There was an interesting article in the NY Times Business Section this week about how e-books can/might/do change business models for publishers — with a focus mainly on the economics of slashing twelve bucks or so off the cost of a new hardcover by putting it on an e-reader. “At a glance,” writes Times resident book-lover Motoko Rich, “it appears the e-book is more profitable,” though she adds several caveats about how small the e-book share of the market is, and the kookiness of comparing e-books to hardcovers as if paperbacks don’t also exist.
Rich also adds that making e-books too successful would reduce actual paper books to nothing more than a curiosity for “collectors and aficionados”, thus spelling the end of bookstores — and then she quotes “a consultant to publishers” who I can only hope publishers don’t actually listen to that much:
“If you want bookstores to stay alive, then you want to slow down this movement to e-books,” said Mike Shatzkin, chief executive of the Idea Logical Company . . . “The simplest way to slow down e-books is not to make them too cheap.”
Basically what this boils down is that in order to save an already struggling distribution channel, Shatzkin thinks we should artificially cripple the clear alternative — which makes about as much sense as pounding on your left foot with the cast already on your right. It seems to me that rather than pretending the shift to “books as items for aficionados” can be prevented — and making idiotic business choices to try and do so — the publishing industry should accept that shift and try to nurture the aficionado market at the same time as unrestrainedly growing the e-book one.
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Tags: Andrew · publishing industry
It’s cold. Winter is long. And so cold. And so damp. Anyone else getting intensely stir crazy? If so, I’ve assembled this list of warm, dry museums to stimulate the imagination and excite ones intellectual faculties!
1. Harvard Museum of Natural History. Free to Massachusetts residents 9am-noon on Sundays (always) and 3pm-5pm on Wednesdays (Sept-May). Otherwise, $7 for students. Ask to see Nabokov’s genitalia cabinet (he collected butterfly private parts–you didn’t expect the guy who wrote “Lolita” to be a tad bit pervy?). The Harvard Art Museum has the same policy for free admissions, however students are only $6 here.
You didn't expect the guy who wrote "Lolita" to be a tad bit pervy?
Light of my life, fire of my…
2. The Boston Public Library. Not a museum, but close to campus, has warm drinks, Sargent murals, and people-watching. Might be better than a museum if you are running out of story material. Consider it a museum of potential characters!
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Tags: Boston · cheap · museums · things to do
Unless you’ve been to see any creepy soothsayers recently, you probably don’t need to beware the Ides of March. Nonetheless, these events should inspire you to avoid the idleness of March. So get out there!
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears... cause I'm reading at Porter Square!
Tomorrow night at 6 pm, at Emerson’s own Paramount Theater, Dan Baum–former New Yorker writer (and “
frenemy” of said magazine’s editor, David Remnick)–will will read from
Nine Lives: Life and Death in New Orleans, a powerful piece of nonfiction.
Also make sure to mosey down to the Howard Yezerski Gallery, 460 Harrison Avenue, to see a fantastic “Combat Zone” photography exhibition (documenting the Emerson neighborhood’s gritty former life–read Anne Gray Fischer’s brief-but-thorough history here). See the exquisite prints for free until March 16.
After the jump, you’ll find a nice and organized list of events that you’re going to dig, all taking place this month. But first, one more thing, real quick.
If you happen to have $30-55 dollars burning a hole in your pocket (don’t we all in these fair times?), and no plans on April 11, David Sedaris will be sharing his satirical southern charm with Beantown at Boston Symphony Hall. But we suggest you hop on it and get tickets now. People up here can be ruthless.
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Tags: Boston Athaenaum · Boston Symphony Orchestra · Brookline Booksmith · David Sedaris · harvard book store · Howard Yezerski Gallery · Institute for Contemporary Art · Porter Square Books
Of course, everybody knows that the AWP annual conference (being held this year in Denver, CO, if you haven’t heard) is all about making connections with other people in the industry, and hearing great authors speak, and discovering wonderful new journals that you’d otherwise never come across. But occasionally, at the end of a long day of intellectualling, you need a small drink to unwind, and so I would like to share, with anybody planning to go to AWP this year, the existence of this bar, mere blocks from the AWP Denver site, that on Wednesday nights will let you flip a coin when you order a drink — and give it to you for free if you guess correctly. (And if yours is one of the few names picked in their monthly calendar on one of the nights during AWP, lucky you — you drink for free regardless!)
I kid, kind of, though anybody who was present at the AWP dance party in Chicago last year will back me up when I say it was a hopelessly messy drunken debacle — and that was an official event.
Anyway, if booze isn’t your thing, you should still consider giving AWP a try: this year the keynote speaker is Michael Chabon (major nerd love); other featured presenters include George Saunders, Sandra Cisneros, and Rick Bass; you can sit in on panels like “Aroused, Parched, and Fevered: The Translation of Sex” (oh my), “Ecopoetics on Colorado’s Front Range: Intersections and Ecotones” (maybe not), and even a roundtable with the contributors to Rose Metal Press’s Field Guide To Writing Flash Fiction, which Brooks raves about below; and, of course, you can stop by and schmooze at the book fair with the hardworking gophers from behind the scenes at Emerson publications Redivider, Ploughshares, and maybe even (gasp) Vernacular. It’s a party not to be missed!
