Today’s links of interest:
- Rumsfeld memoir to be published in 2010
Adding to the pile of "memoirs" that are really not so much about reality. - Deborah Anne MacGillivray Harasses Reader
Wow, this is, without a doubt, the most fun we’ve had reading the Internet in ages. - The Pound Weighs Heavily in London
Or, lessons in that newfangled global economy (also, the pound isn’t so much rising as it is dropping). - E-books niche growing, but people still love paper
File under: Headlines, obvious. - Penguin to publish new titles as ebooks
And this would be much cooler news if Penguin hadn’t said this: "The ebooks will come out at the same time as the print edition and will cost the same." - Libel fears stop Tom Cruise biography’s sale in Britain
Show of hands: how many people bought this garbage in the U.S.? C’mon admit it. If it truly leaped to the top of the charts, someone in our reading audience must own a copy… - Lonely Planet rejects author’s claim he made up parts of books, as writer backtracks
You’ve got to admit it’s a new twist on the popular plagiarizing meme.
1 response so far ↓
Victor Curran // Apr 19, 2008 at 1:03 pm
The outburst of trash talk between Deborah Anne MacGillivray and the Amazon.com reader-reviewer Reba Belle shouldn’t be enough to get these two sent to detention, let alone set “most of the blogosphere” atwitter. We expect to hear trash talk in the schoolyard, but we expect different rules in in the big leagues. And until now, the big-league rules have applied to book authors.
When Manny Ramirez misses a fly ball we can yell “Hey Manny, you suck,” confident that Manny won’t jump up in the stands and kick our butt. The social contract that keeps pro athletes from kicking the butts of hostile fans is the same one that used to keep authors from mixing it up with readers. When publishing was a one-way conversation, authors were on a pedestal, like pro athletes. It was undignified and unfair for them to rough up a fan, no matter how belligerent.
In the Web 2.0 world, even the fans get a chance to step up to the plate. “Most of the blogosphere” thinks that’s a change for the better. But apparently, some of the blogosphere hasn’t figured out that once you step out on the field, the pros don’t have to cut you any slack.