My final guest post at ForeWord Magazine, an introduction to book design, is now up.
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Month: January 2009
So many people admire John Updike — one local editors says he should win the Nobel for literature — that I am almost afraid to voice my dissenting opinion that he will one day be viewed as one of the twentieth century’s most overrated authors. “I like middles,” Updike once asserted, whereas I prefer borders.
But let’s not speak ill of this dedicated man of letters now that he’s gone. Following are some of the best Updike links (and a few brief ones) I have found from the first wave of appreciations. Soon, I am sure, we will have more in-depth retrospectives.
“Honour commercio’s energy yet aid the linkless proud, the plurable with everybody.” — Finnegans Wake
- Book publishing, literature, and the economy : Is it the end of days?
- The demise of dead tree media and the future of PR : “”Public relations is a fluid concept”
- Another great bookshop closes : Harry W Schwartz, Milwaukee
- 7 Publishing Myths : “Myth 2: Your Publisher is all-powerful and all-knowing” — wait, that’s not true?
- Götterdämmerung means “twilight of the gods” : Does today’s expand-your-vocabulary word apply to McClatchy Publishing?
- Championing Platonov: A writer who elides boundaries
- Criticizing Alexander’s inaugural poem : “Inauthentic, bureaucratic, rhetorical” (via The Wooden Spoon)
- The White House is now blogging : No outlinks though — an abundance of caution?
Duly quoted
Dear World,
The United States of America, your quality supplier of ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for its 2001-2008 service outage. The technical fault that led to this eight-year service interruption has been located, and the parts responsible for it were replaced Tuesday night, November 4th.
— more at The Ester Republic
Recent inbound links
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Today’s guest post at ForeWord Magazine is about how book publishers can increase traffic to their websites.
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“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” ~Anatole France
- Barnes & Noble cuts nearly 100 employees : Hard times
- And more cuts : At O’Reilly Media
- Shadow art : Come over to the dark side
- Hanging Bush : The outgoing president as literary stylist
- Would you give a search engine a 3D model of your body? : It knows all about you already
- Christian Science Monitor goes web : another print publication down
- Bookporn : A treasure trove in Singapore for SE Asian specialists
- My colleague Jason Jose is “The Weary Traveler” : Be very afraid, Rick Steves
- Blog for Darwin : Will only the fittest posts survive?
- Typos de graphistes : C’est très bien, selon M. Porchez
Latest inbound links
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This image of Anne (with ukulele) and Carol (with cell phone) on the beach on Anna Maria Island has been run through the Obamicon.me machine.
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The next installment of my series of columns that is running at Foreword Magazine this month is up. This one looks at why publishers should try to optimize direct online sales. The next column will look at some ways to improve numbers from this segment.
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Remember the restaurant known in English as Translate Server Error? Well, be thankful the directions for finding it were not in Welsh.
If in fact they are — but so claims the National Endowment for the Arts.
For the first time in more than 25 years, American adults are reading more literature, according to a new study by the National Endowment for the Arts. Reading on the Rise documents a definitive increase in rates and numbers of American adults who read literature, with the biggest increases among young adults, ages 18-24. This new growth reverses two decades of downward trends cited previously in NEA reports such as Reading at Risk and To Read or Not To Read.
Why might this be? Several theories have been advanced, but as yet I haven’t heard anyone who shares my take.
That’s the topic of my first column over at ForeWord magazine, where I will be doing a series of four guest posts for their Publishing Insider section this January.
Sure, it’s a little overcast, and it rained a bit earlier. But wouldn’t you expect there to be someone on the beach at 1:00 in the afternoon?
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Cities on the southern U.S. seaboard feature a lot of what I call “overwrought iron” work. The image above is from Charleston, South Carolina,
I mentioned I’m on the road. Soon we’ll be heading down to Florida, where I guess it’s in at least the mid 70s, but for the moment we’re enjoying Beaufort, South Carolina, home of grand houses set on big lots full of live oaks that are draped with Spanish moss.
