Quick Hits
August 7, 2007
The Blow-Up 1
by Garth Risk Hallberg
Following the lead of powerhouses Bookforum and The New York Review, the interdisciplinary magazine BOMB appears to be in the middle of a major project to make a lot of its content available free, online. This should be a boon to highbrow bibliophiles. For years, BOMB‘s author interviews have offered deep perspective on the state [...]
August 5, 2007
Students Pay to Do Publishing Industry Grunt Work 6
by C. Max Magee
Recently perusing the course offerings for Temple University’s continuing education program here in Philadelphia, Season Evans uncovered what has to be one of the more unsavory market research strategies ever employed by the publishing companies. A course titled (and misspelled) “A Sneak Peak at Next Year’s Bestsellers,” is described as follows: Every fall publishers introduce [...]
August 1, 2007
Back on Track 1
by C. Max Magee
Following up on Monday’s post, as it turns out, that missing issue of the New Yorker turned up (bearing a paper jacket reminding me to renew and sporting a torn cover) a day after this week’s issue landed in the mailbox. So it appears as though I won’t be skipping an issue after all. Luckily [...]
July 30, 2007
Missing the New Yorker 6
by C. Max Magee
Last week, my New Yorker didn’t show up. This has happened a handful of times in the close to ten years I’ve been reading the magazine. Typically, wherever I’ve lived, my issue has landed in my mailbox between Tuesday and Thursday. If I haven’t gotten my issue by Thursday, I tense up a bit and [...]
July 24, 2007
Harry Potter’s Big Numbers Attract a Wide Spectrum of Retailers 3
by C. Max Magee
The numbers are huge, 8.2 million copies sold in 24 hours in the U.S., 2.65 million in the U.K., but Harry Potter isn’t necessarily a boon for book stores. The big chains, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and the like, discount the book sharply in order to compete with one another, and then they hope that [...]
July 20, 2007
Professor Trelawney Examines Her Tea Leaves 2
by Emily Colette Wilkinson
On the eve of the release of the final Harry Potter, I offer Millions readers a few brief intuitions – alas, grounded more in literary convention than in second sight – about the events to come in The Deathly Hallows. My chief intuition, based largely on the over-determined association of Dumbledore with the phoenix throughout [...]
