Nitpicking
Over the break, while I was drinking mimosas and staying as far away from work-related email as possible, NPR did a story on literature in translation, namely, Edith Grossman’s translation of Don Quixote and Lydia Davis’s Madame Bovary. Before getting all screedy, here’s a bit of the piece that I ...
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Publisher Branding
The always interesting Publishing Perspectives has a great double-sided post today about publisher branding, with Erin Cox advocating for publishers to spend more time & money on this, and Sarah Russo arguing about why publishers shouldn’t “brand the brand.” It’s not hard to figure out where I ...
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"Giving the Fig"
I’m no marketing guru, but there is one rule of advertising that I think everyone should follow: if you dominate a market, never draw attention to your (smaller) competition. This is why Apple attacks Microsoft so directly in ads—for better or worse, Microsoft has a market share the size of a Chicagoan’s ...
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Indie Bookstores, Google Preview, and the Interwebs
Below is a special guest post from Jeff Waxman, bookseller at Seminary Co-op in Chicago (one of the five greatest indie bookstores in America) and managing editor of The Front Table. As someone who loves independent bookstores—and worked in them for years—I really want to see them survive, but Jeff’s post ...
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I Want to Be the Rain on Your Game-Changing Gadget
So guess what’s not pictured above in the image of the brand new iPad and its crucial apps? IBooks, the “magical bullet” that’s going to “save” the publishing industry . . . OK, so I’ll admit upfront that I was more than a bit skeptical about the iPad/Tablet/Slate before the ...
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To Be a Hipster Is to Be Remarkably Provincial
There was a time when I thought Flavorpill’s Daily Dose e-mail was all right. Sure, there was the occasional annoying tone, the fact they never covered any of our books, and the hipper-than-thou sort of attitude. But still, it picked up where VeryShortList was before the New York Observer drove it into the ground bought ...
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Genres, Tags, and Why Don't We Subcategorize Books?
Today’s piece in the New York Times on indie rock sub-categorization isn’t particularly interesting . . . although when you apply what’s been happening in music to the world of books, there are a few intriguing outcomes. The main thrust of Ben Sisario’s Times piece is that indie music has atomized ...
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