on the car radio. Outdoor sculptures and great urban architecture. Oh yeah, and then there's free news and commentary on the Internet which, plain and simple, we are already not paying for.
If we want to examine this classic "rule of paying for things of value", let's consider one of the many masterpieces of nature: the orange. This weekend I bought an entire bag of delicious fresh Florida oranges -- marvelous, ingenious, healthy and beautiful things, really -- for about two bucks. Taken purely for its value, a single orange could easily be worth five dollars. Likewise, taken purely for its value, a bottle of corn-syrup-flavored orange soda shouldn't cost more than ten cents. But these hypothetical prices don't correspond to the real world. We never actually pay for things according to their value. We pay for things according to the law of supply and demand.
When John Williams declares that we pay for things according to their value, he is doing no more than expressing a keening wish. Declaring that we pay for things according to their value is like declaring that we will stay young forever, or that there will be no more crime. It's nice to think such things, but they never were true and they're still not.
I wonder if John Williams will consider that a substantive response. If he does, maybe he should pay me.
2. Here's a really sweet story about the married couple on the 'Woodstock' album cover.
3. Speaking of the New York Times, Gregory Cowles has uploaded a particularly good essay on Nabokov's Lolita to the Paper Cuts blog.
4. Scott Esposito on Intense First Person (a narrative stance I tend to use a lot myself).
5. Way back in 1935, Walter Cronkite interviewed Gertrude Stein.
6. Basil Wolverton was okay, but if you're talking about classic Mad Magazine you're talking about Harvey Kurtzman.
7. Nicholson Baker ponders the Kindle in the New Yorker and, not surprisingly, the essay soars above most of the other commentary on this hot topic. "I changed the type size. I searched for a text string. I tussled with a sense of anticlimax." It's no surprise to anyone who's read Baker's previous works on library science and antique newspapers that he will ultimately not choose to embrace the Kindle.
8. Speaking of the New York Times (and their home delivery problems) again: hah.
Cheap, Free and Otherwise
by Levi Asher on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 01:35 amPricing models are in the air. A new book called Cheap by Ellen Ruppel Shell argues that modern American consumers have duped themselves into a bargain-hunting haze and lost touch with the true price and the true value of things. I was invited by Ed Champion to join a roundtable discussion of this book, and we wasted no time getting down and dirty in this discussion. I turn out to be one of the naysayers in the group, as you'll see if you check out this lively conversation. But I'm glad I was exposed to Ruppel Shell's book. Questions of price and value clearly touch on emotions that cut deeper than any blue light special at K-Mart.
As did my post yesterday about the possibility that the New York Times may begin charging for web access. I wrote that I would stop reading and writing about the New York Times if they began restricting their content to paying subscribers -- a perfectly reasonable stance, I think, since there is plenty of excellent content out there that is openly available to readers around the world which I can read and write about instead.
But I got a strong negative reaction to this statement (via comments, twitter and email), and am honestly surprised to discover that many of my own friends are excited that the New York Times might pioneer a new payment framework for web articles. One reason, of course, is that these people are not only readers but are writers or publishing professionals themselves, and therefore don't like the "free" model for online content any more than the New York Times does.
There's a lot to be said on this topic. Today, I'd just like to respond to a few things I've heard, and explain my side of this debate better. Here's what a few of you have said, and what I'd like to say back:
Why aren't you willing to pay for the New York Times?
I am very, very willing to pay for the New York Times. I already pay about $35 a month to get the print edition delivered to my doorstep every morning.
I never said I wasn't willing to pay for the New York Times, or even that I wouldn't be willing to pay more to help the New York Times survive. I'd happily pay $5 a month more if I felt it would help anything. But I don't.
I believe the decision to put NYTimes.com behind a payment wall would be a bad and short-sighted decision. The New York Times should consider itself to be in the global news business, but this move would marginalize it to the world outside of its own subscriber base. Becoming unavailable to the worldwide community of readers would irreparably harm the paper's position as the most widely referenced American newspaper. It would be the beginning of a slow and painful nose-dive into global irrelevance, because other newspapers would certainly move in to take the Times's place. This is why I'm against the proposed payment plan -- it has nothing to do with my own willingness to pay $5 a month.
Advertising alone cannot support an expensive operation like the New York Times.
Nonsense. Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. If this were true, the New York Times would have folded in 1895, because the Times has always made more money on advertising than on newsstand sales and subscriptions. So do almost all newspapers and magazines.
