Counterbalance

Reader-Writer Moment #487

I read Zero History many books ago now, but I can't stop thinking about it. Even after reading Freedom...but that's another post that still sits, unfinished, in my queue, awaiting further clarity, further research, further backing up of my claims that William Gibson has blown my mind. More, anon. (And less gross misuse of commas.)

There's so much to say about Zero History and some of it is big and lofty and bold and won't touch on the little gems littering this fantastic novel. Here are *almost* more quotes from the book than I should really include, but they'll give you a peek into all that awaits you should you decide to take up Zero History. Even as I type them, I'm reminded of the moment I first read each one. If ever there was a collection of reader-writer moments, of passages a reader reads and immediately thinks "This writer gets me, makes me smile, is divine, I love him" these passages (among many others I'm forcing myself not to include) are it for me:

"Pearlescent silver, this one. Glyphed in Prussian blue, advertising something German, banking services or business software; a smoother simulacrum of its black ancestors, its faux-leather upholstery a shade of orthopedic fawn."

                                     &

"'Call him,' he repeated, wrapped in Japanese herringbone Gore-Tex, multiply flapped and counterintuitively buckled."

                                     &

"Everything about his personal presentation was intended to convey an effortless concision, but nothing quite did."

                                     &

"The Neo rang while he was still trying to grasp Twitter."

                                     &

"There were a few expensively bound and weirdly neutered magazines here, rearranged daily by the housekeepers, but he knew from glancing through them that these were bland advertisements for being wealthy, wealthy and deeply, witheringly unimaginative."

                                     &

"Reading, his therapist suggested, had likely been his first drug."

                                     &

"When you want to know how things really work, study them when they're coming apart."

On their own, these aren't quotable passages (ok, maybe a few) that many will highlight. Yet, together, they begin to hint at the language and insight and coolness and precision with which Gibson tackles his subject in this book. I think it's swoon-worthy. 

A More Measured Look at eBooks?

USA Today has just published a piece about eBook adoption and eBook sales and offers a more measured approach than, say, Negroponte who proclaimed yesterday that printed books would be obsolete in five years.

While this piece doesn't hit every note, it certainly attempts to and offers both sides of the eBook argument for both publishers and consumers. Two sections of note:

"An estimated 4 million U.S. homes have an e-book reader such as Amazon's Kindle or Barnes & Noble's Nook, according to Forrester Research, which predicts sales of more than 29 million devices by 2015.

In a Harris poll conducted in August, 8% say they have an e-reader; 12% are likely to buy one in the next six months. But 80% say they're not likely to do so.

Those results "ratify that using devices for something (reading) that doesn't require a device at all, and has worked perfectly well for centuries, may not be of obvious appeal to the bulk of readers," says Michael Cader, founder of Publishers Lunch, a digital newsletter.

Michael Norris, an analyst with Simba Information, a market research firm, also questions if a tipping point has been reached.

He sees "gradual, uninterrupted growth in e-books, but tipping point implies there will be something overnight which will instantly change the character of the publishing business. Thousands of new consumers are showing up in the e-book 'yes' column every day, but on the other hand, there are still over 120 million people who buy print books."

Fair enough.

"Grove/Atlantic's Morgan Entrekin says that "the change will not happen as fast as it has happened in the music business or even in the newspaper and magazine world." He sees a substantial market for physical books for at least another 20 to 30 years, "but eventually, 30, 40 or 50 years from now, e-books will be the predominant form."

A more measured approach than Negroponte's? Or just as extreme but on the opposite end of the spectrum?

Graphic Novels FTW

 Image from David Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp 

Fresh off Asterios Polyp day, I noted a few interesting pieces about graphic novels:

• Teaching the Graphic Novel - For all the bellyaching about fiction MFA programs and the question many love to ask again and again ("Can writing be taught?"), I found it interesting to think more specifically about how/if writing a graphic novel can be taught. In this great post, Alexander Chee talks about his graphic novel course at Amherst.
• Ink Plots: The Tradition of the Graphic Novel - Publisher's Weekly XYZ blog pointed me to this exhibit that celebrates the work coming out of Manhattan's School of Visual Arts. A quick scan of current and past faculty for the program demonstrates the depth of learning possible: Sal Amendola, R. O. Blechman, Sue Coe, Will Eisner, Tom Gill, Edward Gorey, Burne Hogarth, Klaus Janson, Frances Jetter, Ben Katchor, Peter Kuper, Harvey Kurtzman, Keith Mayerson, David Mazzucchelli, Jerry Moriarty, Mark Newgarden, Gary Panter, Jerry Robinson, David Sandlin, Walter Simonson and Art Spiegelman. Should be a fantastic exhibit if you're in NYC, definitely try to see this.
• Lit Graphic: The World of the Graphic Novel - A piece last week in The Morning Call pointed me to the Lit Graphic exhibit at the James A. Michener Art Museum that celebrates - you guessed it - the graphic novel.

All this graphic novel coverage got me thinking about the online search volume surrounding graphic novels - has it really increased or am I just noticing the coverage more? 

