The big dogs at Borders Group have developed a company network to get select books into the hands of their employees in order for them to recommend them to local shoppers. It’s the same idea you might see at a small, independent bookstore. You buy a couple things or shop there regularly, and the store owner says, “Hey, have you heard of On the Corner of Bitter and Sweet? It’s debut novel, like the kind you seem to enjoy, and I love it.” That’s called hand-selling. Publishers have given Borders credit for making the four previously selected hand-sellers into best-sellers.
Never Satisfied
From Dan Springer of Fox News: “For decades, environmental groups have talked about ‘big oil,’ painting the petroleum industry as greedy and destructive. Now similar language is being applied to renewables. Instead of eco-friendly green power, increasingly it’s ‘big wind’ and ‘big solar.’ . . . many local activists say we need to slow this rush to renewables or risk trading one power problem for another.”
No joke.
A Warning to Non-Fiction Writers
This could happen to you.
Don’t do as I say, or as I do
Being a Democrat means never having to say you’re sorry. But everybody else does.
Here’s a Townhall Blog post by Greg Hengler, with a video clip of Harry Reid explaining, among other things, that it would be awful of the Republicans to do the same things Democrats have been doing to them for many years, and plan to do again next time they’re out of power.
It’s perfect Leftist logic—If you act like me, you’re an awful person.
(By the way, this is an argument every victim of abuse is extremely familiar with, which is probably one reason why I react so strongly to it.) Continue reading Don’t do as I say, or as I do
Happy Birthday, Michael Palin
Today is the birthday of Monty Python’s Michael Palin, born in 1943. At some point after his birth, he said, “I am not a great cook, I am not a great artist, but I love art, and I love food, so I am the perfect traveller. . . . I always wanted to be an explorer, but – it seemed I was doomed to be nothing more than a very silly person.”
The Authentic Francis Schaeffer
Hunter Baker reviews a biography on Francis Schaeffer. He writes about Schaeffer:
The man who cared enough to tutor a little boy with Down Syndrome is also the man who told his church in St. Louis that he would resign if a black person ever came to his church and felt unwelcome. The budding intellectual who answered the existential questions of college students in Europe is also the agitator who took up the cause of the unborn and became arguably the finest shaper of and advocate for a potent evangelical critique of modern culture.
Happy Cinco de Mayo
Calling His Own Shots
Obit Magazine on Jack Kemp: “Kemp wasn’t one of a kind: The quirky and individualistic Barry Goldwater, for whom he volunteered in 1964, was his ideological forerunner. Ronald Reagan, in whose Sacramento office Kemp once worked when Reagan was California’s governor, shared his famous passion for supply-side economics: a stratagem for eternal American prosperity that involved a radical cut in taxes and – somehow or other – a government both flush with cash and raring to spend it. But Kemp was unusual in one special way: He never sacrificed any of his personal beliefs, however sound or loony, for either expediency or personal advancement.”
The article also says Kemp advocated returning to the gold standard. I wonder if that appeals to more people today with our current president’s attack on our economic stability.
The Warren Adler Short Story Contest
The Warren Adler contest is taking short stories now through July 13. This year’s theme is “Short Fiction in Varied Genres” and there’s a $15 admission fee.
How now, Dan Brown?
Patrick O’Hannigan, over at The Paragraph Farmer, discusses an interesting post from Language Log on the (apparently inexhaustible) topic of what a really lousy writer Dan Brown is.
It occurs to me to wonder—why would so many people want to buy and read books written so amateurishly? Granted, the average reader can’t explain the differences between good style and bad, but (within certain limits) every reader can tell a well-written book from a badly written one, because badly written books are—by definition—hard to read. That’s really the heart of good writing—putting down words that convey the author’s exact thoughts in the most efficient, evocative way. If Brown is as bad as they say (I’ve never read any of his books myself), I assume he must be rather heavy going. And yet millions of readers soldier on to the ends of his works. Continue reading How now, Dan Brown?