December 2009
75 posts
Apollo's Fountain (Bassin d'Apollon) at...
The Apollo fountain depicts Apollo conqueror on his chariot pulled by four horses representing force and ardour, getting out of the water among sea monsters to enlighten the Earth as he represents the rising Sun. In Versailles all the statues of Apollo, the sun god, represent Louis XIV, the sun king.
Julian Fellowes: Snobs and Past Imperfect
Julian Fellowes’ new book Past Imperfect is even better than Snobs. He also wrote Gosford Park. To quickly describe him I would say he is a straighter, lighter version of Alan Hollinghurst. And of course more accurate as he really is a minor aristrocrat. Or a more masculine and modern version of Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford.
“Books are notes from the field, bound and domesticated, life brought into narrow...”
– Joshua Ferris, writing against culling your book collection. (via gregbrown) (via thebronzemedal)(via jeanhannah) (via buyhercandy) (via missworld)
Who Is the most Powerful Digital Technology...
Ask yourself who is the most powerful technical company in publishing today? Is it Amazon, Google, Sony, eInk Corp, Apple? We would suggest that the answer is none of the above but a company that sits conveniently in the background. The company is Adobe and the hold over publishing is both tight and across the life cycle. If we look at the Editorial and production environment we see the dominance...
The editor strikes back l The Guardian
Long thought lost to ruthless commercialism, some recent publishing triumphs suggest editors could be making a welcome comeback
…The general consensus these days is that the editor in the traditional sense of the word – ie a purchaser, shaper and champion of a novel – is dead; that all books are now bought by a panel of sales and marketing folk who care little about a book’s worth and...
Upstart Publishing l Seth Godin
Consider this quote from a high-ranking book publisher who should know better, “We must do everything in our power to uphold the value of our content against the downward pressures exerted by the marketplace and the perception that ‘digital’ means ‘cheap.’ …”
Hello?
You don’t have the power. Maybe if every person who has ever published a book or is...
“Simon & Schuster is emerging as a key adversary to Amazon’s push with...”
– Simon & Schuster CEO slams “cheap” digital books
“You have to be patient. You have to give yourself a chance. When you’re first...”
– Former “Colbert Report” head writer/executive producer Allison Silverman, offering advice to aspiring comedy writers in And Here’s The Kicker, aka the best book ever.
via inothernews
2009 The publishing year
The book: Direct Red: A Surgeon’s Story, by Gabriel Weston (Cape, £16.99). Honest, literary memoir of hospital life. It’s all here: blood, death, sex, mistakes and the brutal detachment of doctors. Yet the author’s passion and humility shine through.
Why it deserved better, by Dan Franklin, publishing director: “I was confident that this truly remarkable debut would be in...
The Public Speaking Circuit in the Digital Age
I mentioned that people found out about Berkun’s TOC presentation through Twitter—that’s an important illustration of what Cliff Atkinson is talking about in The Backchannel. Atkinson looks at how Twitter and other real-time social media tools have affected conference speeches and panels by making it possible for audience members to comment on what’s being said, not just to other...
Talk to The New York Times: Deputy Metro Editor...
Q. I know there are, if we are to believe the reports, tons of people who read The New York Times online, while the print readership is declining. But what are we to make of all this? It seems that more and more content is appearing online nowadays, but I find the printed version visually more appealing and easier to read. How anyone can prefer the online version is beyond me, but I do hear that...
'Googled' l Books of The Times
Ken Auletta depicts Google as a brilliant, game-changing behemoth that can be socially inept, and both naïve and arrogant in its dealings with the world.
It’s an observation echoed by the book’s author, Ken Auletta, who in “Googled” depicts the company as a brilliant, game-changing behemoth that can be socially inept, and both naïve and arrogant in its dealings with the world. The book, more...
To Skype or Not to Skype? Though the technology...
But even if Skype-event book sales are strong, there is not necessarily a ripple effect, notes Chronicle Books marketing manager Lara Starr. “The anchors of a traditional author tour are media interviews and appearances at book and specialty stores—or parties or speaking engagements. A newspaper isn’t going to write about a Skype event.” She’s been considering doing a Webcast, but says...
