On Tuesday, Atria, an imprint of Simon and Schuster, will publish its first ‘smart book’ — that is, a book equipped with a smart chip attached to its cover, so that if a bookstore patron taps the book’s RFID-enabled sticker with an NFC-enabled smartphone, the phone will bring up a website with additional information to convince you to buy it. Appropriately, the pioneering book is The Impulse Economy: Understanding Mobile Shoppers and What Makes Them Buy, by Gary Schwartz. As Carolyn Kellogg at Jacket Copy points out, this technology would be much more interesting if the chip lead to content that would enhance the reading of the book, as opposed to simply bringing up marketing content that loses its purpose as soon as the book is purchased. We’re imagining a future book filled with stickers to tap on the inside to bring up extra content as you read, which is something we’d definitely be interested in. Until then, we’ll pass.
[via Jacket Copy]
According to the Telegraph UK, Roald Dahl publisher Puffin has struck a deal with UK supermarket chain Asda to place excerpts from Dahl classics on the backs of ten million boxes of cereal sold in their stores. Over the next few weeks, Asda will replace the games and advertisements on the backs of all of their own store-brand cereals with 200-odd word excerpts and illustrations from Dahl classics The Witches; The Twits, The BFG; Danny, the Champion of the World and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Francesca Dow, the managing editor of Penguin’s children’s books, including the Puffin imprint, explains, ”The great thing about a cereal box, is that it potentially is reaching millions of households that just don’t read any literature outside of school…There could be an enormous number of children discovering Roald Dahl for the first time, bleary eyed over the breakfast table.” Sounds like heaven to us. What do you think? Would you (or your kids) like the BFG with your morning Cheerios?
Some of our most cherished childhood memories involve YA novels, from the wholesome Baby-Sitters Club to the trashy Sweet Valley High to Lurlene McDaniel’s oddly alluring books about teenagers with terminal illnesses. But back in our day, young-adult books weren’t written by reality-TV celebrities like Lauren Conrad. And while we realize that many YA authors are still primarily authors, we find ourselves overwhelmed by the recent spate of random celebrities, from politicians to musicians to talk-show hosts, penning books for tween audiences.
After the jump, we wade through the hordes of famous people who have remade themselves as young-adult authors. Use the comments to let us know whether you’re for or against this bizarre trend.
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The co-editors of This Recording — an irreverent online culture publication that analyzes ’90s movies, male archetypes and dead writers with a wry grin — posted a laundry list of their print influences today, and boy is it revealing. Yes, it reiterates that the writers are super-smart and sure, everyone loves Sassy, but it got us thinking: can we say that print magazines on the market today are making the same imprint? “Print is dead” has become the inevitable refrain with news of magazine closings and budget cutbacks at major publishing houses, but perhaps it’s time to adjust the paradigm. And by that I mean: look past the Cosmopolitans and O Magazines of the world and take a trip down the independent publishing aisle at the local newsstand.
We’ve compiled a list of some solid print picks, old and new, large and small, to keep you occupied — at least until next month’s issues arrive.
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You’ve done it! You’ve taken that shoddy rancher with a responsibly small footprint and updated it with double-paned windows, LEED-certified cladding, a sod roof that recycles water runoff, and a tasteful smattering of Eames chairs and DWR Tools for Living. Next stop: page 64-67 of Dwell! But sometimes being profiled in the leading eco-friendly shelter porn publication* (printed on recycled paper with soy-based ink) isn’t enough to cure the homeowner blues. Some of these people look straight up depressed. Others, well, maybe we’re just projecting. That’s where Unhappy Hipsters comes in. Taking unintentionally hilarious images from back issues of Dwell and adding pithy commentary turns the mag’s tagline from “At Home in the Modern World” to “In Hell in the Modern World.” See for yourself after the jump, plus a fill-in-the-caption contest.
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Lorrie Moore is a writer’s writer. Though fellow author Jonathan Lethem attested in this week’s New York Times Book Review that he only knows one (“one”) reader who dislikes Lorrie Moore, we’ve recently discovered a good number of people — highly-educated urbanites all — who are unfamiliar with Moore’s work in its entirety. Judging from the maelstrom of press anticipation for Moore’s latest release, A Gate at the Stairs
, we feel compelled to address precisely what makes Moore so worthy of the “great author” banner held aloft over Pynchon and other, customarily male, writers of her generation. Read More »
Hot off the presses at the Edinburgh Book Fair today comes the debut of a short story anthology collecting work by literary heavyweights to fete the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Freedom includes a foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and presents a provocative mix of fiction and poetry examining how we live free. We’re a bit partial to Article 27 (“Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits”); get the scoop after the jump. Read More »
You’ve heard the buzz: three novels by age 25, raised in the warm embrace of old-school New York media, toast of the Harvard crowd, handsome, mannered, well-traveled. What you may not know is that Nick McDonell, author of campus novel-cum-spy thriller An Expensive Education, has the work ethic to back up his admittedly blessed existence. After stints reporting from Iraq, Sudan, and Mongolia for the likes of TIME and Harper’s, McDonell is back in New York planning his next adventure and witnessing the film adaptation of an old one (Twelve, the book he wrote at age 17, is being directed by Joel Schumacher and stars a rapper, a Gossip Guy, and Pretty Woman‘s niece). Our interview after the jump. Read More »
Keeping up with the Jobses is a struggle for the publishing industry, this we know. This fall, three new releases coming to a bookstore near you are sounding a battle cry for the antiquarian hardcover book. The twist? Their cover designs are imprinted directly on the board binding the book, meaning no fussy dust jacket and heightened tactile pleasure. (Tactile not currently available in the iPhone apps store.) Read More »
Launched in early June, Electric Literature is a bi-monthly short story anthology already making ripples in the industry for its unique approach to publishing, both in production and compensation. The journal is available in numerous platforms; whether your cup of tea is the Kindle, an iPhone, Amazon, or a bricks-and-mortar independent bookstore, Electric Literature is cheap and accessible. Each issue contains five stories; for each contribution, the author is paid $1000. (Shocking, we know. How do they do that? Read on, friends…) Read More »