Asterios Polyp Day is...Today

I was scrolling through TweetDeck on my phone last night when I saw a wildly enthusiastic tweet from Jenn Northington, Events Manager for Word in Brooklyn. It was about a book I love and a little dialogue ensued:

 

I read Aseterios Polyp earlier this year as part of a crazy jag of graphic novel reading for the LA Times Book Prizes. Here's what I had to say about it then (please excuse the use of the royal "we" in the passage, it's an LAist thing):

"So - to the point: we're trying not to get band wagon-y here, but have you seen Asterios Polyp? It's insanely fantastic. It's gorgeous and the story of Polyp, celebrated architect re-examining his life and the many twists and turns that brought him to his present state, is enthralling. It is also dense. This is a big novel of big ideas and once we finished it, we wandered around in a fugue for days. It took Mazzucchelli ten years to write this and that's how it feels. Asterios Polyp has been hailed as a book that will redefine the future of the graphic novel and it may well do that. For this massive attempt alone, it is oh so worthy of the LA Times Book Prize."

So, yeah, I think it's pretty fantastic. The LA Times thought so too, because Asterios Polyp won the first-ever LA Times Book Award for Graphic Novels. And I think it's clear from the @Storify tweet-stream above that today is, in fact, Asterios Polyp day. Celebrate accordingly.

Some ways you might celebrate accordingly include: racing out to your nearest independent bookstore to buy a copy or several, tweeting/blogging about your love for the book, or simply picking the book up again to marvel at how incredible it is and say a little thank you to David Mazzucchelli for creating such a masterpiece and to Pantheon for publishing this work.

Allen Ginsberg's Howl & eBook Formatting Nonsense (or, HTML is Hard)

I am agog. I am aghast. (Yes, I listened to the Les Misérables soundtrack a bit too much growing up. Another post for another day.)

When I first read that Allen Ginsberg's Collected Poems would soon be available as an eBook, I immediately worried about formatting. It's not a secret that various digital book formats have had typos, spelling errors and odd pagination issues. But an entire collection that includes Howl? A classic poem that at its very core relies upon line breaks? I worried. Yet another part of me thought, well good on them. Surely no one would deign to digitally publish Howl without being sure that formatting was properly sorted.

Hah.

Yesterday brought news that all my format fretting was not in vain, as Howl looks like hell on Kindle.

I tweeted my frustration. Others did too. What does this say for eBooks if we can't get basic things like formatting right? Why create such hullabaloo around this digital release if you hadn't properly checked formatting on every device? Why is it that publishing sits so far outside the norms of what is required to launch something digital? 

I've spent my entire career working at digital agencies. I have war stories about site launches that would make you weep. At any digital agency responsible for launching digital stuff there is Q&A. Tons of it. On multiple platforms. In multiple browsers. We have entire teams devoted to it. We don't launch with errors or people get fired. We don't launch with errors or clients lose sales. We don't launch with errors that anger our clients' customers. They look bad, we look bad. The customers get mad. It's triple bad. So we have systems in place to prevent these errors. If there are too many errors and we're nearing launch date? Guess what? We work all night for weeks on end to fix it or we move the launch date. We don't just ship and cross our fingers. 

But I was getting worked up and yesterday was long. Eventually, my frustration subsided after several long Twitter sessions and I focused on other important things. Like launching sites without errors. And reading James Salter's Dusk and Other Stories which cracked me wide open with its devastatingly clean stories full of ache.

This morning brought news that the reason Howl looks like hell on Kindle is because HTML is hard. See paragraph above. We don't just ship and cross our fingers. And we sure as hell don't say that there were mistakes because building websites is hard. Why? Because we should not be in the business of building websites (or launching digital books) if we don't know what we're doing. Period.

So why is publishing, now playing the digital game, somehow outside these basic digital launch tenets? Surely they have folks who build their websites. Agencies who launch every author site, hound litbloggers to write about the latest book touted in their ePressReleases, build and code their next viral book trailer. So why can't these same teams help Howl out?

What am I missing? Is there some cosmically difficult step in turning a digital file into an eBook that renders basic HTML code unreadable? Who is advising these publishers on fixing this problem? Today's revelation that HTML is hard and that there are no resources to help out is laughable. Quality HTML coding skills are among the cheapest and most plentiful to find. So why is this so difficult? 

What. Am. I. Missing?

Update: I was recently directed to this insightful piece on eReader incompetence - it adds a much-needed additional layer to the discussion as it touches on formatting issues of digital magazines and iPad apps for those magazines. The piece also states quite plainly what we've been discussing in the comments: "If most ereading software doesn't offer a better experience than simple HTML and CSS, why are so many publishers reinventing the wheel?" Indeed. Definitely worth a read, especially as we wrestle with eBook formatting that finds HTML and CSS to be a challenge.

Slacking with Slake

I have secured a copy of Slake. I know, should have done it long ago.

I haven't read it yet (James Salter is commanding my full attention, as is the natural order of things) but I've thumbed through it several times since I picked it up from Vroman's on Friday.

It's pricey.

It's glossy.

It smells good & has pretty pictures.

For you eBook haters, these things should make you dance a jig. As for the writing, as soon as I manage to peel myself away from Salter, I'll let you know my thoughts.

Have you read Slake yet? What do you think? Would love to get your take.