paper trail

Jun 25, 2012 @ 12:51:00 am

451: The next internet error code?

The New York Daily News has sent Alec Baldwin a gift basket full of anger-management books after he punched one of the newspaper's photographers in the face last week.

Error codes “404 Not Found” and “403 Forbidden” are familiar to all internet users, but websurfers may soon be encountering a new one in honor of recently deceased sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury. In a nod to Bradbury’s dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, software developer Tim Bray has proposed that the code "451" be designated to websites that are blocked due to government censorship.

The Rumpus’s Roxane Gay is tired of hearing editors ask where they can find writers of color. So she’s composing a cross-genre list of working writers who fit the bill.

Bret Easton Ellis fans with five grand a month to spend on rent are in luck: as of last weekend, the American Psycho author’s East Village loft is still on the market, and he seems desperate to get rid of it.

Fundraising for a book on Kickstarter is harder than it seems, according to newly released data. While 6,445 publishing projects have been listed on the site (and have raised a total of $10.37 million), only thirty-two percent of the projects have actually gotten funding. So which projects made the cut? Most recently, a book on Detroit’s lost landmarks, a thesis on Bruno Schulz, a feminist zine on “loving misogynist art,” and a glossy magazine about soccer are among those that have met and exceeded their financial requests.

In other Kickstarter book news, an aspiring author has launched a campaign requesting $4,000 to write a novel solely through a Facebook timeline.

At The Millions, Garth Risk Hallberg confesses to trying to read Sergio de la Pava’s long novel Naked Singularity. To figure out why he missed the book’s appeal the first time around, and how the self-published author developed his literary sensibility, Hallberg met up with de la Pava for a coffee.