““People are not confident about using hyphens anymore, they’re not...”
– Thousands of hyphens perish as English marches on | Reuters
“Besides, when you think about it, the but-she’s-beautiful thing is also, at its...”
– On the C.L.: Why Do Men Cheat on Beautiful Women? Let’s Talk About Tiger Woods, Part 597: Smitten: Sex, Love & Life: glamour.com
I don’t always look to Glamour.com for erudite views on relationships with a feminist angle, but this is rather good indeed.
(via himglishandfemalese)
Sparkling Ginger Chip Cookies Recipe →
(via somethingchanged)
Sweet! Is Sugar the future of publishing?
The state of affairs in publishing is beyond depressing. Unless, of course, by publishing you mean the shiny new online-only startups who are behaving as if it were boom times for journalism. An example is Sugar Publishing, the 3 1/2-year old blogging company that focuses on young women. The San Francisco company has 12 sites, 114 people, and boasts an online audience that’s approaching...
Time to transform school into a place where kids...
IT was the flamboyant New York publisher Malcolm Forbes who once said that education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
From simple mathematics to the intricacies of the Pythagoras’ Theorem, Stevens shows how through the use of laptops in the classroom, as well as at home in their own time via social networking, kids can absorb vital knowledge at a critical stage...
Allen Lane and the paperback revolution | London...
To be quite clear: Allen Lane did not invent paperbacks. They had been tried before, and successfully too. Even the famous cover design was largely borrowed, from Albatross Books, a Hamburg publisher of the day. Allen’s particular gift was to notice what other people did not and it took even him a year or more to realise what he had stumbled upon. The ‘paperback revolution’, as it is...
First impressions are usually wrong....
Nobody really cares what specific stereotype they happen to be debating; what matters more is how that label was spawned, because that defines its consequence. It raises a fundamental query about the nature of existence: Is our anecdotal understanding of the world founded on naivete, or is it built on dark, unpopular truths? That is the question. And here (I suspect) is the answer: neither....
The art of the chart: How we fell in love with...
Our modern obsession with chart rankings, top tens and (these days) books that chronicle the 1001 albums, movies, buildings, walks, paintings and places we must experience before we die… have become big business, a staple of publishng and media industries.
Certainly, the pleasure of consumption has never felt so much like tick-box duty. The gift-idea tables in bookshops groan with titles...
Five Magazine and Newspaper Publishers Introduce...
Five major magazine and newspaper publishers on Tuesday announced plans to build an industry-standard platform to present their work on the Web, phones and e-readers in a richer, more flexible and more lucrative form than is possible today…
The consortium of Time Inc., Conde Nast, the Hearst Corporation, Meredith and the News Corporation does not lack for ambition, hoping to design software...
The Penguin Blog: How to win friends and influence...
Last week I was in Paris explaining to 600 French publishers, librarians, booksellers and writers that editors at Penguin were more and more often thinking ‘beyond the book’ when they considered publishing opportunities for their authors. The view that we are in the content business rather than the book business is not one that made me popular in Paris, where the publisher’s role...
German publisher's plan to save the newspaper...
The German publishing community has this cockamamie idea that when Google displays their snippets of content that Google should pay them for the privilege. In essence, Google would be paying for the free advertising it is giving publishers! It would be a nifty trick if, in other parts of the media, publishers had to pay advertisers.
…That’s not the worst idea in the world — although once...
Amazon in secret plan to open high street shops
AMAZON, the world’s biggest online retailer and scourge of bookshops everywhere, is planning a surprise invasion of the British high street. Property landlords said that the Seattle-based company, which has a market value of $59.1 billion (£35.6 billion), had launched a secret search for bricks-and-mortar stores to support its rapidly growing website. It is understood to be scouring the country...
“The publishing world is very resistant to change,” Meltzer said. “But there are...”
– Essay - See the Web Site, Buy the Book - NYTimes.com