If their books were any good at all
May 23, 2006 | Comments Off
Firedoglake counters the enthusiastic coverage of BookExpo with a report from an independent political publisher who formerly worked as a staff writer for Variety and producer for NPR’s On the Media.
Book Expo … is primarily a ridiculous display of fawning and ass-kissing, a giant corporate junket courtesy of the massive marketing budgets at the Big Houses. It’s the yearly gathering where corporate newspaper and magazine reporters wander through thousands of booths, like so many rock stars, saying and writing glowing items about their corporate-publisher-siblings’ books. This process is facilitated by perky and usually blond publicists. Independent publishers are meant to pay the pricey admission just to watch, to stand on the sidelines and not get too familiar with the reporters and reviewers, because really, darling… if their books were any good at all, the Big Houses would have inked those deals.
The writer, Jennifer Nix, works to find bloggers whose ideas could be transformed into books. She’s behind Glenn Greenwald’s #1 Amazon seller — still solidly in the top 100 — How Would a Patriot Act?. (Thanks, GMB.)
Category: Politics