Sorry things have been quiet around here. I’m heading to Washington, DC, for the weekend to attend my brother’s college graduation. As luck would have it, Book Expo is being held in the city this year, so my plan is to stop in and check things out. Hopefully I’ll be able to get in a few dispatches about the goings on at the year’s biggest book event. If you happen to be in town, feel free to stop by the LBC party, the details of which are contained within the image below.
In the meantime, things will be mostly quiet around here. Also, if anyone would like to add more recommendations to the list WWII books in the comments of my last post, that would be awesome. I’m loving the suggestions so far and thinking about doing a standalone post on the recommendations next week.
Heading East
Welcome to the New themillions.com
The Millions, at any given time, has ten regular paid contributors and has been host to over a hundred guest contributors, including some of the literary world’s leading voices. With all this going on, we’ve long felt the great writing here needed a little room to breathe. With The Millions having outgrown its bloggy roots, and with needs that long ago surpassed my meager abilities as a web designer, we decided it was time to give The Millions a redesign that reflected the breadth of criticism, commentary, and reporting you’ve come to expect from the site.
So first, a quick tour. The new front page showcases two main headlines – these will be our two most recent essays or reviews – along with a dozen more recently published stories below.
Underneath that is a new section called Curiosities. Throughout the day, we’ll be sharing interesting links and tidbits here. Those of you who read The Millions via RSS will see Curiosities in the feed along with the rest of our content.
Also in the lower area are category-based links into our archives, as well as our monthly Top Ten. At the top right of the page, you’ll find a search box for the site and for Amazon.
If you you have any feedback or see anything broken, please let me know.
It’s not an easy time to be running an independent literature and culture publication that pays its writers, but we strongly believe that we can help fill the gap as coverage shrinks elsewhere. If you’d like to support this effort (or are just inclined to give a housewarming gift), please visit our support page.
Thanks for reading The Millions!
Summer Hours
I do this every summer don’t I? If you haven’t noticed, posting has become a bit sparse at The Millions, and I expect it to be more sparse as the summer wears on. We’re leaving Chicago soon, and we’ll be heading to temporary digs in Washington, DC, before finding a permanent place to live (the final destination is as yet undetermined though we’ve narrowed it down somewhat.) So, essentially, I’ll have a lot of stuff going on and so blogging will take a back seat. And anyway, it being summer, I’d guess that most folks will be enjoying themselves outdoors and on the road rather than in front of the computer. So, look for just a couple of posts a week give or take until the fall months roll around, and maybe by then I’ll be unveiling some changes at The Millions. Or perhaps it’ll stay the same.In the meantime, here’s a small cache of links for your purusal.An old link, but new to me. Slate commisions pulp covers for classic novels. (via BoingBoing)The Book Critics Circle blog decries litbloggers linking to Amazon. (My response is in the comments.) The Literary Saloon weighs in as well. (via Scott)Alan Cheuse presents his “summer reads” at NPR and shares some background on the selections at the Happy Booker.
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Help Wanted: The Millions Needs a Curiosities and Social Media Intern Superstar – CLOSED
This position is now closed. Thank you to all who applied.
The Millions back office is looking for some help again. The site continues to grow, and that means we have an opportunity to add another book-loving person to our team.
We are looking for someone who can help us with a few specific things. The new Millions intern will contribute to our “Curiosities” link blog and will help man (or wo-man) our Twitter feed, Facebook page, and Tumblr. Through those avenues, the intern we seek will have an audience of hundreds of thousands and will be introducing The Millions to new readers every day.
In return for a very modest time commitment, our intern will also join a great group of creative thinkers and have the opportunity to get their work edited by the working writers among us and potentially see their pieces published at The Millions. As is the case with our crew of regulars, our intern will be compensated for the pieces he or she publishes on the site.
The Details:
Responsibilities:
Posting to our “Curiosities” link blog
Posting to our Twitter account
Posting to our Facebook page
Posting to our Tumblr
Coming up with new ideas for fun ways to utilize the above
Here’s what we’re looking for:
A voracious reader – Our ideal candidate will be well-read and have a solid knowledge of contemporary fiction.
