Year / 2006

by Edward Champion

My Publishing Industry Prediction for 2007

Pardon me while I go into John Dvorak mode.

Google will buy a publisher before the end of 2007. And given certain Bertelsmann grumblings about profit, I have a feeling it may be Random House.

I could be totally wrong on this, but consider the amount of amount of time and money Google has sunk into Google Book Search. Consider also Google’s aggressive efforts to find out what Microsoft and Amazon are doing. And what better way to sidestep publishers’ quibbles over GBS’s copyright infringement and apparent cut into sales than to buy the publishers outright?

Furthermore, one must consider the financial payoff of the Google Book Search feature. Surely, this is a company that cannot be conducting all this out of philanthropy. One stalwart way to recoup costs is through a print-on-demand feature, one publicly available in bookstores. And what better way to approach booksellers than by purchasing a publisher who has a vested history of doing business, thereby pushing whatever POD (or, perhaps, an ironically named GOD) features through a distributor that the booksellers have a history doing business with?

Of course, all this is speculation. But if this all goes down, you heard it hear first.

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • David Lynch is launching his own coffee. (via Matthew Tiffany)
  • Mr. Asher also doesn’t think too highly of Donadio’s most recent article, suggesting that Donadio “is just writing like Snoopy in his ‘dark and stormy night’ mode.” I agree with him that Ozick’s article is well worth your time.
  • Jack Butler, whose Jujitsu for Christ you must check out (thank you kindly, Rake and Carrie), offers this tribute to Don Harrington. Word on the street is that Butler’s got another novel in the works, but I haven’t yet had the opportunity to confirm this info. (via Pretty Fakes)
  • It seems that Mel the Anti-Semite is ripping off Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. (via Gwenda)
  • Salon lists the best debuts of 2006. The big question: Will the Pessl haters, who have been showing up at Mark’s place in droves, now call for Laura Miller’s head? Love or hate Special Topics, I fail to understand the knee-jerk dismissals associated with this book. Many literary folks, including Meghan O’Rourke, seem more content to resort to generalizations (Highly self-conscious prose? What writer doesn’t write self-consciously?), hating this book without citing specific examples. Yet to appear from these apparent detractors: detailed or level-headed assessments on why Marisha Pessl is apparently this year’s literary Beezelbub. So the book was written by a hot young talent and received a lucrative advance. So the book was selected by the NYTBR as one of the Top 10 Books of the Year. I don’t see what any of these factors have anything to do with considering the book’s merits or lack thereof (witness Gawker’s superficial dismissal, for example), but I suspect the early wave of Pessl pecking (or perception thereof) spawned this completely unnecessary turbulence. Is a novelist, by dint of her gender, not permitted to pursue a novel of ideas in the 21st century?
  • Chunkster Challenge? I’m reading two books over 700 pages simultaneously right now. 400 pages? 400 pages? I’ll see your 400 pages and raise you 200 more! You want a challenge? I unearth the Super-Chunkster Challenge: at least four books over 600 pages between the time period of Jan. 1 and June 30, 2007! And I’ll do this in tandem with any additional reading challenges sure to crop up during the next year. More details to come.
  • Behold: WKRP on DVD.
by Edward Champion

A Case Against the Wii, A Case FOR Lazy Gamers

Slate: “After a few whacks, I realized that the Wii isn’t asking me to simulate a realistic swing. There’s no reason to assume a batter’s stance, and no reason to bother swinging the controller fast or following through—flicking the controller like a pingpong paddle works just as well. This is the Wii’s biggest letdown—you don’t need to stand up, leap around, or otherwise leave the warm embrace of your couch. The console senses motion, but compared with the full-body workout of a game like Dance Dance Revolution, you’re not getting any kind of exercise at all.”