Here is what we worry about: name-dropping in novels is so prevalent that readers, those poor, innocent readers, might not be able to discern between legitimate product placement and legitimate characterization. That is unfair to marketers who might pay big bucks for a fleeting mention in a 100,000 word novel. We feel sorry for them, we really do. After all, how carefully must a reader read to make this type of intellectual leap?
Reading is a funny thing. If you can do it (and, sadly, not everyone can, but that’s another post for another day), you do it without thinking. All day long, you take in letters forming words forming paragraphs forming stories. When you’re reading, you’re at the car wash, the dentist, work, home, on the subway, standing in line at the grocery store. You pick up a book, glance at the newspaper, visit a website, read a sign. It’s all reading, it’s about context, and there’s no kind of reading that is superior to the other. Sometimes you, the reader, are
As we all know, it is BS policy to right wrongs, protect truth, justice, and whatnot, and set people straight when they are confused. Our tasks are humble, but we perform them with dignity. Thus we find ourselves delving deep into the comment section of a recent post by the Publishing Contrarian*. We have, over time, written much about the various Google book initiatives (sample here; there’s more, we promise). First things first, Google is a commercial entity. There is no way that they are undertaking a massive and expensive book scanning project without an eye toward making money. Shareholders
As our faithful readers know, we have been strong supporters of Project Gutenberg — Gutenberg’s mission is to digitize public domain books and make them available for general usage. This volunteer-driven effort still seems to fly under most radars, but we will happily admit to utilizing this service frequently. From July 4 through August 4, 2006, the World eBook Fair will be held, providing access to approximately 300,000 free ebooks. The vast majority of these works are books currently in the public domain; the remainder, in-copyright works, have been included with permission from the copyright holders. Planned as an annual
Just before we headed off for our long weekend of fun, fun, fun, we paused over Sara Nelson’s comments about Kevin Kelly’s New York Times Magazine article “Scan This Book”. Nelson specifically takes issue with Kelly’s comments on copyright — even as she agrees that there are serious problems. Copyright in this country is a mess. Kelly noted that copyright was originally established to protect the artist, a sort of quid pro quo. The government would protect rights to an artist’s work for a certain period of time; in return, the artist would allow his or her work to enter
We are very enthusiastic about the current online serialization project going on at Unbridled Books. This is a really cool, innovative project — and that more independent publishers could benefit from this model. Briefly, Unbridled is serializing Golem Song by Marc Estrin. Subscribers will be able to access new chapters of the book every week, with the final chapter being made available at the same time the print version of the novel is published. Additionally, subscribers will be able to access Estrin’s podcast reading of his novel. Subscriptions are $8; subscriptions with a signed copy of the book are $15.95
In a recent comment, author Mia Zachary asked, quite rightly, why some people think authors shouldn’t attend BookExpo America. After all, from her perspective, she made good contacts with booksellers, got some quality time with her editor, and the price was right. All excellent points. Any time you, the author, can get yourself in front of people who will help your career — and you can do so in a non-obnoxious manner — we say go for it. However…while the floor of the conference is rife with authors (which, if you close your eyes and imagine it, well, yeah, not
We have a bit of snark to work out of our system this morning, and what better way than to get all cranky on a poor, innocent soul who quite possibly had nothing to do with titling her article “Novel Ways to Publicize Your Fiction Book”. Our issue, of course, is that these are not particularly novel ways. That is not say they will not work, but it’s time for fiction writers to stop thinking like non-fiction writers. Perhaps is because we have recently encountered a large number of people dressed like dogs (or Pillsbury Doughboys) and at least one
As we continue to process our BookExpo America experience, we’ll be posting all sorts of exciting news. We did want to start your morning (it’s always morning somewhere) with an introduction to what we believe was one of the coolest announcements of the conference. Amazon.com (you may have heard of them) unveiled a complement of new features designed toward moving the publishing game into this brave new digital era. We’ll be looking at these with our noted depth later, but one item caught our attention: Amazon’s aggressive move into Print-On-Demand.
Not that we’re the type to complain*, and we’re going to be talking more about this as we get our thoughts in order (one thought, we have discovered, got on the wrong train last night and is somewhere in Virginia — as the rest of the thoughts are safe in Maryland [it turns out the states on this side of the country are really close together], we need to wait for its arrival)..where were we?…ah, thoughts, thinking, complaining. Okay, so we are at BookExpo America. It is, and there is no other way to describe this, a big-ass conference. You
