- Covers: dedicated to the appreciation of book cover design. – Beautifully designed and executed site, as it should be. Will book covers become the next gatefold record sleeve?
- Chark Blog: The heist – A bit late on this one, but you may be amused by Macmillan CEO Richard Charkin’s prank on Google at the BEA. Interestingly, delicious tags are equally weighted between ‘funny’ and ‘stupid’ on this one…
- “Only the professional critics – Anthony Lane, Alex Ross, James Wood, AS Byatt, Claire Tomalin – know what they are talking about; bloggers are merely expressing an opinion.” – Wonderful Independent publisher and bookseller Persephone broadcasts disappointing opinion. I’d like to see how this is applied to critics who blog, or bloggers who get hired. The distinction is meaningless.
- The end of General Trade Publishing Houses – Excellent Idea Logical speech from the BEA. Read.
Stop Press for June 13th
June 14, 2007
How is it possible to claim that ‘professional’ critics know what they’re talking about, while bloggers are merely expressing an opinion? Do professional critics not also express an opinion? Do some bloggers not also know what they’re talking about?
Many bloggers who review online are experts in their own field. Many bloggers who review online also publish criticism and reviews in print copy. You can’t sell all the reviews you’d like to write, and sometimes a reviewer might want to take a more informal or discursive look at a book than would be possible under the constraint of limited column space in a newspaper or magazine. It’s also a useful way to keep working during a dry patch, to keep your name current.
It’s a non-argument, really. The internet is growing more powerful every day and those not yet on board are terrified of what these changes in reading patterns may mean for their jobs. That’s what all this ‘we’re better than bloggers’ nonsense is about.
Jane Holland
(poet, critic & obsessive blogger)
Comment by Jane Holland — June 21, 2007 @ 11:14 am