The publishing industry stopped having new ideas out of respect for the untimely death of Ernest Hemingway in 1961, and has been doing everything the same way ever since. Usually without adjusting for inflation. Thus, when a publishing house releases a book – a gala event that occurs only 3,567 times per house per day, straining the resources of each house’s four publicists (collectively comprising 6 percent of Sarah Lawrence College’s class of 2009) and two Commodore 64 computers – the strategy to propel that title to the top of the bestseller list is usually multi-pronged:

1) Send copies of the book to whatever newspapers still exist, along with a polite note asking them to start reviewing books again.

2) Encourage the author to capitalize on his social media network by hassling the shit out of nursery school friends of his parents on Facebook with constant, self-serving blather.

Continue Reading...