Simon & Schuster is producing a new online “get published” site. It’s called First Chapters and is being touted as a web-based “American Idol for books”. Basically, unpublished authors submit works, then everyone votes, etc., etc. After weeks of narrowing the field a panel of judges awards the winner $5,000 and a publishing contract.
I guess any publicity for the publishing industry is good. But this just seems like a convoluted way of arriving at a book with mass appeal via the “lowest common denominator”.
I’ll check in once the field has been cut to the finalists. The whole point of relying on publishers and editors is so they cut through all the crap for me and I don’t have to waste time wading through stuff that’s not any good.
of blog. There have been little rumblings over the past six months about the upcoming Helvetica documentary, but never anything official that you could sink your teeth into and get excited about.
But now Gary Hustwit, director of the film, has started his own blog to help all the typophiles of the world keep pace. I have to say I’m pretty stoked about the film. I’m anxious to see all the interviews with the type designers. I hope it’s heavy on the “creative process” discussion and lighter on the “history of type” stuff.
Well that was relativley painless. Those folks over at WordPress sure are smart. All went according to plan and I even installed one of those “math comment field” spam blocker deals.
Let me know if it gives you any trouble.
While all this was backing-up/updating I watched the New York Times Book Review tour that aired on BookTV this past weekend. Pretty cool if I do say so. That would be a most awesome job to have. Did you see the pile of books that will never appear in the pages of the NYTBR? HUGE!!!! They said they get some 1,000 books submitted per week and only review 30-40 per weekend. Wow.
Here is another great idea for a blog! The Independent Bookstore Photo Gallery posts visitors’ pics of their favorite local independent bookstore haunts. They even post a little write up about each place. It’s sort of a super-flickr group or something. Should be fun to keep up with.
We’ll be contributing Reed’s Bookloft and The Alabama Booksmith shortly.
The blogosphere could use a little southern lit love!
