Wanted: A book deal
If you're paying attention, you'll notice that a lot of popular Web sites have become popular books lately: PostSecret, Stuff White People Like, This is Why You're Fat ... the list is seemingly endless.
Which is why I LOVE this Web site devoted entirely to getting a book deal. (Dave won't let me print the actual name of the blog, since this is a family site. But it's SFW, no worries.)
Every post is a concept: Nontrending topics, Drunk or Southern?, Cute Animals Staying Awake; published in the ironic hope that maybe, just maybe, one idea will catch on, and a publisher will become giddy at the prospect of turning page views into customers.
While there are plenty of sites I enjoy, and would love to see made into a book, (HELLO XKCD!), I have to admit that this crowdsourcing version of publishing gets a bit silly after awhile. If you thought the reality-TV craze was getting out of hand, just you wait ...
Comments
But "popular" doesn't mean good. Web seems so much "gsarbagein/garbageout".
Let's call this a manifesto of sorts.
I am on a Rimbaud kick lately and I find Paul Schmidt's intro to A Season in Hell (underline) - instructive- the "n" word Rimbaud describes aspiring to be- his criticism of capitalism but succumbing to it in the end- the need for money-survival.
Jean Genet, Norman Mailer's "white negro"- and me? I'll join, thank you- I still question all adults- just like Holden Caulfield...to be in a society in which war and shallowness rule- where no one lifts their fat buttock off the chair to change conditions. R started out swimmingly- a brilliant start, then went under. A pity. Fellow visionary Wm Blake a much better model- integrity up to the end.
Me, I have remained a rebel to a degree- but I have also made myself comfortable.
But- my point? I find publishing to be, in the end, as political a process as anything else...very shallow, very un-helpful.
the great texts- the Q'uran, the Bible- look at how they came to be.
oo here comes the capcha- they sc sc sc sc are me.
Posted by: david eberhardt | January 13, 2010 11:20 AM
Some people are so greedy. My dream is to write a haiku whose movie rights sell for millions.
Posted by: Patrtick K. Lackey | January 14, 2010 2:52 PM