Category: words

In 2008 I sold a book-in-progress for $200,000 ($170,000 after commission, to be paid in four installments), which still seems to me like a lot of money. At the time, though, it seemed infinite. The resulting book—a “paperback original,” as they’re called—has sold around 8,000 copies, which is about a fifth of what it needed to sell not to be considered a flop. This essentially guarantees that no one will ever pay me that kind of money to write a book again.

“In 2012, total industry sales in the book business fell just under 1 percent over all, but those of downloadable audiobooks rose by more than 20 percent. That year, 13,255 titles came out as audiobooks, compared with 4,602 in 2009.”

“First, some people are simply more critical of popular things… Secondly, as a book is read by more and more readers, it is subjected to an increasingly diverse range of literary tastes.”

American Studies circa 2014 is an academic pursuit undone by its own prose style.

Academic prose is, ideally, impersonal, written by one disinterested mind for other equally disinterested minds. But, because it’s intended for a very small audience of hyper-knowledgable, mutually acquainted specialists, it’s actually among the most personal writing there is.

“Winning a prestigious award not only garners more attention for a book, but also more negative reviews.” Hunh.

For instance: Alfred, Lord Tennyson:
“Is the goal so far away?
Far, how far no tongue can say,
Let us dream our dream today.”

“In such a way is the work of publishing succinctly translated into the digital sphere, searching out literary gems among the masses of narrative available to us, and bringing them to us wherever we may be.”

The official explanation — that it was a “business decision” — doesn’t sway most of the students.

The company PrintPedia, whose product is an app to print Wikipedia content on demand, is trying to raise $50,000 on Indiegogo to produce the complete English-language Wikipedia as a 1,193,014-page, 1,000-volume set of books. Isn’t that completely beside the point? Depends on what exactly the point is.