Tags: Andrew · author readings · Brooks · networking · publishing industry
If it takes you a long time to read The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, edited by Tara L. Masih, it is only because immediately after completing each chapter you will want to stop and write. [Read more →]
Tags: Brooks · Very Short Fiction
How many people did the United States Government kill by tagging industrial alcohol used by bootleggers during Prohibition?
A. None, you leftist twat. If, however, we let death panels become the law of the land, dontcha know…
B. Millions. Which paved the way for MKULTRA, and the global conspiracy that Nixon outlined in crayon on the walls of the Oval Office that, if you look at the acrostic on page twelve of the transcript for this year’s live Super Bowl commentary…
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Tags: belated indignation · booze · government · Prohibition · Slate
Bill Pannapacker, one of my former professors at Hope, goes on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show to warn you about doing 8-10 in a Ph.D.-Humanities program.
“I think that students who are not expecting to become professors at the end of the process, who are going there for intellectual reasons, and who are prepared not to be seduced by the idea that academe has a monopoly on the life of the mind…are not going to be beholden to the institution, they can pursue their own best interests, and when they are ready to do something else, they won’t be imprisoned by it, hopefully. But there is always the danger that students who are in graduate school will become socialized into believing that life outside of academe means failure.”
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Tags: academe · debt · foresight · grad school · pannapacker · professor · teaching
Last week, my parents both sent me separate Sorry for Your Loss e-mails. My brother called to say how regretful he was and friends of mine were messaging me the same sentiment. I even had two ex-boyfriends text me individual condolences.
Y’see… J.D. Salinger died.
I’m not a Salinger scholar. I’m not a Salinger historian. I’m just a fan. A silly little fan girl. Apparently a lot of the people I know were aware of it and, when Salinger passed away, I had friends and family telling me I was the first person they thought of, wanted to tell me they were sorry “your boy” was gone,” they knew he was “your favorite author,” R.I.P., all of it. My mother even said, “He’ll be immortalized for your lifetime – at least on your skin.”
This is, hands down, the only kind or positive thing my mother has ever said about any of my various tattoos, but she was referring to two in particular – I have the word “Rye” on my lower back (guess which Salinger book that’s for!) and the number 9 between my shoulder blades (for Nine Stories).
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Tags: Catcher in the Rye · J.D. Salinger · Lisa Battiston · Nine Stories · tattoos
I have always been interested to see, up close, where writers worked and lived. Pablo Neruda’s house in Santiago, Chile, for instance, demonstrates his obsession with boats and the sea. All of the ceilings are low to the ground and the windows shaped like portholes. The house’s title “La Chascona,” comes from Neruda’s nickname for his third wife, so given because of her wild hair.
Then there is William Faulkner’s house in Oxford, Mississippi, with its beautiful old trees, its smokehouse and stables, and the modest study with walls covered on each side by Faulkner’s hand-scribbled notes.
Don't adjust the pixels on your screen, folks. This Twain is made of LEGOS.
A two-hour drive from Boston (by modern horseless carriage!), Mark Twain’s house in Hartford, Connecticut, is where he spent his most productive years as a publisher and writer (before bankruptcy forced him and an all-female brood to move to Europe, ’cause “it was cheaper”). After two restorations, the place looks better than ever and throws its doors open to the public seven days a week.
And as it happens, this is quite the year for Mark Twain fanboys to make the trek. The year 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of Twain’s death, the 175th anniversary of his birth (both occasions coincided with the celestial appearance of Haley’s comet), and the 125th anniversary of the book that Ernest Hemingway deemed America’s greatest: “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”
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Tags: Alexis · Connecticut · Hartford · Mark Twain · Travel
In Which You Are Strongly Encouraged to Go Read Something Someplace Else
February 17th, 2010 by Peter
Respond
Specifically, I Am Not Sorry I Have A Vagina at HTMLGIANT.
Highlight from the comments: “reading this comment through the lens of masculinity, you and i seem but two apes in an htmlcongo, sparring to see who is alpha.”
Insightful highlight from the comments: “please don’t fuck my poems, leidz.”
Insightful highlight from the comments, this time I’m serious: “Stuff like this gives me headaches. I don’t know anyone personally who uses this kind of language. Maybe it’s why I don’t hang out with many writer-types. A lot of artists, though. And the ladies never define themselves as women as it is quite obvious that they are female. At least biologically. I would never call Barnes or Sexton or Maslowska or Reza (the latter being two of my favorite contemporary writers) ‘women writers’ because it’s just as ridiculous as calling myself a ‘Chicano writer.’”
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Tags: Comment Spectating · Guernica · Sex · Women2 Comments