A social media superstar– Again, Twitter, Facebook, (Tumblr, blogging, etc.)
Experience with WordPress is a huge bonus.
More details: This isn’t going to be anything close to a full-time gig. We’re thinking 5-10 hours a week realistically, plus as much time as you want to spend writing for us. We think the internship would be a great fit for a college or grad student, but are certainly open to hearing from non-students whose schedules will allow them to do this. We’re looking for a one-year commitment, though we can be flexible on the duration. The Millions has no dedicated office, so this is a remote position and can be done from anywhere in the world.
The position is unpaid, but any long-form pieces that you write for the site and are approved for publication will be compensated using the same system we use to compensate our regular writers. And there will most probably be some free books here and there.
Why should you do this? The Millions is read by hundreds of thousands of people every month. Our readership is a laundry list of influential, brilliant folks in the publishing and media industries as well as in academia, not to mention the most engaged, avid readers of literary work that you’ll find anywhere. Aside from learning about how a site like The Millions operates, you’ll have an opportunity to write for all these people, and you’ll get experience running a Twitter account with 120,000 followers.
How to Apply:
Please send the following to [email protected]
A resume
Three sample Curiosities, using the format we use on the site
If applicable and you are willing to share, we would like to see the following: Twitter account(s) you use; any Facebook pages you’ve had the opportunity to run for schools, publications, companies, etc.; your Tumblr(s) (Essentially, show us that you have experience using these, even if it’s just your own sparsely followed, but very entertaining Twitter account.)
In addition, show us the other cool stuff you are responsible for online, your blog, etc.
The deadline is one week from today: 9/12.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Thanks for Three Years from The Millions
I can’t believe it’s been three years, but it’s true. I started The Millions three years ago today (though it didn’t become a Blog About Books until a little later.) Want to see what it looked like? Ugly! In the intervening years I’ve tried to make the blog a little nicer to look at and a little easier to read. I’m still having fun though, and I wouldn’t have kept it up for this long (I’ve never kept anything up this long!), if it weren’t for you guys. So thank you. Thank you to my contributors who keep this place from being too monotonous. Thank you to all those folks in the publishing industry who work hard to get good books out there to the people and who are kind enough to occasionally send me books they think I might like. Thank you to writers and aspiring writers for creating things for us to read (and for visiting The Millions sometimes). Thanks to my fellow book bloggers – if it weren’t for you guys, this would be a pretty dull hobby. Thanks most of all to the readers of this blog and the readers of books. I’ve greatly enjoyed our ongoing, virtual conversation.All those thank yous. One of the nice things about having a blog is that you can publicly pretend you’ve just won an Oscar any time you feel like it.Finally, I just want to harken back to my so-called manifesto from way back when, when I laid out why I think it’s important for us to discuss what we read. It’s still my goal for the blog today: “Given that you and I will only be able to read a finite number of books in our lifetimes, then we should try, as much as possible, to devote ourselves to reading only the ones that are worth reading, while bearing in mind that for every vapid, uninspiring book we read, we are bumping from our lifetime reading list a book that might give us a profound sort of joy.”Keep reading good books!
The Millions Relaunched
You may have noticed that I spent the long weekend (which for me is one day longer thanks to the national day of mourning for President Ford) updating the look of the site. I hope it’s easy on the eyes. However, if you can’t find something you’re looking for, or if I’ve inadvertently broken something, please let me know.In addition to the superficial changes, I’ve also adjusted the site to allow for our contributors – there will soon be six of them – to post directly to the blog, which, I’m hoping, will up the level of discourse even further. So, all in all, 2007 should be a good year for The Millions. Thanks for reading and Happy New Year.
He wouldn't be graduating from the University of Maryland on Sunday, would he? If so, that would be a remarkable coincidence! I'll be there cheering on my cousin!
Nope GW, but you (and the Bat) should have fun in College Park.