Morning Coffee – 17 February 2020
Here are a few stories to read this Monday morning.
- Victoria Strauss explains why paying to have your book displayed at a book fair is a waste of money.
- Someone spent thousands of dollars to hang E-ink screens on their walls just to display the front page of the New York Times.
- Quartz explores the growing trend in flat illustrations.
- LitReactor asks why men don’t read romance.
- The Guardian is getting very excited over something that is actually very old: booksellers recommending books to customers.
- I am pretty sure this New Yorker piece on typos is satire, but I could be wrong.
- After a hundred years of study, we still don’t know what the Voynich manuscript says or who wrote it.
- Barnes & Noble canceled its racist Diverse Editions project.
Comments
Roland Denzel February 17, 2020 um 8:13 am
I love me some Voynich news. The manuscript that keeps on giving.
Nate Hoffelder February 17, 2020 um 11:03 am
My current theory is that a time travel from the future faked it just for kicks. (I would)
Nirmala February 17, 2020 um 10:12 am
Regarding typos, there is an old story about some monks at a monastery where they would carefully copy old original manuscripts and then store them away to preserve them. One day, several of the monks noticed that Brother John wasn’tt anywhere to be found. Finally they discovered him way back in the stacks of original manuscripts and he was crying inconsolably and curled up in the fetal position. They gently asked, "What’s the matter Brother John?". Between anguished sobs, he sputtered, "I double checked the original manuscript and it says 'Celebrate' not 'Celibate'!"
Nate Hoffelder February 17, 2020 um 11:08 am
I heard that joke, too
Aaron February 17, 2020 um 11:07 am
Wow, I went into that article about the guy displaying the NY Times on his wall assuming he hacked an old DX screen for this project, but $1500 for the e-ink screen just to display the front page of the paper?! That’s some commitment.
sroman February 19, 2020 um 10:05 am
With regard to book fairs, back in 2018 even the Independent Book Publishers Association (of which I’m a member) warned us off of paying for space at Book Expo:
"Without pulling punches, BookExpo on the whole is rather hostile toward author publishers. Some of this has to do with author publishers who come to the show without understanding the rules (pitching Big 5 publishers, literary agents, and/or distributors in hopes one of them will publish or represent their book, for example – an activity BookExpo considers particularly gauche), but mostly it’s for the same reason the show isn’t great for very small and/or not yet established independent publishers generally: e.g., a singluar focus on blockbuster titles backed by considerable publisher-provided marketing dollars."
https://www.ibpa-online.org/news/408540/IBPA-Report-from-BookExpoBookCon-2018.htm
Nate Hoffelder February 19, 2020 um 3:26 pm
IBPA was selling that same service in 2019. They pitched it to me several times.