With an attitude like that, I'm shocked that they're going out of business.

It's not usually my habit to post before going to work, but I have a little time and this unintentionally hilarious (in a not-happy-shiny way) rant about the death of books was too interesting to let pass. I understand that losing one's business is traumatic, and that people in the grips of strong emotions do things that they regret, such as reprint twelve-point manifestos that lay the blame for one's mercantile failure squarely at the metaphorical feet of the observable universe (minus, of course, the bits consisting of the person writing/quoting the manifesto).

I'm not exaggerating by all that much.

(Via Amygdala)

Moe

Comments

[bob mcmanus]

There was an informative discussion of this over at Teresa Nielsen Hayden's blog, Making Lite

I blog too much

[Edward]

I don't think he's that far off, quite frankly.

I would stop short of accusing writers and a few others in this list of the deeds he does, but he's dead on about editors...my other job (the one that supports my gallery) is in publishing and I've watched over the past 15 years how the art of editing has lost battle after battle to marketing...so much so that most editors now come from sales. I've even heard it suggested that copyediting is an inessential part of publishing.

It is if you're Kinko's perhaps.

[Slartibartfast]

I can't relate. I buy more books at this point in my life than I ever have, and that's saying a great deal.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

"aiming at demographics instead of people"

What does that mean?