Guess what word doesn't appear in this post

This prompts a question: Why are there no Twain impersonators on Twitter? You'd think the people who have done such a great job with Dickens, Johnson, and Poe would have a field day with Mark Twain:

"Scott recently sat in his backyard drinking iced tea. The sun was setting. His three dogs ran underfoot. He said he wasn't interested in changing his act, in spitting out 100-year-old Twain quotes. He wanted to capture Twain's sensibility about modern events." (via)

It's not just Forks:

"These days, on Fridays and Sundays, the guides offer a 'New Moon' tour, which includes a bloody finale in a jail, with its own prize-winning troupe of inmate actors. As Boelen explains: 'Our visitors want vampires, but we give them Volterra. That's our trick. We show them our Roman amphitheater, the Etruscan graves and the Renaissance palace -- and maybe something out of all of that will stay with them.'" (via)

Away from the intersection of books and hard-nosed commerce:

"The independent bookseller in an apron tends to see the books he or she sells, and the other independent, underpaid, modestly accomplished and unaccountably enthusiastic, possibly even prideful souls who sell books, as all of a piece with culture and the like...we tend to feel even the potential loss of another independent bookstore as another gap in the barricade."

Sometimes it's necessary to say the basic stuff plainly - as Brian does: "

Publishing didn’t always look like this, and it’s okay that it [will] look different in the future."

But there are times when metaphor works:

"The perennials need pruning and the annuals need pulling up and discarding so you can plant a new crop every year. Just like most books, they only last a season or so. A lot more books are annuals than they are perennials. Many, of course, are simply weeds."

Makes sense, as long as the "analyzed" step doesn't disappear:

"If someone today had the Pentagon Papers, or the modern equivalent, would he still go to the press, as Daniel Ellsberg did nearly 40 years ago and wait for the documents to be analyzed and published?...Mr. Ellsberg knows his answer. 'As of today, I wouldn't have waited that long,' he said in an interview last week. 'I would have gotten a scanner and put them on the Internet.'"

I'm not a big fan of mission statements,  but this one I can go for:

"At its best, I believe publishing is a community service – not a non-profit one, either – and our job is to represent ideas we believe in, and to connect great writers to readers."

The word that's not here? S-A-V-E. And its conjugations, declensions, and variations. I've reached a quota of "what will save publishing and related industries?" stories, and I'm declaring a moratorium on the verb -- in that context -- as far as my authority extends. (Yeah, I know. A few pixels, at most. Work with me here.)

I have no problem with analyzing the industry's possible futures, or trying to figure out how to shape that change to the advantage of the largest number of players. But there's a difference between "what will publishing look like in a decade?" and "how can we save publishing?," and it's the sense of agency. You know how Microsoft Word's grammar check chides you for using passive voice? Same kind of thing.

Posted at 10:14AM Apr 26, 2010 by Sarah Rettger in General  |