Happy Thursday everyone — here are your news flashes so far.
* Richard Nash at SoftSkull / Counterpoint has announced on the SS blog that he will be stepping down in order to pursue some other, yet-clandestine publishing ventures. Levi at LitKicks has his guess; GalleyCat readers opine as well: my bet is he'll found a straight e-book publishing house, maybe the first fully reputable house of its kind. Just have a feeling, from following SoftSkull and Nash's public notes. It will be interesting to see this all develop.
* Haaretz has an interview with the literary agent who represents all those authors you read: Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, Nora Ephron, etc. She rails agains Amazon, of all people, for breaking the book market with discounts, 'Amazon prices books at $9.99. Books in hardback cost $30.00, and the stores give a discount and the price goes down to $15.00. Amazon is not regulated the way retail outlets are, so they can do whatever they want.' I'm not sure retail outlets are price-regulated though. On the other hand, her author anecdotes are neat, especially about McCarthy doing the Oprah interview mainly for the sake of his publisher. Good man.
* Maybe relatedly, I was alerted to the existence of Ted Striphas' intruiging blog The Late Age of Print by Scott at Conversational Reading. He discusses the enormous positive effect that Oprah has had on the general reader in America, and mentions an instance of Ms. Winfrey giving a guided tour on her show of a big bookstore. Ted writes, 'Those who are already well ensconced in the world of letters easily forget how intimidating their world can be for outsiders looking in. If you want to excite people about books and reading, take the time to show them in, and don’t belittle them for not already knowing the way.' I completely agree: there is nothing a person wants to avoid more than feeling looked-down-upon, and bookstores are a minefield of condescention, from the employees to the customers. Maybe I'll start posting video tours of some local bookstores here.
* The Godine interns are totally blowing our cover . . .
1 comments:
Thanks for the link to Late Age of Print, a blog I'm going to start following. He makes some intriguing points. And as for bookstores, I sometimes get intimidated and end up looking for some kind of raft - staff choices, a themed table. I can believe it's a lot to take in for someone who doesn't read regularly. And I might add having worked at chain bookstores, many of those employees are not helpful unless you know exactly what book you want, and even then it can be spotty service. They're paid about the same as McDonald's employees, and valued about as much by management often times. Another reason to shop indie...
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