I may have mentioned it elsewhere that from 1995 to 1998 I was manager of advertising technology at Time Inc. New Media, which ran websites for Time, People, Sports Illustrated, Life and Fortune. I worked closely with the advertising department and learned a lot, including the fact that every Time Inc. magazine makes more money on advertising than on sales. So do most other magazines, and so does the New York Times and pretty much every newspaper.
You can't support excellent content solely through advertising? Somebody better warn the television industry, and the radio industry too. They've somehow managed to thrive all these decades.
It's a simple fact: advertising is big money. The reason the New York Times is suffering now is that they haven't yet figured out how to sell ads online (where they regularly get their ass kicked by Google, which has figured out how). Another reason is that there's a big recession going on, and ad sales is down. That's why a decision to put NYTimes.com behind a payment wall is short-sighted: as soon as the economy picks up again, the Times is going to want those pageviews back. I guarantee it.
(And, again, I been around this online ad sales industry a while. They will want those pageviews back -- I guarantee it).
Instead of convincing newspaper readers to pay to access the website (a hard sell, except apparently to my friends and a few other eager New Yorkers), the Times should be bringing their advertising strategy into the 21st Century (hint: figure out which publishers are selling ads online, and learn from them). They should also be convincing their investors and potential investors of the long-term revenue potential for the most trusted journalistic source in America. The long-term potential is enormous, and that's why a retreat behind a payment wall would be such a shame.
The problem with private/dedicated payment plans is mechanical. We need a payment system that works.
This I agree with. Putting the Times behind a payment wall is clearly a desperation move, and a diversionary tactic. The numbers just don't add up -- this idea will not bring in enough revenue to equal a healthy online sales operation.
However, here's the kind of idea that might work: figure out a way people can pay $10 a month or $20 a month and get privileged levels of online access for every major newspaper in the world. Some consortium or third party provider should then need to figure out how to chop that money up and dole it out correctly to the individual publishers. This is a formula -- the cable TV model -- that could actually work. I'd pay up, why not? Make it easy for us, and we'll be in.
But even if this does happen, guess what? The $10/$20 splits won't support the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. They'll still need advertising revenue to survive, just like they always did.
Advertising has supported some of the most innovative entertainment and publishing of the last 100 years. That's the funny truth about all this faddish talk about "free" as an innovative new content model: free has been around all our lives. It was "free" that made Lucille Ball and Elvis Presley and Walter Cronkite and the Beatles and Bill Cosby and Michael Jackson and Jerry Seinfeld. As far as content/publishing goes, there's nothing new about "free". It's what always made the world go around.
As did my post yesterday about the possibility that the New York Times may begin charging for web access. I wrote that I would stop reading and writing about the New York Times if they began restricting their content to paying subscribers -- a perfectly reasonable stance, I think, since there is plenty of excellent content out there that is openly available to readers around the world which I can read and write about instead.
But I got a strong negative reaction to this statement (via comments, twitter and email), and am honestly surprised to discover that many of my own friends are excited that the New York Times might pioneer a new payment framework for web articles. One reason, of course, is that these people are not only readers but are writers or publishing professionals themselves, and therefore don't like the "free" model for online content any more than the New York Times does.
There's a lot to be said on this topic. Today, I'd just like to respond to a few things I've heard, and explain my side of this debate better. Here's what a few of you have said, and what I'd like to say back:
Why aren't you willing to pay for the New York Times?
I am very, very willing to pay for the New York Times. I already pay about $35 a month to get the print edition delivered to my doorstep every morning.
I never said I wasn't willing to pay for the New York Times, or even that I wouldn't be willing to pay more to help the New York Times survive. I'd happily pay $5 a month more if I felt it would help anything. But I don't.
I believe the decision to put NYTimes.com behind a payment wall would be a bad and short-sighted decision. The New York Times should consider itself to be in the global news business, but this move would marginalize it to the world outside of its own subscriber base. Becoming unavailable to the worldwide community of readers would irreparably harm the paper's position as the most widely referenced American newspaper. It would be the beginning of a slow and painful nose-dive into global irrelevance, because other newspapers would certainly move in to take the Times's place. This is why I'm against the proposed payment plan -- it has nothing to do with my own willingness to pay $5 a month.
Advertising alone cannot support an expensive operation like the New York Times.
