“I’m thrilled to death,” said Joyce Generali, 48, of Leawood, Kan., who paid $6,000 to appear in Michael Chabon’s next novel, due out spring 2006. “I was thinking of remodeling my bathroom, but this is a lot better than some Italian tile. The bathroom can wait.” She was even more thrilled to learn that Chabon’s dad lives in the same town as she does. Online Literary Auction Raises $90,000
Booksquare household hero, Tim O’Reilly, offers his thoughts on the Google libraray. O’Reilly has been a pioneer in publishing, making the full text of his books available electronically via a subscription service called Safari. He also supports the Google initiative. O’Reilly responds to one publisher’s statement that the opt-out option is unfair because he, the publisher, cannot possibly know what he published in the 60s and 70s. Heavens, those were the olden days and nobody’s bothered to digitize the records. They’re very dusty, allergies, you know. It’s kind of a fun argument: we don’t know what we have and we
Despite many (many!) years of working with contracts relating to the calculation and payment of royalties (or non-payment, depending), there is one thing we would never do: sign an agreement without the benefit of an attorney’s review of the language. The fact that so many people do is terrifying. Even if your contract is the fairest, simplest, most clearly written document in the universe, if you don’t understand each and every sentence, then you deserve what you get. A good rule of thumb is that the contract is almost always written in favor of the party drafting it. That is
It took us a while to get to last week’s New York Times story about manga and the girls who read it, but we have a good excuse*. We have now read enough to feel confident in our ability to recap the highlights: publishers didn’t realize that girls’ market would be so big (despite the fact at women read more than men, and that the market is huge in Japan); there is a lot of different kinds of manga; many of the stories have mature and/or weird themes, and parents should exercise caution. How weird is it that this very
If you’ve never had the privilege of contacting an elected representative (and we have to wonder who you are), opposing the renewal of Section 215 of the Patriot Act represents a perfect opportunity to see bureaucracy in action. You can enjoy the wonder of House and Senate member websites, you can try to contact specific committees, you can puzzle over how someone who is making law for the entire nation can state, with a straight face (or font), that they will only respond to their local constituents. Most of all, you can sleep better at night knowing that if your
For the eight or nine of you who slept through last week, we have breaking news. For the zillion who were paying attention, we are going to revisit an old story. Either way, books have been saved, or something like that. Oprah Winfrey has decided she’s done enough boosting sales for dead people and is refocusing her energy on the living. We suspect this is due to America’s change in priorities since Hurricane Katrina. As always, Oprah’s logic is pragmatic: “I wanted to open the door and broaden the field,” Ms. Winfrey said in an interview. “That allows me the
No, not from us. Far too lazy to come up with something creative (we were informed that we may devote our remaining hours today to “goofing off”. . .then we were quizzed on royalty calculations; at no point, can the concept of net revenues be considered lighthearted conversation). Our friend Karen Palmer, guest-blogging at The Elegant Variation (and with a bunch o’great posts today), explores her relationship with first person. We say relationship because her interactions with the I have not always been comfortable, yet there is a bond there, as evidenced by the appearance of I in Karen’s new
We received the following request from Colleen Mondor and are happy to pass it on: As you may have read in the Bookslut blog last week, (I am a regular contributor over there), I am working with a group in Baton Rouge who are helping children sheltered with their families at Southern University. We have put together a couple of wish lists of books and games that the folks at Parkview Baptist Church will happily deliver to the SU kids and other area shelter kids, all of whom would love to have a diversion right now. We are also trying
We are cheap and we are easy. Not necessarily in that order. Thus we derived more pleasure than normal from Ian McEwan’s short essay on the travails of giving away free books. Yes, yes, we know, who wouldn’t want a free book? Men, as it turns out: The guys were a different proposition. They frowned in suspicion, or distaste. When they were assured they would not have to part with their money, they still could not be persuaded. “Nah, nah. Not for me. Thanks mate, but no.” Only one sensitive male soul was tempted. McEwan touches on the notion that
Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting commas back in the same places. I like that way of working on something. I respect that kind of care for what is being done. That’s all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones, with the punctuation in the right places so that they can best say what they are meant to say. If the words are heavy with the
