Tao Lin is the next big thing in urban hipster lit. At least, so say the people that read his books on the subway. “That guy is the next big thing,” announced one last fall to a stranger eyeing his book. “People just don’t know it yet.”

The book he showed off was “Shoplifting From American Apparel,” the novella by 26-year-old Brooklyn, N.Y., author Tao Lin. Of course this exchange happened on the L train, which moves through the heart of hipster Brooklyn, and of course the guy was wearing Converse Chucks, skinny jeans and a tight flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He looked about 27.

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What fame Lin has already achieved is a testament to his ability to master viral and unconventional publicity techniques. In July 2008, Lin sold six shares of “Richard Yates” online. The winning bidders gave him $2,000 each in exchange for 10 percent of the domestic profits that come from “Yates.” As he says with a laugh, “If it doesn’t make very much, that’s their loss.” Inevitably, Stephen Elliott’s Lin-adoring online outlet the Rumpus named “Richard Yates” the August selection for its newly launched book club, four months before the book’s publication. James Frey has endorsed “Yates,” and the New York Observer recently published a profile of Lin written in his own distinctive style.

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From Times Higher Education…

“Do you read a book a week?” a student asked me one day in class, a note of sarcasm colouring his frustration with the course’s reading load.

“No,” I said, after a suitable pause. “I don’t read a book a week. I read four or five books a week.”

Usually I would not have responded at all, but I felt that the other students deserved to hear my answer because implicit in his question was a dismissal of the importance of books - not just in my life, but also in the lives of many of his peers.

My teaching career was far advanced before it occurred to me that reading - deep reading - might need any defence. I have always looked upon interacting with the written word as a natural and indispensable part of life that, like breathing, requires no justification. Yet all too often I encounter students who cannot name the last book they read for pleasure; neither, for that matter, can many adults, and I am frequently struck by how many otherwise handsomely appointed homes have no books in sight.

This decline in the frequency and breadth of reading among the general population stems, at least in part, from the dramatic shift in priorities and lifestyles that has occurred since the close of the 19th century, a shift driven by the engines of commerce and technology. The causes are complex, but a few factors seem painfully clear to me. More…

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The Digital Sphere: Opportunity for Growth or Existential Threat?

The 2010 Book Conference, held at the University of St. Gallen, 6-8 November will feature a special publishing panel.

About the panel:
Digital technologies are not mere tools applied to stable phenomena. Instead, they are essential factors in the creation of a new space — the digital sphere. Although the digital sphere shares many characteristics with traditional productive and social realms, it also introduces mechanisms and possibilities that make it profoundly distinct.

The digital sphere provides novel opportunities and challenges to the publishing industry, raising key questions about the ways in which publishing and related sectors might be accommodated. The panel serves as a forum for the examination of these possibilities through a consideration of key questions, such as:

• Is the book publishing industry in better shape than the music industry, and therefore better equipped to cope with digital downloading?
• What does social media mean for book publishing?
• Is the ‘long tail’ approach to sales and distribution just fashionable hype, or can it lead to increased profits? If yes, for whom?
• Is downloading of greater interest to publishers than Print on Demand?
• How big of a problem is piracy? Is it an inevitable fact of life or a profound threat?
• And, more generally, what is the publisher’s role in the digital sphere? What is the key to success in this realm?

Comprised of professionals from the publishing industry, the panel will include:

• Eric Merkell-Sobota, Springer Science+Business Media
• Jochen Gutbrod, Holtzbrink Group
• Tom Hall, Lonely Planet
• Lucy Küng, Media Management and Transformation Centre, University of Jönköping (Panel Moderator)

Click here for more information on this featured publishing panel, or here for more information on the 2010 Book Conference.

(Image: Anthony Mattox)

From Edward Nawotka at Publishing Perspectives…

The “freemium” publishing model, advocated by proponents such as author Chris Anderson and that has been popular with computer software, is now making in-roads into academic textbook publishing. Case in point: Flat World Knowledge –- the three-year-old textbook publishing company that offers students the ability to read their books online for free, while selling them a variety of alternative formats and add-ons, including POD editions, e-books (in epub, .mobi and PDF formats), audiobooks, and study aids, such as interactive quizzes and flashcards.

