Books on the Radio

This interview has it all.  Well, some of it.  In pieces.  Kinda glued together.
I called Cory on Thursday November 12th, 2009 from Control Booth B at CJSF.  He was probably in his hotel room getting started on a day of media publicity for the launch of his new book, Makers, published by Tor Books.
I have [...]

In the vault with Rob Chaplin: to listen to our conversation click this link.
I’ve known Rob Chaplin for a few years.  Ever since he walked into Sophia Books – back when I was buyer there for art books & graphic weirdness – and asked me to take a few copies of Ten Counting Cat into [...]

It’s a great time of year.  There’s a chill in the air, the days are getting a little shorter, pumpkins are appearing in the markets, flimsy costumes and cheap novelty noses are appearing in every aisle at the drugstore.
So let’s take a moment to celebrate this absurd time of year.
Above is a short clip from [...]

I only know about this great poem because I follow him, Ernesto Priego, on twitter.  Further evidence that twitter is not a vacuous hole of suburban non-sense (all the time).
Check out Ernesto’s blog, Never Neutral, for more poetic experiments involving technology, text and comix.

The visual poet is the person who sees text where others see [...]

I have always loved the work of Jeanette Winterson.  From the moment Sexing the Cherry jabbed me in the brain to when Art & Lies knocked the wind out of me on a flight from Montreal to Belfast to the sublime sexiness of Written on the Body.
Art Objects was like a holy book to me [...]

OMFG!  The greatest book trailer ever produced.  An absolutely brilliant sell job by the folks in marketing/publicity at Penguin USA.  Great cinematography, excellent editing, great music, great voice, great tone.  Whoever was in charge of making this happen just lapped the field, set the bar and shouldn’t be the one buying drinks until some time [...]

Green Apple Books in San Francisco has put together two great videos playing the physical book against the Amazon Kindle.
In case you’re wondering just how fundamentally flawed the Amazon Kindle is please check these videos for details.
Lots of posts on this blog advocate embracing new digital technologies and occasionally mock publishers for dragging their feet [...]

The mercurial Alexa Clark interviews Lisa Charters, SVP Digital @ Random House Canada, about respecting a customer’s “time and energy” and the usefulness of ‘book trailers’.
I have always been suspicious of book trailers.  I understand the concept: brief videos consumed online advertising a new book. Slick tantalizing digital productions for the printed word.  I can [...]

Ok, alright, I know.  I have been ridiculously remiss in my updates lately.  I promise that will be fixed in the next few days as I unload my ideas and experiences from BookCamp here.  In the meantime, let’s just take a trip back to simpler times with Annie Lennox.  This song comes about as close [...]

Mark Hosler speaks about writing the sampling license for Creative Commons and his views on Copyright and creative culture.  Mr Hosler believes that our current copyright laws are irreparably broken if not completely misguided or totally unnecessary.  Read the Negativland essay Two Relationships to a Cultural Public Domain.