A group of bloggers—estimated to be more than 9,000—has filed a class-action lawsuit against the Huffington Post and AOL, seeking payment for past contributions to the site. Jonathan Tasini, the lead plaintiff and a former HuffPo blogger, says that he will make Huffington “a pariah in the progressive community.”
Amazon has announced a new Kindle deal: A model that’s only $114, but includes advertisements along with literature. An intrusion, no doubt, but not a new one—as Paul Collins writes, there has been a long history of ads in books.
Today is Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Rae Armantrout’s birthday; we suggest ditching your normal duties and spending the day with her multivalent and profound collection Versed.
Peter Osnos remembers the heady days of publishing books in the era before the Internet: “Independent bookstores—according to [an] estimate, there were about 3,500 full-service booksellers, which is twice the number there are today—played a major role, since they had the ability, when enthusiastic, to turn first novels into bestsellers.”
It is not too late to get tickets for BOMB magazine’s 29th annual Gala and Auction, held in late April, and honoring Cecily Brown, Nicolai Ouroussoff, Gabriel Orozco, and Nancy Spector.
