In this conversation with David Carr at NYU, Tina Brown reveals her recipe for a successful book publishing company: a tiny staff that outsources books to free lance editors based on their areas of expertise.
45% of voters agree it should be more than just a digital version of text but almost as many (42%) disagree completely and think that’s all it should be. What do you think?
Thomas Friedman‘s recent column about “The Great Disruption,” a term coined by the Australian entrepreneur Paul Gilding, has come up a couple of times in conversation lately. (Basically Friedman concludes that decades from now, we’ll all remember 2008 as the year the shit hit the fan). Gilding’s notion, that “we are taking a system operating past its capacity and driving it faster and harder,” applies equally to our ecosystem and our financial markets. But – and this is where the conversation heats up – doesn’t it also apply to media and the arts? Is it reasonable for book publishers to expect the bottom line to grow each year? The long time publishing veteran with whom I had lunch recently found this notion absurd.
What do you think? Does Friedman’s argument apply to book publishing?
Publishing may not have an official red carpet at most events, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have pub-arazzi! Send your party pics to harperstudio@harpercollins.com and we’ll feature the best ones on theharperstudio.com
Be sure to include the date, the event, the names and titles of people in the photo, and any appropriate links.
Put “Pubarazzi” in the email subject line and look for your photo to be spotlighted in our upcoming feature!
Kindles and iPhones aside, the original “book” is still a pretty sweet piece of technology. It’s been serving the interests of readers for thousands of years. Lightweight, portable, and wireless, you can read a book in bed, on the beach, or even on the john. Sometimes it takes some humor to appreciate the genius of simplicity.
“In our web 2.0 world, we can empower the public by providing them with raw data that they can remix and reuse in new and innovative ways”
- Mike Honda, Vice chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch
[wired]
We are excited to have signed up an anthology called Till I End My Song: Last Poems Edited with an Introduction by Harold Bloom. This acquisition came out of a brainstorming session Bob and I had with Glen Hartley and Lynn Chu some weeks ago. I recently spoke to Harold:
Keats died at 25. Are there lesser known poets of significance who also died tragically young?
Off the top of my head Shelley, Emily Brontë, Hart Crane, Samuel Greenberg who died on Ellis Island at the age of 23, Christopher Marlowe, Trumbull Stickney, Keith Douglas, Andrew Marvel
What was Yeats’ last poem?
Why do you find the idea of editing this anthology appealing?
It has always been in my mind, child.
- Julia
When I sat down to lunch the other day with Rachel Syme I was curious to learn more about what kind of infrastructure The Daily Beast has, and how she makes the case for “the web” to writers of a different generation.
Loading ...
