Archive for January 2010

Surely you understand by now why comments are a bad idea    (2010.01.12)

“[A] searing insight into the pathetic and disastrous state of our comment-obsessed culture”

What’s your publisher done for you lately?    (2010.01.12)

According to a tendentious, borderline dishonest Jonathan Galassi, tons. And now they own your book, essentially

A digital magazine is not quite a ‘Web site’    (2010.01.12)

But it will be expressed as some form of HTML. Still, there will be problems

1 ≠ I    (2010.01.11)

It’s great that Al Gore noticed a ranging-figure 1 was hard to read. It’s hard to read because of the fake bullshit rule that acronyms have to be typeset in small caps. (Now with update you won’t bother to read)

‘Stale Roles and Tight Buns’    (2010.01.08)

“What’s almost as pointless as a bottom with nine inches uncut? A novelist with nine inches uncut”

Ben Hammersley’s useful precedent    (2010.01.07)

Ben Hammersley and I agree: Marked-up documents are rare to nonexistent in the book and magazine world

Anatomy of a literary agent’s contract    (2010.01.07)

What the first draft of one literary agent’s contract looks like

Spoofs    (2010.01.06)

Will Ferguson: “Canadians are great at spoof; it’s what we specialize in, doing an affectionate, fake version of something familiar… There seemed to be confusion, among the reviewing class, who really should know better, a confusion between satire and spoof”