Forward Motion
Jul. 15th, 2006 09:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zalenaBrother called late last night to let me know everything was okay and that it was good dad had come because his alternator is busted and dad could tell him how to fix it.
vyrin came by late and we went for a midnight walk by the river, listened to the ducks snore, and watched an enormous, orange, moon listing over the lake. He is well, though his life is accelerating and I'm not sure any of us are prepared for it.
I've been living so quietly this past year, it's difficult to talk about what HAS been happening, a subtle shift in perspective is what's most important, and I'm finally starting to feel (after the disaster Xmas 2004, and last September's disappointments) that I'm ready to move into forward motion again. I'm needing to do some serious thinking about bread and butter. I've been floating, and devoting most of my resources towards therapy, an experience I'm still not sure I have words to describe.
I finished Fall of Hyperion yesterday, and I liked the ending, but I did not like the experience of reading all of it. The concept and format of Hyperion was more elegant than that of Fall and I think the whole thing could have been a lot shorter. Publishers like long books so they can jack the price. And sf has a long standing tradition of "world building," which is to say that people read more for the environment than the plot. It drives me crazy.
I especially hate how non-fiction books have about 90 pages of good idea and about 150 pages of filler. Recently, I've decided that publishers should go ahead and publish shorter, stand alone, works. People don't have that much time to read, shorter works might encourage them to read more.
We've seen this model in children's books where the trend is towards shorter, hardbound, books. You can charge slightly more than for a paperback, but because of the small trim size and short length, slightly less than for an ordinary hardbound book. The books are nicely packaged to make people want them, and here's the kicker, *they are never available in paperback* which means that people will actually spend a little bit extra for the hardbound editions.
This week at the Boulder bookstore I was shocked to see a separate section exclusively for Penguin Classics. (Penguin has done a great job with branding.) Within the Penguin Classics are the new editions of classic essays, sold separately within beautifully designed little editions. THAT'S what I'm talking about, but with more books. The advantage to this is it also makes books more compatible with electronic forms of reading.
Anyway, that's what I've been thinking about lately. It's 9:30 and already 84 degrees. It's going to be another scorcher today.
vyrin came by late and we went for a midnight walk by the river, listened to the ducks snore, and watched an enormous, orange, moon listing over the lake. He is well, though his life is accelerating and I'm not sure any of us are prepared for it.I've been living so quietly this past year, it's difficult to talk about what HAS been happening, a subtle shift in perspective is what's most important, and I'm finally starting to feel (after the disaster Xmas 2004, and last September's disappointments) that I'm ready to move into forward motion again. I'm needing to do some serious thinking about bread and butter. I've been floating, and devoting most of my resources towards therapy, an experience I'm still not sure I have words to describe.
I finished Fall of Hyperion yesterday, and I liked the ending, but I did not like the experience of reading all of it. The concept and format of Hyperion was more elegant than that of Fall and I think the whole thing could have been a lot shorter. Publishers like long books so they can jack the price. And sf has a long standing tradition of "world building," which is to say that people read more for the environment than the plot. It drives me crazy.
I especially hate how non-fiction books have about 90 pages of good idea and about 150 pages of filler. Recently, I've decided that publishers should go ahead and publish shorter, stand alone, works. People don't have that much time to read, shorter works might encourage them to read more.
We've seen this model in children's books where the trend is towards shorter, hardbound, books. You can charge slightly more than for a paperback, but because of the small trim size and short length, slightly less than for an ordinary hardbound book. The books are nicely packaged to make people want them, and here's the kicker, *they are never available in paperback* which means that people will actually spend a little bit extra for the hardbound editions.
This week at the Boulder bookstore I was shocked to see a separate section exclusively for Penguin Classics. (Penguin has done a great job with branding.) Within the Penguin Classics are the new editions of classic essays, sold separately within beautifully designed little editions. THAT'S what I'm talking about, but with more books. The advantage to this is it also makes books more compatible with electronic forms of reading.
Anyway, that's what I've been thinking about lately. It's 9:30 and already 84 degrees. It's going to be another scorcher today.
