“Facebook’s rising dominance as a referrer led to … content that was optimized for social media. … The problem with social-optimized content is that its overt, eerie familiarity drapes a kind of lowest-common-denominator cynicism across the internet … [and favors] exaggeration over subtlety. … SEO content, on the other hand, dispenses with the emotional in favor of the mechanical. It can be stilted and awkward — but it’s more honest and transparent.”
Category: words
As Streaming For All Media Grows, Physical Books Are Holding Their Own
The oldest form of physical media is actually holding up quite well. According to PwC’s Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2018–2022, the consumer market for physical, printed books is holding its own in an increasingly digital world (see “Print Presses On”). Between 2018 and 2022, sales of physical video games, home video, and music are expected to decline each year, in some instances by double-digit percentages. By contrast, sales of physical books are expected to grow modestly, by about 1 percent annually, every year.
The U.S. Poetry Establishment Is Finally Becoming Diverse – And Audiences Are Responding
“Skim the table of contents of the major literary journals, … and even general-interest weeklies with vast reach such as The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. Scan the recipients of the prestigious and sometimes lucrative fellowships, awards, and lectureships … The face of poetry in the United States looks very different today than it did even a decade ago, and far more like the demographics of Millennial America. … These outsiders find themselves, at the very start of their careers, on the inside — and not just of a hermetic realm of poetry … At literary festivals, many of these poets are drawing big crowds.”
Excitable: The Age Of The Rampant Exclamation Point!
Are we doomed to live in a world where every sentence will need to have a minimum of three exclamation points in order to be read as anything less than outright hostile?
Solving The Book Storage Problem
In recent years, there’s been a rejection of the stodgy old alphabet in favor of organizational principles driven by color, size and genre. I blame online shopping. Aesthetics in literature are important, but literature as aesthetics makes me nervous. When did a candle-topped pyramid of paperbacks become a symbol of depth? If you line up your novels in rainbow order but don’t Instagram them, were they ever really there?
A ‘Spotify For Cookbooks’ Is Coming
“Like Spotify, for a fixed monthly fee ($8.99 in the U.S.), users can browse CKBK’s collection of more than 500 cookbooks and 100,000 recipes, which [co-founder Matthew] Cockerill said was just a starting point. ‘We have a huge pipeline of content that we will add to the service as it grows,’ he said.”
The Unmaking Of Barnes And Noble
Sales are falling. The Nook, Barnes & Noble’s attempt at selling electronic books, became a financial drain. Critics say the company lacks direction, sometimes seeming to prioritize sales of gifts and tchotchkes over books. For investors, the impact is already evident: Barnes & Noble’s stock price is down 60 percent over the last three years. Publishers are worried that a crucial pipeline for book sales could be crumbling.
This Year’s Big Literary Embezzlement Case Is Still Not Over
“When Darrin Webb, a bookkeeper for Donadio & Olson, pled guilty to embezzling over $3.3 million from the literary agency late last month, it seemed like a bizarre episode in the industry was reaching a close. Webb’s theft, which leaves a storied agency facing the possibility of bankruptcy and a cadre of authors with holes in their bank accounts, was, by all industry accounts, an aberration. The tale, though, may not be over, as a lawyer is considering taking action against the firm and could file a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the authors affected.”
Is Appalachian English Really A Preserved Form Of 17th-Century English? (No.)
It’s a nice myth, and one of long standing, but myth it is, writes linguist Chi Luu. For one thing, language has no more remained static in Appalachia than it has anywhere else, and there has been migration in and out of the region, especially in the last century. Luu looks at the myths around Appalachian dialects and draws a connection with African-American Vernacular English.
Who Owns Franz Kafka? (It’s Complicated, Of Course)
Before he died, Kafka had written a letter to Max Brod, who found it when he went to clear out Kafka’s desk. In this “last will,” Kafka instructed Brod to burn all his manuscripts, including his letters and diaries. But Brod, who admired Kafka to the point of idolatry, refused to carry out his friend’s wishes. Instead, he devoted the rest of his life to editing, publishing, and promoting Kafka’s work—even writing a novel about him, in which Kafka was thinly disguised as a character named Richard Garta. In this way, Brod ensured not only Kafka’s immortality, but his own. Though Brod himself was a successful and prolific writer, today he is remembered almost exclusively for his role in Kafka’s story.