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September 12, 2009

Kindle Metrics

Robin says,

Forgive me while I crow for just a moment: Mr. Penumbra just hit what I think is a new peak in the Kindle store. It's the 937th bestselling item in the entire Kindle universe. The fourth-bestselling short story. The third-bestselling "techno thriller."

The sad truth: As best I can figure, that rank was driven by about 30 copies over the past two days.

Alas, Kindle. Your universe is small indeed.

Comments (1) | Permasnark | Posted: 2:26 PM

September 10, 2009

Mr. Penumbra Speaks

Robin says,

This is awesome! The folks at Escape Pod contacted me a while back about doing an audio version of Mr. Penumbra's Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store. I said yes, of course... and now, here it is!

I haven't listened to it yet, but I'm really looking forward to it.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 9:52 AM

September 9, 2009

The Book's Terms of Service

Robin says,

If this was the set, then this, from Matthew Battles, is the spike: The Book: Terms of Service. Simultaneously sharp satire and a really strong, beautiful statement of values.

It's a reminder that books at their best are not just intellectual objects, not just aesthetic objects, but democratic objects.

And it makes me think of Salman Rushdie's claim:

Literature is the one place in any society where within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way.

Go go go read it read it read it.

Comments (1) | Permasnark | Posted: 9:35 PM

September 7, 2009

Inside Every Don Draper Is Alexander Portnoy

If you don't watch Mad Men, and haven't read or don't know about Phillip Roth's novel Portnoy's Complaint, this doesn't mean anything to you.

If you do, and have, these two guys seem as far apart as any two white men inhabiting New York in the sixties could reasonably be.

And yet, there's something about Draper and Portnoy's shared desire to jump out of history (the history of the world, the history of their own families), their sense that this is the time to do it, and that sex and language are the mechanisms to do so, that pulls the two together. If they met, I think they'd have a lot to say to each other.

(Inspired by this 40th-anniversary article about Portnoy's Complaint in the Guardian.)

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Posted September 7, 2009 at 9:16 | Comments (0) | Permasnark
File under: Books, Writing & Such, Society/Culture, Television

September 6, 2009

The Xerox Moment

Joni Evans's memoir-ish essay nicely connects the late Mad Men-era (in her case, of publishing, not advertising) to the digital present by way of an archaeology of office technology. It's the intermediate transformations she registers that are more interesting, and maybe - arguably - more significant:

The Xerox machine meant that suddenly, not one manuscript was submitted to one publisher, but that 10 copies went to 10 publishers simultaneously. The first publisher to claim the book won, cutting a six-week process to six days or sometimes six hours.

Agents soon realized that they could auction books to publishers and not settle for the first bid. Knopf would bid against Putnam, Simon & Schuster would bid against Random House, and so on. The fax machine accelerated the process of signing contracts, and beamed manuscripts overseas for worldwide auctions.

Our lives changed. Agents descended on our formerly humble authors, empowering the new literary lions with Hollywood-like contracts and making us dizzy with new rules.

We were all drunk on the new attention. We hired public relations firms, sought Barbara Walters interviews and romanced the