Ebury seeking the next McMurtry or Dunning?
Monday, May 4th, 2009Ebury Publishing in the UK (Random House subsidiary) is kicking off a contest to uncover the talents of a bookseller/writer (open only to booksellers in the UK). They are asking for the first 5 pages of a draft. Cool idea – most booksellers I know are/were/could be writers of some caliber and imagination, and they [...]
New online course offering at McSweeney’s – ENG 371WR: Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era
Thursday, April 30th, 2009For you fellow old fogies (in the internet age, that means anyone over 30) who lament the fall of the English language into some kind of weird pidgin language filled with “AFAIK” and “BOSMKL”. Robert Lanham’s got a fun piece on McSweeney’s called Internet-Age Writing Syllabus and Course Overview. It’ll leave you, well, ROFL. Just [...]
Department of Justice opens antitrust inquiry into Google – finally!
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009In perhaps one of the best bits of book-world news that we’ve seen in awhile, the New York Times is reporting today that the US DOJ has finally opened an antitrust inquiry into Google’s book scanning project. For awhile, it was really looking as if Google was going to get away with breaking copyright law [...]
Coming May 1st – International Buy Indie Day
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009Author Joseph Finder is trying to get a new “holiday” on the calendar: international buy indie day. This Friday, people everywhere are pledging to visit a local independent bookstore and make a purchase. Here’s to hoping you’ll be one of them! Why, you ask? Why, because small businesses are superior to chains in nearly every [...]
How to clean and repair ex-library books
Monday, April 27th, 2009One very common question we receive from customers is, “how can I take all the library markings off of an ex-library book? Its very tempting, as book collectors, to want to malign libraries for the damage they do to books. But as Stephen (whose parents were librarians) has often defended to me: “How many books [...]
Bildungsroman Smackdown: Dickens vs. Adiga
Friday, April 24th, 2009I read two books simultaneously recently: Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger, and Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. Talk about a really fascinating juxtaposition! Both are what you would call bildungsroman novels, meaning the plots center around the development of a central character. But talk about a brutal literary smackdown of Victorian vs. Postmodern. While others were staying [...]
Emailing credit card numbers; a how-to guide
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009Ever wondered what the safest way to have a customer e-mail credit card data to you is? There isn’t one. In fact, asking a customer to transmit credit card information to you via e-mail can land you in very big trouble with the credit card companies. Like $500,000 big. I am floored how common the [...]
Why should I care about e-books? Lessons learned the hard way from the newspaper biz
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009I had the dubious privilege of working in the newspaper industry in the final heady years before its collapse. It has often worried me that the book industry carries a similar hubris about technology as newspapers did in, say, 2001. My job as director of online at the time was to usher in “new media” [...]
Books as contraband?
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009So, what really happens if CPSIA isn’t overturned? Those books you read and loved as a kid? Gone. Osbolete. Illegal, in fact. Books as contraband? Yes.
Why do some people want to drag politics into Everything?
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009In our recent customer newsletter, we featured “green” books in celebration of Earth Day. And, of course, we got some feedback from customers. Without further ado, presenting evidence that People are Weird: Why are you sending out “green” books for Earth Day, but no Atlas Shrugged (by Ayn Rand) for tax day? If this reflects [...]
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