{"id":3251,"date":"2008-12-08T17:49:07","date_gmt":"2008-12-08T22:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3251"},"modified":"2008-12-08T16:01:14","modified_gmt":"2008-12-08T21:01:14","slug":"monday-various-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3251","title":{"rendered":"Monday various"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<ul>   <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>Last week saw a <a href=\"http:\/\/antickmusings.blogspot.com\/2008\/12\/merry-christmas-for-book-publishing.html\">rough couple of days<\/a> in the publishing world. Thankfully, we haven&#8217;t been quite so hard hit where I work, but the troubled economy has made things tough all over. I encourage you all to take <a href=\"http:\/\/whatever.scalzi.com\/2008\/12\/04\/publishing-asks-why-it-is-in-a-rapidly-descending-handbasket\/\">John Scalzi<\/a>&#8216;s advice: buy more books! Or, y&#8217;know, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kaleidotrope.net\/\">zines<\/a>&#8230; Every little bit helps.<\/li>\n<p><\/font> <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>Now probably isn&#8217;t a good time for publishers to start <a href=\"http:\/\/www.holtuncensored.com\/hu\/three-things-id-like-to-see\/\">moving out of New York<\/a> en masse. But generally speaking, I don&#8217;t know that it&#8217;s such a bad idea. Rents are probably much cheaper outside Manhattan, and there&#8217;s few reasons beyond tradition for New York to be the publishing capital of the United States. Then again, maybe that&#8217;s coming from the part of me that&#8217;s still not convinced this is where I want to live and work. But if you want to work in publishing, this is sort of the only town in game.<\/li>\n<p><\/font> <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>It&#8217;s nice to see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/11\/30\/opinion\/30gleick.html?_r=1\">someone is optimistic<\/a>, if not necessarily about publishing or bookselling, then certainly about the future of books in general:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>But I don&#8217;t see it that way. I think, on the contrary, we&#8217;ve reached a shining moment for this ancient technology. Publishers may or may not figure out how to make money again (it was never a good way to get rich), but their product has a chance for new life: as a physical object, and as an idea, and as a set of literary forms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">This is something I&#8217;ve heard before &#8212; namely that the publishing industry&#8217;s woes stem largely from its abandonment of the midlist in favor of the blockbuster model, i.e. the occasional <em>Harry Potter<\/em> in favor of the 90+% of the list where the real money and good books come from. <\/font><\/li>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/uk_news\/magazine\/7762438.stm\">An interesting take<\/a> on why John Wyndham&#8217;s <em>Day of the Triffids<\/em> is still relevant. Although I take issue with the BBC&#8217;s contention that &#8220;Horrorphiles may trace the zombie lineage back to Richard Matheson&#8217;s 1954 novel <em>I Am Legend<\/em>&#8230;&#8221; &#8212; given that the creatures in the book are vampires, not zombies, and that zombie lineage goes back considerably further. [<a href=\"http:\/\/sfscope.com\/\" title=\"SF Scope\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<p><\/font><\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>I didn&#8217;t think it needed to be said, but: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.warrenellis.com\/?p=6813\">Amanda Palmer is not fat<\/a>. And hey, so what if she was?<\/li>\n<p><\/font><\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>&#8220;It&#8217;s quite hard to get embarrassed with art as you let people see whatever you want them to see.&#8221; &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tor.com\/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=blog&amp;id=9500\">Dave Gibbons<\/a><\/li>\n<p><\/font><\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/font><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week saw a rough couple of days in the publishing world. Thankfully, we haven&#8217;t been quite so hard hit where I work, but the troubled economy has made things tough all over. I encourage you all to take John Scalzi&#8216;s advice: buy more books! Or, y&#8217;know, zines&#8230; Every little bit helps. Now probably isn&#8217;t &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3251\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-3251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-various"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3251"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}