Nonsense. Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. If this were true, the New York Times would have folded in 1895, because the Times has always made more money on advertising than on newsstand sales and subscriptions. So do almost all newspapers and magazines.
I may have mentioned it elsewhere that from 1995 to 1998 I was manager of advertising technology at Time Inc. New Media, which ran websites for Time, People, Sports Illustrated, Life and Fortune. I worked closely with the advertising department and learned a lot, including the fact that every Time Inc. magazine makes more money on advertising than on sales. So do most other magazines, and so does the New York Times and pretty much every newspaper.
You can't support excellent content solely through advertising? Somebody better warn the television industry, and the radio industry too. They've somehow managed to thrive all these decades.
It's a simple fact: advertising is big money. The reason the New York Times is suffering now is that they haven't yet figured out how to sell ads online (where they regularly get their ass kicked by Google, which has figured out how). Another reason is that there's a big recession going on, and ad sales is down. That's why a decision to put NYTimes.com behind a payment wall is short-sighted: as soon as the economy picks up again, the Times is going to want those pageviews back. I guarantee it.
(And, again, I been around this online ad sales industry a while. They will want those pageviews back -- I guarantee it).
Instead of convincing newspaper readers to pay to access the website (a hard sell, except apparently to my friends and a few other eager New Yorkers), the Times should be bringing their advertising strategy into the 21st Century (hint: figure out which publishers are selling ads online, and learn from them). They should also be convincing their investors and potential investors of the long-term revenue potential for the most trusted journalistic source in America. The long-term potential is enormous, and that's why a retreat behind a payment wall would be such a shame.
The problem with private/dedicated payment plans is mechanical. We need a payment system that works.
This I agree with. Putting the Times behind a payment wall is clearly a desperation move, and a diversionary tactic. The numbers just don't add up -- this idea will not bring in enough revenue to equal a healthy online sales operation.
However, here's the kind of idea that might work: figure out a way people can pay $10 a month or $20 a month and get privileged levels of online access for every major newspaper in the world. Some consortium or third party provider should then need to figure out how to chop that money up and dole it out correctly to the individual publishers. This is a formula -- the cable TV model -- that could actually work. I'd pay up, why not? Make it easy for us, and we'll be in.
But even if this does happen, guess what? The $10/$20 splits won't support the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. They'll still need advertising revenue to survive, just like they always did.
Advertising has supported some of the most innovative entertainment and publishing of the last 100 years. That's the funny truth about all this faddish talk about "free" as an innovative new content model: free has been around all our lives. It was "free" that made Lucille Ball and Elvis Presley and Walter Cronkite and the Beatles and Bill Cosby and Michael Jackson and Jerry Seinfeld. As far as content/publishing goes, there's nothing new about "free". It's what always made the world go around.
WEBBY VALLEY
by Levi Asher on Thursday, June 4, 2009 12:56 am
(This is chapter 20 of my ongoing memoir of the Internet industry.)
I went to San Francisco in March 1998 to attend the Webby Awards. Literary Kicks was a nominee in the Print/Zines category. I was up against Salon (a well-financed new content venture), the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (exciting stuff!), a compendium of electronic literature known as Labyrinth, and, finally, alt.culture (my friend Nathaniel Wice's site, hosted by Pathfinder).
It felt strange to be up against a site edited by my friend and hosted by the company I worked for, but Nathaniel and I both agreed that alt.culture didn't have a chance, and neither did Litkicks. Salon, a darling of the new media industry since its highly publicized introduction, was the clear choice to win.
I flew out to California to attend the awards ceremony at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, bringing the Enterzone crew, Christian and Briggs and Martha and Rich, as my guests. We showed up to the event in an ironic mode, enjoying the hyped-up red carpet atmosphere though we knew my site would lose, and feeling dubious about the crowd of fashionably dressed dot-commers that filled the auditorium. It wasn't until the Print/Zines category was presented and I saw an image of the Litkicks front page on the large theatre screen that I suddenly realized I wanted Litkicks to win.
This sudden epiphany that I wanted to win was quickly followed by the announcement of the winner: Salon. Dammit.
Book Expo Wrapup
by Levi Asher on Sunday, May 31, 2009 06:53 pmBEA 2009 was my third Book Expo. The first time I came here, in 2005, I got invited to no parties (I didn't even know there were parties) and I walked the convention center floors feeling bewildered.
