*Books Are Units

I read a book, Carnival Culture, years ago by James Twitchell concerning the state of our society.  Very funny, very astute.  It'll cost you possibly the best penny you ever spent on a book

http://www.amazon.com/Carnival-Culture-Trashing-Taste-America/dp/0231078315/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1325707279&sr=8-2

Twitchell had a quote from a speech by Oscar Dystel (yes, Jane Dystel the agent's father) the head of Bantam Books  where he had been talking about units for an hour and there was an asterisk and footnote which was "*Units are books."  Just so no one was confused by what this publisher at a speech about publishing was referring to.

(I gotta tell you how hard it was to find that in the book, digital really spoils you with the search function.)

These elitists talk a good story about how glorified and exalted their work is, but it's no such thing to them in reality.

"We sell books, other people sell shoes.  What's the difference?  Publishing isn't the highest art."--Michael Korda, (at the time) editor-in-chief, Simon & Schuster. 

So today we have blog posts concerning legacy publishing and how it's big business that's about "acquiring" "properties" and let's not think of books as "books".  And then I thought let's call them units because that's what you've been calling them for years.  Or we can just call them "reads".  Which I hate bigtime.

A little of these people goes a long, long way.  I wish this is the last post of the year where I mention tradpub.

Got my new Nikon 40mm lens.  Love it.  I took it out of the box, let it warm up and the condensation clear, and took this.  No preparation, no nothing.  This is a raw image, no tweaks of any kind.  That's a thing of beauty.  Now I can do my next cookbook.