Historian. Author. Ranter. Idea Junkie.
This a blog. Sort of. I rarely use it anymore.
I couldn't have said this better myself (if only because I have zero math ability). But here is precisely why I worry about the mania for electric cars: we're already mindlessly piling "stuff" on and into the power grid, with little thought about whether it can handle what it's carrying.
Back, for a moment, to newspapers: Odds are that the New York Times won't survive 2009, at least not in its current form. (It's carrying a staggering debt load, and has loans due in March with no way to pay them.)
I know that many in the blogosphere (god, what a word) smirk and otherwise condescend when it comes to the Times, but when it comes to in-depth research and quality writing, it's one of the finest newspapers on the planet.
Bloggers can blog about "news" events to their heart's content, but often they're standing on the shoulders of research done by the staff at the Times. Because that's what newspapers do: pay people to do research and write about what they've learned.
Anyway, two new stories worth reading, both of them focusing on the Times. This from the new issue of The Atlantic (which itself, sigh, gets thinner with each new issue...).
And this from New York magazine. (And an eye-rolling "I'm not impressed" reaction to that piece.)
Tip o' the mug to Nieman Journalism Lab for links to the New York piece and Spiers reaction.
I swear I'll stop now, but after you read David Nygren's post about e-publishing, take a look at this from the other side of the fence: the one where the "traditional" publishers live. And keep in mind: David's post contemplated SELF-publishing: how to bypass the current guardians at the publishing-gate.
The blog referenced in this post looks at those guardians. (And yes, ignore the pink text and those icky polka-dots. Ugh.) I sympathize with the traditional gatekeepers. All of my books have been published "traditionally," and I know editors, agents, publicists, copyeditors, etc. They're good, hard-working people who love their work and who KNOW that the business is changing.
But change either comes in one big WHOOOSH: painful but fast. (Kind of like jumping right into that cold swimming pool.) Or it's slow and painful. (Putting first one foot, then another into that cold water, and then sloooowly easing the rest of your body in.) American publishing is, I fear, suffering the woes of the latter rather than the former.
David Nygren of the Urban Elitist continues his analysis of the e-book. (Yes, I know: Why is a middle-aged Iowan is reading the blog of a Brooklyn hipster? What can I say? Good ideas transcend age and geography.)
His current blog entry is a delight: an idea-packed stroll through the possibilities of promoting/selling a self-published e-book. There's much to consider in his post, but I especially like his idea of serialization. As he notes, serialization was once a common mode of delivering books to readers.
In the 19th century, for example, writers routinely published their work as serials, with installments appearing on a regular basis in a specific magazine or newspaper. Many were authors no one has heard of since then, but among the better-known who published this way were Anthony Trollope (one of my favorite writers) and Charles Dickens. (Film studios, by the way, adopted the model in the 1920s: those "shorts" the preceded the main movie were short serial films whose plot continued from week to week.)
So why not bring back the serialized book? Have it delivered in chunks to your email inbox or Ipod or Kindle? Great idea! (The folks at dailylit.com are doing something similar with books in the public domain.)
David also points out that writers who go the way of self-pubbed e-books will need a "hook," something that will grab the reader fast so he/she will decide to buy the entire work (delivered in one piece or serially).
Here's one way to do that: writers could cooperate in operating a communal "storefront." The would-be reader visits the site, and "grabs" for free maybe the first five hundred or a thousand words of the book. If the buyer likes what she's read, she can then pay for the entire book. The money would go directly into the writer's account.
Anyway, as David notes, once writers AND readers get past the idea of the conventional publishing model (agents and publishing houses and physical objects sold in "real" stores), there's no limit to where creativity can take the new e-model for publishing and reading.
Again, there's plenty there for both readers and writers. Take a look.
Absolutely worth reading. Start with this essay by Alan Jacobs at Text Patterns (part of Culture 11), and then, as he suggests, read the Tim Wu's New Republic review of Zittrain's book. Fascinating stuff, but I'm especially grateful that Wu is thinking about Zittrain's book in a historical context.
This "research" from the World Cancer Research Fund (a British group) (and via the weekly newsletter [subscription only] edited by Pete Reid of Modern Brewery Age).
To which I say: Oh, for fuck's sake. Give it up. How much anyone wanna bet that the World Cancer Research Fund is interested in cancer research in the same way that the Center for Science in the Public Interest is interested in science? (As far as CSPI is concerned, the only "real" science is the stuff that supports its nearly fascist, nanny-state agenda....)
Besides which, this drinking-and-cancer thing has been around for decades and warnings show up, clockwork-like, every decade or so. To say nothing of that fact that humans drink less alcohol now than they have in millennia past, and if cancer were really so lethal and risky, well, the human race would have died out, ya know, millennia ago.
It's a prohibitionist plot, is what it is.....
(Kidding.) (Sort of.)
Website of Maureen Ogle, author and historian. Books include Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer; In Meat We Trust: An Unexpected History of Carnivore America; and Key West: History of An Island of Dreams.
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