The second time, in 2007, I got invited to the parties but didn't know what to do at the parties once I got there. I walked the convention floors feeling excluded.
This time, it was my own friends hosting the parties, and I walked the convention center floors feeling entirely comfortable. So now I have finally adjusted to Book Expo -- the one USA book industry convention that the entire industry actually shows up for -- just at the moment that many in the industry began to question whether a radical shift towards digital publishing will become necessary in the next year, whether book publishing is in permanent decline, and whether or not there will even be another Book Expo next year.
Attendance is down and fewer galleys are available, but the spirit of innovation is up. I'm sure the economic problems currently obsessing booksellers have more to do with poor consumer spending and less to do with the digital revolution, and so I couldn't stand to sit through a Saturday morning panel discussion about whether large commercial book publishers "still hold the keys to the kingdom", or a later one about how book reviews are changing. The probability of hearing a single fresh thought at either event seemed slight, so instead I saved my event-going for a panel called 7x20x21, organized by Ami Greko and Ryan Champan and offering free-form inspiration from Lauren Cerand, Chris Jackson, Pablo Defendini, Debbie Stier, Matt Supko, Jeff Yamaguchi and Richard Nash. At 7 strictly-timed minutes per speaker, nobody had time to do anything but speak from the heart. Let's forget about the future of the book for a moment and talk instead about the future of the panel discussion: 7x20x21 is a good template for other event organizers to follow.
A "blogger book signing" sponsored by NetGalley.com was a real hoot. I enjoyed sharing my hour with Sarah Johnson, who writes about historical fiction at Reading the Past. I had never heard of several other literary bloggers I shared this schedule with. I gather that many of them specialize in specific genres or areas, and that several are more obsessed with the constant stream of newly published books than I am (personally, I'm also excited about what books are coming out next year, as long as next year is 1863).
But most of these sites also feature the characteristic I value most in a literary blog: an authentic human voice. Here's the whole gang, for your checking-out enjoyment: The Book Maven, Presenting Lenore, Follow the Reader, Maw Books, GalleyCat, Tools of Change for Publishing, Books on the Nightstand, Beatrice.com, Booksquare, Jenn's Bookshelf, The Swivet, Book Club Girl, Booking Mama, My Friend Amy, The Friendly Book Nook, Beth Fish Reads, Pop Culture Junkie, She is Too Fond of Books, Hey Lady! Watcha Readin'?, Reviewer X, My Cozy Book Nook, Book Reviews by Jess , Smart Bitches Trashy Books, Personanondata, Sharon Loves Cats, Janicu’s book blog, The Big Picture, The Olive Reader, Literary License, Stephanie’s Written Word, Bookrastination, Every Day I Write the Book, Reading the Past, Literary Kicks, Wands and Worlds, Mother Reader, Teleread, Laura’s Review Book Shelf, The Tome Traveller's Weblog, Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, Bat Segundo, The Abbeville Manual of Style.
I could say more about Book Expo 2009, but I can't compete with the Twitter tag for currency. Is the book biz in trouble? I just don't think so, based on the enthusiasm I've spent the last three days soaking in.
After I left BEA Sunday morning I was exhausted and slightly sick of the scene, but I found myself at Penn Station an hour and a half later with some time to kill. Naturally, I spent the next twenty minutes in a bookstore.
The second time, in 2007, I got invited to the parties but didn't know what to do at the parties once I got there. I walked the convention floors feeling excluded.
This time, it was my own friends hosting the parties, and I walked the convention center floors feeling entirely comfortable. So now I have finally adjusted to Book Expo -- the one USA book industry convention that the entire industry actually shows up for -- just at the moment that many in the industry began to question whether a radical shift towards digital publishing will become necessary in the next year, whether book publishing is in permanent decline, and whether or not there will even be another Book Expo next year.
Attendance is down and fewer galleys are available, but the spirit of innovation is up. I'm sure the economic problems currently obsessing booksellers have more to do with poor consumer spending and less to do with the digital revolution, and so I couldn't stand to sit through a Saturday morning panel discussion about whether large commercial book publishers "still hold the keys to the kingdom", or a later one about how book reviews are changing. The probability of hearing a single fresh thought at either event seemed slight, so instead I saved my event-going for a panel called 7x20x21, organized by Ami Greko and Ryan Champan and offering free-form inspiration from Lauren Cerand, Chris Jackson, Pablo Defendini, Debbie Stier, Matt Supko, Jeff Yamaguchi and Richard Nash. At 7 strictly-timed minutes per speaker, nobody had time to do anything but speak from the heart. Let's forget about the future of the book for a moment and talk instead about the future of the panel discussion: 7x20x21 is a good template for other event organizers to follow.
