Soft Skull News

Thee guys who read...

Wed, 14 May 2008 18:46:45 -0500

New book blog arrives, ThreeGuysOneBook—on the one hand, just three guys who like books, on the other hand, they represent a good chunk of the literary consciousness of an enterprise called Bookazine, a company that occupies in interesting position in the book ecology/supply chain. I wish I were better educated about the history of book distribution because these guys are basically the last of a breed of wholesaler called the "jobber"—so far as I can tell, their genius was a combination of their ability to manage same-day delivery, and be able to provide pretty personalized advice to booksellers.

Anyhow, so far, they've been at it three weeks and have given us Sarvas, Benioff, and a debut called Outtakes From a Marriage.

Mother Said...

Tue, 13 May 2008 09:58:57 -0500

I still have not been able to figure out the scheduling functionality—this was supposed to go live on Sunday, but didn't...

Soft Skull on the iPhone

Fri, 09 May 2008 15:56:21 -0500

OK, so this is exciting, We've a button on the iPhone.

OK, so the image is of the Facebook app version of this iPhone eBook reader, but it's the same deal on the iPhone. So, if you're on your iPhone right now, go here, if you wanna check out the company here, and on Facebook here.

We got USA Today to say "masturbation." Hee, hee.

Thu, 08 May 2008 11:14:54 -0500

Minzheimer on The Solitary Vice.

"The book is provocatively subtitled Against Reading. If that weren't enough, its title is borrowed from the Victorian euphemism for masturbation."

Mike Shatzkin: "The competitive slope for each new book published is steeper than for the one before."

Wed, 07 May 2008 21:38:58 -0500

Top notch speech, transcribed here. Sorry, folks, you gotta read the whole thing, even the bit at the end focused on the speaker's audience (Danes...)

So, it's doable...

Wed, 07 May 2008 12:51:34 -0500

The transition for some.

Beth Lapides interviews Mary Roach

Wed, 07 May 2008 12:24:43 -0500

Our Beth Lapides (she of Did I Wake You?—you can get a signed copy at BEA at our booth) interviews Mary Roach.

"...so you’d find out about things that way"

Wed, 07 May 2008 09:14:35 -0500

Where I was, as a young teenager back in the early 80s, you’d hear a band like Throbbing Gristle or Psychic TV and they’d start talking about William Burroughs, and you’d wonder who that was so you’d find out about things that way.—Jack Sargeant, describing the impulse behind the two books of his we're re-issuing this year, Deathtripping: The Cinema of Transgression and Naked Lens: Beat Cinema, an impulse that reminds of what animates so many people working in "indie" culture, you follow what you like, and sooner or later, you're doing what we do.

"I'll kill him." "We'll kill him!"

Tue, 06 May 2008 11:53:34 -0500

Dead in Desemboque on sale in a few weeks.

African Psycho a finalist...

Sun, 04 May 2008 21:14:56 -0500

...for the 2008 Believer Book of the Year. As is Tom McCarthy, author of Tintin, in this instance for last year's novel Remainder.

Economists are starting to notice...

Thu, 01 May 2008 14:51:40 -0500

Chris Anderson isn't the only guy wondering if the price of content is heading towards zero. Mr. Marginal Revolution just noticed, too.

With much ado...

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:40:44 -0500

...our Fall catalog. Download, check it out and email me a list of review copies, ya know? Cause it's hard to keep track of you fine peops and while I know it's nice to have me break it down, it's also nice for me to discover likes and dislikes of y'all's I'd never known about.

So I promise, in the coming months, to give you the skinny on some of the titles in the catalog, and you guys in exchange tell me what review copies you'd like, and we're golden.

[Oh and on the Counterpoint catalog, I particularly draw your attention to Graham Rawle's illustrated Wizard of Oz, and Miriam Toews's The Flying Troutmans, and My Life at First Try—I acquired the first two...]

First instance of Soft Skull book becoming Harvard Business School Case Study...

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 15:27:40 -0500

...ever!

Book trailers: the truth

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:57:43 -0500

You can pay someone lotsa money to do a book trailer no one will watch cause it's so damn obviously a marketing gimmick, or you can just try t o publish the best books you can, and if you're doing a decent job, someone will make one for you:

Books 'n' brews

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:21:50 -0500

Jeff Van der Meer's latest prankish acticity: what beer is your book? This could warrant an entire blog of its own, quite frankly...