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From Stephen Elliott
What is particularly crucial to understand is that books were not dragged kicking and screaming into each new area of capitalism. Books not only are part and parcel of consumer capitalism, they virtually began it.
In an essay for the Virginia Quarterly Review, former head of Soft Skull Press Richard Nash explores the business of literature with an almost alarming degree of thoroughness.
...moreMatt Runkle interviews Richard Nash for the Boston Review, who ran Soft Skull Press for eight years. Now he’s heading two other publishing ventures, Cursor (an online literary community where writers can post/discuss manuscripts) and their first imprint, Red Lemonade.
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This week in New York The Rumpus throws an A Night Together with Sam Lipsyte, Michael Showalter, Lorelei Lee, Jeff Lewis, Jump-Off winners and more, Jamaica Kincaid and Rick Moody help collect Books for NY Schools, Richard Nash and Jim Hanas debate fiction and technology, Gary Shteyngart and Amy Sohn host a Shabbat dinner, Robert Coover reads, Etgar Keret talks to Ira Glass and Frederick Wiseman’s film Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind screens.
The books blogs always like to talk about the future, but this week was like some sort of official book blog crystal ball week, what with this new decade they tell me we’re in now and everything.
We’ve already linked to Richard Nash’s take on the next ten years, but the NBCC’s Critical Mass has lots of different perspectives.
...moreWinter has finally come to south Florida, by which I mean it’s a nipple-hardening 51 degrees Fahrenheit as I type this and you can discern the locals from the transplants by the size (or lack) of the coats they’re wearing.
Quoting Catullus in a text message can get you into trouble, depending on what part you quote.
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As the New York Bureau Chief, I thought it might be a good idea to round up some notable literary and cultural events going on around New York that I think readers of The Rumpus would be interested in. So, I’ll start with some nightly, and sometimes daily, notables for this week:
Monday, September 21, 2009 – Sunday, September 27, 2009
Monday 9/21: The Rasskazy Book Launch Party at Housing Works: Tin House Books and CEC ArtsLink celebrate the release of Rasskazy, a new volume of translated short stories by the best of contemporary Russian writers.
...more“Soft Skull began at a Kinko’s in 1993 courtesy of Adobe and Xerox. It started with fewer resources and far less maturity and experience than, say, Seven Stories, Arcade, Manic D or New Press. But we all benefited from the collapsing barriers to entry into the publishing business.
...moreIf anyone should be listened to in indie publishing (and I’m not saying that anybody should be) it’s Richard Nash (best to follow him on Twitter). And according to Nash, this is the idea that’s most shaped his current thinking on publishing strategy: A Digital Concierge.
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