A "blogger book signing" sponsored by NetGalley.com was a real hoot. I enjoyed sharing my hour with Sarah Johnson, who writes about historical fiction at Reading the Past. I had never heard of several other literary bloggers I shared this schedule with. I gather that many of them specialize in specific genres or areas, and that several are more obsessed with the constant stream of newly published books than I am (personally, I'm also excited about what books are coming out next year, as long as next year is 1863).
But most of these sites also feature the characteristic I value most in a literary blog: an authentic human voice. Here's the whole gang, for your checking-out enjoyment: The Book Maven, Presenting Lenore, Follow the Reader, Maw Books, GalleyCat, Tools of Change for Publishing, Books on the Nightstand, Beatrice.com, Booksquare, Jenn's Bookshelf, The Swivet, Book Club Girl, Booking Mama, My Friend Amy, The Friendly Book Nook, Beth Fish Reads, Pop Culture Junkie, She is Too Fond of Books, Hey Lady! Watcha Readin'?, Reviewer X, My Cozy Book Nook, Book Reviews by Jess , Smart Bitches Trashy Books, Personanondata, Sharon Loves Cats, Janicu’s book blog, The Big Picture, The Olive Reader, Literary License, Stephanie’s Written Word, Bookrastination, Every Day I Write the Book, Reading the Past, Literary Kicks, Wands and Worlds, Mother Reader, Teleread, Laura’s Review Book Shelf, The Tome Traveller's Weblog, Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, Bat Segundo, The Abbeville Manual of Style.
I could say more about Book Expo 2009, but I can't compete with the Twitter tag for currency. Is the book biz in trouble? I just don't think so, based on the enthusiasm I've spent the last three days soaking in.
After I left BEA Sunday morning I was exhausted and slightly sick of the scene, but I found myself at Penn Station an hour and a half later with some time to kill. Naturally, I spent the next twenty minutes in a bookstore.
#bea09
by Levi Asher on Thursday, May 28, 2009 11:46 pm
It's so cool that Book Expo 2009 is taking place, literally, in a crystal palace, otherwise known as Jacob Javits Center in New York City, alongside the Hudson River where only recently a pilot made these words famous:
"We're gonna be in the Hudson."
Indeed we are. Captain Sullenberger is at the Book Expo, so is Clarence Clemons and Steve Tyler and Tina Brown. I'm in there somewhere too -- I'll be part of the blogger book signing at the Firebrand booth, Sunday morning at 10 am. Please come down and say hi if you're at the Expo.
I'll be posting a full report this weekend, and here are just a few thoughts in advance:
• Dedi Felman (co-founder of Words Without Borders and former Simon and Schuster editor) and Richard Nash (former Soft Skull chief) are apparently launching some kind of new media publishing venture together. I missed their event so I don't know the details, but I know this is a power-packed team.
• I see there's a panel called "Book Format Fusion: Why Trade Paperbacks are the Format to Embrace". Well, well, well. What a crazy idea. I wonder who practically held his breath till he turned blue saying the same thing a year and a half ago.
• I'm looking forward to the unveiling (advance copies only) of the next Katharine Weber novel, the follow-up to her Triangle. She'll be signing at the Random House booth on Friday.
• Lev Grossman is appearing on Friday in a panel discussion blandly called "Discussion on the State of the Publishing Industry", along with Steven Johnson, Tom Standage and Chris Anderson. Lev Grossman's upcoming novel is apparently called "The Magicians" and is about a boy who is suddenly enrolled in a magical school. Come on, Lev. I don't mean to get on your case because I know there's a good writer inside you. But your last novel Codex wanted to be Da Vinci Code, and your new one is trying to be Harry Potter. Please tell me high school vampires aren't next.
Anyway, if I run into any LitKicks readers at the conference I hope you'll say hello. I'll also be at a so-called "Tweetup" downtown on Friday night. And if you're not at the Expo but want to join the discussion you can follow and comment on the events on twitter, or just follow me if you only want the choice bits.
