Entries from June 2009

Jun. 29, 2009

On Moving to a New Publisher in the UK

Being dropped by one English publisher is humbling, being picked up by another is inspiring.

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Jun. 29, 2009

Fred Wilson on Social Media

Fred Wilson is a venture capitalist with a knack for explaining the power of social media in plain English. I am a junkie for the latest developments in the web, and I’ve become addicted to his blog, called A VC. In this interview, he talks at length about the rise of social media — Facebook, [...]

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Jun. 27, 2009

How Writers Write: Philip Roth

Philip Roth discusses his writing process (video)

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Jun. 24, 2009

Publishers as booksellers?

In a long and interesting interview with Poets & Writers magazine, Jonathan Galassi, president and publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, has an interesting prediction for the future of book-selling: publishers, not online retailers like Amazon, will profit from selling directly to readers. It makes a lot of sense, especially as book-selling transitions more and [...]

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Jun. 23, 2009

Richard Diebenkorn: Notes to Myself on Beginning a Painting

Painter Richard Diebenkorn’s *Notes to Myself on Beginning a Painting*

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Jun. 22, 2009

Writers as Performers

Malcolm Gladwell, like Dickens and Twain before him, knows that while his books can easily be reproduced, the author’s genuine presence cannot.

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Jun. 17, 2009

Oprah’s Mystery Reading List

In over a dozen years of her “book club,” Oprah has never recommended a straight mystery or crime novel. Now, for the first time, Oprah has published a summer reading list of mystery novels, which is very good news for those of us who till that field. The list is quirky and very interesting. It [...]

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Jun. 15, 2009

The Science of Home-Field Advantage

Jonah Lehrer examines why the home team tends to win more often. The answer is more complex than you might think. Several years ago, an innovative study compared the performance of two NCAA basketball teams in the presence and absence of spectators. Because of a measles outbreak, the teams played 11 games while the schools [...]

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Jun. 15, 2009

Kickstarter

Kickstarter.com is a cool new web site that provides “a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, bloggers, explorers…” Think of it as DonorsChoose for creative types: artists post descriptions of projects they would like to do; visitors pledge donations to support them. The artists might offer any sort of reward they can [...]

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Jun. 13, 2009

The Breakthrough, at last

After weeks of futility, a breakthrough on a stubborn scene

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