Never mind blogging—The Observer’s Emily Witt reports on the new way to land a novelty book deal: “Start a Tumblr or Twitter feed with some combination of puppies, fear of protracted adolescence, horrific Americana, text messages from your friends or photos of your parents; add a dose of nostalgia, regret or chagrin, promote it all over the Internet and wait for the literary agents to find you.”
Farhad Manjoo counters Richard Russo’s New York Times op-ed against Amazon’s small-bookstore killing “price-check” app with an especially Slate-like counter-intuitive response: Amazon may be killing independent bookstores, but independent bookstores are expensive and inefficient. “As much as I despise some of its recent tactics, no company in recent years has done more than Amazon to ignite a national passion for buying, reading, and even writing new books,” writes Manjoo. Meanwhile, the angry replies are pouring in.
Does it pay to be a poet? Not if you’re publishing in magazines. According to New York magazine, the New Yorker pays $460 for a 36-line poem, the Paris Review pays $75 a poem, Ploughshares pays $25 a page, and Poetry Magazine pays $10 a line.
The Atlantic selects Wodehouse’s Right Ho, Jeveves (a favorite among BF editors) for its December book club.