Kindle Spotting
by Levi Asher on Tuesday, May 19, 2009 11:25 pmAfrican-American, British, Drama, Haiku, New York City, News, Publishing, Reading, Southern, Technology, Visual Art
1. Okay, so I flip-flopped on the Kindle. I still dislike the high price, the DRM policy and the secrecy about sales numbers, but on the other hand Amazon appears to be showing conviction, focus and flexibility in the way they are evolving the product. Also, a few months ago I wrote that I've never seen anyone reading a Kindle on a train, but I have recently seen two people doing so. This says a lot. I remain mixed in my feelings about the product, but it's clear that the Kindle is here to stay, and this is probably a good thing.
Following the lead of several other literary bloggers, I've now made this website available for Kindle subscription. I don't own a Kindle myself, so I can't even check out how it works, but if any Kindle owners out there can check it out, please tell me what you see!
2. More technological developments: here's Slate on the semantically-charged new knowledge engine Wolfram Alpha, supposedly a challenger to Google: "If only it worked ..."
3. There are a lot of intense debates revolving around the triple satellites of e-books, blogs and Twitter, all of it possibly leading to same grand conflagration (or, more likely, not) during next weekend's Book Expo 2009 in New York City. Till we all meet there, Kassia Krozser is tracking various debates involving electronic publishing.
4. Allison Glock flaunts her silly prejudices in a Poetry Foundation article about blogs. Based on her piece, I'm betting she's never actually seen a blog.
Instead of fostering actual connection, blogs inevitably activate our baser human instincts—narcissism, vanity, schadenfreude. They offer the petty, cheap thrill of perceived superiority or released vitriol. How easy it is to tap tap tap your indignation and post, post, post into the universe, where it will velcro to the indignation of others, all fusing into a smug, sticky mess and not much else in the end. You know those dinners at chain restaurants, where they pile the plate with three kinds of pasta and five sauces and endless breadsticks and shrimp and steak and bacon bits all topped in fresh grated cheese? Blogs are like that: loads of crap that fill you up. With crap.
5. Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is one of my favorite plays. It's now running in New Haven with an African-American cast, featuring Charles S. Dutton as Willy Loman.
6. Jamelah tells me: "Paste Magazine is a really really good publication and it would be sad if it went under".
7. The New York Public Library is facing deep budget cuts and asking for a show of support. Let's keep those lions well-fed.
8. A Michigan high school bans Toni Morrison's novel Song of Solomon.
9. Flannery O'Connor in Atlantic Monthly.
10. Arthur Conan Doyle and spiritualism. And here's what Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law are doing with Sherlock Holmes.
11. A glance at a surprisingly healthy publishing industry in India.
12. I didn't realize Britian's legendary publishing firm Faber and Faber was only 80 years old.
13. John O'Hara's wonderful novel Appointment in Samarra gets some appreciation from Lydia Kiesling at The Millions.
14. Another form of Action Poetry: Yoko Ono is arranging Twitter haiku.
The Weight
by Levi Asher on Monday, April 27, 2009 09:14 pm
I'm in the process of moving to a new apartment, which means I just finished boxing up and shipping my entire book collection. This was a lot of boxes. I'm the kind of person who likes to travel light, so it's at moments like this that I really see the value in the so-called e-book revolution that's apparently heading our way. If the e-book revolution means I can enjoy these same objet's d'art in a virtual form about 600 pounds lighter, I'm for that.
As those who follow book industry news know, electronic books are the hot topic of 2009. Much of the coverage has been negative, in tones ranging from poignant to tragic. Another wave of media attention is coming, because Amazon has just purchased Lexcycle, the Texas-based startup that created Stanza, the most popular iPhone e-book reader. We've been interested in Stanza for a while, and we're not sure what to think about Amazon buying the Kindle's biggest competition.
As for the larger debate about the negative effects of electronic publishing, though, we remain confident that the transition from a print-only literary publishing environment to a print-and-electronic literary publishing environment will be a positive one. I'll say it again: that was a lot of boxes I just had to move. Sometimes when we carry a lot of weight with us everywhere we go, we forget to think about how good it might feel to become free of that weight. I'm looking forward to someday carrying all the great literature that's currently residing in 35 cardboard boxes in my new apartment in a device that fits inside my pocket. I don't see how anyone who truly loves books can not be excited about the idea that this will soon be possible.
