“Facts are stranger than fiction” — The Toronto Star profiles The Monkey’s Paw bookshop and owner (pictured):
“Books have been totally superseded by digital. A generation ago, books were not only the primary, but the only way we stored and transmitted culture. Books were culture. And they’re not any more. They’re these odd anachronisms,” Fowler says. “But that doesn’t mean they don’t contain all sorts of treasures. They’re beautiful and interesting and they have fascinating content and startling stuff in them.”
The serendipity of accidental discovery — Allison Arieff profiles William Stout, publisher and owner of the eponymous architecture and design bookstore in San Francisco, for the New York Times:
I love the tangents an afternoon spent searching the Internet can generate… But I realize as well that it’s contributing to a sort of collective ADD that makes ambling through aisles of a place like Stout Books feel that much more special, requiring an altogether different commitment of time, care and attention.
A Publisher’s Decalogue — 10 (+1) good rules for publishers from Alma Books (via The Book Depository Blog).
The E-Book Difference — The Book Oven’s Hugh McGuire on why publishers need to get to grips with e-books and mobile devices:
The reason digital and ebooks are going to become more important is that’s where the eyeballs are going to be. And if you can’t find more ways to get eyeballs on digital books, then I do fear for the future of (traditional) book publishing.
Making Magic — A sprawling interview with the brilliant (and possibly quite bonkers) Alan Moore in Wired:
I thought that a book like Watchmen would perhaps unlock a lot of potential creativity… I was hoping naively for a great rash of individual comic books that were exploring different storytelling ideas and trying to break new ground… That isn’t really what happened. Instead it seemed that the existence of Watchmen had pretty much doomed the mainstream comic industry
Borderless thinking — Graham Vickers looks at how digital is rewriting the rules for publishers and distributors in The Guardian:
The most creative ideas are still to be found outside the orbit of the traditional media… in places where there were no predefined models, and no pre-existing ground rules to impede borderless thinking.
Daily Routines — A blog about how writers, artists, and other interesting people organize their days. For someone who endlessly struggles with their daily routine, I find this fascinating.
Perhaps Fowler, 44, should consider some facts before spinning fictions. Given that illiteracy rates in the US were twice as high for the generation before his own (See http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp) coupled with the existence of popular broadcast media (i.e. radio and television) it’s absurd to say that books were the only way culture was transmitted or that they were culture.
If you look at how many titles were published in the US in 1965 vrs 2005, (see http://www.swivel.com/data_columns/spreadsheet/1534590?page=1 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per_year) there were around seven times as many books published in 2005 while the population had not quite doubled.
I’m not sure its all that helpful to posit book reading as freakish or quirky but I suspect Mr Fowler is just marketing his wares and given that it’s the book shop that’s the more endangered part of the equation than the book, more power to him.
Hi Margie. Thanks for your comment. I could be wrong, but I suspect Mr. Fowler probably had his tongue somewhat in his cheek.