The Observer crashes Tao Lin’s graduate seminar on the short story, and gets pretty much what you’d expect: a discussion of George Saunders and casual prescription-drug use.
Despite how many books are being published these days, writers and publishers are often bad at promoting them, argues Impossible Mike at HTML Giant. But then, precisely because of the number of books coming out, most forms of advertising don’t seem to work: traditional promotion is often ignored, and social media is overrated. “I’m just wondering,” he writes, “what the hell is the best way to sustainably advertise books? Reading tours? Book trailers? Posting your shit on Tumblr? Linking your books to your friends and family?”
“You might wonder how a ten-year career becomes worthy of commemoration, and so would I. Yet no one openly questioned why we were attending a 'roast' of, rather than a reading by, Gary Shteyngart”: Michelle Dean reports from an event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
What’s the status of e-reading in China? Some statistics: According to the Atlantic’s Peter Osnos, “some 220 million people read electronic media. Of these, almost 120 million people use their mobile phone to read. And almost 25 million people only use their cellphones to read books."
An international streak of literary vandalism continues with the desecration of the Edgar Allen Poe House in Baltimore. Within the past month, vandals have graffitied the side of the building, and stolen the house’s wooden steps.
This week’s shameless linkbait: Flavorwire’s list of the New York’s “100 Most Important Living Writers.”