Launched in 2007, the company has since published a total of 24 textbooks; with the first, Launch! Advertising and Promotion in Real Time by Mike Solomon, going live online in March 2009. At present, some 1,300 professors at 800 different colleges in the United States (a majority are community colleges), and some 50 throughout Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, have adopted the books.

In all, some 140,000 students are expected to be using Flat World textbooks in the coming semester, with more than half of those expected to buy add-ons. More…

Refereeing of submitted papers will commence shortly so start the submission process early by submitting your proposal.

Paper submission guidelines and timelines are available online.

Common Ground is setting new standards of rigorous academic knowledge creation and scholarly publication.

Unlike other publishers, we’re not interested in the size of potential markets or competition from other books. We’re only interested in the intellectual quality of the work.

If your book is a brilliant contribution to a specialist area of knowledge that only serves a small intellectual community, we still want to publish it. If it is expansive and has a broad appeal, we want to publish it too, but only if it is of the highest intellectual quality.

In recognition of the important role of referees, the international advisory board acknowledges all referees who have reviewed papers as an ‘Associate Editor’ in the volume of the journal they have contributed to.

If you would like to referee papers submitted to The International Journal of the Book, please email journals@booksandpublishing.com, with your professional details, areas of expertise and contact details. If we feel you are qualified and we require refereeing for papers within your expertise, we will contact you.

From Patrick Kingsley at The Guardian…

If you’re reading this article in print, chances are you’ll only get through half of what I’ve written. And if you’re reading this online, you might not even finish a fifth. At least, those are the two verdicts from a pair of recent research projects – respectively, the Poynter Institute’s Eyetrack survey, and analysis by Jakob Nielsen – which both suggest that many of us no longer have the concentration to read articles through to their conclusion.

The problem doesn’t just stop there: academics report that we are becoming less attentive book-readers, too. Bath Spa University lecturer Greg Garrard recently revealed that he has had to shorten his students’ reading list, while Keith Thomas, an Oxford historian, has written that he is bemused by junior colleagues who analyse sources with a search engine, instead of reading them in their entirety.

So are we getting stupider? Is that what this is about? Sort of. According to The Shallows, a new book by technology sage Nicholas Carr, our hyperactive online habits are damaging the mental faculties we need to process and understand lengthy textual information. More…

It weighs in at more than 130 pounds, but the authoritative guide to the English language, the Oxford English Dictionary, may eventually slim down to nothing. Oxford University Press, the publisher, said Sunday so many people prefer to look up words using its online product that it’s uncertain whether the 126-year-old dictionary’s next edition will be printed on paper at all.

The digital version of the Oxford English Dictionary now gets 2 million hits a month from subscribers, who pay $295 a year for the service in the U.S. In contrast, the current printed edition - a 20-volume, 750-pound ($1,165) set published in 1989 - has sold about 30,000 sets in total.

For more…

An interview with principal reviser Russell David Harper

From The Subversive Copy Editor…

Russell David Harper is the only person on the planet with all of the following qualifications: He has worked as a manuscript editor for the University of Chicago Press for more than a dozen years, and he contributed to the fifteenth edition of The Chicago Manual of Style. For nearly three years, he kept a finger on the pulse of CMOS readers by serving as editor of the online Q&A. He is a technology wonk (I’m sorry, Russell, but I looked it up to make sure, and you are a wonk), with experience in typesetting, proofreading, and printing. And for good measure, he’s a polymath, a published author, and a kind and generous and funny person whose patience and reliability under pressure are legendary.

Because of his unmatched experience in Chicago practices and his techie leanings, Russell was decided to be a perfect choice to serve as principal reviser for the sixteenth edition of The Chicago Manual of Style. As principal reviser, he was responsible for drafting a detailed outline and summary of the new edition and, in cooperation with the Manuscript Editing Department at the University of Chicago Press and the CMOS Board of Advisors, for writing the manuscript itself and serving as its nominal author through all the stages of publication. For the interview…