There’s a lot to look forward to on the LA Review of Books relaunched site, which will go live in about a week; we’re especially looking forward to reading Grace Krilanovich on cult filmmaker Kenneth Anger; Thomas Sayers Ellis on poverty, photography, and poetry; Hua Hsu on office chairs; and Robert Polito nominating “three poems that would make great movies.”
Two years ago there was an outcry when it was revealed that The Anthology of Rap contained more than a few transcription errors. However, connoisseurs of the forthcoming Snoop Dog book, Rolling Words, need not get excised if they discover an error or two—they can simply tear out the offending page and use it to smoke their misgivings away.
Amazon may be the pariah of the publishing world, but it’s been busy working behind the scenes to make friends. The Los Angeles Review of Books, One Story, Poets & Writers, and Kenyon Review are three of the journals that receive financial support from the online giant, and PEN and the Brooklyn Book Festival are also beneficiaries. These small grants are estimated to cost Amazon around $1 million a year, though the company won’t openly discuss the program. “It’s the bully on the playground handing you a lollipop,” Goosebottom Books publisher Shirin Yim Bridges told Salon. “I mean, what do you do?”
Online magazine publishing service Zeen is nearing completion. The company, which is the brainchild of two YouTube co-founders, lets users “create and discover” their own internet zines.
Stephen King’s real name was Richard Bachmann, Pablo Neruda’s was Ricardo Neftalí Reyes Basoalto. Flavorwire investigates the reasons why writers change their names.
Coffee-houses have played a major role in literary culture over the past century, but is the new generation of cofficeurs (that is, people who use coffee-houses as their offices) doing the tradition a disservice? “Writing in public feels like a performance, but, when we’re dealing with literature, the performance is not what endures,” Matt Lombardi gripes at The Millions. “To put it another way: the final outcome is the performance. I can’t help but assume when I see the coffice-bound writer as one who privileges persona over results.”
Nothing disappears on the internet, which is why it’s troubling that so few news outlets have policies on removing or altering content. Of over one hundred publishers polled, less than half had a stance on “unpublishing,” though requests to remove names and articles are becoming increasingly common.