Some lovely vintage French book covers on Flickr, courtesy of Alexis Orloff (via Words & Eggs).
Cultural Change — A really interesting analysis of the current state of publishing by John B. Thompson, author of Merchants of Culture, at The Brooklyn Rail:
Readers and consumers have many different values, and beliefs, and preferences and you will see some be very happy to read on electronic devices of one kind or another. Others will remain wedded to print on paper and will want books in that form. There are deeply embedded cultural practices around writing and reading and these are not going to change quickly and easily. There are people who believe that technology sweeps all before it, and that technology is really the driving force of social change. I don’t take that view. I regard that as a technological fallacy—the view that technology is a driving force of social change. I think technologies are always embedded in social, cultural context and what technologies get taken up depends on a variety of factors that shape people’s practices and beliefs. There are many examples of technologies that went nowhere…
Getting Paid — Cartoonist and illustrator Colleen Doran on the pirating of her comics (via Richard Curtis):
Creators and publishers can’t compete with free and the frightening reality is that even free isn’t good enough. Pirates aggregate content in ways creators and legit publishers can’t. Why go to dozens of web pages for entertainment when you can go to a pirate and get everything you want? There’s no connection to creators as human beings who work hard and make money from that work, and who need income from past work to finance future work.
Distribution is the only concern. Readers care about the gadget that gives them the goods, and have no connection to the goods at all, or who made them. But without desirable content, there’s nothing to distribute.
Everyone gets paid — manufacturers of computers, iPads, electricity, bandwidth — everyone except the creators of content.
And finally…
A Children’s Treasury of Mark E. Smith Verse (via the awesome A Journey Round My Skull):
