“The Louvre is being held hostage by the Kim Kardashian of 16th-century Italian portraiture: the handsome but only moderately interesting Lisa Gherardini, better known (after her husband) as La Gioconda, whose renown so eclipses her importance that no one can even remember how she got famous in the first place.” – The New York Times
Category: AUDIENCE
Has The Publishing Business Become Too Reliant On Huge Hits?
Though the hits-driven nature of publishing has not changed in recent years, the nature of those hits has. Due to a number of coalescing factors—including a shrinking physical retail market and an increase in competing entertainment driven by the proliferation of streaming TV platforms—book publishing has watched as a handful of megaselling titles have begun to command an ever-larger share of its sales. – Publishers Weekly
Chicago Public Library Dropped Overdue Book Fines, And Return Of Late Books Jumped By 240%
“It’s a big piece of evidence countering a major argument used by those arguing against ditching overdue fines for library books.” – Forbes
Is Cellphone Prison The Solution For Stopping Ringing During The Show?
“As you reached your row, you were told to turn off your phone or put it on silent and insert it to a glove-like pouch. You keep your phone but you cannot turn it back on without unlocking the pouch, which uses a simple mechanism not unlike the security tags you find in clothing stores and that have to be removed by cashiers. At the end of the show, ushers show up and quickly unlock the devices.” – Chicago Tribune
Grappling With The Purpose Of The Public Library
If public libraries are not for the rich, they probably are not otherwise for the poor. To understand the public library as a benevolent form of welfare would be to entirely miss the radical potential of the institution as a political project. It isn’t utopian, nor is about culturing the masses, nor offering the marginalized a space where they mustn’t “pay for coffee.” – The Baffler
Fight Between Netflix And Movie Theatre Owners Led To Odd Theatre Availability Of “Irishman”
The major exhibitors typically insist on a 72-day period of exclusivity for the films that play on their screens. During the monthslong talks with Netflix over “The Irishman,” representatives of two major chains agreed independently to lower that number to around 60, according to two people familiar with the negotiations who were not authorized to discuss them publicly; Netflix signaled that it would not go above 45. And that’s where it ended. – The New York Times
As Streaming Fragments The Audience, Say Goodbye To The Golden Age Of TV
The Golden Age of TV, the halcyon period that dates from the premiere of The Sopranos in January 1999, has been drawing to a close for a while now, but as the streamers lay out their plans for the 21st century’s third decade, it’s increasingly clear that it’s well and truly over. – Slate
Can This Website Become An Amazon For Independent Bookstores?
This January, the American Booksellers Association Bookshop will launch Bookshop, “a mobile-friendly website with one-click ordering à la Amazon that … will sell physical books and digital audio but not e-books. It will also discount, but not nearly as deeply as Amazon … [and] experiment with various thresholds for free shipping.” – Publishers Weekly
Streaming Wars Are Getting Serious This Fall (And It’s Going To Be Expensive And Inconvenient)
In a couple of weeks, you’ll have so many options to pay for content à la carte, you won’t really know where to start. And yes, you’ll be paying extra for the inconvenience. – Shelly Palmer
DirectTV Loses Staggering 1.2 Million Pay-TV Customers Last Quarter
ATT&T said Monday its DirecTV and its U-Verse television business in the third quarter lost a staggering 1.2 million customers, as more consumers cut the cord and migrate to video streaming platforms. – Los Angeles Times