Books or Butter

In a post titled “Print Culture and the Fate of the Literary Quarterly” Salon blogger Front Porch Republic (FPR) references TriQuarterly and Shenandoah going online and worries what these changes mean for print literature. FPR sites similar concerns from George Core, the editor of Sewanee Review, a journal to which he subscribes, and also quotes R.T. Smith, editor of Shenandoah, who, in part, blames Shenandoah’s predicament on “the disproportion between the number of people who would love to publish in Shenandoah and the number of who would love to read it.”

FPR goes on to say that he buys or subscribes to a select number of literary magazines “out of duty, I suppose, and out of loyalty too, and perhaps out of guilt, but also out of the belief that my money is better spent on, and is more needed in the service of, a Republic of Letters in print.” While I don’t know a magazine editor who would want anyone to subscribe out of a sense of duty or guilt, it is true that the profusion of graduate writing programs over the last 20 years has led to a profusion of writers and a profusion of new magazines but not a profusion of subscribers. And I would go so far to suggest that if you have an advanced degree in creative writing and can’t find any magazines that you would not only willingly subscribe to but also eagerly anticipate each number of, then you are likely in the wrong line of work.

Take, for example, FPR commenter JustJuli, who seems to view her time spent in a graduate writing program as like living in a North Korean gulag. Now, set loose with an MFA from her (apparently compulsory) course of study, and consequently unemployable, JustJuli says she must choose between subscribing to literary magazines and shoeing her children. Fortunately, having been deprogrammed from her harrowing brush with creativity, she finds the choice a no-brainer.

Commenter tomreedtoon too says piffle to FPRs concern for the future of print culture because, he states boldly (literally), “nobody reads any more (sic).” And he has proof that this is true—for tomreedtoon has said the exact same thing in comments to previous posts that were about people reading things and yet people still keep putting up posts about people reading things! How does tomreedtoon carry on in the face of such willful intransigence? One is inclined to wonder. Of course, the notion that no one reads anymore is common these days, largely, one imagines, among people who don’t read.

H/T Marya

Corporate Thought-Monitoring: It’s a Feature Not a Bug

Buried in UC-Berkeley professor Pamela Samuelson’s thorough evaluation of the implications of the Google Book Search Settlement is this inadvertent Onion headline: “Google’s senior management has actively been trying to expand the firm’s revenue models.” Should the settlement be approved, Google will still be allowed to “track reader’s past and present online actions and locations through some unstated combination of cookies, IP addresses, referrer logs, and numerous distinguishing characteristics of a reader’s hardware and software.” These practices, according to Samuelson, “would allow Google to know ‘what books are searched for, which are browsed (even if not purchased), what pages are viewed . . . and how much time is spent on each page.'”

Michael Chabon, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Jonathan Lethem oppose the settlement, fearing fewer people might browse, say, Tropic of Cancer if they knew that somewhere in a bunker somewhere somebody is keeping track of how long they are lingering over the naughtiest bits. Of course, lest one become too paranoid, we can be reassured that all this monitoring will not be conducted in the name of decently or patriotism but commerce.

Rope, Part Deux

According to Wired, via Reuters, a consensus arose at this year’s BookExpo America (the yearly orgy of commercialism for the book publishing industry) among publishers that an e-book alternative must arise to sidestep the Apple/Amazon battle for hegemony. Which suggests, remarkably, that unlike in previous platforms wars, such as Betamax v. VHS or HD-DVD v. Bluray, the winner won’t be one or the other but rather none of the above. As it stands you have Amazon, and their attempted i-Tunes-ification of the publishing industry versus latecomer Steve Nobody-Reads-Books-Anymore-but-We’re-More-Than–Happy-to-Sell-Them-to-You-Anyway-in-a-Format-Unreadable-by-Devices-Other-Than-Ours Jobs.

All of this digital maneuvering has drawn attention to what might be called an analog advantage to printed books. As Susan Peterson Kennedy, president of Penguin, points out, “The devices have not caught up with the content. Contrary to popular opinion, the book is actually so far more flexible.”

Thus it appears that the future of print literature may be more secure than early adopters of e-readers would have us believe. Unfortunately, the article suggests that much of the buzz at the convention surrounded Barbra Streisand’s forthcoming book on interior design, so the future of civilization remains in doubt.

Best. Book. Review.

Ever.

h/t Mairead