Morning Coffee – 25 January 2019
Here are a few stories to read this Friday morning.
- McSweeney’s is reinventing the MFA workshop.
- Wattpad informed everyone (except me) today that they are getting into publishing books.
- KDP’s limited language support is causing problems following the Createspace merger.
- Literary Hub has conflated having a large personal library with hoarding books.
- This medieval book coffer shows the appeal of mobile reading isn’t new, yada yada yada, clickbait clickbait clickbait.
Comments
Richard Hershberger January 25, 2019 um 9:03 am
Wattpad: "The company will use what it calls Story DNA Machine Learning technology to take “the guesswork” out of the publishing equation, said Allen Lau, the company’s chief executive and co-founder. Whereas traditional publishing is based on individual editors’ tastes, Wattpad’s technology will scan and analyze the hundreds of millions of stories on the app to find themes or elements that might determine a story’s commercial success, Lau said."
That sounds utterly dreadful. Pandora makes a similar claim about analyzing songs to find ones that we will like. My personal experience is that the results are most kindly characterized as "eccentric."
Nate Hoffelder January 25, 2019 um 9:42 am
it does sound dreadful, yes
Disgusting Dude January 25, 2019 um 5:55 pm
Are you sure it will really be worse?
If nothing else it won’t be giving out publishing deals to the cousin of the editor’s old college buddy.
gbm January 25, 2019 um 6:06 pm
Remember GIGO.