Commenter Grey Ghost linked this excellent article the other day.

It reminded me of this one (which, we are assured, was tightly fact-checked by one of the most aggressive editorial teams in the publishing.)

I'm all for reason-based this and science-based that, but let's not kid ourselves. And let's not try to kid anyone else, either.

Moar, moar.

(Minimal circuitous citation, I promise.)

I hate unions.

Scrolling through the trove of insults, Lieberman and his students found that almost all of them fell under one (or more) of six categories: they were about appearance, intelligence, race, ethnicity, sexuality, or social acceptance and rejection.

Seekers, Amy may come a-knockin' in a few months.

http://i.imgur.com/YzqQYa1.jpg?1.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/eQH4Nbh.jpg

"Seekers, Amy may come a-knockin' in a few months."

"Nuh-uh. I get readers by writing my ass off. Woke up at 4:53 today and got cracking."

Maybe I missed something in the article, but from what I gathered, authors give the consultant a chunk money to buy their books, and give another large chunk of money to do, well, something else.

I'm not seeing the added value here. If they're going to lay out that kind of coin, why don't the authors just buy the books themselves, and cut out the middleman?

http://i.imgur.com/ku9LJhv.jpg

OK, I didn't read my own link. But it's hardly a sin to have some of one's own skin in the game… Especially if, as Amy suggests, you must actually attract an audience before things pay off.

Meg Whitman wanted to be Governor of California. (She'd have been good at it, too.) (Relatively.) 144 million dollars later, she works at Hewlett-Packard.

Nothing new under the sun. For the past fifty years or so, teenagers have dreamt of being signed to major labels which will promote and distribute their music. But young musicians don't know how to read contracts: The record labels would charge back all the expenses for promotion — parties and bagels for journalists, free copies and shipping for radio, recording studios — etc. These things would be deducted before they ever saw their first check, as would the expenses from 200 failed acts.

Amy once posted a picture of herself zonked out at her kiosk during a regional conference of alt-weeklies. Having faith in your own product is essential, whether or not your costs are cleverly inflated by a corporation of rapacious attorneys.

I understand that Jeff Bezos is probably bad for America is ways we haven't figured out yet.

Nonetheless, I think this is very important:

[Amazon] makes it possible for everyone to get that book out. This is the one thing no one seems to be talking about. The September 6th press conference in Santa Monica has everyone abuzz speculating on an Amazon phone or a Kindle Fire 2.

Frankly, I don’t care what it is because I believe Amazon is on a multi-year tear. After revolutionizing commerce, it has revolutionized publishing. This is what intrigues me.

You can publish within days instead of waiting months for a brick and mortar publisher‘s recent English major grad to read your magnum opus out of the 200 a week said English major has to wade through (they don’t call it a slush pile for nothing). Another amazing thing is you can publish a physical book within days with an Amazon feature called Create Space and make the book available on demand to an author’s clamoring public. And the service is free!

Beatle- or Potter-magnitude success, while stoking the daydreams of the masses, was never where the action was.

OK, I hear you... Listen, that's why I mention that photo you posted. You're indisputably hard-working.

But the charts (music/film/print) are losing meaning as expressions of success, or even popularity. We're told there are plenty of books that trounce the sales of NYT bestsellers, but they're sold in Christian bookstores, thus are not counted.

I suspect you'll do well, perhaps VERY well, even if you never hit big charts. (And yes, we've all noticed that authors talk more about their Amazon ranking than about the NYT nowadays.) I bet there are hundreds of successful and delighted lady singers in their forties who aren't Gwen Stefani.

Yeah, my ultimate retirement plan is suicide. I'd rather take a drug od than live another 10 something years on dozens of medications requiring diapers and weekly liver function tests

Edgy! Transgressive!

I bungled this yesterday and still feel bad.

Nork eroticism is a gently tumbling kaleidoscope of nuance and detail.