TED — “Chip Kidd: Designing books is no laughing matter. OK, it is.”
You know Chip Kidd, right? He designs book covers. You know, books?
2 Your Brain on Fiction
“The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated. Keith Oatley, an emeritus professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto (and a published novelist), has proposed that reading produces a vivid simulation of reality, one that “runs on minds of readers just as computer simulations run on computers.” Fiction — with its redolent details, imaginative metaphors and attentive descriptions of people and their actions — offers an especially rich replica. Indeed, in one respect novels go beyond simulating reality to give readers an experience unavailable off the page: the opportunity to enter fully into other people’s thoughts and feelings.”
1542 National Geographic's Top Ten Literary Cities
National Geographic Traveler, Sept. 2011:
- Edinburgh, Scotland
- Dublin, Ireland
- London, England
- Paris, France
- St. Petersburg, Russia
- Stockholm, Sweden
- Portland, Oregon
- Washington, D.C.
- Melbourne, Australia
- Santiago, Chile
Yes, that’s right. No NYC.
13 Penguin moves into self-publishing
On the face of this, I rather like the idea of self-publishing through a Big Six’r and what it would have to offer in regards to quality and reach.
However, there will be an issue of conflict of interests. Production and distribution are the only places I see safe comingling. Services performed before production have to be separate and delineated.
Wonder what literary agents will have to say…
17 Jane Austen 'died from arsenic poisoning'
A snippet:
Author Lindsay Ashford moved to Austen’s village of Chawton three years ago, and began writing her new crime novel in the library of the novelist’s brother Edward’s former home, Chawton House. She soon became engrossed in old volumes of Austen’s letters, and one morning spotted a sentence Austen wrote just a few months before she died: “I am considerably better now and am recovering my looks a little, which have been bad enough, black and white and every wrong colour.”
Having researched modern forensic techniques and poisons for her crime novels, Ashford immediately realised the symptoms could be ascribed to arsenic poisoning, which can cause “raindrop” pigmentation, where patches of skin go brown or black, and other areas go white.
38 Why You Shouldn’t Pitch Your Novel This Week
Note: this has to do with July, August and the start of September.
Weeks to Avoid: July 11, 18% on vacation, July 25, 11% on vacation, August 1, 11% on vacation, September 5 (week of Labor Day), 10% on vacation, September 12, 13% on vacation.
The Best Weeks: August 15, 6% on vacation; August 22, 4% on vacation.”
What’s a couple more weeks of editing to be certain?
11 B&N Launches Tikatok Nook App: lets kids create and publish their own eBooks on the Nook Color
Dear B&N: In need of adult version. Please contact when ready.
Users can creat [sic] stories on the device and submit them to be published into hard, softcover or eBooks. The app includes an art gallery, decorative backgrounds and book titles for kids to use as kindling for their ideas.
(Source: tikatok.com)
2 The 1,000-to-1 Long Shot: How Hollywood Decides What Books Hit the Silver Screen
Part one of two. From International Creative Management’s Josie Friedman (Co-head of the Media Rights Department):
“We’re selective with the material we decide to take on,” explains Ms. Freedman. “We don’t flood the marketplace with endless submissions…”
This exclusivity, she proffers, translates to a more serious consideration by prospective rights buyers. “There’s a certain standard…Most of the time, it’s material that people pay attention to. I’m not saying it’s the easy material. Some of it, in fact, is quite the opposite. It’s very difficult…It certainly either has some sort of patina to it, or it may be wildly commercial at the moment, but at the end of the day, it’s all great stuff.”
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